Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

by Stephen O'Connor

  We arrived at Monticello just before Christmas, and from that moment on, Mr. Jefferson became entirely absent from my life, once again locking himself in his chambers for most of every day and then spending the holidays with, as he put it to me, “my family.”

  Given that I was carrying within my person the youngest member of that family, I could not help but take affront, even if none had been intended. And yet, at the same time, I was becoming more and more aware that my association with Mr. Jefferson was unnatural and untenable. I began to dwell, in particular, on a fact I had known since childhood: that when Mrs. Jefferson was on her deathbed, he had promised her he would never remarry. He had never mentioned this promise to me, but maybe that was because he knew there was no need—my mother had been right there in the room when he’d made it. In any event, during our first days home that promise came to seem the nail in the coffin of my association with Mr. Jefferson. I spent much of my time telling myself that I had been a fool to have imagined any other outcome, that whatever affection my celebrated master might have felt toward me had been only an artifact of our time abroad, and wrong from the beginning, and that I would be better and happier when it was behind me. I was, in short, looking for reasons to hate Mr. Jefferson, and so it was not long before fate answered my call.

  One morning, after I had been home less than a week, I woke from a night riddled with grotesque dreams and bouts of feverish anxiety and decided to take a long walk, in the hope that it might restore my peace of mind. I had not gone more than a half mile before I came upon a gang of Negro men rebuilding a stretch of road that had fallen away in a mud slide. They were singing as they worked, a slow song that sounded like the very exhaustion I could see in their bent backs, in their hanging heads and in the wrists they dragged across their sweating brows.

  This was the first time since my return from France that I had come across a work gang, and so, to a considerable extent, I saw this once-familiar sight with a foreigner’s eyes. During my three years in Paris, I never encountered another slave apart from my own brother—and, of course, he and I were not slaves either, at least from a legal point of view. More important, we dressed better and lived better than many of the French—including some shopkeepers and most of the people working barrows in the market squares. Although I never forgot that I was a slave during those years, for most of that time my enslavement was a mere detail, lacking urgency or the solidity of fact. And so, oddly perhaps, my unconscious assumption on first catching sight of these men bent over their shovels was that they were free—and thus my instantaneous correction hit me like a hammer blow, or like several in succession:

  They were not free.

  Neither was I.

  We were all the victims of a grotesque crime perpetrated by white people—and by Mr. Jefferson in particular.

  As I happened on the scene, an overseer was shoving one of the men—or, in fact, a boy who looked to be about fourteen, though most likely he was sixteen. He had huge brown eyes and bone-thin limbs and was clearly incapable of working like the other men. With every shove, and in the most repulsive and obscene language, the overseer asked the boy if he was a girl, an old woman, a lazy sod. And even as each shove nearly knocked him over, the boy kept trying to do his work but was too tired to scoop more than a handful of soil onto his shovel, and even that would be spilled by the overseer’s blows. What most shocked me was that none of the men did anything to help him. There were eight of them and only the one overseer, but they just kept shoveling and chanting as if completely oblivious. The overseer was unarmed, but he did have a cowskin coiled on his belt—a symbol so potent it seemed to entirely emasculate all of these tall and strong men.

  And then something very strange happened. One moment I was wondering if Mr. Jefferson might actually have been the one to hire this overseer, and if he might even have placed that cowskin into the overseer’s hand, and in the next I was running back up the road in abject terror, feeling that I was being borne down upon by some doom so malevolent and vast as to be unimaginable. Only once the stable roof came into view over a copse of locust trees and my breaths began to burn in my lungs did I slow to a walk and think again and again that this man who had just appeared to me in so hateful a form was the very man whose child was growing within my body, the man who had run the back of his finger so tenderly along my cheek, looked so fondly into my eyes and told me that I was beautiful, that there had been a time when he had wanted to die, but that now, because of me, his life was a joy.

  “Such a joy,” he had said so very tenderly. “Such a joy.” . . .

  On Slavery (Private)

  On January 26, 1789, only three months before the commencement of his sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Edward Bancroft, “As far as I can judge from the experiments which have been made, to give liberty to, or rather, to abandon persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children.” Up until this point, Thomas Jefferson had advocated for the emancipation of slaves almost exclusively on the basis of their fundamental rights to equality, justice and freedom, but from now on, in his private letters, he would argue that captivity had so destroyed the independence of spirit and habits of industry in slaves that they could not be freed until these virtues had been reinculcated through training and more humane treatment.

  Like many other forward-thinking white people in the north as well as the south, he also worried that were slaves freed en masse, their outrage at past treatment combined with the bigotry of whites would inevitably result in race war—a catastrophe avoidable only if emancipation were held off until a “probable & practicable retreat” could be found for newly freed slaves, possibly in Canada or Ohio but most likely in the West Indies, West Africa or Latin America, which were already inhabited by “people of their own race & colour” and had climates “congenial” to the African constitution.

