Crawford: Don't blame Jefferson's brother
If you've not heard of Randolph Jefferson, don't feel bad. There's reason to believe most historians have been unaware of the man's existence, including, until recently, some scholars specializing in the life and thought of his better-known older brother, Thomas Jefferson.
Randolph Jefferson has nonetheless been in the news lately, for one reason and one reason only: People determined to exonerate the author of the Declaration of Independence of charges that he fathered one or all of Sally Hemings' children have rounded up a new suspect. They've decided Randolph did it.
This is most unfair. For years, when noticed at all, Randolph Jefferson has gotten rather rough treatment, especially for someone who never called attention to himself and doesn't seem to have wanted it. Twelve years younger than Thomas, Randolph Jefferson was by all evidence an unassuming fellow, content to work his plantation, called Snowden in Buckingham County, Va. Not much is known about him, and he might have vanished completely from sight were it not for the famous -- and famously misinterpreted -- DNA studies of descendants of Sally Hemings' youngest son, Eston Hemings.
While there is no way to do justice to this enormously complicated controversy in a newspaper story, one (for now) indisputable result of those studies was this: They eliminated as suspects the two men who for many years had represented the default-position candidates of "deniers." These were two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews, Samuel and Peter Carr. For generations, individuals and organizations determined to protect Thomas Jefferson's reputation, basing their arguments largely on family stories, blamed the Carrs.
Blood work, however, has shown that neither of these two men could have been Eston's father. This left deniers casting about for somebody other than the Carrs to blame, so they have come up with a new "most logical" culprit. Today, anyway, it's poor Randolph Jefferson.
In fairness to all parties, some of the historians, researchers, writers and freelance controversialists to have weighed in on the question have made significant contributions to our knowledge of an understandably sensitive subject. Robert F. Turner in his meticulous and fair-minded "The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy," for example, does yeoman service poking holes in some of the claims of what might be regarded as the pro-Sally school, from Fawn Brodie to Annette Gordon-Reed. Turner's is a long-overdue corrective, worthy of respect and serious consideration.
Others of the pro-Thomas school, starting with Virginius Dabney's "The Jefferson Scandals," seem at best needlessly defensive as well as dismissive, when not disingenuous. Every dog in this fight seems to have his or her own biases, some more admirable than others.
Where they all fall down, however, is in their treatment of Randolph Jefferson, which seems at times opportunistic and at others downright cynical. The ground for this disparagement, it must be said, had already been well tilled. Because Randolph had not the imposing intellect of his elder brother -- his clumsily composed letters show he was most interested in simply running his farms -- he has been labeled as "retarded" and a "half-wit." These assertions are not only cruel but false. It has been well established that Randolph Jefferson was educated at the College of William and Mary (though he might only have attended the grammar school associated with the college) and that he studied the violin with Francis Alberti, who was also his brother's music teacher. While his letters are those of a tobacco planter and not a scholar, he was certainly capable of carrying on a serviceable correspondence.
The "smoking gun" for the pro-Thomas faction is an 1847 interview with Isaac Jefferson, a Monticello blacksmith. In it, Isaac Jefferson calls Randolph Jefferson "a mighty simple man, who used to come out among black people, play the fiddle and dance half the night." Some have translated this into "fiddling" around with the slaves.
That, folks, is pretty much the case against Randolph Jefferson, which, until the DNA studies, was considerably weaker than the case against the Carrs. The master of Snowden plantation liked to socialize with those unfortunate souls who were denied their freedom and condemned to a lifetime of servitude. (That Randolph Jefferson enjoyed some level of companionship with the enslaved population, viewed differently, might speak well of the man.) The pro-Jefferson side can't even place Randolph Jefferson at Monticello during the time when Eston Hemings was conceived. They must content themselves with the fact that he was invited to visit back then, though whether he did so no one knows.
It's fair to wonder how much credence deniers would put in the blacksmith's memoirs had he claimed, as Sally Hemings' son Madison Hemings, a carpenter, did in 1873, that Thomas Jefferson fathered all five of her children. Dabney found the Monticello carpenter's recollections completely unreliable, except in one particular -- when he said Jefferson was "uniformly kind to all about him," including the slaves. Hmmm.
Who fathered Sally Hemings' children? I don't know, and I would be surprised if anyone ever finds out for sure. Those who in good faith seek answers to questions of this nature should always be open to evidence, and they should acknowledge, when announcing whatever conclusions they reach, the very real possibility that they could be wrong.
But those who think they want to safeguard Thomas Jefferson's legacy should remember this: If all men really are "created equal," then Randolph Jefferson's reputation deserves the same care and consideration as his illustrious brother's. I hereby recommend a commission of scholars to vindicate him.
Alan Pell Crawford is the author, most recently, of "Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson." Readers may send him email at ACrawford@aimmedia.com. He wrote this for The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va. Distributed by MCT Information Services.
