The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (102 page)

36.
See, e.g., Francis Eppes to TJ, Sept. 14, 1785,
Papers
, 15:623–24; Elizabeth Eppes to TJ, Sept. 22, 1785, ibid., 624. See below, chap. 9, for a discussion of Polly’s trip with Sally Hemings.

37.
MB
, 570 n. 22; 558, n. 73.

38.
MB
, 609, entry for Feb. 2, 1786.

39.
TJ to Antonio Giannini, Feb. 5, 1786,
Papers
, 9:254.

40.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 2:6. While in Paris, Jefferson never tried his hand at writing personal letters in French. His friends wrote to him in the language, and he wrote back in English. See, e.g., Madame de Tessé to TJ, Jan. 21, 1787,
Papers
, 11:60-61; Madame de Tott to TJ, early Feb. 1787, ibid., 117; TJ to Madame de Tessé, Feb. 28, 1787, ibid., 187; TJ to Madame de Tott, Feb. 28, 1787, ibid., 187–88. It is possible that his official correspondence was drafted by William Short. He did write to his servant Adrien Petit in French, but Petit was not well educated, and Jefferson may have worried less about impressing (or failing to impress) him.

41.
Antonio Giannini to TJ, June 9, 1786,
Papers
, 9:624.

42.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:430.

43.
The Autobiography of Colonel John Trumbull, Patriot-Artist, 1756–1843, Containing a Supplement to the Works of John Trumbull
, ed. Theodore Sizer (New Haven, 1953), 35.

44.
Philip Mazzei to TJ, April 17, 1787,
Papers
, 11:297–98.

45.
Ibid.

46.
Ibid.

47.
TJ to Philip Mazzei, May, 6, 1787,
Papers
, 11:354.

48.
Bear,
Hemings Family
, 10.

1.
Henry Adams,
History of the United States of America during the Administration of Thomas Jefferson
, 2 vols. (New York, 1986), 1:101.

2.
Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams
, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 2 vols. (Boston, 1848), 1:193; Martha Jefferson to Eliza House Trist, Aug. 24, 1785,
Papers
, 7:437.

3.
See David Garrioch,
The Making of Revolutionary Paris
(Berkeley, Calif., 2002), 67, discussing the "corporate" nature of French society. "The corporate system was central to the Parisian labor market. Anywhere up to two-thirds of the adult male population and a smaller proportion of the adult female population were grouped into over 120 officially recognized trade corporations, while another 16 or 17 trades had a guild structure but no legal standing." In other words, working people were used to banding together to assert their rights.

4.
Ibid., 246–47, on the spread of elite culture to the masses and on Madame Moreau, a seamstress who ran a literary salon.

5.
Margaret C. Jacobs,
Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe
(Oxford, 1991).

6.
See, e.g.,
MB
, 369, 572, 573, 593, 605, 569, 577, 608, 627.

7.
Garrioch,
Making of Revolutionary Paris
, 244.

8.
Ibid.

9.
Sue Peabody, "
There Are No Slaves in France
":
The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime
(New York, 1996), uses the phrase "Freedom Principle" to describe the announced French position on the status of slaves in France. In her new, more comparative work, she refers to the principle as "Free Soil."

10.
Ibid., chap. 1.

11.
For a discussion of the basic function of the parlements of France, see William Doyle,
Origins of the French Revolution
(Oxford, 1980), 68–70. See also Georges Lefebvre,
The Coming of the French Revolution
(Princeton, 1947), 17. See, generally, Peabody, "
There Are No Slaves
"; Pierre H. Boulle, "Racial Purity or Legal Clarity?: The Status of Black Residents in Eighteenth-Century France,"
Journal of the Historical Society
6 (2006): 19–46.

12.
See Peabody, "
There Are No Slaves
," 73 (the "deluge"). Peabody notes that for the rest of his life Poncet de la Grave continued to "wage his personal war against licentiousness," which had always been focused on efforts to stamp out interracial relations and prostitution (p. 139). "Crank" is a pejorative term, but it seems apt for one who, because he equated a man and a woman who wanted to marry and raise a family with prostitution, was largely responsible for the 1778 law that banned interracial marriage. Of course, Poncet de la Grave was not alone in his concern about having blacks in France. See Boulle, "Racial Purity," 23, citing a letter from the minister of the marine written in 1763, expressing the need to curb the number of blacks in France because their "communication with the whites" was resulting in "mixed blood, which increases daily."

