Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings (49 page)

. . . I don't know exactly how or when it happened, but at some point I simply defined the life I was leading as a good one, which meant that anything I did that allowed me to continue living my good life was also good. And so I became afflicted with an especially perilous form of blindness.

Where I had once seen light and dark, black and white, red, yellow, orange, purple, I now saw only gray. Everything became muted, dim. I lost my ability to feel the pain of others or to be outraged. In order to believe that I lived in a good world, I had to believe that the whole rest of the world was no good—people especially—and that my only obligation was to care for my children, my family, the people I loved.

And so I used little truths and partial truths and sometimes big truths (my love for my children) to convince myself of the very big lie that I need feel no shame, that I was as close to virtuous as I could reasonably have expected to be.

I said yes to Mr. Jefferson and yes to evasions, lies and complicity. But I could have said no. No, you may not kiss me. No, I do not want your hands on my body. No, I owe you nothing. I don't believe you. No, I don't. I won't. I don't love you. No.

Had I adopted that policy, none of yesterday's evils would have been averted, but I would not have been complicit in them, nor in any of the other evils from which I have profited over the last forty years.

No and no and no.

I might have had a purer soul. . . .

J
ames T. Callender is walking up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the president's mansion—although “avenue” is an absurd euphemism for this dirt track passing through swamp and primeval forest, along which a carriage could not travel twenty feet without jolting over a boulder or an insufficiently excised tree stump. So, too, the name “city,” when applied to these half dozen unfinished and ill-designed Palladian imitations amid a scattering of shacks and swaybacked houses belonging to trappers and fishermen and to the benighted farmers who supposed this swampland might be made to flourish under their plows.

Almost exactly a year ago, Callender was martyred for his service to Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party when John Adams had him imprisoned under the Sedition Act for the crime of publishing the truth of Adams's own villainy and the villainy of the party he serves. No one could have been happier than Callender himself when his efforts propelled Adams out of office and Thomas Jefferson into the presidency, and no one could have been more justified in the expectation that those efforts and his consequent martyrdom would be amply compensated for by the man who had derived the greatest benefit from them. But this expectation has been revealed to have little more validity than the fantastical notion that this mosquito-infested wilderness through which he is walking might be the august capital city of a great nation.

Although it is early April, the weather belongs to July, and Callender is aware of the rank effluvium being suffused by his own person and wardrobe. He remained naked much of the previous day, as he scrubbed his solitary suit of clothing and then waited for it to dry. He had worn those same clothes every day of his imprisonment and, despite numerous washings, had never been able to rid them of the fetid stench of his cell. This morning, lifting his coat and breeches to his nose, he concluded that his efforts had at last met with success, but now, thanks to the heat of the sun and of his own body, he knows that he will never cease smelling of the jailhouse until he has the funds to purchase an entirely new wardrobe.

But maybe that is a good thing. Maybe nothing would be better than
for Thomas Jefferson to experience this mere hint of the suffering that James T. Callender endured on his behalf. Maybe then he will comprehend the rankness of his own failure to live up to his obligations.

Callender's requests could hardly have been more humble: the mere two hundred dollars that Thomas Jefferson has already promised him and an appointment as postmaster of Richmond. Is that too much to ask? The money would only cover the fine he had to pay after his conviction, and the job could hardly be more innocuous, nor easier for a president to effect. The current postmaster is, after all, a Federalist, and it is only in the government's best interests to purge every last Federalist occupying an administrative post.

While Thomas Jefferson seems to have entirely given up answering his letters, Callender does not see how the man could possibly deny the justice of his requests once he has been confronted by them in person.

A hot day indeed, and a brilliant one, especially once he ventures across the muddy plain that surrounds the president's mansion—so brilliant that he can see almost nothing once he has stepped into the building itself. But he can hear Thomas Jefferson's voice echoing down a corridor to his right. And even though Callender can still make out little more than floating wads of darkness and smears of illumination reflected off polished floors, he hurries in the direction of the voice, knowing that Jefferson could well choose to avoid him if given the chance.

