Thomas Jefferson, the once -revered sage of Monticello and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, has been knocked off his pedestal in recent years, the victim of what many historians believe is his own hypocrisy.
But William Hyland, Jr. claims that Jefferson himself is the victim of a 200-year-old character defamation recast as revisionist history. A former Virginia attorney who now practices law in Tampa, Florida, Hyland has taken on the academic establishment defending Jefferson from oft-repeated accusations that he fathered children with his slave, Sally Hemings.
Hyland told me he spent close to three years researching “In Defense of Thomas Jefferson,” which has climbed to the 16th best seller on Amazon’s History listing. After taking a methodical look at all of the evidence from a defense attorney’s point of view, Hyland says he has no doubt that Jefferson is completely innocent, despite a 2000 report by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation.
The report cited results of a 1998 DNA analysis and oral history passed on by Hemings’ descendants, concluding that the third president was the likely father of at least one, if not all, of Hemings’ children.
But if Jefferson were put on trial, Hyland maintains, most of the evidence against him would be thrown out. For example, the DNA study found a link between Eston Hemings, born in 1808, and a male Jefferson, but did not prove that Thomas Jefferson himself was Eston’s father.
University of Virginia Jefferson scholar Robert Turner and 12 other distinguished scientists and historians unanimously agreed that the DNA could have come from any of two dozen other Jefferson males, they pointed out in their 2000 dissenting report.
Hyland also presents detailed historical evidence that implicates Jefferson’s younger brother, Randolph, a widower who was known to socialize with the slaves at Monticello. Thomas is exonerated by the only recorded eyewitness: Edmund Bacon, the overseer of Monticello, who said that he personally witnessed another man besides Thomas Jefferson coming out of “[Sally’s] room many a morning when I went up to Monticello very early.”
Until 1976, the Hemings’ oral tradition maintained that they descended from a Jefferson “uncle,” which accurately describes Randolph, who had been invited to Monticello exactly nine months before Eston was born.
The 64-year-old Jefferson himself suffered debilitating migraines, rheumatoid arthritis, and severe urinary and intestinal problems that made sexual trysts with Hemings highly unlikely, Hyland writes.
Such behavior was roundly denied by Jefferson’s only surviving daughter and her children, who spent much time at Monticello. After his beloved wife died young, Jefferson admitted being infatuated with the educated, sophisticated and married Maria Cosway while serving as minister to France – the same time he was supposedly launching a torrid love affair with the 14-year-old Hemings.
The Hemings accusation was first published in 1802 as a “vindictive political attack” by journalist James Callender, who was angry at Jefferson for not giving him a patronage job, so his motive was tainted. And, although Jefferson never denied the charge publicly, he did so privately in letters to friends and colleagues.
If Hyland’s goal as Jefferson’s self-appointed defense attorney was to raise reasonable doubts about the accusations leveled against one of our most prominent Founding Fathers, he does exactly that.
And while his book doesn’t change the brutal fact that white plantation owners like Jefferson often took sexual advantage of their female slaves, forcing them to bear their unacknowledged offspring, it does remind us that even dead white males deserve to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Barbara F. Hollingworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
