And americans family. She is professor of law of the new York Law School and professor of history at rutgers university. She is the author of Thomas Jefferson sally henning, which remains most influential study of the subject. She has written numerous articles on jefferson and edited forthcoming reader on jefferson and rates which will be published by Princeton University press. She also had had time to complete a short biography of Andrew Johnson which will be published in the fall of 2009. Please join me in welcoming a net cord in reeves. [applause] thank you, very much for that introduction i love how he says that. [laughter] say it again. Say it again. It is great to be here among some many people that i know. Such a familiar place to me i came back to monticello and many times and it is always good to be here ive never been here when is raining. So, this is an interesting thing for me. A day that began at 4 00 a. M. This morning trying to get there quickly and taking off at 1 00 so i am just here and i am very happy to be here with you. I thought that i would talk a little bit about how i came to write this book. What the book is about an what it means to me. People who are familiar with my other work understand that my first interest in monticello was not really the hemming it was really jefferson. And, thinking about jefferson antislavery after having read a child biography when i was in the third grade about jefferson that was my introduction to history and it was when i first began to let history as a topic and began to think and note that this is something that i always wanted to do. I will not go through all of my life story and my connections or feeling of connection to this place. But to tell you that i came to write my first book about Thomas Jefferson and sally kennings because i was concerned about the way black people were portrayed in jefferson scholarship. The particular story about chip Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemingses was interesting to me the more interesting to me was how people weighed evidence and how people treated the lights and the voices of black people when they said things that some people found discomfiting. That book was an analysis of the historiography about jefferson and hemingses and it was largely an analysis of the story. I thought i would put that aside as some point when it was over and i would get to what i really wanted to do which was a biography of jefferson which i still intend to do. But as i was working on the hemingses and is thinking of the subject of the way that people are portrayed in history it occurred to me that it might be an interesting thing to do in preparation for writing about jefferson to kill two birds with one stone in preparation for writing about jefferson deal with this other question and that is black voices and the black portrayal in the writing of history. Now, i should say this slavery history over the past 50 years has undergone a revolution. I often say that slavery studies is really the crown jewel of american history. It really great historians have put their minds to the task of figuring out what happened or telling the story of what happened in americas past, one of the most tragic aspects of but i felt that this was something that should be brought to bear in jefferson scholarship in particular because he is such a focus of interest of so many people. And this would be a good place to actually, and a good time to actually do that. So when i was writing about the the xerography, i realized all come at jefferson was a Record Keeper there is lots of material about slavery at monticello him and certainly stanton and of dirt others have pioneered the study of writing about enslaved people. On the plantation. But i wanted to do more to take it a bit further because i knew there were lots of things in lots of areas that have not really been explored in as great of a debt as i thought they should be explored. So why i felt this was in borden and contribution that would be made to it typically, i have often said that for black people, inslee people and black people today, social history really waitrons biography. You think about slaves in sort of an abstract way. Or blacks in an abstract way. Blacks are sort of monolithic. Whites can be individuals. And i understand why that is true obviously slavery was a great overlay. And of course, you want to focus in on that system. But there were individuals within that system who reacted to that world in different ways. It doesnt mean it to say that the system itself was not bad for everybody. Slavery was no picnic for anybody, obviously. But the inability or the reluctance or the difficulty of is seen people as individuals a struck me as a problem and i think it is a legacy of slavery that carries over to the way people see blacks as today. The last time i was here talking about my children commenting upon television and popular portrayals of black people and saying that basically, it is constant. I mean outcross shows, across time. They are all the same type of character. This is not to say what whites arent stereotype in television to but to say there are 27 types of white people in 24 of black the same thing over and over again. And because, you dont see or you dont have the sense that there are different black people with different ways of going through the world. And, so what i thought i might try to do with this story, was to help solve what i saw was a basic problem when i was writing Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemingses is you can say things about people you dont know. In order to have empathy with people, instead of pity. Pity is putting somebody over there. Empathy is establishing a connection that allows you to think of that person as Something Like yourself. She and once you do that, it is difficult to treat that person and ways that it would not like to be