Callender has hardly taken two steps, however, when a figure looms out of the obscurity and catches him by the elbow. It is James Madison, Jefferson's lackey and attack dog. “Mr. Callender!” he says. “What a surprise! Might I trouble you for a moment of your time?”

James T. Callender tugs his elbow from Madison's grasp and says, “I have essential business with the president.”

“Yes, yes—I'm sure you do. But I need to have a word with you first. It's important.”

This time Madison grips Callender's arm with such force that it would be impossible to escape without a struggle. “Right here,” he says, and all but shoves Callender through the door into an office, pleasantly decorated with mahogany furniture and gilt-framed paintings and suffused with golden daylight. “Please,” says Madison, indicating a chair in front of the desk, behind which he himself takes a seat.

“I have to talk to the president immediately,” says Callender.

“I'm aware of that,” says Madison. “But I have to speak to you first.”
He indicates the chair again, and Callender, thinking better of making a dash for the door, finally sits. He pulls his flask from his pocket and takes a deep swallow but pointedly does not offer any to Madison.

Everything transpires exactly as Callender expects. The corruptive magnetism of power cannot be resisted. Within the precincts of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson was an immensely articulate opponent of all forms of power, and so Callender dared to imagine he might prove truer to his own principles than most. But in the end, words and principles are less substantial than the breath it takes to speak them, and they have no force except insofar as they prettify brutal self-interest. Now that Thomas Jefferson has achieved the most powerful position in the land, his own words and principles are only an embarrassment, because they expose, by contrast, the true nakedness of his greed.

This is precisely what Madison is referring to—although he himself may be entirely unaware of the fact—with all his sanctimonious chatter about “practicality,” “indiscretion” and “extremism.” And so Callender cuts him off in midsentence by getting to his feet and declaring, “I have no business with you, but only with the president.”

In fact, Callender has just abandoned all of the arguments he was formulating over the last several days. Thomas Jefferson may now be insensible to argument, but he will not be insensible to Callender's physical presence, nor to the threats that Callender now realizes he has no choice but to make. Once a man's soul has been infected by power, he will heed only those who might help him increase his power and those who might take his power away. Since Callender is no longer welcome as a member of the former category, he will do his damnedest to occupy the latter.

As soon as he emerges from Madison's office, he makes straight for the corridor down which he can still hear Thomas Jefferson's voice resounding. But Madison, not two steps behind him, calls out to a pair of soldiers, and after some hasty contention involving insults, grunts and an elbow to the cheekbone, Callender's arm is wrenched up behind his back and he is marched out into the brilliant day. Some hundred yards from the presidential mansion, he is let go and told that if he dares to enter the building again, he will be shot on sight.

Callender wants to laugh at the retreating backs of the soldiers, but he can't quite manage it. The reason he wants to laugh is that he knows Thomas Jefferson goes for a ride every afternoon, and so all he—James T. Callender—has to do to have his moment with the president is sit down
within sight of the stables and wait. He walks around to the rear of the mansion and finds a comfortable place to sit, on a rock outcropping beside a dirt track designated as New York Avenue.

There is only one thing wrong with this plan: Between his trip from his hotel that morning and his audience with Madison, Callender has already emptied his flask and he is not at all sure he will have the necessary fortitude to confront Thomas Jefferson without another swallow or two.

Even in so imaginary a city as Washington, there can't be very much distance between taverns, so Callender sets off and does not have to walk even a quarter mile before he finds himself sitting at a table, a glass of brandy in front of him and his flask refilled. He would have been back at his lookout point beside New York Avenue within fifteen minutes, but he gets into an argument about the superiority of militias to a standing army and ends up not starting back to his post until the sun is a good third past its zenith. He walks with heavy steps, all but certain that Thomas Jefferson has already returned from his ride. But then, still some twenty yards from the rock outcropping, he catches sight of a tall man on a bay stallion just approaching along New York Avenue. Lifting his coat hems with each of his hands, Callender sprints until he is standing directly in front of the bay and its rider.

