the hemmings of monticello and american family. professor of law at the new york law school and professor of history at rutgers university and it remains the mostof theje. influential study of the subject they were the forthcoming which shuld be published by princeton universitye . although had time and this is admirable to complete a short biography that will be published in the fall of 2009. please join me in welcoming annette gordon reed. [applause] thank you for that introduction. [laughter] it's great to be here among so many people i know. i've come back many times and i when is rainin must say i've never been here while it was raining.happy e hee a am very happy to be here with you. this is what this book means to me and people are familiar with my work understand that my first inte interest inre monticello wasn't really the hemmings, it waseffen jefferson. fter having read a child'sintro biography. that's when i first began to to love history. using my feeling of connection tell you i cameook about thomas to write my first book about thomas jefferson and sally hemmings because i was concerned about the way people were per trade in the scholarship.on and it was interesting to me is more is how people wait out theghed d evidence and how people treated the lives and the voices. this book is an analysis of the historiography of jefferson and he sings and it's largely anof t analysis oftory the story. i thought i would put that asidy and get to what i want to do for the biography of jefferson which i still intended to do with when i was working on the hemmings is in thinking of the subject it occurred to me it might be an interesting thing to do in preparation to kill two birds with one stone. they deal with this other question and that is the portrayal in the writing of history.estion and i should say that slavery historiography has undergone a revolution. i often say it is the crown jewel of americanrevoluti. historiography. really great historians have pua isy the nds to the task of figuring out what happens by one of the most tragic aspects but i felt this something that should so whewas wri was writing the historiography, is realized jefferson was a record keeper.ut they did the study of writingon. about people on the plantation hit i wanted to do a little bitt more because i knew there were lots of areas that haven't beens explored g in as great of depths i thought they should be explored. for people today social history really trumps biography. acks a it's sort of monolithic.i undery and i understand the overlay and you want to focus on that system but there were individuals in it dn't meanho reacted in different ways and it doesn't mean to say the system itself stsn't bad for everybody but the inability struck me as a problem. they are basically saying that her constant. to say that this 27 types of white people in four types of e same blacks. because you don't see or don'tan have this sense that there's different types of people in different ways of going throughe the world and so what i thought imight try to do is help solvet what i saw as a basic problem that you can say things about s people that youaw was a don't s order to have empathy withgs people, pity is putting puttingu somebody over there and empathy is an establishment, connectioni that allows you to think of that person like yourself and when you do that it becomes difficult to treat that person in ways that you would not like to be treated. thin sally hek mmings, for example, o people don't know much about her and thinkk and her primarily as aa problem as a controversy.s she was someone's mother andy a friend. without thinking of her in those sort of ways it was easy to say. anything you want to say about her.asy to s because there is no sense ofou t connection, there is no care and what i thought i would try to dr in this book is talk not just c aboutonnectiowith her but aboue family to put them inxt the context that would make it easier to see people as human beings and not as a part of a particular problem, so i satcona down to write the book that was. under contract for a very long time. i wrote a book with vernonll ine jordan and the world trade tower fell into my apartment and we so had to start our whole life over again so those kind of things delay the appearance of the book there is a book we cannot do to scare people away. it ends in 1831 after monticello was sold and the family is distressed because there were too many interesting things toot say to wrap it up in one fell ll see swoop. a very long book-not so long and i'm very grateful for that with the that the book has three parts. what i try to do is evoke that time and place an area around williamsburg and area around williamsburg in the 1730s which was the demographic would look like the williamsburg of for thatve kind. it's difficult to reproduce the world cup was english and african. it's not one kind of africa and africans are not monolithic.ith different people speaking different languages.aking we think of today's world as af. multicultural world the term that has pejorative.that point i then introduced john wales wh would become elizabeth's ownerw and father of six of her children and work with aster genealogist to figure it out. a fascinating man who comes to the colony and makeses a livingg from a very poor background who n of a is raised up and made a lawyer ohd becomes very wealthy andy ij then talk about jefferson and what happened to them during the the revolution during