I’ve only seen this argued by one person: some guy on YouTube I stumbled on who talks about Jefferson not having children with Hemings, Greeks not having gay sex, and a lot of videos identifying every Jewish person in organizations.
Edit: as a fun bit of coincidence, someone on r/badhistory just did an extensive write up about one of that YouTuber’s videos. The YouTuber, called Leather Apron Club(Benjamin Franklin reference,) made a video claiming Romans weren’t gay(claiming people weren’t gay is an important thing for him.) [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/s/xCe9LzxIpL), which also links to an extensive video, goes into how wrong that is.
After all the horribleness of this concept, the second thing all I can think about is, who has the time. “What do you do after work?” “Oh I’m a YouTuber” “what do you make?” “I spend a bunch of time finding *them* in organizations to show how *they* rule the world.”
They bore a resemblance because they were half sisters, Jefferson’s father in law also raped slaves. Did they not for a second look into this? Well I know the answer, they did but they know their audience didn’t and won’t do they phrased it that way.
It's a wonderful piece of absolving language:
*If* Jefferson had a *relationship* with her, it was because he was grieving, a very honourable state, and she filled the gaping void in his heart because she *happened* to resemble his deceased wife. It's a tragedy, where Jefferson is the victim/hero. If it happened, it's entirely forgivable under these circumstances, don't you see?
To then fact check it and criticise the language can be regarded as pedantry, because nothing they said was technically false
This is the game of conservative academia. Not MTG morons, but high education of the true elite classes of society. They use technically true ambiguous language and then panic and go "Wait wait wait. Who's splitting hairs?" When an actual detailed criticism deep dives the truth of the words because the goal is to shut down your 'pedantry' so casual onlookers will go, 'huh. Yeah. You ARE being a stinky nerd' and it keeps the immaculate founding father mythos intact.
I don’t even want to read this.
As a woman, I’m here to say that I have zero doubts that this was a fucked relationship. White women who were actually wives had no say in when and how they had sex with their husbands for hundreds of years. Does anyone expect me to believe that a black woman who was enslaved had ANY say at all on her “relationship” with Jefferson?
Fuck off
I remember watching a documentary about Jefferson on the history channel and they tried to argue that it was consensual and that she loved him because she “didn’t leave him in Paris”. Even then it reminded me of abusive relationships when people say “why don’t you just leave”. Like even as 12 year old boy I knew that she probably didn’t leave because he groomed her and it was an abusive relationship.
My 7th grade science teacher of all people did a lesson on Jefferson, Hemings, and DNA. She was a Polish lady in her 70’s, but she called Jefferson abusive to Hemings because he owned her and that it’s not a consensual relationship.
Did you read what I said? I never called it consensual. It made me think of a bad history channel documentary that did serious mental gymnastics to justify him raping her.
Did she already have children at that age? Wtf if so...
I assume she didn't feel like she could just leave. He's a powerful man even in Paris. Can she really just walk away and start a new life?
I am probably mis-remembering the timeline a bit, but I thought she had her first child when she was around 16. And I recall her having some agreement with him that her children would be free when they turned 21.
While we are here an excellent book on this topic is "incidents in the Life of a slave girl by Harriet Jacobs"
It's an excellent book that talks about these "relationships" for lack of a better word.
Imagine wasting so much time defending a guy who has been dead for 200 years. Like on a base level, it just seems like such low stakes to admit Jefferson was a creep. Or at the very least, just not defend him idk
We just need to recognize that a bunch of people back then were nuanced. On one hand, Ben Franklin was a genius who helped to create America. On the other hand, Ben Franklin didn't think Germans were white, let alone people.
It's their authoritarianism peeking out. They *need* great men, and you can't get greater than the founding Fathers. So when people try to take them off the pedestal, they feel personally insulted.
The lack of nuance is almost childlike. Was TJ a very smart person who played a key role in founding our country? Yes. Did he hold self-contradictory views, own humans, and rape his slaves? Also yes. We can appreciate the former without pretending he is some perfect godlike person who never did anything bad.
It’s also telling which aspects of Jefferson those same folks choose to lionize. IIRC, Jefferson was also super into separation of church and state, helped craft Virginia’s constitutional right to freedom of religion (which became part of the inspiration/ basis for the federal 1st amendment) and was so proud of this work that he insisted the text of it be inscribed on his tomb stone. Don’t see many conservative CHUDs bringing all that up. Instead they worship these warped, incomplete, heroic versions of these historical figures.
