Chair's Message

Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of law at New York Law School, put Thomas Jefferson on trial at our June meeting. If the forty plus Round Tablers were constituted as a jury, I suspect the vote would have been guilty as charged by James Callender. Ms. Gordon-Reed is the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, an American Controversy. She gave us a riveting description of how she became interested in this explosive subject, starting as a 12 year old, devouring young reader's biographies of Jefferson, then graduating to Fawn Brodie's hotly-debated biography and exploring the subject in scholarly depth as a history major at Dartmouth.

The reaction to the movie Jefferson in Paris triggered her determination to write the book. She was dismayed by the virtually universal dismissal of the film's thesis, that Ambassador Jefferson began a 32 year liaison that made him the father of Sally Hemings' six children. Examining the evidence as an African-American and a woman, she found startling facts that at the very least should make anyone hesitate to dismiss the idea out of hand.

Perhaps the most important evidence is Jefferson's presence at Monticello nine months before each of Sally's children was born.

Although in her book, Professor Gordon-Reed did not state a conclusion, she confided to the Round Table that after further thought and extensive discussions with audiences and other historians, she has now decided the evidence in favor of a guilty verdict is far stronger than the argument for acquittal.

The after-speech questions were so numerous and intense, the Chairman was finally forced to intervene with the remark that he wished we could devote another two hours to the subject. Professor Gordon-Reed departed to thunderous applause.

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Dave Jacobs