Sally Heming (27 page)

There was something ironic, almost biblical in Nathan
Langdon's strange addendum to the story of Sally Hemings. The closing of the
circle, and final contradiction of turning her white for the sake of
history.... Sally, he thought, probably had a fine sense of the ironic. The
peasant-slave philosophy of her youth would have blended well with the cynicism
of the French education she had received while in Paris. If he told this young
man what he could not find in the Federalist papers, he would only corroborate
what Sally Hemings herself had already revealed. How extraordinary that she had
broken her silence at all, he thought.

"Well, I can't say I know the whole story, but our
family was closest to the truth of it. What I do know, however, is
confidential, and I should categorically deny everything if it is
repeated." The rugged and ponderous Quincy Adams suddenly had the look of
a mischievous boy. "The enigma of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson will
never be completely solved. My parents were very close to Jefferson. What I know,
and I know that what I know is true, I learned from them. Despite their
difference with the president at the time, they tried to stay out of the
scandal as much as they could. It was a tragic campaign...."

"I know, some of the newspaper articles, and the
pamphlets, were inexcusably virulent."

Quincy Adams looked up over his spectacles. Could Nathan be
hinting at his own poetic efforts at pornography? His miserable ballad
referring to Sally had even bubbled up out of proportion during his own
electoral campaign of
1828.
Quincy Adams did not immediately take up the conversation. The Sally
Hemings scandal had unfolded when he was young, and scrupulous enough to
believe that the lives of public men should be led in accordance with their
professed opinions ... as his father's had, he thought, thanks in great measure
to his mother. He turned in his armchair and gazed out onto the cow pasture
that stretched from the unfinished, unpaved Pennsylvania Avenue to the Potomac
River. He was thoroughly ashamed of that awful poem.

He would admit that he had greatly admired Jefferson, Adams
mused, for his erudition, his interest in science and letters, but that he had
always mistrusted his political principles, and disliked many of his personal
traits, including much stretching of the truth in favor of the well-turned
phrases or the elegant aphorism. Jefferson's affected simplicity irked him,
too, when everyone knew his great wealth (if the number of slaves one owned
could decently be counted as wealth). Then, too, he continued to think to
himself, Jefferson's tendency to live beyond his quite sufficient means
offended his Yankee sense of thrift, and he also disdained any man unable to
give his ideas a clear synthesis. Jefferson's ideas were scattered in the most
voluminous collection of letters of the century, yet nowhere in that morass of
words, he thought, did Jefferson state clearly his political or moral
principles in a way that corresponded to his political and personal actions.

Quincy Adams' inner voice continued. Why had Thomas
Jefferson, a staunch abolitionist up until
1790,
suddenly lost all fastidiousness about slavery? Certainly
during his presidency, at least the second term, he had had the political and
moral power to turn the country around on this subject. Yet, from that time on
he had sunk deeper and deeper into compromise with his beliefs, and into a
lethargy that couldn't be blamed entirely on the Virginia sun. Sally Hemings?
Is that what turned him into a hypocritical gradualist, with no plan for
accommodating the second race of America?

Nathan Langdon stirred politely, but Quincy Adams,
unconcerned, continued his inner monologue.

That Jefferson had loved Sally Hemings he had no doubt.
Whether Sally Hemings had loved Jefferson was less clear, since she had had no
choice. That was the tragedy. That such an unnatural love may have changed the
course of history, undoubtedly preventing Jefferson from using his power and
genius to turn the tide against slavery instead of being an accomplice to all
its darkest and most passionate aspects, was tragic indeed.... Why had
Jefferson revised his stand against slavery when he returned from Paris? What
had bound Jefferson to such a deep and lasting contradiction? He had not
believed in God; therefore, all his ideas of obligation or retribution were
bounded by this world. His duties to his neighbor had been under no stronger
guarantee than the laws of the land and the opinions of the world. The tendency
of this on a great mind was to produce insincerity and duplicity. Duplicity had
ultimately been Thomas Jefferson's besetting weakness.

Nathan Langdon uncrossed his legs and turned his gaze on
the silent ex-president. He had come a long way in Washington since his first
hesitant steps less than two years before. After his rupture with Sally Hemings
he had lost his bearings. The humiliating memory of his broken engagement and
his departure from home and family had almost been wiped out by the
exhilaration of Washington. All aspects of his life had become resolved and
clear, except one: Sally Hemings. Only she remained a haunting obsession. It
was only now, after more than a year of working for John Quincy Adams, that he
had dared bring up the subject—one that even after all these years had arisen
in Quincy Adams' own presidential campaign. He wanted that story, told in a
lonely cabin at the foot of a mountain, corroborated. He was determined to do
it.

Nathan waited. If there was one thing he had learned in
Washington these past eighteen months, it was that when a politician starts off
with a disclaimer, you were about to get the unvarnished truth. He faced Quincy
Adams, not speaking, using his now perfected technique of never breaking the
silence of another man.

"Sally Hemings was indeed in Paris with Jefferson for
about two years ..."John Quincy began.

Nathan Langdon listened, hopeful yet almost afraid of what
he was about to hear.

"... but my mother's worst fears were realized, I'm
afraid, since both James and Sally returned with Jefferson to Virginia after
their two years in Paris. Her status at Monticello and those of her children
were much above his other slaves. When I visited Monticello, I was startled to
encounter one or several of them, for they were all house servants and
practically advertised their paternity. It was mostly Northerners like myself
who noticed. Southerners, especially Southern ladies, seemed to take it for
granted. Or, should I say they were so inured to the situation they didn't even
blink an eye? I greatly admired their
sang-froid...
but then you would know about such things, having been brought up
there.