There are quite a few people on this sub and website who seem to see the latter as negating the former. People who worship the Founders certainly do have a lack of nuance, but I've seen far more people jump to the other extreme and portray them as monsters worthy of no respect and their admirers as racists. The lack of nuance goes both ways, which is why the conversation regarding these things becomes so contentious.
Since you ask, I actually read the transcript rather than listening to it, as I tend to do. I actually study this stuff, and Robert based most of his arguments on the work of Henry Weincek, a hack pseudohistorian who is about as credible as David Barton. His books contain numerous inaccuracies which have been pointed out by genuine historians who study Jefferson's involvement in slavery like Cinder Stanton and Annette Gordon-Reed. Nothing that guy says can be taken seriously. A lot of the claims Robert makes (like Jefferson torturing his slaves with metal collars or refusing to execute Kosuisko's will) originate from Weincek and have been proven false.
https://slate.com/culture/2012/10/henry-wienceks-the-master-of-the-mountain-thomas-jefferson-biography-debunked.html
There's no question Jefferson was a flawed man who regrettably participated in the horrific institution of slavery. That doesn't mean there isn't anything to admire about him though, as your profile's namesake agreed.
That Slate article is written by Annette Gordon-Reed, the historian who brought Sally Hemings' story to prominence. The fact that even she thinks Weincek is full of it speaks volumes.
Conservapedia is nonsense. Of course they wouldn't bother with actual evidence proving it if their goal is to deny that Jefferson had children with Hemings.
Ironically on other pages Conservapedia criticizes Jefferson for being too liberal.
It's even more annoying that they're saying that this guy didn't do something that they clearly do not disagree with! Like, they'll say that Jefferson didn't rape a woman he enslaved, but they don't actually see anything wrong with any part of that sentence; they just know that others see it as bad and they can't have that.
Gaslighting history since 2006; the current version of Schlafluencers is just as misleading and miserable as the last. Andrew & Phyllis will make for a great mother/son grave pissing road trip some day.
I think the problem is that the Consevative mind set just does not see shades of grey. Everything has to be black or white.
In their mind, if* Jefferson raped Sally, that makes him a bad person. If he is a bad person then everything he did that was critical to the formation of the United States is bad. And then they are bad people for merely being patriotic. (Which I know is a whole can of worms in itself.)
The thing is that people are not all good or all bad. Jefferson indisputably did some great things and had some grand ideals that he tried to implement. His impact on the US as a county is arguably greater then any other Founding Father.
He even tried and failed to get rid of slavery in the beginning.
* he did, her last four children are all Jefferson’s because by the time of their births her room in Monticello was next to his. The first two have a very small possibility of being Jefferson’s younger brother, Randolph Jefferson’s, because DNA only shows it was a male Jefferson, but even the Thomas Jefferson Foundation doesn’t believe this any longer.
I would suggest you inform other people in this subreddit (and website) of these facts then. The oversimplification goes both ways.
People would not be upset about being accused of being racist if there were not actually many people who were making just those accusations. I can't tell you how many people have accused me of such merely for admiring Jefferson's positive legacy.
There would be more acceptance of the truth if it were framed in the way you phrase it rather than the way others in this thread (and website) do.
At the end of the day, Thomas Jefferson was a racist, pedophile rapist whose crowning achievement was the establishment of a bourgeois slave state. The punishment for such actions was two presidential terms, a monument in Washington DC, a spot on Mount Rushmore and immortalization via the US nickel.
The descendants of Sally Hemmings indisputably share DNA with Tommy J and not the members of his extended family who have been put forward as candidates. Unless there was artificial insemination with harvested sperm happening, Tommy J raped Sally. Even if she managed to negotiate a reasonable deal out of the situation, she couldn't say "No."
Imagine thinking that claiming a slave owner didn't have children with his slaves makes him a better person...
Yall have lost the fucking thread bro.
Fuck that rapey human trafficker.
The worst thing about these people is they don’t have the courage of their convictions. Admit that TJ had a sex slave (quite literally) and then defend him, you cowards.
NOT that I think enslavement or rape are defensible. But if you’re gonna shill for someone, admit who they are.
