Lecture 7: Halliday (Understanding Thomas Jefferson)

Jefferson fathered all of

Sally Hemings’s children

_____ ______ was wary upon meeting the young Sally Hemings in London, suspecting the implications of a young, attractive enslaved girl living in Paris with Jefferson

Abigail Adams

while some biographers have framed Jefferson and Hemings’s relationship as consensual, why can this not be the case?

Sally had little choice due to her status as a slave, making Jefferson’s role one of powerful master rather than an equal partner

how does Jefferson’s writings about slavery differ from his actions?

he typically expressed strong condemnations of slavery but yet he was a slave master for most of his life

he advocated for gradual emancipation and deportation of freed slaves

Jefferson did express in several instances his view of Blacks being inferior

Sally Hemings was Jefferson’s late wifes

half-sister

what is the meaning of the painting of Abraham and Hagar?

it depicts Abraham about to sleep with Hagar, who was an enslaved women, and Jefferson writes that he would’ve agreed to be Abraham

how did Sally’s son describe Jefferson?

uniformly kind to all about him, Jefferson ensured his children with Sally were trained in valuable traits

what are Jefferson’s evolving views on slavery?

early on he advocated for emancipation

later on he advocated for gradual emancipation followed by colonization - he was anxious about racial mixing and uprisings

what are the two Thomas Jeffersons?

the idealist who wrote about freedom and equality

the pragmatic slave owner who struggled to reconcile those ideals with the realities of his life

what are examples of how Jefferson was not necessarily the benevolent man people saw him to be?

he had young boys working long shifts in the nailery, kept records of output and materials wasted

he tried to incentivize productivity but he also used punishments- ordering flogging and selling rebellious slaves

what were Jefferson’s writing on race?

he argues that black people are inferior both physically and mentally

Halliday suggests that knowing Sally and raising their children together could

humanize his understanding of black people

why did Jefferson want gradual rather than immediate emancipation?

years of enslavement had made black people incapable of self-sufficiency