everywhere certainly with african-american communities and many of whom wantedbut to join the loyalists into the british who promised freedom so this is a verybel wh volatile time and they are a part of thatt as well. the first section ends with martha jefferson but it was an important change because jefferson decides to take a commission to france because his wife was ill. while he is living in different parts of virginia and richmond. it's what you would think of as the enslaved person. he leaves the continent altogether and the two younger daughters that was to have sister said so it is a genealogy going on and the family's life is transformed. it changes hands and here they were sure they would stay in one place but then that changes their life as well. this is when he's about to talk about at some point he finds out that there was a phrase that wasn't exactly true. but it was a place people could file petitions in the 18th was a century hundreds 18th century hundreds of people file petitionst there are e for freedom. the losing party had to pay for the case so you could see whats happens if you know it's going to be free no matter what. then they freed them on their own. to bring them into the world and see them not as a symbol of an abstract to talk about they in community. they couldn't have done this or that but they don't know anything about the society during that time period. a little over a thousand of them are situated in paris but the interesting thing about it is mostn paris. of them were in tw alree neighborhoods they areso m concentrated in a small area because for the most part many of them are in the service of the french colonials who come to paris on business and so forth. have there's the highestross town concentration than any neighborhood in the city so peopround,d be people around so it doesn't do any good to think of james hemmings who operated a by himself. they know this is a community that helped one another. they supported one another and had freedom that pooled their resources and suggested there was a community there was different than the kind of community he would have encountered in virginia. the notion they might have wanted to stay looks different. about this they had to beistere listed their occupations so weai know what they did for a livingo they were at the hotel, some of them were innkeepers, there was a wide variety of occupations that these people held. surprise surprise when you do research there is stuff to be known about them and as i said if you treat them as people and do the kind of research and asko the questions he wouldu ask ab jefferson and paris if you ask those questions about james and sally hemmings you get a different picture. the dark i talk about her life and one of the more one of the chapterss n. that is my personal favorite the while she's in paris the inoculation anybody that sold the series of john adams. at the time they were thehethe doctors to the storesh he in fae was brought in to try to save king louis the 15th but robert sutton said they were doing whatever they could and they isolghthe 15th. him in to try te king louis the 15th. if god intended for you not to have smallpox, comes the people didn't like the inoculation for that reason but they also didn't like it for sally hemmings washn great fun to find out that whole process to find out what happened to her and how it was done. it's being sent away to the countryside could speak a and language that you don't know how to speak and being given a version of smallpox and that isn a tough thing. one of the ratifying things i had made me think of his s grandmot grandmother thathe was italian e was 15-years-old and didn't speak the language and didn't sle girl idy and certainly a 15-year-old isn't the same as an immigrant girl coming to ellis island but there are some points of humanity that you can hookin into. so telling that story in that chapter was gratifying to meghtn because i think it that ch highs of someone people think of primarily just in terms of a problem or controversy.ilym i talk about james and sallyut s hemming high hearing a tutor atour who asks for the whole issue. the the narrative stops for about three or four chapters and i began to talk about them becaus i have it in my mind i was going to write a blog for the family. i'm going to do these others. you have to talk about sallyy. hemmings and all this and i do that in this chapter i've been home to the third part of the book which is called on the mountain which technically isinh not because jefferson comes hom from france. she doesn't want her child to be a slave and the story isis her basicallyised in a nutshell everything is going to be okay and yoursicall children will be free to come back.me back. jefferson was supposed to return with a leave of absence fortweea james hemming's could have had a shot at coming back to paris.s . she had become a young woman inr a completelyy worried ab differ. there was no reason there was a concept of coming back but james evhing.ferent. i say in the book james was e ey'r doing something good for sally wadoing even came to friends. she hired a tutor to come back and stay in virginia.ink so. i will not be as odd that she was the only one who thought i'm going to stay here.planning tdoi they accept the offer to become secretary of state and said heh couldn't turn that down so i talk about what happens after that. he continues to be paid a salar i mentioned this before they ge wages and over the years