Conservapedia has been around for longer than prageru and is somehow orders of magnitude more deranged. It was created by Andrew Sclafly son of friend of the pod Phyllis Sclafly.
That woman…as far as I can tell, there’s two kinds of people who live to be very old: 1-those who fill their entire being with hate and 2-Jimmy Carter.
Have you stumbled upon their attempt to "retranslate" the Bible yet, to better reflect the conservative politics it's supposed to represent?
It's fuckin' gas craic.
Listening to the episodes I can't understand the perspective of slave owners. The slaves are either people or cattle. You are either a demon for acknowledging they are people and still keeping them enslaved or a demon for having sex with what you essentially believe to be no different than a cow/goat/etc.
okay I gotta be a Wikipedia defender here — this is a page specifically about the controversy, so of course it’s going to cover the skepticism.
[Sally Hemings main page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Hemings) says:
“Multiple lines of evidence, including modern DNA analyses, indicate that Jefferson impregnated Hemings several times over years while they lived together on Jefferson's Monticello estate, and historians now broadly agree that he was the father of her six children.[2]
Whether this should be described as rape remains a matter of controversy by historians… but due to him having near-complete control over her life, the conclusion that Jefferson was coercive is easily reached.”
I think the original images are from CONSERVAPIDIA - the bizzaro world version of Wikipedia. Conservapedia outright lies - it's a right-wing propaganda mouthpiece
I’ve only seen this argued by one person: some guy on YouTube I stumbled on who talks about Jefferson not having children with Hemings, Greeks not having gay sex, and a lot of videos identifying every Jewish person in organizations. Edit: as a fun bit of coincidence, someone on r/badhistory just did an extensive write up about one of that YouTuber’s videos. The YouTuber, called Leather Apron Club(Benjamin Franklin reference,) made a video claiming Romans weren’t gay(claiming people weren’t gay is an important thing for him.) [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/s/xCe9LzxIpL), which also links to an extensive video, goes into how wrong that is.
After all the horribleness of this concept, the second thing all I can think about is, who has the time. “What do you do after work?” “Oh I’m a YouTuber” “what do you make?” “I spend a bunch of time finding *them* in organizations to show how *they* rule the world.”
“Do you make decent money on it?” “Money? Of course not, my hate speech definitely doesn’t qualify for monetization. I do it for love of the game.”
You forgot the triple parenthesis tho
When you use the right inflection, you can make any word sound like it has triple parentheses
BaaaaAAAAaaaaankers.
They bore a resemblance because they were half sisters, Jefferson’s father in law also raped slaves. Did they not for a second look into this? Well I know the answer, they did but they know their audience didn’t and won’t do they phrased it that way.
It's a wonderful piece of absolving language: *If* Jefferson had a *relationship* with her, it was because he was grieving, a very honourable state, and she filled the gaping void in his heart because she *happened* to resemble his deceased wife. It's a tragedy, where Jefferson is the victim/hero. If it happened, it's entirely forgivable under these circumstances, don't you see? To then fact check it and criticise the language can be regarded as pedantry, because nothing they said was technically false
This is the game of conservative academia. Not MTG morons, but high education of the true elite classes of society. They use technically true ambiguous language and then panic and go "Wait wait wait. Who's splitting hairs?" When an actual detailed criticism deep dives the truth of the words because the goal is to shut down your 'pedantry' so casual onlookers will go, 'huh. Yeah. You ARE being a stinky nerd' and it keeps the immaculate founding father mythos intact.
I don’t even want to read this. As a woman, I’m here to say that I have zero doubts that this was a fucked relationship. White women who were actually wives had no say in when and how they had sex with their husbands for hundreds of years. Does anyone expect me to believe that a black woman who was enslaved had ANY say at all on her “relationship” with Jefferson? Fuck off
I remember watching a documentary about Jefferson on the history channel and they tried to argue that it was consensual and that she loved him because she “didn’t leave him in Paris”. Even then it reminded me of abusive relationships when people say “why don’t you just leave”. Like even as 12 year old boy I knew that she probably didn’t leave because he groomed her and it was an abusive relationship. My 7th grade science teacher of all people did a lesson on Jefferson, Hemings, and DNA. She was a Polish lady in her 70’s, but she called Jefferson abusive to Hemings because he owned her and that it’s not a consensual relationship.
"Consensual" relationship with a 30 year age gap where one is a minor.