treated. Sally who, for example was the insect but people dont know about her and think of her as primarily a problem and controversy and i try not in my book with a person. She was a daughter. She was someone sister. She was someones mother and a friend. And without thinking of her in those sorts of way, putting her in the light was easy to say anything you wccant to say about cccheard in this sense. Cccheard in this sense. C based on nothing because you do not know her, there is no sense of a connection with her as a person. There is no care with of life. And what i thought i would try to do with this book was not talk just about her, but to talk about her entire family, to put all of them in a context that would make it easier for people to see them as human beings and not as slaves, not as part of a particular problem. So, i sat down to write the book, this book was under contract it has been under contract for a very long time. Things intervene. I wrote a book with jordan, my editor i edited a volume of essays the world trade tower fell into my apartment. And we have to start our whole life over again. So those kinds of things delayed the appearance of this book. So, i started to write and do research. And quickly found that there was a lot of material. Things that i would laugh wrap this up in 200 pages in my editor was happy about that but then get longer and longer and longer. And i realized that it was going to be 1,000 pages which we cannot do, it would scare people away. So i decided to break it up into two books and this is the first book of what will be to blocks of the hemings family and it and after a 31 after monticello is told and the family is pretty much disperse because i found that there were too many interesting things to say about the 19th century to just wrap it up in one stale swoop. So, the book is long, as you will see. By publishers have done a very, very good job of making a book that, what do i want to say . I dont know how long it will be but a long book look not so long. And i am very grateful to them for that. So people will not be frightened about it. But the book has three parts the first call that part is called origin and in that, i introduced the matriarch of the hemings family elizabeth who is born in 85 we of fragmentary information about her. When she was born, about where she is born, that she was owned by the deaths family. The chapter is called young elizabeths world and what i tried to do is invoked that time and place. The area of around williamsburg in the 17 thirties which was, well if you go to williamsburg today, it would not look like, obviously, for obvious reasons, like the democrats would not look like the williamsburg of that time. For very obvious reasons africanamericans today dont have much interest in dressing up like slaves and walking around. Williamsburg to try to show the demographics of it. It is interesting to do reenactments and things like that, but that is not, that is difficult to reproduce a world that was english and african. A large number of africans in the 17 thirties, more africans were brought into va than any other time or decade in the history. It is a place of it, english people, africans, not one kind of african. Africans are not monolithic different people speaking different languages. We think of todays world as a multicultural world that term that has both positive and negative connotations but this is multicultural and multilingual world at the time that she would have been, that she was born in to begin so ii tried to evoke that time to give them a sense of the country at its beginning. And the slave system. Sort of maturing at that point. And, the world that she would have encountered during that time period. And then i introduced john who would become elizabeth him mingst levin owner and father of six of her children and i got to go to england and lancaster and work with a genealogist that to try to bear it out. About his life and background as fascinating man who comes to the colony, and makes his living, a man of a a very poor background. Who is raised up about a man named motherwell and becomes a what lawyer and becomes very wealthy i introduced john wales and talk about jefferson, and john wells daughter, martha, whom he married. And bring the family to monticello. And talk about the revolution and as some of the hemings family interaction and what happened during this time was great turmoil everywhere but certain the Africanamerican Community many of whom wanted to join the loyalists and the british comic who had promised them freedom to the rebels on the slaves of a rebel who would join the army. So this is a very volatile time free soil in france. There was a phrase that there are no slaves in france, that wasnt exactly true. But, there were slaves, people that were enslaved in france. But it was a place where people could file petitions for freedom. In the 18th century, hundreds of people filed petitions for freedom in france and every single one of them was granted. So this was a pro forma thing. For enslaved people. If the one in their freedom that could take it and at some point it became so clear that the out that the court would grant them freedom that some slave owners just freed the slaves on their own rather than fight them in court because the other thing they had was called the shifting. The losing parties had to pay for the case. So, you could see what happened if you knew the slate would be freed no matter what and you lose any pay the cost. They took them down to the court, and free them on their own. One of the things i wanted to try to do in this sense of invoking a different world or to try and bring in tinsley person like james into the world and have people see him not as i said a symbol or someone who is an abstract concept is to talk about the black community in paris and very often people talk about james and sally in paris