  The primary personal implication of these new arguments was that he could relax. There was no longer any moral urgency regarding the emancipation of his own slaves, and while he may have been obliged to treat them in such a way that they might regain their virtues of industriousness and independence of spirit, it was possible for him to argue to himself that he was already doing just that—as, for example, with the top-flight culinary education that he had provided James Hemings, whom he also allowed to travel great distances in France on his own, often carrying a considerable amount of money.

  In the years after his return to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson trained many of his slaves to be carpenters, furniture makers, blacksmiths, chandlers, cooks and pastry chefs—with the primary beneficiaries of this policy being members of the extended Hemings clan. It should not be forgotten, however, that by having so many skilled craftsmen working for him Thomas Jefferson was able to build one of the most beautiful houses in the United States, and to fill it with excellently made furniture (often of his own devising), and to enjoy coq au vin, bouillabaisse, ratatouille, crêpes and bûche de Noël.

  Those slaves who needed to be literate for their work were also taught to read and write. Unlike at other plantations, no one at Monticello was forbidden to acquire these skills. Indeed, in 1796 Thomas Jefferson even advocated for the establishment of public schools for enslaved and free black children. And in later years he encouraged his grandchildren to give reading lessons to any house slave who showed an interest, though it is also true that he worried that literate slaves could forge manumission papers for themselves and others (his writings on slavery are filled with such contradictions).

  Some slaves were paid for their work (though only a fraction of what white workers received), some received a share of the profits their work helped generate, and a few were made overseers, most notably at a small nail-manufacturing plant, which for roughly a decade beginning in 1794 was by far the plantation’s most profitable venture—though, in general, Thomas Jefferson was not a skilled farmer and made very little, if any, profit most
years from his vast plantation. Slaves were also allowed to have their own small gardens and to raise chickens, and could sell whatever they grew or raised to neighbors, including the Jeffersons.

  It is hard to know how many people benefited even marginally from these comparatively liberal practices, but most likely no more than a hundred, which is to say only a small proportion of the more than six hundred human beings whom Thomas Jefferson owned over the course of his lifetime and whom he famously referred to as both his “family” and “those who labor for my happiness.”

  Small as her fist. Its own fists like the pistils of daylilies, curling in front of the blue bulges where its eyes would have been. Not it—her. Her eyes. Her fists. Mere wrinkle between her legs, which are smaller than the front legs of tree frogs. Gigantic head that reminds Sally Hemings of nothing so much as the tip of a man’s thing—though she is ashamed to even think that.

  Her mother says, “That head’s why the Lord let her go. The Lord always has his reasons.”

  Sally Hemings hopes so. But to her it seems that most things don’t happen for any reason at all. She washes the little one herself. La Petite. Puts her into the jam jar herself. The one he got her that time in Paris. Apricot preserves. The time he wanted her to think better of him. She seals the jar with grease paper and twine. She wraps the jar in burlap and ties the burlap in twine, too.

  She told him when she was going to do it. He nodded and looked as if he were made of sorrow, but he did not say he would come.

  He is not here.

  She holds the jam jar against her belly. Her mother is with her. And Thenia and Critta. And Jimmy. Jimmy is carrying the pickax. Peter has the shovel.

  The sky is filled with snow, but the snow is not falling. The earth is pink and hard. Tow-colored grass. The bare trees are the many colors of bruises. She looks back toward the house, but he is not there.

  She walks first; the others follow. When they get there, he is not waiting.

  Jimmy thinks what they are doing is sacrilege. Witchcraft. Only those who have lived should have funerals. But he has come anyway. And when they arrive, he holds the pick with both hands and asks where she wants him to dig.

  “No,” she says.

  She gives the jam jar to her mother and takes the pickax. The first time she strikes the frozen earth, the vibration snaps like a cowskin lash up her arms to the center of her spine. She has made only a knuckle-shaped dent in the earth amid splayed grass blades. But she hits again and again and again, feeling it is right that she should suffer for this poor creature to whom she could not give life.

  He still has not come when, at last, she lays the jam jar at the bottom of the knee-deep hole and covers it over with the chips of frozen earth and tangled bits of the tow-colored grass. On top of it all, she puts a squarish flag of stone that Peter removed from the wall along Mulberry Row.

  “Au revoir, ma petite,” she says. She also wants to say, “Je t’aime,” but she can’t. The steam of her breath dissipates in the frigid air.

  When she starts to walk away, her mother grabs her arm.

  “No!” Sally Hemings says. “Let me go!”

  Jimmy says, “She’ll be all right.”

  Her mother just stands there, ash-faced, looking.

  Down the hill. Down. Down. Not along the road but through the woods. Hands skin-stripped and blistered, crammed into the pockets of her greatcoat. Lifting her skirts over fallen trees. Shoving aside or ducking under face-level branches. Feet making a constant shush, shush, shush in the pale-copper leaves.

  It is good to get away. She feels nothing but good. Her burning hands throb in her pockets, but the cold air is sweet in her lungs.