"As for Jefferson, there was absolutely no
embarrassment on his part and none evidenced by his daughters or family. All
the children seemed to be brought up together. So great were his powers of
self-deception that I doubt if he even noticed the stares of his guests—at
least those who were not privy to Southern mores—at the resemblance of his
slave children to his grandchildren. Yet as you know, so strong are the bonds
of silence concerning this Southern taboo, and so ferocious the penalty for
acknowledging even
en famille
the concubinal arrangements of Southern gentlemen when the partner is
of the dusky race, that it was only when Jefferson sought a second term as
president that the scandal broke. Of course, as I said, Virginians had their
own private reasons for leaving Jefferson and Sally alone—their
own
dusky partners ... Jefferson's
cousin and enemy, Chief Justice John Marshall, for example...."

Nathan Langdon smiled. John Quincy Adams was warming to his
story as it began to touch politics rather than sentiment. Nathan had had no
idea about Chief Justice Marshall.

"My mother and father kept their peace, out of
embarrassment and loyalty, and in my father's case, a deep love. But my mother
could never forgive Jefferson—either privately or publicly—for what she
considered a betrayal of Sally, his daughters, and herself. For you must
remember, the publicity, when it came, had to be borne not only by Jefferson
but by his friends, family, and daughters. It was political suicide. Political
suicide," he repeated, shaking his head. Then he went on:

"My father blamed this extraordinary and tragic story
on the damnable institution of chattel slavery, and he was right. Nothing is
more important to the ultimate survival of this country than the abolishment of
slavery. I have introduced in the House a petition for the abolishment of
slavery and the slave trade on behalf of the Pennsylvania Quakers...

I intend to do it again and again. To force the government
to face and discuss this abomination. The end of the slave trade and slavery is
inevitable. What is at stake is whether it will come peacefully and legislated,
or in a river of blood, in the not too distant future. You, my friend, will
doubtless live to see it. So will the children of Sally Hemings. I have an
abhorrence of slavery, but just how bad it is no one can imagine without
understanding the details."

"I know," said Nathan Langdon softly. All those
women's voices he had heard on the day of Turner's trial suddenly filled his
head, the room.

"This subject of slavery," continued Quincy
Adams, "to my great sorrow and mortification, is absorbing all my
faculties!" Adams stared gloomily ahead. He had not meant to speak with
such passion. The story he had just told had dredged up the most disturbing
emotions and passions. But he was stuck with it. And what did it matter now,
thirty years later? One didn't cure the evils of this world by repeating them.
He had been president when Jefferson had died. Today Sally Hemings probably
wanted to be left alone, to die in peace and anonymity. It was with a certain
anxiety that Quincy Adams met the startled, almost childish gaze of Langdon.

"You know, Nathan, you should read Thomas Jefferson's
autobiography." Adams spoke again to the young man. "It is
regrettable that it ends on the twenty-first of March,
1790,
the day he arrived in New York to take up his post as
secretary of state. It should have begun there.... It seems as if Jefferson
made some pact with himself not to speak of himself. Every man, great or small,
needs one place where he can explain himself.

"From
1790
to the end of Jefferson's presidency, his ardent passion for the rights
of man, his patriotism, the depth of his understanding, the extent and variety
of his knowledge, the constant awareness of public opinion, and finally the
pliability of principle which he accommodated to his own designs—all these
facets of his character emerged during those twenty years. And with them were
combined a rare mixture of philosophy and epicurean morals, of burning ambition
and stoic self-control, of deep duplicity and generous sensibility, between
which qualities, and a treacherous and inventive memory, his conduct appears a
tissue of inconsistency."

Adams thought back on the appropriate conclusion he had
written in his private diary: "When genius pandered to the will, deceiving
others meant one must have begun by deceiving oneself." It was power that
was the great deceiver, and those who wielded it were the first to be deceived.
How well he knew. It was Jefferson himself who had been the first deceived. He
had deceived himself into believing he could love a woman he held in slavery.
He had deceived Sally Hemings into believing a man that held her in such
servitude could love her. Adams wondered suddenly if she had realized this
finally, or had she loved him to the end?

Langdon had gotten what he wanted. But he could not help
seeking more.

"But—from what I've read—there must have been a
terrible row during his first term about Sally Hemings. Why did Jefferson risk
losing the second term?"

A vision of those golden eyes flashed in Langdon's mind,
and he dreamed for a second at what he would have done for them. Despite
himself he blushed deeply.

"Why did he persist in the face of such humiliation?"
asked Nathan Langdon. Quincy Adams smiled.

"It was all in the family, you might say, Nathan,
never to be touched by anything from the outside. Washington Irving described
it best. 'In a large Virginia estate, the mansion is the seat of government,
with its numerous dependencies such as kitchens, smokehouses, workshops and
stables. In this mansion, the planter is supreme: his overseer is his prime
minister, he has his legion of house Negroes for domestic service, his host of
field Negroes, a standing army; a national treasury for the culture of tobacco
and cotton. All this forms a kingdom. A plantation produces everything within
itself for ordinary use and luxuries, fashion, elegance is carried on with
London and Paris, up the Potomac like foreign trade.... Everything, you
understand, comes from the plantation.' " Quincy Adams paused. "The
absolute power of life and death over other mortals, that was the very air he
breathed. It gave him, the great democrat, a magisterial view of the world.
Therefore, my dear boy, nothing could humiliate Thomas Jefferson. He was, you
might say, Olympian."