and they tell me about that they couldnt have done this or that. But they dont know anything about the society during that time. You never sent jefferson to france and not do an investigation of what france was actually like during the time he was there. There was the black community in france. Not a very large community. There were about 5,000 people in france in a country of about 20 Million People so we are talking about a tiny group of folks as a little over 1,000 of them were situated in paris. The interesting thing about it is that most of them where in two or three neighborhoods. So there is a small number of people but they are concentrated in a relatively small area. And it concentrated in a small area because they are, for the most part many of them are the servants of french colonials who have come to paris on business and so forth. And they stay in the best neighborhoods. So it makes sense for the blacks to be in the best neighborhood because they were there with the richest people. And it doesnt do any good to have servants if they live across thought across town in someplace. So, though the neighborhood that jefferson late lived in have the highest concentration of blacks of any neighborhood in the city. So, if you would have seen people around, people of color who are around. And when you are a minority in a place, you noticed people who are lucky. So, it doesnt do any good, it doesnt do good to think of him is operating by himself. There is a black community there. A number of people who love and work on blacks and pairs during this time noted that this was a community that help one another. Ms. Support one another and they talked about freedom. They pooled their resources for brent and suggested, you know, people for jobs and things of that nature. So, there was a community for him there, that was different, very different from the kind of community that he would have encountered in virginia necessarily because come most, i should say most of the people there, people of color were not slaves. The slightly more free people there. So there was a community for yen. And once i found that, the notion that he and Sally Hemings wanted to stay looks different now than when we talk about this story of ed Salley Hemings not wanting to come back to america they are skeptical and they say where to go how cheap shot the chief function but people their function. The other thing about this we know how they function because, blacks had to be registered in paris. And in france and a list of their occupation. So we know what people do for free, we know what they did for a living. And, they were in the hotels and. Some of them were innkeepers, seamstresses, there was a wide variety of occupations that these people held. That james and the selling 214 could have held certainly james who was trained as a chef in the grid is kitchens and france could have been able to find a job. So, michael understanding of their life there began to change change when come as a price, surprise when you do research instead of just, like common sense tells me that. No. There is that to be known about them. And if, as i said treat them as people, and you do the kinds of research and ask of the kent the questions that you would ask about jefferson in paris, patty and pulley in paris with a like for a young girl . Those things if you ask those questions about genes and sally you get a different picture than just simply relying on what you may or may not think constitutes common sense. So, i have a couple chapters of bob james in paris and some of the is exploit when Sally Hemings comes to paris with jeffersons daughter after the death of the youngest daughter, in the dark about her life there, one of the chapters that is my personal favorite which is called dr. Seven. Eight a chapter about Sally Hemings e inoculation when she is in paris. Inoculation was if anybody saw the miniseries of john adams. The very harrowing scene, someone interesting scenes i shall say with Abigail Adams being inoculated for small pox and becoming a nurse tour children but that is another story. Inoculation was very, very difficult and arduous process. Sue is inoculated by a man named roger sutton who was part of a family that was among the most Famous Family inoculated at the time. They were the doctors to the stars. In fact, if he was brought in to try to state save king louis the 15th he died of smallpox there was no cure for it but Robert Sutton was held in such high regard they were doing whatever they could and they brought him in an 1774 and try to save king louis the 15th. He inoculated c17 and inoculation and required isolation, obviously that is why people were against it and religious reasons. They thought that god intended for you not to have smallpox. That he would have given it to you. People did not like inoculation for that reason but that also didnt like it because sometimes is started a epidemic is so it was great fun to try and fair out that whole process and find out what what happened tour and where she went. And i found out where the inoculation house was and she was sent away 40 days and she was sent away to undergo this procedure. One thing i want them you create that and the and i tried to do it in the book and think about being 40 or the teen years old and going to a foreign country and being sent away to the countryside in isolation with a group of people who talk the language you dont know how to. And be given smallpox. A mild version of smallpox and being ill away from home. That is a tough thing. One of the most gratifying things that i had a person who came up to me who had seen me talk about this and read about this and said, it made me think of my grandmother. His grandmother. He said i think of my grandmother coming to ellis island and she was 15 years old and didnt talk the language and didnt know anybody. And what it must have been like. So certainly