A Founding Contradiction
Hidden Brain
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The Relationship Between Jefferson and Sally Hemmings
I think it's hard to read your book without at least reading into it the possibility that jefferson had, at least in his own mind, something approaching an intimate relationship with sally hemmings. Of course, a lot of people have criticized you for this. She was a slave. She could not have given consent. But if you look at the kinds of male female relationships they would have known at that time, a wife, a white wife, would have been under the control of her husband too. So it's complicated. I don't believe that every relationship between an enslaved woman and a master was exactly the same. And jefferson shows signs of having been attached to
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