“Now you have no choice but to hear me out!” he declares between gasps.

“There's no point in wasting your breath,” says Thomas Jefferson. “Randolph has given up his suit, and you will have your money forthwith.” He tugs the horse's reins to the right, but Callender leaps again into his path, before the horse has taken half a step.

“Damn the money!” he shouts. “I don't care a pig's prick for the money! I only want my just and deserved recompense for the services I have rendered you!”

Thomas Jefferson yanks the reins a second time. “I will not discuss this matter any further,” he says as he passes. “You have been more than adequately compensated for your work. I agree that your imprisonment was a travesty of the law, but I pardoned you as soon as I took office, and now I have seen to it that your fine will be returned to you. I owe you nothing more and consider our association ended.”

Callender shambles alongside the horse as Thomas Jefferson speaks. Several times he reaches for the horse's reins, intending to bring it to a halt, but they repeatedly elude his fingers. Only when the horse bucks and grazes his knee with a hoof does Callender leap back and give up his efforts.

“You're fucking arse wipe, Jefferson!” he shouts at the president's retreating back. “You're twice the tyrant that Adams was, and even Washington would be staggered by your self-serving hypocrisy. You're the fucking traitor! Do you hear me? You don't give a rat's arse for democracy! But you can't escape your own actions! Mark my words: Even you don't have the power to change the facts! I know why you're always in such a hurry to get back to Monticello! I know that every word you have ever uttered about niggers is a damnable lie! Rind may have been too afraid to publish what he knew, but I am not! Do you hear me? I am not!”

I
t is well known that the man,
whom it delighteth the people to honor
, keeps, and for many years past has kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY. The name of her eldest son is TOM. His features are said to bear a striking although sable resemblance to those of the president himself. The boy is ten or twelve years of age. His mother went to France in the same vessel with Mr. Jefferson and his two daughters. The delicacy of this arrangement must strike every person of common sensibilities. What a sublime pattern for an American ambassador to place before the eyes of two young ladies! . . . By this wench Sally, our president has had several children. . . . THE AFRICAN VENUS is said to officiate, as housekeeper at Monticello.

—James T. Callender

Richmond Recorder

September 1, 1802

O
n September 3, 1802, Mr. Lilly sends Tom Shackelford into Charlottesville to dispatch several barrels of nails to Baltimore and London. Sally Hemings goes with him so that she might visit Mickel's Millinery to buy cloth for the quilts she is making for Maria's son, Francis, and for her own little Harriet, who is a year and a half old. But also it is a fine day for a ride: sunny and coolish, one of those days in which the sky seems to have expanded and the breezes to move about more freely—an enormous relief after three solid weeks of nearly one-hundred-degree heat.

She gets off the wagon at the stage office and walks east on Main Street, which is still muddy from the previous day's thunderstorm. A white man in shirtsleeves and a pink waistcoat is sitting on a bench in front of a grocery, smoking a pipe. Sally Hemings's eye is drawn to him more by his perfect stillness than anything else. He is gaunt, with deltas of shadow under his cheekbones. His brow is gnarled, one corner of his mouth is pulled down and his china-blue eyes are staring directly at her. “Yellow bitch!” he says, and spits at her feet.

Sally Hemings is so shocked that she stops in her tracks.

“Abel!” the man shouts through the grocer's door. “Come on out here! Jefferson's nigger slut is right in front of your store!”

“What?” a voice calls from the dark interior.

“Just come on out! That yellow bitch whore is right here! Right on your doorstep!”

Sally Hemings has lifted the skirt of her gown and is hurrying with her head lowered along the muddy street.

“Dusky Sal!” a voice calls from behind her. “Dusky Sal!”

She hears laughter—from two men and a woman.