a 15 yearold in slave girl is not the same thing as an immigrant girl coming to ellis island. But there are points of humanity that you could hook onto their. Knowing what it means to be young. Knowing what it means to be by yourself and be killed. And so telling that story, i thought in that chapter was gratifying because i do you think that it highlights the humanity of someone whom i said before, as people think of primarily just in terms of a problem or a controversy. I talk about james and the Sally Hemings in paris. The tour who asked of them this seed may be in a bad ways and james beat the heck out of him. And, you know, put him back in his place. And i talk about the whole issue of the beginning of a relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. And here i go into what might have editor called the analytical chapters. [laughter] he likes them but the narrative stops about three or four chapters and i began to talk about this because i no people are interested in it. I had it in my mind that i would write a biography about them in a little bit about Sally Hemings. I am sick of sally stop but then realized that was crazy. You have to talk about Sally Hemings and all of this and i do that in this chapter in three chapters. And i bring him home to the third part of the book which is called on the mountain which technically is not on the mountain because jefferson comes home from france and he thinks he is going back. The story is the fallacy came home she is going to have a baby and jeffersons baby and she does not want her child to be a slave. And the story is that jefferson promised her, basically in a nut shell that everything is going to be okay and your children will be free. Come back. Think about the difference between james and sally. Jefferson was supposed to return to france he was coming home on a leave of absence so james could have had a shot at coming back to paris. Sally would not have. Jefferson is taking his daughters home. He was very worried about her she was coming into womanhood in a different country. She has become a young lady and a young woman in a completely different culture. And different attitudes about everything. And he is desperate to get her back home. Theyre with the reason that Sally Hemings would have any prospects coming back. James was different but james, i believe and i say in the book was doing something. James was preparing to stay there before c17 even got, even came to france. At the end of his apprenticeship he hires a tour almost two years that is two years worth of money and time and effort to come back to virginia. I dont think so. It looks like he was preparing. I will not be sexist about this. But it strikes me as i add that the 16 yearold, that she, by herself was the only one that would stay there. This was her brother and herself planning to do this. But jefferson persuades him to come home. They come home. He immediately except George Washington offer to become secretary of state he said he couldnt turn that down. So i talked about what happens after that. James goes with him to new york when they are there and then philadelphia and dislike and he continues to be paid a salary what i neglected to mention was while he is in paris, while in paris both james and Sally Hemings received wages from jefferson just like the other servants of terrorism. And i mentioned before. But james and that valley get wages and over the years that look at their wages and sort of compared them to the wages he was paying other servants and thinking you are shortchanging these people. The coachman is getting this much money and that person gets that much more money and they were getting a small amount. Then it was like a moment where is not, dont look at vertically dont look what you get in relation to the other people look for is donnelly. What are the chefs getting . And it turns out that james was being paid much more it than the typical shelf in an upper class household as was Sally Hemings as well. So it is wrong to think of them 1i mentioned the black community there as a source of support. These people are getting paid and they are getting paid well and every month on like most french servants who are paid once a year. You sign a contract and you got paid at the end of the year. And sometimes, people didnt pay. And they would have to fight over their severance but this is the reason they have a revolution. Sometimes the masters would not be the servants and what are you going to do . Go to another place they were forced to resign and continue on hope and eventually they would be paid. So these are people that had an opportunity James Hackney have learned he knew that he would work for a living and take care of himself and Sally Hemings have learned that as well to a certain extent so when i come back to america, jefferson continues to play games like a white worker when he is in new york and when he is in philadelphia. Up until the point at which jefferson decides that he is going to leave after getting beat up by hamilton and leave the cabinet and james and he come to an agreement in which james r. Greece and says i would give you your freedom if you train in the the person to become a shock. So we end up with James Hemings and jefferson having an agreement and the comes back to monticello and fulfills the promise and is then free and the rest of the story he is a character that his character a strike so many different people because of his character. His very volatile person it evidently very talented person and he is someone who readers, who read the galleys and i talked to about him respond very well and it fits very well with my goal of a sort of showing a slight as an individual you see james first as a young boy capturing mockingbirds and then as a young man who is enrichment when he called him to go to paris working on his own. And then you go off and become a professional