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Search - Sally Hemmings

Sally Hemmings
Author: Barbara Chase-Riboud

One of the greatest love stories in American history is also one of the least known and most controversial. Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence, had a mistress for thirty-eight years, whom he loved and lived with until he died, the beautiful and elusive Sally Hemmings. But it was n... more »ot simply that Jefferson had a mistress that provoked the scandal of the times; it was that Sally was a quadroon slave, and that Jefferson fathered a slave family, many of whose descendents, known and unknown, are alive today.

In this moving novel, which spans two continents, sixty years, and seven presidencies, Riboud re-creates a love story, based on the documents and evidence of the day, but giving free rein to the novelist's imagination.

The story opens in the Paris of 1787, two scant years before the start of the French Revolution and but a decade after the start of our own, where Thomas Jefferson is serving as the American ambassador to the court of France. A widower for five years, Jefferson's elder daughter, Martha, has been in France with him, but now he decides to bring over his younger daughter, Polly, as well. Sent with her as maid and servant is fourteen-year-old Sally Hemmings. Over the next several months, Jefferson grows increasingly infatuated with his slave, and before long becomes her lover. Highly intelligent and sensitive, and increasingly educated and sophisticated through her Paris sojourn, Sally Hemmings could have opted not to return to America when Jefferson was called home, could have chosen freedom on the basis that slavery had been abolished on French soil. But, she did return with Jefferson to Monticello, thus re-enslaving herself to him. She never left Monticello again, and Jefferson, despite pressures to do so, did not remarry; the reason, no doubt, was Sally Hemmings.

Woven into this rich story of love and enslavement is the story of the early Republic and of the personages of Aaron Burr, Dolley and James Madison, John and Abigail Adams, and John Trumbull. And like a series of somber counterpoints to the compelling love story are three salient themes: the slave rebellions of Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner; murders, those of George Whythe, Jefferson's old professor and benefactor, and of George, the Lewis slave in Kentucky; and, above all, survival, that of Sally Hemmings but also that of her indomitable mother, Elizabeth. Here were two generations of slave mistresses: Sally Hemings, mistress to a president, and her mother, mother to a president's father-in-law.

The strange and complex ties between these two American families, the Jefferson's and the Hemmingses, one white, one black, form in a sense the underside of our history. In this brilliant novel, Barabara Chase-Riboud presents the remarkable love story of Jefferson and Hemmings as a poignant, tragic, and unforgettable addendum to the history of the races, and of the sexes, in America.

Note: the ISBN Number for this book is 0-345-38971-9. It is incorrectly listed as a 'hardcover' under this ISBN number.

ISBN: 228904
Publication Date: 1994
Pages: 360
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Write a Review

Genres:

History >> Americas

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