Just read - no comments needed

[David Lockmiller]

The New York Times reports today:

A new exhibit at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s palatial mountaintop plantation, is dedicated to Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who bore children with the founding father.

It’s the culmination of a 25-year effort to grapple with the reality of slavery in the home of one of liberty’s most eloquent champions. And it deals a final blow to two centuries of ignoring or covering up what amounted to an open secret: Jefferson’s relationship with a slave, which spanned nearly four decades, from his time abroad in Paris to his death.

I did not read much of the New York Times story but the top reader comment to the story stated the following historical information:

"Sally was 14 at the time. Sally was pregnant by Thomas Jefferson only a few months later.

Whatever we do, let's not talk about Sally Hemings and Jefferson as if it is some kind of glorious romance. Scratch the surface and everything about her story is sad -- including Jefferson's promise that Sally's children would grow up free. (They didn't.) A similar figure is Sacagawea, basically sold into marriage at 14 to a man she didn't know and pregnant by 15, who then was forced by her husband onto the Lewis and Clark expedition with her 2-month-old child."