incomes back to america and after his freedom embarks upon a life of travel. And then his life ends tragically. There is an aura that you dont get to see as i said. Seeing him also in connection to his family. So on the mountain is just a story about what brings the family back here and talks about different members of the family and how they relate 21 another at this point. Talks about Sally Hemings and the relations with the family. One thing that struck me in doing this, i remembered when i worked on my first book someone gave me some letters that jefferson had written to joan in nancy that i didnt use in the first book. But in this book ive used very well and show farewell that jefferson was a around them. That they travel with them. He doesnt mention them by name but he says john and the two aides would come with me and we will go to Popular Force of this notion that they are disconnected is not really true. So, that is talked about in the story as well. And finally, the final area at monticello when it jefferson dies in debt and i am sure you all know greatly in debt. And loses everything. And the slaves lose even more. Many of them even lose their families in the auction that takes place at this time. And, following the hemings, the ones that are freed move to charlottesville and Peter Hemings and all of these people end up informally three in some way. I mean Sally Hemings is in formally freed and two children ran away earlier. To live with white people and disappeared off the radar screen that is something i would like to work on for the next volume there will be another story to try to ferret it out. So to end with this sort of four generations of family in a way that ends in a tragic situation. There is, you know, there is nothing about slavery there was a picnic for in one of the said but this is a story thats eliminates that in a very, i know poignant sort of way and we wouldnt have if we did not have jeffersons record the memories of some other families the oral history of the headings family that people here and monticello have been gathering have benefited enormously. And getting word am putting you in touch with people beverly great people that know about the hemingses after words to appease all of this together. And it has been, i should say, i am glad i did it. I really came so close to just born onto jefferson going on to jettison but peter hearing at said year to do the jefferson biography yet to do that and i am so glad that i decided to postpone that and go this route because i really think it is a great time to talk about this. It is a great time to reinvestigate the america of routes. And sort of the world that form us in a way and i really do you think that there is much to tell us about where we are today by looking at this family. So at this point, i would like to entertain any questions you have about the book, about the methodology or anything that i have said today that would be of interest to you. [applause] monticello is unique as a Historic Place in placing emphasis on research and education with the establishment of a campus of terrorists and studies. It has also been something of a pioneer in integrating slavery into the history of the house and the lights of jefferson. And i wanted to know if you want to expand a little bit while you touched on this at the end of your talk on how the projects conducted here and some of the members were helpful in the research for this book. Well, certainly senator stanton giving me information, talking about, and making me pretty to things that i wouldnt have known anything at all about. At the research center, the Research Library has certainly been helpful. One of the things that was marvelous was a new project, and online project of the family letters projects. That the papers of Thomas Jefferson have done in putting up family letters that can be searchable and they are easily searchable to give you an example when i wrote my first book, i was looking at reading the ms. Coolidge a letter to all her husband which she says this saddam car was the father of all of the Sally Hemings children and i sort of thought that is a letter written for prosperity because she was in things tour has been that he would have known. You note from shivers and was a great character a man. He knows that. I mean what are you saying that . This is your husband this is obviously something for posterity. When i was looking but that is as far as i got. When i looked up the p. M. The projects which allows you to do keyword searches i typed in sam carr and Joseph Coolidge and the name pops up and it turns out, that just of coolidge new sam carr. The letters from them in the early 30s when he says the bank him for the hands and if you look read the letter you know that she says, she tells her husband who seem car is. But i would never, without the family letter project, without being able to search that i would have never discover that the would of been ill in a haystack thing and that is important that is an important thing to see that i had a hunch that this was written to talk to people down the ages. But it becomes clear when she introduces her husband or describes a man the sheet that he knew very well and i would have never found that without this so the project of getting word some of the recollection of things that you can hook onto. The lead you down a particular batch of research that sort of this is a question from the floor. What particularly makes you think that now is a good time for revisiting the story of the hemings family . Well, i guess the question and interviewers as me all the time and of asthma over the past week is is this a good time to talk about this and we could put that on the table because of the election the possibility of electing a black man as president of the United States a black man whom is of mixed race. This is what is interesting about this book people talk