海角大神

When Thomas Jefferson, recently widowed, was appointed minister to France in 1784, he brought his eldest daughter, 11-year-old Martha, with him. Martha thrived in Paris, where, to her father鈥檚 distaste, aristocratic women were well educated and vocal about their political opinions. Several years later he sent for Martha鈥檚 sister Maria, directing his 14-year-old slave Sally Hemings to accompany the younger girl, as her maid, on the long journey across the ocean. Paris would have been revelatory for Hemings, too: According to Jefferson鈥檚 records, she received wages for her work, and she likely would have been able to win her freedom there had she petitioned for it.

But as Villanova University historian Catherine Kerrison recounts in the absorbing and affecting Jefferson鈥檚 Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America, in 1789 Jefferson and his party returned to the nation he鈥檇 helped found. Martha married at 17 and eventually settled with her family at Jefferson鈥檚 Virginia estate, Monticello. Hemings, 16 years old and pregnant with her master鈥檚 child, returned to life as a slave there, although according to Kerrison, she had first ensured that she and her family members would be 鈥渁 caste apart鈥� and secured a promise from Jefferson that their children would be freed at the age of 21.

Jefferson and Hemings had four surviving children, one of whom was a daughter, Harriet, born in 1801. Kerrison鈥檚 book closely examines the lives of Martha, Maria, and Harriet, comparing the different possibilities open to them and the limits they all faced as women in post-Revolution America.

Jefferson鈥檚 priority for his legitimate daughters and, eventually, granddaughters was, Kerrison writes, that they be able 鈥渢o sing, dance, draw, and converse 鈥� that is, to be pleasing to men.鈥� In a letter he wrote young Maria from Paris, Jefferson warned her not 鈥渢o go out without your bonnet because it will make you very ugly and then we should not love you so much.鈥� Martha had 11 surviving children, six of whom were girls. Her sophisticated Parisian education was largely wasted on her duties as a Southern plantation mistress, but she devoted herself to teaching her daughters a curriculum typical of boys鈥� education at the time. (Maria, meanwhile, suffered a fate similar to her mother, who buried several children and died young following childbirth; Maria died at 25 after a third difficult childbirth, and only one of her children lived to adulthood.)

It is heartbreaking to read Martha鈥檚 daughters鈥� letters, in which they frequently dreamed of having time to study. One daughter, Mary, yearned to return to her 鈥減recious studies,鈥� but couldn鈥檛 figure out how learning Latin 鈥渨ould be compatible with [her] house keeping duties.鈥� Another, Cornelia, complained of 鈥渂ooks lying covered with unmolested dust鈥� when it was her turn to supervise the house slaves at Monticello. By this time their grandfather had founded the University of Virginia, but he never would have permitted girls, even his own intellectual granddaughters, to attend.

The evidence 鈥� much of it from an oral history Harriet鈥檚 brother Madison gave late in his life 鈥� suggests that the daughter of Jefferson and Hemings, upon being freed, settled in Washington, where she changed her name, lived as a white woman, and married and had children with a white man. (She was seven-eighths white; her mother was one of six children born to slave Elizabeth Hemings and Jefferson鈥檚 father-in-law, John Wayles, making Sally not just Jefferson鈥檚 slave but his late wife鈥檚 half sister.)聽

Kerrison makes a heroic effort to learn more about Harriet and find her descendants, but in order to succeed in passing, Kerrison writes, Harriet 鈥渙bliterated her historical tracks.鈥� Once she left Virginia she likely never risked seeing her family again. Jefferson鈥檚 records establish that he facilitated her departure from Monticello, but he didn鈥檛 give her manumission papers, probably to avoid stoking the rampant rumors that he had fathered children with Sally Hemings. If her identity had been discovered, she would have been at risk of being returned to a life of slavery, along with her children.聽

Like all great histories do, 鈥淛efferson鈥檚 Daughters鈥� brings its period vividly to life, a credit to Kerrison鈥檚 exhaustive research, her passion for her subject, and her elegant writing. It is unfortunate that so much remains a mystery. Did Harriet鈥檚 husband know her secret? Was she consumed by the fear of discovery? Still, how fascinating to contemplate that, as Kerrison observes, 鈥渋n expanding the boundaries of the life into which she had been born, she was spectacularly successful, arguably even more so than the privileged Jefferson 鈥� women had been.鈥