She doesn't know where she is going; she only wants to put as much distance between herself and the man at the grocery as she can. But other people have heard the shouting and have stopped in twos and threes to watch her go by.

“That's her,” one woman tells another as she passes.

“Who?” says her friend.

A man lurches in front of her—drunk, or pretending to be drunk—then gives her upper arm a stinging, three-fingered slap as she dodges past. She hears several people speak the words “nigger wife.”

At last she is in Mickel's Millinery, the door shut behind her and its little bell still jingling. She leans her back against the door for half a second, then steps away, trying to regain her self-possession.

Yesterday Edy Fossett told her that an article about her and Thomas Jefferson had appeared in a Federalist newspaper—but Edy had only heard tell of the article, not read it herself. When Sally Hemings asked what it had actually said, Edy replied, “Just silliness and balderdash! I don't know why people trouble themselves with those rags!”

Mrs. Mickel glances at her as she stands by the door but doesn't meet her eye. There are two other people in the store—a white woman and her grown daughter—and Mrs. Mickel is explaining to them that she is all out of baleen and won't have any more until the week after next, but if Miss Clark—the daughter—is in a hurry, the wooden stays are almost as good. There follows a long conversation comparing the virtues of various types of stays, during which Sally Hemings keeps a few steps to the rear, waiting her turn, grateful for the opportunity to calm her hammering heart. She doesn't know what she will do when she finally has to leave—except that she won't go back to the stage office along Main Street, but maybe along Market and Little Commerce, although that would take her considerably out of her way.

Sally Hemings has been coming to this store for close to thirteen years, ever since she got back from Paris. Mrs. Mickel used to love it whenever she brought in Martha's or Maria's French gowns for copying or repair, and she could talk for hours about the quality of their materials and the fineness of the design and the stitching. Even those beautiful dresses became old-fashioned, however, and Mrs. Mickel was close to tears the day Maria asked to have one of Martha's passed-down Parisian gowns altered so that it might look more stylish. Ever since Maria's marriage, however, Sally Hemings has mostly come into the shop on her own business. She and Mrs. Mickel have that placid affection that arises between shopkeeper and customer over years of counter-side chitchat, and of learning bits and pieces of each other's life, and of watching each other age. It is clear Mrs. Mickel thinks Sally Hemings a kindred spirit.

Miss Clark and her mother simply cannot decide whether to settle for
the wood stays or hold out for the baleen and hope the latter come in on time. Sally Hemings keeps waiting for Mrs. Mickel to cast her a surreptitious eye-rolling glance, but no such glance is forthcoming.

At last the women reach a decision: They will have the dress made now and perhaps substitute baleen stays for the wood at a later date. Mrs. Mickel tells them she has just exactly the material they will want for the bodice and skirt, and then she calls for Nora, her Irish servant, to bring out the new shipment of silk.

Nora does as instructed, and while Miss Clark and her mother consider the skeins of evergreen, midnight blue and burgundy silk, Mrs. Mickel retreats to the back room with Nora for a couple of minutes. When she returns, she continues to ignore Sally Hemings, even though her two other customers have little need of her attention.

After a couple of minutes, Nora also emerges from the back room and indicates to Sally Hemings with a lateral glance and a hook motion of her hand that she should go out the front door and meet her in the alley.

Nora is only twelve, and as she speaks, she keeps her eyes on the ground. “Mrs. Mickel told me to tell you,” she says, “that she is sorry, but she will no longer be able to serve you in her store.” After a moment of silence, the girl looks up with her almost-Oriental, coffee-brown eyes. “I'm sure she doesn't mean it,” she says. A nervous smile flashes across her face, and then a wince of sorrow and shame.

Sally Hemings's only response to the message is to ask whether Nora thinks it would be possible to make her way to Market Street via mewses and alleys.

“I'm afraid I wouldn't know, miss,” says the girl, and Sally Hemings decides to give it a try.