about barack obama that is keep first half of black and half white he is not the first one in america like that. Would you think has been happening over the past 300 years . He is not the first mixedrace person in america. And, i hoped that the book will bring that out and make people sort of thing why is it that black people are all different colors . Why is it thati remember being in school and, when of those things when people ask where youre ancestors came from and so forth. And i remember a black person in my class saying that one of their great, great grandfathers was irish. I kept my mouth closed about those kinds of things. And people in the class word saying that is not right you are a black person and it is just insane. So, i think race is an issue that is of interest to people now. The question of what kind of nation the country is come on the notion that of is this a what country one thing i said at the beginning of the countrys origins have always been white, red. It has always been a mixture of things i dont mean just mixing together but living sidebyside. It has never been a white country. And with obama are running now which has brought braze to the floor i think this is sort of an interesting historical moment to be talking about this and maybe people can sort of reflect on that and not see him as, well he is a amazing figure. I went to one of these. He graduated from law school a couple years after me and we have every two or three years every black person that does graduated from harvard has a big reunion and he came and talked and whatever your politics are, it is incandescent personality. So he is, i dont want to say. He is an anomaly. But in terms of his background and this book, i think it would be interesting to have people read this and let of the thoughts that he is interested or you need is because of his make mixed character. I am sorry. This is a question about dorgan long term writing a biography of jefferson. The question is with so many competitive accounts, what unusual perspective would you bring . [laughter] why are you doing this, annettte . I hope the perspective that i bring. I think there have been many great biographies of jefferson. But, there are two things. I think i would bring a perspective that, i would like to try to situate the him in his place and time as a slave holder. I think that that is something that has kind of gotten away from. I mean the politics are important. This is, this is a great political figure of the world. Not just america and it is important to focus on them the most of the biographies tend to and they follow that track, you know of him in his public life and not a lot about what is going on in the private life. When i worked on this book. I read other biographies and i assume some of the things i needed for my book would be in those books. You think surely you will go and look at this. No. It is not there and it is not anybodys fault. He just said that he was five or six men rolled up into 1i was thinking eight or nine. There was so much material. And i would like to have, i wanted to do the politics because i love politics. Ithe class i teach at rutgers is about early American Republic and one of my students walked up to me and said professor are we going to talk about slavery in this class and as it is we are we will get to that. I love politics and no one to do that as well but i want to situate the him here as a slave owner. I would like to see him with the people around him. The nine famous people around him the non famous friends that he had tell you a great deal about him. People like thomas bell who lived with mary hemings, Sally Hemings sister was one of jeffersons closest friends but you dont see him anywhere. He is sort of a middling prosperous person who offered jefferson the sort of perspective of ordinary people. So the perspective i would bring would be, you know, more sort of monticello center. I would like to know about the county. I was talking of france i dont have a sense of what the place was like from reading about him. I dont know, i just dont know much about that world so i think i would want to bring much more of the locale, the local area into the story to try and even things out a bit. So, that is part of it. And, you know, i was working on this, and i kept even going through the paper saying what has no one written about this . Was no one written about this . It is too much material. And the way to bring it in, for me my perspective would be much more localized jefferson with the politics inverted with the politics. As a part of it. Have you had an opportunity to talk with members of the hemings descendants . Yes, i have. On a number of occasions. And i have to say, people always ask me if i use them and very much in my resources and as a result. Now. I mean i might probably use them or talk to them much more about the second volume. I pretty much live in the 18th century. In the 19th century and i know them socially. And that is primarily, i mean they dont really talk much about. When we are together the times i am with them we talk about things going on now, not the things that went on in the past. But i do you know some of them. You said to Sally Hemings, the first child as jeffersons child. In 1998 than in the dna pre test to prove that. No as i said in a book in the first of you could probably get that. Sally hemings first child born in 79 the died. And that, i believe that, so she did not have a child that grew up to have a defendant who could be tested in 1998. So, no. And the reasons i can talk about why, i think, there is no record of the child at and jefferson spoke. The inoculation records which are, i didnt get a chance to put in the text of the book. But i devote a footnote to him. He had a plan of vaccination eight tinsley people and also is family. This is interesting thing about people used to thank like blood was different