Thomas Jefferson Honors Promise to Dying Wife... Sort Of
Thomas Jefferson portrait painted by
Charles Willson Peale. Philadelphia, 1791.
When Thomas Jefferson's wife, Martha, was dying in 1782, he promised her that he would never remarry. He kept his promise, but you could say he found a loophole.
Though Jefferson never admitted it, many at the time knew that he had shacked up with his house slave, Sally Hemings, and fathered 6 children with her. Sally, who was 1/4 black, was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha. It was common at the time for men to sleep with slaves, but it was still a scandal. Especially since Jefferson himself had written in 1814 that "[t]he amalgamation of whites with blacks produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent."
I'm sure that this was all at one point comforting to Strom Thurmond, who isn't the only hypocrit with jungle fever on this list.
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