The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family » (~)

Annette Gordon-Reed is a professor of law at New York Law School and a professor of history at Rutgers University. She is the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. She lives in New York City.

Winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize: “[A] commanding and important book.”—Jill Lepore, The New Yorker

The Washington Post - Fergus M. Bordewich

…monumental and original…Liberating the woman known to Jefferson's smirking enemies as "dusky Sally" from the lumber room of scandal and legend, Gordon-Reed leads her into the daylight of a country where slaves and masters met on intimate terms. In so doing, Gordon-Reed also shines an uncompromisingly fresh but not unsympathetic light on the most elusive of the Founding Fathers…In this magisterial book, she has succeeded not only in recovering the lives of an entire enslaved family, but also in showing them as creative agents intelligently maneuvering to achieve maximum advantage for themselves within the orbit of institutionalized slavery.

Chronology of the Hemings Family 11

Preface 15

Introduction 21

Pt. I Origins

1 Young Elizabeth's World 37

2 John Wayles: The Immigrant 57

3 The Children of No One 77

4 Thomas Jefferson 91

5 The First Monticello 111

6 In the Home of a Revolutionary 131

Pt. II The Vaunted Scene of Europe

7 "A Particular Purpose" 153

8 James Hemings: The Provincial Abroad 169

9 "Isabel Or Sally Will Come" 191

10 Dr. Sutton 209

11 The Rhythms of the City 224

12 The Eve of Revolution 249

13 "During That Time" 264

14 Sarah Hemings: The Fatherless Girl in a Patriarchal Society 290

15 The Teenagers and the Woman 308

16 'His Promises, on Which She Implicitly Relied" 326

17 "The Treaty" and "Did They Love Each Other?" 353

18 The Return 376

Pt. III On the Mountain

19 Hello and Goodbye 397

20 Equillibrium 414

21 The Brothers 437

22 Philadelphia 455

23 Exodus 480

24 The Second Monticello 504

25 Into the Future, Echoes from the Past 521

26 The Ocean of Life 540

27 The Public World and the Private Domain 562

28 "Measurably Happy": The Children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings 586

29 Retirement for One, Not for All 606

30 Endings and Beginnings 629

Epilogue 655

Acknowledgments 663

Notes 669

Selected Bibliography 737

Index 755