Framing a Legend

March 1, 2013
Since Fawn Brodie's Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974), or Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello (2008), popular belief holds that the third U.S. president begat a family with his slave. Holowchak is not the first disputant (see William Hyland's In Defense of Thomas Jefferson, 2009), but he may be the most pugilistic. Taking Brodie and Gordon-Reed to task, Holowchak flays their works as weak arrangements of the several incontestably known facts about the enslaved woman in question, Sally Hemings, into a liaison with Jefferson. A philosopher by profession, Holowchak illustrates his points with syllogismshe contests probabilities underlying DNA evidence which, supporters of a Hemings-Jefferson relationship assert, indicate that a relationship existed; and he pummels arguments favoring a connection for what he considers defects of logic. From his exercise in demolishing Brodie, Gordon-Reed, and others as fabulists, Holowchak switches to an approbation of Jefferson's character, which he maintains casts the Hemings thesis in further doubt. His argument aside, Holowchak may irritate some in his references to the subtext of this historical controversy, race, yet he gains a hearing for defying conventional wisdom.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)