Jefferson declines even to respond to the charge. But it becomes an unblottable stain. Political opponents and the Federalist press gleefully trumpet the alleged affair. Decades pass and more evidence surfaces. A young man, descended from the beautiful slave woman in question, tells a newspaper in 1873 that Jefferson was his father.
Defenders ridicule the allegation.
But it was not so easily dismissed. So skeptics would have us believe. But new evidence appears to set the stage for the final episode of the Jefferson-Hemings epic. This week's issue of the British journal Nature presents the results of scientific tests that show a conclusive DNA match between a male descendant of Sally Hemings and another man who can trace his lineage to Thomas Jefferson's paternal uncle. Advances in the mapping of the so-called Y chromosome, which confers maleness on embryos, allow scientists now to consider DNA matches of the type reported by Nature as virtual proof positive of genetic linkage.