Jefferson-The DNA Myth

Here's a 200 year old smear resurrected as a modern myth masquerading as science -- Thomas Jefferson had a decades long affair with slave Sally Hemings.

How did this myth get started and why? What gave this myth "legs"; that is, what factors led so many people to accept it as if it were a hard fact?

It's a long story.

Fortunately, a concise, objective analysis is available from The Intellectual Activist (TIA) at www.tiadaily.com.

You can buy the issue containing the article -- "The Anti-Jefferson Revolution: Academic Irrationalism and the Sally Hemings Controversy" -- for a few dollars. If you value justice and the freedom Jefferson helped bestow on America, you have an opportunity to put your money where your ideas are. I urge you to buy and digest this intellectual ammunition.

Here, I will comment on what has led so many good people to accept the myth as if it were hard fact. It's the alleged DNA evidence. Scan the internet and you'll find many references to it. The trouble is this -- there is no DNA evidence linking Thomas Jefferson to Sally Hemings.

The TIA article reports "the available genetic evidence could not prove that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings, but it did prove that a Jefferson rather than a Carr fathered him." [Emphasis added] "Demanding proof of a negative, Foster [author of a 11/5/98 British scientific journal Nature on the DNA analysis] argued, 'in the abscence of historical evidence' to support paternity by another Jefferson, that 'Thomas Jefferson, rather than one of the Carr brothers, was the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson, and that Thomas Woodson was not Thomas Jefferson's son.' For his 'historical evidence,' the retired pathologist relied upon the original Callender article, Fawn Brodie's Freudian psychobiography, and Joe Ellis's American Sphinx."

Callender is the man who started the smear in the 18th century. In the 20th, the smear was dressed up under the guise of pseudo-science. However, lipstick on a pig does not change its nature.

Jefferson once wrote the following: "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

If ever there was a challenge to the best within you, this is it. Apply this powerful advice to the case at hand ... as well as to the rest of your ideas and values.