  Down past the lake, which is sealed beneath a dull-glinting sheet of ice: black and mottled gray, shifting yellow reeds along its shore. She crosses the path where he takes his daily rides. She wills herself not to look for him. She wills herself not to hope she will see him hurrying home, distraught because some accident kept him from her side. Or hurrying from home, filled with sorrow and anxiety, wanting only to find her, to get down on his knees and beg her forgiveness. She has resolved to hate him. She will be as cold and hard to him as the earth beneath her pickax.

  First she hears a gentle ticking on the fallen leaves, and then she sees the snowflakes, millions of them, drifting between the upreaching branches of the hickories and oaks. Then she is standing by the black river, dank mustiness filling her sinuses, the hissing roar of water over stones filling her ears. The snow is heavier now, obscuring the far shore in its diagonal sweeps and swirls. The world is whitening. Her shoulders are shrouded with snow, and the upper surfaces of her sleeves.

  When she felt the warmth trickling down her legs, then saw the blood, she entered into a sort of fog and a numbness that was less grief than a terrific confusion, a profound lostness. But that’s all over now. Her mind is utterly clear. Here in the cold beside this loud river, she feels more alert and alive than she ever felt in Paris. Here in this wild land where she was born—the only place where she can feel that she is truly herself and in the living world.

  Some hour later, almost back to Monticello, she stops on the edge of a sloping field, now entirely white with snow. The wind has stilled, and the flakes are bigger now, the size of feathers. Rocking. Drifting left, then right. Endless numbers of them, falling all around her in perfect silence. And as she watches, she feels that what she is watching is the settling of grief upon grief upon grief that has been occurring, without relent, for all the centuries since creation.

  The glasses in the hands of the guests are like balls of fire, each reflecting the hundreds of candles that Sally Hemings has been replacing constantly ever since the white sun touched the iron clouds over the western hills. That was at four-thirty; it is now after ten.

  “Love,” says Thomas Jefferson, his face red, candlelight glinting in his eyes, “is our greatest gift.”

  The guests are being served champagne from bottles carried around the room by Jupiter, Thenia and Critta. Some of them sip from their glasses immediately; some are waiting for Thomas Jefferson to finish.

  “Without love,” he says, “our homes would be as comfortless as caves. Our labors would have no purpose, for what is the point of straining our backs and going exhausted to bed if not to bring happiness to those we most want to be happy?”

  Some of the guests gaze with fixed grins into empty space, as if they hear and see nothing of what is happening around them. Old Mrs. Randolph is seated in the corner, her chair entirely concealed beneath the lavender heap of her skirts, her head against the wall, her eyes closed. Her son, Tom, is standing beside her, shifting restlessly from foot to foot, constantly looking down into his glass. And between him and Thomas Jefferson, her cheeks bunched into shiny pink balls from the huge smile that has not left her face all day, stands Patsy—although she has announced that as a married woman she wants to be called only by her Christian name: Martha. She is seventeen. Not to be outdone, Polly, eleven years old, has announced that she only wants to be called Maria, although the name she was given at birth is Mary. She is not in the room, however. Sally Hemings has not seen her for more than an hour.

  “Without love,” says Thomas Jefferson, “the word ‘home’ would have no meaning, for what else makes our homes places of solace and joy than the love that we find in them?”

  A candle is guttering on the sideboard just behind Thomas Jefferson, but Sally Hemings is not going to replace it. She remains on the opposite side of the room, staring directly at him, although he has yet to notice her.

  “But love,” he says, “is not merely a gift we are given; it is a gift we give. Our labors in office, field or manufactory are not meaningless, because they are the gifts we give to our wives and to our children—to the people we love—and their labors in the home are their gifts to us.”

  Sally Hemings has not moved. She is waiting. But Thomas Jef
ferson has not looked her way.

  “When Tom,” he says, “first visited us in France, I loved him already as the son of my dear cousin.” He glances at old Mrs. Randolph, but seeing she is entirely unaware of what he is saying, he continues. “But when I noticed the looks he turned toward my dearest Martha and I saw the blushes those looks engendered, my love for him redoubled, not merely because he is, as everyone in this room knows, a fine and responsible young man but because he had the power to give dear Martha the greatest happiness in life—by meeting her love with an equal love of his own.”

  Tom Randolph lifts his gaze from his glass and trades an embarrassed glance with his ferociously grinning bride.

  “And on this day, when the feelings they share have been sanctified before God and in the hearts of all in this room”—Thomas Jefferson lifts his glass, as do all the guests—“I want to make a toast to the sentiment that binds these two young people and without which none of us could bear to spend a day on this bleak earth.”

  As he raises his glass above his head and says, “To love!” his gaze at last turns to Sally Hemings, who holds it for a long instant before turning her back and leaving the room.

  The guard bangs her billy club against the bars of the prisoner’s cell. He is lying on his cot, the side of his head swollen—purple and red, capillary laced. She speaks.

  —Morning! Rise and shine!

  — . . .

  —Don’t worry. I’m in a much better mood today.

  — . . .

  —What’s the matter? You look so glum.