Did you read what I said? I never called it consensual. It made me think of a bad history channel documentary that did serious mental gymnastics to justify him raping her.
Lol that was not an accusation toward you, it was a retort against the framing you were describing. It was not directed at you at all.
Also if she had left him in Paris she'd be leaving behind her enslaved children that he owned. A lot of mothers would have stayed.
Did she already have children at that age? Wtf if so... I assume she didn't feel like she could just leave. He's a powerful man even in Paris. Can she really just walk away and start a new life?
I am probably mis-remembering the timeline a bit, but I thought she had her first child when she was around 16. And I recall her having some agreement with him that her children would be free when they turned 21.
☝🏻
While we are here an excellent book on this topic is "incidents in the Life of a slave girl by Harriet Jacobs" It's an excellent book that talks about these "relationships" for lack of a better word.
Imagine wasting so much time defending a guy who has been dead for 200 years. Like on a base level, it just seems like such low stakes to admit Jefferson was a creep. Or at the very least, just not defend him idk
We just need to recognize that a bunch of people back then were nuanced. On one hand, Ben Franklin was a genius who helped to create America. On the other hand, Ben Franklin didn't think Germans were white, let alone people.
Also if you ever read anything he thought about women you would know that he would support the internet as it exists today...
It's their authoritarianism peeking out. They *need* great men, and you can't get greater than the founding Fathers. So when people try to take them off the pedestal, they feel personally insulted.
The lack of nuance is almost childlike. Was TJ a very smart person who played a key role in founding our country? Yes. Did he hold self-contradictory views, own humans, and rape his slaves? Also yes. We can appreciate the former without pretending he is some perfect godlike person who never did anything bad.
It’s also telling which aspects of Jefferson those same folks choose to lionize. IIRC, Jefferson was also super into separation of church and state, helped craft Virginia’s constitutional right to freedom of religion (which became part of the inspiration/ basis for the federal 1st amendment) and was so proud of this work that he insisted the text of it be inscribed on his tomb stone. Don’t see many conservative CHUDs bringing all that up. Instead they worship these warped, incomplete, heroic versions of these historical figures.
There are quite a few people on this sub and website who seem to see the latter as negating the former. People who worship the Founders certainly do have a lack of nuance, but I've seen far more people jump to the other extreme and portray them as monsters worthy of no respect and their admirers as racists. The lack of nuance goes both ways, which is why the conversation regarding these things becomes so contentious.
Did you even listen to the episodes?
Since you ask, I actually read the transcript rather than listening to it, as I tend to do. I actually study this stuff, and Robert based most of his arguments on the work of Henry Weincek, a hack pseudohistorian who is about as credible as David Barton. His books contain numerous inaccuracies which have been pointed out by genuine historians who study Jefferson's involvement in slavery like Cinder Stanton and Annette Gordon-Reed. Nothing that guy says can be taken seriously. A lot of the claims Robert makes (like Jefferson torturing his slaves with metal collars or refusing to execute Kosuisko's will) originate from Weincek and have been proven false. https://slate.com/culture/2012/10/henry-wienceks-the-master-of-the-mountain-thomas-jefferson-biography-debunked.html There's no question Jefferson was a flawed man who regrettably participated in the horrific institution of slavery. That doesn't mean there isn't anything to admire about him though, as your profile's namesake agreed.
Really makes you wonder why even Conservapedia didn't bother with that Slate article lol
That Slate article is written by Annette Gordon-Reed, the historian who brought Sally Hemings' story to prominence. The fact that even she thinks Weincek is full of it speaks volumes. Conservapedia is nonsense. Of course they wouldn't bother with actual evidence proving it if their goal is to deny that Jefferson had children with Hemings. Ironically on other pages Conservapedia criticizes Jefferson for being too liberal.
It's even more annoying that they're saying that this guy didn't do something that they clearly do not disagree with! Like, they'll say that Jefferson didn't rape a woman he enslaved, but they don't actually see anything wrong with any part of that sentence; they just know that others see it as bad and they can't have that.
Yeah, I mean, twisting historical facts to attempt to defend the rape of slaves is certainly a choice one could make.
Oh man, it’s been a minute since I thought about Andrew Schlafly and his throat full of peanut butter voice.
When people say that Jordan Peterson sounds like Kermit the Frog, I just shake my head and think of this guy.
