It begins in 1802 as an attack on America's high-minded president, the man who declared that all men are created equal. James Callender, a vengeful drunk and disappointed job seeker, accuses Thomas Jefferson of fathering illegitimate children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. 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.