then white blood and all of these different things. He had been vaccinated people and takes the a inoculant from them and vaccinates his granddaughters and other enslave people and other relatives. He begins this process and 1801 and the vaccinates beverly and carry it in 1802 and he backs and it puts maximin max in 16 and they are all listed as Sally Hemings. There is no mention of any other child so not only is it not in a record but these records have not been published yet. They are in the process of being published by the papers of Thomas Jefferson. Dna did not disprove it because as i sort of indicates in the first book and say flat out in this book. I mean i have always believed that the child died so there is no. I mean there was no dissent and who could be deep tested in 98. So james foster, the first time i met james or talked to james he didnt know me from adam ort eve, however you should say it. And they announced and they did the test and i got his phone number and called him up and i introduced myself and said yes i know you are. And the second you know, at some point, dr. Foster, have you talked to these people . Do you know what is going to happen and i will never forget. He said professor, we dont know what is going to happen and i said well, i kind of do. And he said, you know, these are adults. And he was right. They are adults and they have a can right to participate in this and do this and so forth. So my point is, that i was not surprised in what happened because i dont believe that she had a child who lived long enough to get married, have children and have descendants the would have been tested in 1998. These are a couple of sexual questions. The first of which you probably answered. Did jefferson have many of his slaves inoculated . And the second question was, it was. Know. We have no letter. James knew how to read and robert knew how to grieve. Is leathers. This is a twist on john wales he gets a bad rap because he is a slave trader that little thing. But, in terms of he didnt read the kids in all of this but he was under a statute when he was alive. And in order to free his children, he would have had to ask the governor and the council and make the claim that they have contributed service to him. The liberalization emancipation came after he was dead terry it is interesting to me that his sons robert and james you how to read and james apparently, from his cooking inventory but a list of the inventory that are reproduced in the book and has been reproduced a lot of places shall his handwriting has high prices and so we know james and robert knew how to read. We dont know about sally. Hemings because we have no appearing in the slaves have last names its just that the master did not use them and some people took different names but it seemed odd to me with the histories of their family is that they had names the owners did not use them but did not put peoples less means like the gillett family made this point with jefferson that appears as part of the gillett family slaves had last names but the orders did not know that our chose not to use them. George washington refers to his manservant as william who calls himself lee like its not really a last name but enslaved people did have last names but the last name having this comes from the english ship captain so the family certainly had the name that they referred to them as having said. For a long time at least from the time of the fathers and also people ted blast them of their fathers even if the father was white. Has there been any Research Done to prove or disprove that ms. Channings head jeffersons children . Harris is a story the oral history of the family suggest that she was jefferson son in there is the oral history that there is another sign i had not done any more Research Rather than asking people about the oral histories and i could not find anything from contemporary times to support either one of those but betsy having its i have no idea who her father was there is one line of the father that says thats i havent found anything to support that but first tester with the obvious why is the last dave faucet . And not having lois people understood that signal paternity and the way i discussed that did the book is when in doubt i would go with what the people themselves the enslaved people would figure their lives the rather they and their descendants. Betsy having is is a mystery to me i do not even discuss that in the book because i just heard that. Looking at something for contemporary times because oral history is important but to meet the past to match up with the name saturn going non and i have not found anything. One of the great figures of history describes this as a brilliant book is a remarkable achievement because it tells the history of slavery through the lives of individuals which a one time was not possible and it makes that history more than statistical studies and contextual studies to ring gauge the of motions. Congratulations. [applause] [inaudible conversations]. Wendy think about the one day festival the National Book festival with over 100 authors from childrens authors and illustrators graphic novelist over 100,000 people come to celebrate books and reading you cannot have a better time i am a little hesitant because i am a library and but if anybody that wants to get inspired at the book festival is a perfect place. Booktv cspan2 prime time looks that members of congress we were on capitol hill of representing speaking with a representative from georgia. The congressman from georgia what are you reading and why . Eric metaxas wrote if you can keep it talking about the question ben franklin was asked with the very closeddoor meeting and said do we have dave minority or republic he said of the have a republic if you can keep it now ralph is with capital ministries and his book is called rebuilding america is the biblical truth