page_title: Jefferson–Hemings controversy
section_title: Claims of Madison Hemings
hierarchical_section_title: Jefferson–Hemings controversy / Controversy / Claims of Madison Hemings
caption_attribution_description: English: An article on page 2 of an 1845 edition of The Liberator which mentions one of Jefferson's sons (either Eston Hemings Jefferson or Madison Hemings) being denied the right to vote in Ohio. Originally in the Cleveland American
context_page_description: The Jefferson–Hemings controversy is a historical debate over whether there was a sexual relationship between U.S. President Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings, and whether he fathered some or all of her six recorded children. For more than 150 years, most historians denied rumors from Jefferson's presidency that he had a slave concubine. Based on his grandson's report, they said that one of his nephews had been the father of Hemings' children. Before changing his mind following the results of DNA analysis in 1998, Jefferson biographer Joseph J. Ellis had said, "The alleged liaison between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings may be described as the longest-running miniseries in American history." In the 21st century, most historians agree that Jefferson is the father of one or more of Sally's children.
  Beginning in 1953, new documentation related to this issue was published and studied by historians. In a 1972 article in American Heritage and later in her bestselling 1974 biography of Jefferson, Fawn M. Brodie suggested Jefferson had been the father of Hemings' children.
context_section_description: In November 1845, Ohio newspapers reported that one of Jefferson's sons by Sally Hemings living in a central Ohio county was not allowed to vote or testify in court due to Ohio laws regarding his race. The story was subsequently reported by William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator.
  On July 7, 1870, Chillicothe, Ohio census taker William Weaver noted in his official census book beside the entry for "Hemmings, Madison", recording "This man is the son of Thomas Jefferson."
  In 1873, the issue received renewed, widespread attention after publication of an interview with Madison Hemings, who asserted that Jefferson was his father. He was interviewed about his life as a slave at Monticello, and his account was published in an Ohio newspaper. Then age 68, Hemings claimed Jefferson as his and his siblings' father. He said that when Jefferson and Sally Hemings were still in Paris, she became pregnant with his child. Slaves could petition for their freedom in France, and Hemings initially demurred when Jefferson asked her to return with him to Virginia.  Based on Jefferson's promise to free her children when they came of age, she returned with him to the United States from France. Israel Jefferson, also a former slave of Monticello, confirmed the account of Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children in his own interview published that year by the same Ohio newspaper. Critics attacked the newspaper account as politically motivated and the former slaves as mistaken, or worse.
  In 1874, James Parton published his biography of Jefferson, in which he attributed the content of Hemings' memoir to the political motives of a journalist who interviewed him. He and other critics essentially discounted Hemings' memoir, while attributing to him a range of negative motives for telling his story. In his work, Parton repeated the Jefferson family's oral history about a Carr paternity and the claim that Jefferson was absent during the conception period of one of Hemings' children.
caption: 19 December 1845 article in The Liberator reporting on the lack of rights for Eston or Madison in Ohio
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