The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

Thoughtful best describes Gordon-Reed's treatment of the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings relationship. The most important aspect of this work is her research of the attitudes and behaviors prevalent after the Revolutionary War. It is very easy for one not familiar with that timeframe (and how could we be, as it was two hundred years ago) to assign "Victorian" bias to an inter-racial relationship. The author's thoroughness in explaining and identifying morals and ideas of the post-revolutionary era, as well as European/French laws and philosophies, allows the reader to understand the basis of how this relationship was created and endured for 38 years. She is not critical of either party, even Jefferson, who ensured his career was not jeopardized by never formally acknowledging his mistress or his children. All of this takes place during "heavy" political times for Jefferson. The Hemings family history is exciting and very unusual for it's day. This is a great book.

The Hemmingses of Montecello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed is a fascinating look into the strange black/white family constellations that emerged under the weight slavery during the American Revolutionary period. Providing a glimpse into southern patterns of interracial mixing during 18th and early 19th century, it illimunites the ways in which standard race relation practices differed during the Antebellum and Jim Crow periods of time. These things, taken together with the interesting individual Hemings family stories, made the book hard to put down.

This book helps us rethink our past and remember what we have forgotten. America is a racially mixed country because of slavery and its legacy. Now we know definitively that Thomas Jefferson and Annette Hemings had a relationship--one that was tragic but also beautiful. The author takes the history of an interracial relationship out of the shadows and tells it with vivid detail. It opens up a new way of thinking about America's founding fathers--and mothers.

One star only because the Kindle version needs to start at $9.99, $17. . . .

Annette Gordon-Reed has written a captivating piece of history about the Hemings family, about the way they were inexorably intertwined with the Jeffersons well before the Sally story, about the feel of what it meant for slaves like the Hemingses to live in Virginia and in other places like Paris and Philadelphia. For me, the most interesting aspect of the book is the story of Sally's brother, James. What abilities he had, what a rich life he led by the standards of his time, what a right arm he was for Jefferson, what a conflict of identity he shouldered, and what tragedy and mystery defined the end of his life! The author has shed light on so much about the story of the two families, but another interesting aspect made crystal clear by her book as well, is to have to learn and accept what we do not know, what we will never know, such as James's death, in other words, what is lost to history about that and so much else concerning slavery and the Founding Fathers.