i've looked at the wages. these are short changing these g ople.re shortangin wait a minute, don't get what they are getting in relation to the other people that horizontally what are theyettint getting imperious and it turns out he was being paid much more than the vertically typical chee lation upper-class household. they were paid once a year and 1i menti you sign the contract andon get paid at the end of the year. what are you going to do, go to another place that they would be forced to sign in and continue on hoping they would be paid so these are people that had an opportunity and james hemmings had learned he could work for a living and take care of himself. so when we come back to americao jeffersonn continues to pay whn he's in new york and philadelphia up to the point in which jefferson besides she's going to leave after getting beat up by hamilton is going to leave the cabinet. so we end up coming to this agreement into coming back to monticello. because of his characteris somea indefensibly a very talented wh person intoo someone that as an individual you see him first capturing as a young man in richmond going to work on hisest own and then a person that goes off and becomes a professionaloe and after the predawn embarks upon a life of travel there is an art seeing him in connectiont to his family so it is a story that brings the family back and talks about different members. one of the things that struck ma in doing this.two jefferson was around and they traveled with him. he doesn't mention my name. finally the final cataclysm when jefferson dies and i'm sure you all know.way. they move to charlottesville and peter hemmings and all these people end up freed in some ways that i madison is free and two of the children had run away. that's something i would like to th work on for the next volume.ral it was a picnic for every one and this is a story that we wouldn't have it if we didn't have the record and the memories the people here had been benefiting from the work puttine me in touch with people who know about this afterwards. peter is a professor here and has been asking you got to do that. it's a great time to be talking about this and reinvestigate the roots. at this point i would like to entertain any questions you have about the book and the methodology. [applause] [inaudible] if you to the history of the house and i wonder if you might like to expandnd a little you started to touch on this at the end of your meers we talk.inly senator some of the members were hopefuk in the research for this book. he's been a great resource for getting the information andrese talking about making me privy to maings that i wouldn't have known anything at all about ifc. the library has been helpful. one of the things that was marvelous was a project of the papers of thomas jefferson hadlg put up family letters that can be searchable when i wrote my first book i was looking at reading the letter. she was saying things to her husband he wouldd have known. this is obviously something for prosperity but that's as far as i got with it and the name pops up.out if you ever read the letter she tells her husband who hea is bt i would never have discovered that. that would have been a needle in the haystack and that'speople da important to be ablege to see ad to talk to people down the ages but itwithout becomes clear whe introduces or describes a man he knew very well so they are talking about the recollection you can hold onto that leads you down a particular path of research into that kind of stuff has been invaluable to me. >> this is a question from the floor what makes you think thatt now is a good time for revisiting?talk ahis an >> we could put this out on the tion t s ble the possibility ofng a bla electing a black man as president of the united states or who is of mixed race and here's the interesting thing about this book people talk about barack obama and it's like am what do you think has beenhappee happening. mi's not the first mixed race person to run in america and i hope the book will bring that out and meet people sort ofis i think. i remember being in school and one of the things people ask ofh where your ancestors cameose th and i remember a black person in my class saying one of their grandfathers was irish. i kept my mouth closed about gra this sortth of thing that people were like that's not right. i think race is an interest of people now and the question of what kind of niche in the and the country is and is this anot aiite country one of the thingss i was saying in the beginning about the countries of origine has always been white, black and red, a whole mixture of things not just mixing together but side-by-side. it's never been a white country siy-side. and with obama running now this brought race to the floor and this is sort of interesting historical moment to be talking about this and maybe people cann in that and not see him as a nominal figure that an amazing figure. i went to one of these a couple years after and every two or he gra three years every black person that's graduated from harvard has a reunion and he came and talked and says whatever your politics are you are just anlke incandescent personality. terms of his background, its bd would be interesting to have people read this.organ lo this is a question about writing the biography and with so many erff competitive accounts ofat perspective what you bring? [laughter] i hope the perspective that i bring is i think there've been many great