Jefferson and Hemings -Preparation for the Next Clinton Scandal?
So, Now Will Clinton Submit to DNA Testing for His Own Reported Black Son?
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, www.originalsources.com
November 5, 1998
Is America being set up to accept another Clinton "Lapse of judgment?" It would appear so, based on the odd timing of a 200 hundred year old bit of political mudslinging. Suddenly a couple of days before the election, which some thought would be a referendum on Clinton's deplorable lack of morals, we hear a news report that claims to have DNA evidence that, U.S. News and World Report calls "proof...beyond any reasonable doubt that Jefferson had a long-term sexual relationship with his mulatto slave" Sally Hemings.
While there appear to be a number of people who claim to be descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the only one that DNA found any kind of familial match was a male descent of Eston Hemings, Sally's last child, who was born when Thomas Jefferson was sixty-five years old, and Sally was 35.
While generally all we hear about Sally is that she was a "slave" of Thomas Jefferson, she also happened to be his sister-in-law. Jefferson was 29 years old when he married a young widow, Martha Wayles Skelton in 1772, who brought into the marriage a large piece of property - Monticello. Sally Hemings was born a year later at Monticello to Elizabeth Hemings and, most historians believe, John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson's father-in-law. When Martha, and then her father John died, Jefferson inherited all the property which not only included the land, but also 167 slaves that lived on that land. When Jefferson's wife died in 1782, leaving Thomas Jefferson with three daughters to raise, Sally Hemings was 9 years old
While the 200 year old gossip on this subject, which was published when Thomas Jefferson was running for President, claims Jefferson fathered six children by Sally, the DNA evidence, supposedly only found an x chromosome match to descendants of Eston, her youngest. While US News and World Report is concluding that this match "proves" Eston was Thomas Jefferson's son, in fact it probably only indicates that another story about Sally may be true - that she had a sexual relationship with one of Thomas Jefferson's nephews. Thomas Jefferson was 30 years old and recently married to a woman he loved deeply when Sally was born in 1773, and would have been 65 at the time of Eston's birth.
However, don't expect logic and facts to cool this story off. Why, do you suppose, we are being fed such garbage as "proof" that Thomas Jefferson was not the decent man we have always believed him to be? Apparently it's because there is another Clinton scandal lurking out there in the dark and we are being set up to accept it as "OK" because supposedly "Thomas Jefferson did the same thing."
Wesley Pruden, editor of the Washington Times, recently put it this way: "Eric Lander, a DNA expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the article in Nature magazine setting out the evidence -- proof, most people are calling it -- of Mr. Jefferson's very own personal democracy project, wants everyone to draw the parallel between Messrs. Jefferson and Clinton. " 'Now, with impeccable timing,' he says, 'Jefferson reappears to remind us of a truth that should be self-evident. Our heroes, and especially presidents, are not gods or saints, but flesh-and-blood humans, with all the frailties and imperfections that this entails.' "True enough, and who among us doubted a self-evident truth? The parallel is not between Miss Hemings and Monica Lewinsky, but it may be -- now that Mr. Clinton's friends bring it up --between Miss Hemings and Bobbi Ann Williams.
"Bobbi Ann Williams, for those who have difficulty remembering what happened on the day before yesterday, is, or was, a Little Rock hooker who is the mother of an effervescent little boy named Danny whose daddy, according to Arkansas lore, is Bill Clinton. Some black folks in Little Rock tried to make this an issue in 1992, but Mr. Clinton, like Tom Jefferson before him, denied the accusation by ignoring it. In the photographs circulating at the grittier edges of the '92 campaign, little Danny, an endearing little tyke in an Arkansas Razorbacks T-shirt, does in fact look a lot like a Clinton. He would be about 13 now. A lot of "respectable" news organizations spent a lot of money in '92 trying to find Bobbi Ann Williams, and never did. Miss Williams' mother -- little Danny's grandmother -- talked to reporters but wouldn't tell them much.
"Bobbi Ann Williams just disappeared, like a lot of people whose paths crossed Bill Clinton's in Arkansas, and Bobbi Ann sightings have been reported in places as diverse as San Diego, Salt Lake City, New Orleans. But no Bobbi, no Danny.
"The Clinton campaign worked mightily to suppress the story, which in its calculations did not rise to the level of an official 'bimbo eruption.' Betsey Wright never had to concern herself with it. The word was put out that anyone who asked about her or the boy was a 'racist,' though how such a question could be construed as racist was never explained. The racism, if there was any, would seem to have been in the Clinton campaign's suggestion that their man could not possibly have been involved with a black hooker. Well, that was then, and this is now. Rutting stories about Bill Clinton that were dismissed out of hand then are routinely accepted as credible now. Even his friends concede that the 42nd president of the United States, though doing a swell job as the leader of the free world, actually prefers the sleazy, sordid, shabby and shoddy in his private life."
Obviously America was not ready for this story in 1992, but today? What the heck! What difference does it make if we have another sex scandal in the White House? This one would give the talk shows and soap operas lots of material. What is the politically correct - or say even, the "right" thing for Bill Clinton to do about Danny? Should he divorce Hillary and marry the boy's mother so he can have a son to carry on the Clinton name? Should he go on TV, shake his finger in our faces again and declare, "I did not have sex with that woman!" Or should he volunteer to have a DNA test, and if it is positive go on TV and tell us that he had another "lapse in judgment" but that it DOES enable him to proudly say that, as the father of a black child, he is, indeed, America's first "black president" just as some in the black community have claimed?
If, as it appears, as a nation we have come to the conclusion that nothing this president does is bad enough for us to send a disapproval message, should we just stipulate that position and be done with it? Do we have to destroy the reputations and character of long dead founding fathers to provide Bill Clinton with cover?
What ever became of that once finely tuned American sense of fair play? Thomas Jefferson isn't here to defend himself. If he were, and was willing to talk about it, we might find out how he dealt with a situation in which he owned his own sister-in-law, who was so fair-skinned that at least a couple of her children were able to move away from Virginia, and pass as white people in other states. Much is made of the fact that Jefferson never "freed" Sally. If he had freed her, of course under Virginia law at the time she would have had to leave Monticello and the state and never come back. Thomas Jefferson would have done whatever was best for his wife's half-sister in a very difficult family situation. It might not be considered the politically correct thing to do by today's standards, but Jefferson clearly treated Sally generously, even having her take lessons in Paris in reading, needlework and other "arts" of refined young ladies in the 1700s. Recent archeological findings at Monticello clearly indicate the Hemings were literate.
James Callander, a disgruntled journalist, published the charges about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings during a bitter presidential campaign and because Jefferson really believed in freedom of speech, he never responded to the false charges then or later.
However, for the Clinton spin doctors to use a 200 year old tragedy in the life of Thomas Jefferson, that was not of his making, to try to justify totally amoral behavior on the part of the president is a new low, even for him.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
originalsources.com |
