Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Thomas Jefferson’s religious views were always controversial, with his critics commonly denigrating him as a “confirmed infidel” and even as a “howling atheist.” While he probably did believe in God — at least most of the time — he was decidedly not orthodox and wanted to put strict limits on the ability of any one denomination to wield governmental power or dictate the conscience of individuals. In 1777, during an era when the Anglican Church had such sway over Virginia society that children not baptized in the faith could be taken from their parents, he wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, both to prohibit the establishment of state religion and, as he put it in his Autobiography , to protect the rights of “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and the Infidel of every denomination.”

Believing commerce to be governed by “a selfish spirit” that “feels no passion or principle but that of gain,” Thomas Jefferson also sought to minimize the power of business, especially within government, an agenda at the heart of his opposition to the policies of Alexander Hamilton, which he felt would enslave Congress to the ambitions — and bribes — of New York bankers. He strongly preferred temporary local militias to a standing national army, because he believed that the latter could all too easily be deployed against the people by a tyrant. And, lastly, he was an advocate of the dispersal of governmental responsibility to the states as a check against the power of the federal government.

Thomas Jefferson rarely hewed to any of his ideals with perfect consistency, however. He became rather less sanguine about freedom of the press once he was subjected to vicious attacks by the Federalist papers, and he asserted entirely unconstitutional executive authority when, as president, he pushed the Louisiana Purchase through Congress. Nevertheless, he remained skeptical of institutionalized power to the very end of his life.

In the epitaph he composed only weeks before he died, he said nothing about having been president, governor of Virginia, ambassador to France or about any of his official positions within government. Instead he wanted to be remembered only as the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and as the “father” of the University of Virginia.

It is September 1, 1799. Sally Hemings is twenty-seven years old, and the northern wing of Monticello is in ruins. The roof lies in heaps among the weeds a small distance from the foundation. The walls are naked brick, penetrated at intervals by rectangular holes that lack doors, jambs, casements or windows. The floors inside the wall, on which once stood mahogany tables, silk-upholstered chairs, dressers and bookcases, are warped and grayed by the rain and in some places not safe to walk on. A substantial honeysuckle vine has commandeered the fireplace and rises up the whole of the chimney like a frozen cloud of dark green and yellow butterflies.

Thomas Jefferson had intended the demolition of this wing of his house to be completed in March and for construction of a new wing to have progressed all summer, but he has been too busy with his struggles in Philadelphia to direct his mechanics, and now that he is considering standing for president, he has even less time.

Sally Hemings, six months pregnant, is sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair under the shade of the very copper beech where some two decades earlier Martha Jefferson asked her if she wanted to be little Polly’s companion. She is repairing the skirt of one of her own gowns, which she accidentally stepped on and ripped as she was climbing the stairs. Seventeen-month-old Beverly is asleep on a blanket beside her, twitching his legs and arms like a dreaming dog, occasionally uttering tiny cries and moans as delicate as pigeon coos.

The door to the southern side of the house opens, and Thomas Jefferson walks out onto the terrace to pace in his shirtsleeves and riding boots, with head lowered and one hand clutching the other behind his back. He passes briskly up and down the terrace eight, nine, ten times, then goes back into his study. A moment later he is out again, with a dented and frayed yard-wide straw hat on his head. He crosses the terrace, trots down the steps into the ankle-high grass of the lawn and strides off, in exactly the posture in which he has just been pacing. At the edge of the woods, he reverses direction and recrosses the lawn, his hat brim wafting lazily on either side of his head like the wings of a great blue heron.

All at once, halfway to the house, he makes an oblique left turn, walks directly toward one of the outdoor privies, mounts the two steps in front of it, opens the door, takes off his hat, backs through and closes the door behind him. He emerges a few moments later, puts his hat on again, straightens his clothing and, hopping down the steps, seems possessed by new vigor.

At just that moment, Beverly stirs on the blanket. His little face reddens, and he makes the first stuttery cracks of his usual post-nap hunger cry. In a moment Sally Hemings will have to bring him into the kitchen for some porridge, but for the moment she settles him at her breast. Just as he begins to suck, she looks up to see Thomas Jefferson, only three yards off, walking straight toward her.

“Beautiful day!” he says as he comes to a stop. The sun reflects off the yellowing lawn, turning his eyes a buttery brown. “Can’t understand how anyone can keep inside on a day like this.”

And with that he lifts the crown of his hat, turns about-face and strides off toward the woods, left hand clutching his right wrist behind his back, his hat brim wafting.

Two weeks before Christmas 1799, Jimmy comes to see Sally Hemings. “Now that you can read,” he tells her, “I’m going to write you letters, and you have to write me letters back.”

Jimmy is free. The previous day their brother Peter completed his first week as Monticello’s cook, and Thomas Jefferson, pronouncing himself entirely satisfied, signed Jimmy’s manumission papers and gave him twenty-five dollars. Jimmy’s plan is to move back to Paris, or maybe to Spain, but first he is going to Philadelphia, where he can earn enough money cooking in taverns to pay for his transatlantic passage. His plans to start a French-style restaurant with Adrien Petit are long forgotten — Petit having returned to Paris some five years previously, under a cloud of disgrace that neither Jimmy nor Thomas Jefferson would ever fully elucidate to Sally Hemings.

“Why do you have to leave now?” she asks.

“I just do. I feel like if I don’t go today, I’ll never leave. And then what’s the point of being free?”

Sally Hemings is sitting in a rocking chair by her fireplace. Her belly is so large she can’t see her knees, but the baby inside her isn’t moving. This baby has never moved very much, not like Beverly or little Harriet. She thought the baby would be born in mid-November, and here it is a week into December and nothing is happening. Can babies suffocate, she wonders, if they stay inside too long?

She doesn’t tell her brother what she is thinking.

“Don’t worry,” he tells her. “I’ll be back. I just have to see the world a bit.”

She doesn’t tell him that she is not sure whose baby is inside her. She doesn’t tell him that she thinks the baby has been killed as a punishment.

“Maybe I’ll go to Africa,” he tells her. “I think I should see Africa, find out what it’s really like. You hear all kinds of things about Africa — about lions and savages and kings with golden palaces. I wonder if any of that is true.”

She doesn’t tell Jimmy anything she is thinking because she thinks he should already know. Or if he doesn’t know, he should ask. But Jimmy will never ask, because he is too lost inside his own head. His head is a deep, dark cave, and he doesn’t have a light to find his way out. She doesn’t tell him any of this either.