biographies of jefferson but there are twoi ho things. i think i would bring a perspective i would like to try to situate them in his place and time that has gotten away from the politics that are important as a great political figure ofe fromworld not just america and it's important to focus on that. but most of the biographies follows is a gre the track and t what was going on in the private life. i read other biographies and assumed some of the things ii know o in my work would be in i those books. bou think i will go for this. w no, it's not fair and it's not anybody's fault justified for six rolled up s into one and there's so much material. i want to do the politics want to dolove politics. i teach about the early americae republic and one of my studentsr walked up tout early a rimeca ne are we going to talk about. slavery in this class and i said we will get to that. i love politics but i want to situate them here as a slave owner i like to see him with the people around him, then on famous people around him, then on famous friends he has thearyl hellest you a great deal about him, people like thomasville who lived with sally hemmings sister but you don't see them anywhere. would be he offered a perspective on ordinary peoples of the perspective they would bring is have a s more monticello center. i do not have a sense of what that place was like., the locaa in the stoow much about that world so i would want to bring more of the locale area into tha story to try to even things out a little bit. so that is part of it. i was working on this and evenim going through the paper why has no one written about this. pey it's too much material and the way to bring that in for me and my perspectiveve would be what the politics as a part of it. have you had an opportunity to talk with members of the descendents of?nd as a >> yes, i have.to them ch more on thea number of occasions people ask if i use them very much inond volume. my research,e answer is no.d that is imarily,i i might use them or talk to them more about the second volume that i pretty much lived in the and 19th century and i known n them socially. we don't talk very much about s. this. the times i've been with them ta talk about the stuff that's jefferon now not the things that went on inso the past but i do know some of them.rst of yld pro >> you prefer to refer to sally hemmings first child ast child jeffersons child in the 1998 dna study didn't that disprove that? >> know because as i say in myun anok sally hemmings first child died and so she didn't have a child who grow up to have a descendent who could be tested in 98 [inaudible]different thene i didn't get the chance to put it in the tech stuff the bookfe but i devote a footnote to them. this is the interesting thing he has vaccinated and vaccinate hit granddaughter and other recor relatives and begins the procesg and vaccinate in 1816 and they are listed as sally hemming his children there is no mention of i y other child so not only but another records these haven't been published yet so they didn't disprove it because inn ev however the first book as i said flat and they out i've always believed theis child dies so there was no descendent that could be tested. and that's why the first time i. met jean he didn't know me from adam or eve, and they announced they were doing the tests i got the number introduced myself and he said yes i know who you are.e i said have you talked to these people and do you know what's going to happen and i will never forget he says we don't know what's going to happen and iuset said i kind of do. childr he said these are adults and he's right they are and theyhavd have a right to participate in sexual this and do this and so forth.. i wasn't surprised in what happened because i don't believe she had a child who lived longu. .nough to get married, have children and have descendents who would have beeknn tested in 1998.on john les he >> these are straight factual questions. did jefferson have many of his hher slaves inoculated into thn second question whatever they talk to read? >> sally hemmings we don't know robert hemmings knew how to read a key was under the statute hene would have had to ask the governor and council to contribute a meritorious service it's been reproduced in lots of places. we have new writing from her but it would strike me as odd that her brothers knew how to read and write and no one, she didn't know how to add all but no we don't have any record of her but we have record from her older brothers being able to read it differently at a proficient level but they knew how to read and write. >> this is the final question that there will be an opportunity and will be happy to take questions afterwards. so many didn't have lost things. when did they acquire the names and get others during their time in servitude? >> they talked very much about these last names. with the histories of their family is that they had names the owners did not use them but did not put people's 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 it's 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. channing's 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 that's i haven't 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] you can't have a better time i think. i'm a little prejudiced because i am a librarian that any reader or anybody that wants to get inspired, the book festival is the perfect place. >> book tv on cn2

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