Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

And here, at last, I became the insane woman whom everyone had imagined me to be, as I ran after the retreating wagon, shouting out, “Evelina! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I love you! I love you! Evelina! I love you!” Now it seems odd to me that I should have professed my love to this woman, because during most of my association with her, especially when she was my own servant, she had often irritated me, and I had never found her sufficiently industrious or remotely intelligent. But as I ran after that wagon, my love for her was passionate and true, and if it had been possible to gain her freedom by throwing myself under the wheels of the wagon, I would have done so without a thought.

But the wagon only gathered speed as I raced toward it over the frozen, rutted, red earth of the East Road, and it was clear that even if my heart had not already been pounding and my breaths had not been burning in my throat, I had no chance of catching up with it.

But then a horse by the side of the road started — perhaps at McFlynn’s driver’s cries — and lurched in front of the wagon, pulling its gig along with it. McFlynn’s horses veered left, and the driver yanked on the reins, avoiding a collision and bringing the wagon to a halt. And so, still shouting my love and my sorrow and not caring who heard me, I redoubled my pace, and in instants I was gripping the posts at the rear of the wagon.

I had not been able to tell as I ran if Evelina had been even aware of my pursuit, but now she was looking straight at me under her lowered brow. As I, unable to gather air sufficient for speech, only sobbed and gasped wordlessly, she placed her hands on the bed of the wagon and dragged herself as close to me as her chains — fastened to the base of the driver’s seat — would allow. Over her shoulder I saw that McFlynn had turned to look at me. He yanked the whip out of the hand of his driver — who was exchanging curses with the driver of the gig — and lifted his leg so that he might step over the seat and into the back of the wagon.

I didn’t care what he did with that whip. I almost longed to feel its sting on my shoulders and cheek. Evelina’s face was now only inches from mine. I looked into her eyes, which seemed filled with animal fury. She was milling her mouth in a peculiar fashion, as if she were engaged in some terrific struggle to regain the power of speech, and then, exactly as the driver cried out and the wagon jerked forward, yanking the posts from my grip, something white shot across the space between us.

As I watched Evelina draw away from me, her new master behind her, one hand gripping the back of his bench, the other holding his whip high in the air — though only to steady himself as the wagon tilted into and then out of a rut — I felt her warm saliva, still fragrant of the inside of her mouth, oozing down my nose and onto my lips….

The story of my own life is like a fairy tale, and you would not believe me if I told to you the scenes enacted during my life of slavery. It passes through my mind like a dream. Born and reared as free, not knowing that I was a slave, then suddenly, at the death of Jefferson, put upon an auction block and sold to strangers. I then commenced an eventful life.

I was sold to Col. John R. Jones. My father was freed by the Legislature of Virginia. At the request of Mr. Jefferson, my father made an agreement with Mr. Jones that when he was able to raise the amount that Col. Jones paid for me he would give me back to my father, and he also promised to let me learn the blacksmith trade with my father as soon as I was old enough. My father then made a bargain with two sons of Col. Jones — William Jones and James Lawrence Jones — to teach me. They attended the University of Virginia.

Mr. Jefferson allowed his grandson to teach any of his slaves who desired to learn, and Lewis Randolph first taught me how to read. When I was sold to Col. Jones I took my books along with me. One day I was kneeling before the fireplace spelling the word “baker,” when Col. Jones opened the door, and I shall never forget the scene as long as I live.

“What have you got there, sir?” were his words.

I told him.

“If I ever catch you with a book in your hands, thirty-and-nine lashes on your bare back.” He took the book and threw it into the fire, then called up his sons and told them that if they ever taught me they would receive the same punishment. But they helped me all they could, as did his daughter Ariadne.

Among my things was a copy-book that my father gave me, and which I kept hid in the bottom of my trunk. I used to get permission to take a bath, and by the dying embers I learned to write. The first copy was this sentence, “Art improves nature.”

— The Reverend Peter Fossett

“Once the Slave of Thomas Jefferson”

New York Sunday World

January 30, 1898

Account Book

1. Sally Hemings was not freed in Thomas Jefferson’s will but “given her time” by Martha Randolph, an arrangement that simultaneously avoided the scandal that might have arisen had Thomas Jefferson freed her himself and, since she was not technically free but only allowed to live as free, enabled her to evade the Virginia law that required freed slaves to leave the state. Her sons, Madison and Eston, were exempted from the law through a dispensation granted, at the request of their father, by the state legislature.

2. Joseph Fossett worked many years to earn enough money to buy back his wife, five of his children and five grandchildren. In 1840, once it became clear that Colonel John R. Jones would never allow Fossett to buy back his son Peter, the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. Although he was also unable to buy back his daughter, Patsy, she ran away from her new master within the year and was living in Cincinnati at the time of the 1850 census.

3. Burwell Colbert never rescued any of his children from slavery. His elderly mother lived at Monticello until the great house was finally sold in 1831. He would visit her from time to time, clean up the house and tend the garden, but mostly he worked as a painter and glazier at the University of Virginia. When he was fifty-one, he married a twenty-year-old freewoman and started a new family.

4. Wormley Hughes, a favorite servant, who dug Thomas Jefferson’s grave, was also given his time by Martha Randolph, but his wife and their eight children were sold to separate buyers in Charlottesville. Jeff Randolph bought them all back immediately after the auction, and over the next four years, he bought eighteen more members of Hughes’s extended family, all of whom were reunited at Randolph’s Edgehill Plantation.

5. Forty-two of the approximately two hundred human beings auctioned at Poplar Forest and Monticello ultimately found freedom or lived out their lives in comparatively beneficent servitude with members of Thomas Jefferson’s extended family. The rest were dispersed among households and plantations across Virginia and perhaps in neighboring states. Their fates are entirely unknown.

… It is late. The fire is out. So maybe it is five or six in the morning. The room is frigid and still dark. I can see my breath by candlelight. I don’t know why I have been writing all of this.

No. I do. I do.

I said that I wanted to understand, but that is not true. What I wanted was absolution. I thought that by admitting my sins I would somehow be freed of them. That is all I really cared about. Instead I am only more despicable to myself. When I finished my narrative, I needed company. In truth, I wanted my mother — which shows how friendless I have made myself. Mrs. Martha is here. And Mr. Jeff. And their servants. But I can no longer stomach white people, and the servants won’t talk to me. In my presence they behave as if they can neither see nor hear me. I am invisible to them. I am nothing. And it is true: I am not white. I am not black. So I am nothing.