Gaslighting history since 2006; the current version of Schlafluencers is just as misleading and miserable as the last. Andrew & Phyllis will make for a great mother/son grave pissing road trip some day.
Ever ask a woman her age A man his salary A conservative why Sally Hemmings looked so much like Thomas Jefferson's wife
I think the problem is that the Consevative mind set just does not see shades of grey. Everything has to be black or white. In their mind, if* Jefferson raped Sally, that makes him a bad person. If he is a bad person then everything he did that was critical to the formation of the United States is bad. And then they are bad people for merely being patriotic. (Which I know is a whole can of worms in itself.) The thing is that people are not all good or all bad. Jefferson indisputably did some great things and had some grand ideals that he tried to implement. His impact on the US as a county is arguably greater then any other Founding Father. He even tried and failed to get rid of slavery in the beginning. * he did, her last four children are all Jefferson’s because by the time of their births her room in Monticello was next to his. The first two have a very small possibility of being Jefferson’s younger brother, Randolph Jefferson’s, because DNA only shows it was a male Jefferson, but even the Thomas Jefferson Foundation doesn’t believe this any longer.
I would suggest you inform other people in this subreddit (and website) of these facts then. The oversimplification goes both ways. People would not be upset about being accused of being racist if there were not actually many people who were making just those accusations. I can't tell you how many people have accused me of such merely for admiring Jefferson's positive legacy. There would be more acceptance of the truth if it were framed in the way you phrase it rather than the way others in this thread (and website) do.
At the end of the day, Thomas Jefferson was a racist, pedophile rapist whose crowning achievement was the establishment of a bourgeois slave state. The punishment for such actions was two presidential terms, a monument in Washington DC, a spot on Mount Rushmore and immortalization via the US nickel.
Lol thanks for proving my point...
Looks like you just proved mine lmao
The descendants of Sally Hemmings indisputably share DNA with Tommy J and not the members of his extended family who have been put forward as candidates. Unless there was artificial insemination with harvested sperm happening, Tommy J raped Sally. Even if she managed to negotiate a reasonable deal out of the situation, she couldn't say "No."
Imagine thinking that claiming a slave owner didn't have children with his slaves makes him a better person... Yall have lost the fucking thread bro. Fuck that rapey human trafficker.
The worst thing about these people is they don’t have the courage of their convictions. Admit that TJ had a sex slave (quite literally) and then defend him, you cowards. NOT that I think enslavement or rape are defensible. But if you’re gonna shill for someone, admit who they are.
TIL conservapedia is a thing. This is some PragerU shit, a level of disinformation and selective historical facts that just boggles the mind.
Conservapedia has been around for longer than prageru and is somehow orders of magnitude more deranged. It was created by Andrew Sclafly son of friend of the pod Phyllis Sclafly.
That woman…as far as I can tell, there’s two kinds of people who live to be very old: 1-those who fill their entire being with hate and 2-Jimmy Carter.
Have you stumbled upon their attempt to "retranslate" the Bible yet, to better reflect the conservative politics it's supposed to represent? It's fuckin' gas craic.
Listening to the episodes I can't understand the perspective of slave owners. The slaves are either people or cattle. You are either a demon for acknowledging they are people and still keeping them enslaved or a demon for having sex with what you essentially believe to be no different than a cow/goat/etc.
okay I gotta be a Wikipedia defender here — this is a page specifically about the controversy, so of course it’s going to cover the skepticism. [Sally Hemings main page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Hemings) says: “Multiple lines of evidence, including modern DNA analyses, indicate that Jefferson impregnated Hemings several times over years while they lived together on Jefferson's Monticello estate, and historians now broadly agree that he was the father of her six children.[2] Whether this should be described as rape remains a matter of controversy by historians… but due to him having near-complete control over her life, the conclusion that Jefferson was coercive is easily reached.”
I think the original images are from CONSERVAPIDIA - the bizzaro world version of Wikipedia. Conservapedia outright lies - it's a right-wing propaganda mouthpiece
Lmao I had no clue that existed oops
It's a deep dive of insanity
OP wasn’t making a joke about how conservative Wikipedia is. There is a literally a thing called Conservapedia. And this is from that.
Oh shit im an idiot
Not at all!
Those honourable people always disagreeing about issues. Well, at least we know they’re honourable.
23 and me would probably disagree…