Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. New York, W. W. Norton & Company. 2008. 798 pages.

Abstract

This review introduces Annette Gordon-Reeds The Hemingses of Monticello critically. The book recounts the extended history of three generations of the Hemingses and the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and them that developed at Monticello between 1735 and 1826. The author, however, questions the suggested sexual relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Elizabeths youngest daughter, as to whether Sallys sixchildren were fathered by the president, a long-standing controversy since the turn of the eighteenth century. The discussion of the specific contexts of slavery and of social circumstance at that time makes the authors argument in the book convincing and thought-provoking. Gordon-Reeds view of the Jefferson-Hemings relationship as based on love, however, often relies on her own abstract reasoning, which creates many questionable points. Such factors overshadow the authors efforts to recover Hemings from the silence of history while ironically emphasizing Jeffersons hegemony over her.