Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson - The Scandal Essay

Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson - The Scandal - Essay Example Each member relies on what each knows of human nature, using common sense and the ability to reason If the assumptions seem ridiculous, throw them out, if the reasons make sense, convict. Here Jefferson will be convicted, but free from scandal. Jefferson was a man of passion and conviction, like many a good leader, and it is just these characteristics upon which he will be judged as well as the elemental conditions of the evidence available. As with any fair trial we must first presume that Thomas Jefferson is innocent before we can bring evidence against him. This presumption will lie in the testimony of his statements and those of his contemporaries. Thomas Jefferson himself never commented publicly on the issue, though some of his remarks have been interpreted as indirect denials. For example, he publicly stated his opposition to miscegenation (a word not yet coined at the time): "Their [blacks] amalgamation with the other color," he wrote, "produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent."1 Why would a man with these opinions ever think to "consent" to relationships outside his own race? The Jefferson Family also vehemently denies any possible impropriety on Jefferson’s part equally sighting his high moral character and his veracity. The family also states as fact that Mr. Jefferson was never geographically present at the times in which Ms. Hemings would have conceived any of her children. â€Å"Thomas Jefferson Randolph [grandson of Thomas Jefferson], holds basically that Jefferson was not at Monticello when Sally Hemings children were conceived, and that they were fathered instead by one of his nephews, either Peter or Samuel Carr.†3 However, careful studies of Jefferson Farm Book and the detailed chronology of his public life record tend to reveal otherwise (see Timeline on page ten). Also the Author of Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History reveals