patrick.net

I urge you to read the piece in it's entirety. It is well worth it. I edited down as much as I could without ruining it, eliminating maybe 5 paragraphs:

Ann Coulter

The Jefferson-Hemings myth was revived by feminists trying to elevate the role of women in history. Modern pedagogy requires that no period of our past be taught without turning it into a lecture on racism, sexism or homophobia.

Fawn M. Brodie got the ball rolling with her 1974 book, “Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History,” which used Freudian analysis to prove Jefferson kept Hemings as his concubine and fathered all six of her children.

Brodie’s book was followed by Barbara Chase-Riboud’s 1979 novel “Sally Hemings,” a work that imagines Hemings’ interior life. When CBS announced plans to make a miniseries out of the novel, Jefferson scholars exploded, denouncing the project as a preposterous lie. The miniseries was canceled.

Finally, a female law professor, Annette Gordon-Reed, wrote “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy,” which accused professional historians of racism for refusing to defer to the “oral history” of Hemings’ descendants.

She said “racism,” so the historians shut up.

In 1998, a retired pathologist, Dr. Eugene Foster, performed a DNA test on the Y-chromosomes of living male descendants of Sally Hemings, as well as those from Jefferson’s paternal uncle. The Y-chromosome is passed from male to male, so, if the story were true, Hemings’ male descendants ought to have the Y-chromosome of the Jefferson male bloodline.

What the DNA tests showed was that Hemings’ firstborn son, Tom — the Tom whose alleged paternity was the basis for Callender’s accusation — was not related to any Jefferson male.

Foster’s study did establish that Hemings’ last-born son, Eston, was the son of some Jefferson male, but could not possibly say whether that was Thomas Jefferson or any of the other 25 adult male Jeffersons living in Virginia at the time, eight of them at or near Monticello.

For Eston to be Jefferson’s son, we have to believe that five years after being falsely accused of fathering a child with Hemings, Jefferson decided, What the heck? I may be president of the United States, but I should prove Callender’s slander true by fathering a child with my slave! No one will notice.

It would be as if five years after the Duke lacrosse hoax, one of the falsely accused players went out and actually raped a stripper — in fact, the same stripper.

Nonetheless, Nature magazine titled its article on the study “Jefferson Fathered Slave’s Last Child.” Hundreds of newspapers rushed to print with the lie, e.g.:

“Study: Jefferson, Slave Had Baby” — Associated Press Online, Nov. 1, 1998

“DNA Study Shows Jefferson Fathered His Slave’s Child” — Los Angeles Times, Nov. 1, 1998

“Jefferson Exposed” — Boston Globe, Nov. 3, 1998

Two months after these false “findings” had been broadcast from every news outlet where English is spoken, Foster admitted that the DNA had not proved Jefferson fathered any children by Sally Hemings, merely that he could have fathered one child. Only eight newspapers mentioned the retraction.

The science alone puts the odds of Thomas Jefferson fathering Eston at less than 15% — less than 4%, if all living Jefferson males are considered, not just the ones at Monticello.

None of the private correspondence from anyone else living at Monticello credited the Hemings rumor, though several pointed to other likely suspects — specifically Jefferson’s brother, Randolph.

Eston was born in 1808, when Thomas Jefferson was 64 years old and in his second term as president. His brother Randolph was 52, and Randolph’s five sons were 17 to 24 years old. All of them were frequent visitors at Monticello.

While Jefferson was busy entertaining international visitors in the main house, Randolph would generally retire to the slave quarters to dance and fiddle. One slave, Isaac Granger Jefferson, described Randolph in his dictated memoirs thus: “Old Master’s brother, Mass Randall, was a mighty simple man: used to come out among black people, play the fiddle and dance half the night.”

There is not a single account of Thomas Jefferson frequenting slave quarters. Nor did Jefferson take any interest in Hemings’ children. Randolph did, teaching all of Hemings’ sons to play the fiddle.

Randolph was an unmarried widower when Eston was conceived. After Randolph remarried, Hemings had no more children.

In response to DNA proof that only one of Hemings’ children was related to any Jefferson male — and her firstborn son was definitely NOT fathered by any Jefferson — the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the Monticello Association and the National Genealogical Society promptly announced their official positions: Thomas Jefferson fathered all six of Hemings’ children! Guided tours of Monticello today include the provably false information that Jefferson fathered all of Hemings’ children.

GREAT piece by Ann Coulter: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/03/coulter-was-thomas-jefferson-on-the-duke-lacross-team/