As I read Annette Gordon-Reed’s narrative about the Hemings
family, and particularly your relationship with Sally Hemings, I can’t help but
feel angry about your role as a slave owner. Throughout my life certain history
teachers have been careful to point out the contradiction of owning slaves and
fighting for the freedom of the American colonies. Often, this contradiction is
explained away by emphasizing the incredible force of slavery as an institution
and as a part of Southern culture. I was always led to believe that the racism
and belief that Black people were less than human that were perpetuated by the
mere existence of this system was too much to be overcome during your time
period. However, reading about how you treated your slaves, related to the
Hemings family, and the ideas you held about mixed-raced people have made the
fact that you owned slaves even harder for me. It is difficult for me to
rationalize how you, or anyone, could think about people the way you thought
about the Hemingses and continue to hold them in slavery.
Gordon-Reed repeatedly shows how you viewed that Hemingses
along the lines you would view lower-class whites. Your decision to exempt the
Hemings women form fieldwork evidences how you “constructed the Hemings women
along more traditional European feminine line” (116). Meanwhile, you seem to
have treated some of the Hemings men “as if they were lower-class white males”
(115). Furthermore, you wrote that in slave-owning societies “women and
children are often employed in labours disproportioned to their sex and age”
(118). How could you see slaves in this way and do nothing to end such a
horrible system? Why would you leave this important task up to another
generation?
After reading The Hemingses of Monticello I am left grappling with a past that I have always
known existed in my country but of which I had only learned about briefly, in a
detached way during my time in grade school. Other issue that the book raises, issues
of race, power, and sexual abuse; the intersection of gender, race, and class;
and even mixed-race identity are all issues I have at one time or another
seriously thought about during my time here at Stanford. However, slavery is
not something I have talked about in any of my classes and is something that
was only mentioned briefly, if at all, during the discussions I have had about
any of the previously mentioned issues. I am left feeling angry at you for
perpetuating white supremacy in what Gordon-Reed explains as something that:
does not require deep conviction.
Ruthless self-interest, not sincere belief, is the signature feature of the
doctrine. It finds its greatest expression and most devastating effect in the
determination to state, live by, and act on the basis of ideas that ones knows
are untrue when doing so will yield important benefits and privileges that one
does not care to relinquish. (119)
While I always thought of you as far from perfect, this book has
confronted me with the harsh reality of you as a slave owner in a way I cannot
detach myself form emotionally. I am hesitant to admit I still held illusions
about you as a hero of our nation, but this book has forced me to realize that
I had previously glazed over this devastating fact about you and my own country
for too long; choosing to acknowledge the existence of slavery historically
without ever really taking the time to study this period or think too long
about this painful reality.- Sophia
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