The part played by Sally Hemings in the life of Thomas Jefferson has been regarded as provocatively dubious since political enemy James Callender claimed in 1802 that Jefferson was the father of several of Hemings’s children. Historian Merrill Peterson, observing that paternity is hard to prove, wrote in 1960 that no concrete evidence was ever produced to support the accusation. Peterson also noted that Jefferson never issued a public denial of the charge. The legend of Sally Hemings has invited endless speculation while remaining apparently impervious to disproof. Perhaps most notably, the story has been periodically recycled to illustrate Jefferson’s moral hypocrisy and white society’s oppression of blacks.
In recent years Annette Gordon-Reed’s 1997 study, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, stands out as the most vigorous and determined effort to defend the legend.1Gordon-Reed, a
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