13.
Peabody,
"There Are No Slaves
," 4 (on the populations of England and France).

14.
Ibid., 111–20; Boulle, "Racial Purity," 25–27.

15.
Déclaration pour la police des noirs
, Aug. 9, 1777, reprinted in Pierre Boulle,
Race et esclavage dans la France de l’Ancien Régime
(Paris, 2007), 255–58.

16.
See C. L. R. James,
Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Overture and the San Domingo Revolution
(New York, 1963), 47–48; Laurent Dubois,
A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804
(Chapel Hill, 2004), 46. "The plantation economy, and the traffic in humans that sustained it, produced fortunes in France." Boulle, "Racial Purity," 27.

17.
Déclaration pour la police des noirs.
Article 1 provided, "Faisons défenses expresses à tous nos sujets, de quelque qualité et condition qu’ils soient, même à tous Étrangers, d’amener dans notre Royaume, après la publication et enregistrement de notre présente Déclaration, aucun noir, mulâtre, ou autres gens de couleur, de l’un ou de l’autre sexe, & de les y retenir à leur service; le tout à peine de trois mille livres d’amende, même de plus grande s’ily echoit." Article 2 made clear that the declaration was meant to cover even free blacks: "Défendons pareillement, sous les même peines, à tous Noirs, Mulâtres ou autres gens de couleur de l’un & de l’autre sexe, qui ne seroient point en service, d’entrer à l’avenir dans notre royaume, sous quelque cause & prétexte que ce soit." Article 4 provided for the creation of a "dépôt" to house blacks pending their return to the country.

18.
Article 13: "Les dispositions de notre presénte Déclaration seront exécutées nonobstant tous Édits, Déclarations, Réglements, ou autres à ce contraires, auxquels nous avons dérogé et dérogeons expressément." Had there been any express provision in law for immunity for diplomats, the clear language of this article would have abrogated it. They were quite serious about this matter and even discussed how to handle matters if "princes of the blood" were found to have violated the rules. See Peabody, "
There Are No Slaves
," 125. If they were willing to confront members of the royal family, it is doubtful that they would have hesitated to confront Jefferson about either of the Hemingses.

19.
Article 9 provided for the registration of blacks who came into the country. "Ceux de Nos Sujets, ainsi que les Étrangers, qui auront des Noirs à leur service, lors de la publication & enregistrement de notre présente Déclaration seront tenus dans un mois,…de se présenter par-devant les Officiers de l’Amirauté dans le ressort de laquelle ils sont domiciliés, & s’il n’y en a pas, par-devant le Juge Royal dudit lieu, à l’effet d’y déclarer les noms & qualités des Noirs, Mûlatres, ou autres gens de couleur…qui demeurent chez eux le temps de leur débarquement, & la colonie de laquelle ils ont été exportés." Article 1 established the fine for noncompliance with the law "le tout à peine de 3,000 liv. d’amende, même de plus grand peine s’il y échoit." At the time of its publication, the declaration gave every French subject and foreigner who had a black slave or servant one month to register the person. If one month passed without registration, the master "could only keep the said blacks in their service with the consent of the latter." The provision caused much confusion and led to the publication of clarifying
arrêts
, which were not substantially more helpful. There is no record of cases involving foreigners and their slaves, but it is probable that if an American slaveholder brought a black slave to France, a court inclined to deport blacks who arrived after 1777 would have been satisfied to have them sent back to the United States. The important thing was to get them out of France.

20.
Pierre Boulle,
Race et esclavage
, 127. "Ainsi, aucune déclaration n’est faite par Thomas Jefferson, le ministre plenipotentiaire des Etats-Unis de 1784 à 1789, au sujet de ses deux serviteurs de couleur, James et Sara Hemings, bien que le ministre Sartine, quelques années plus tôt ait clairement spécifié que la loi s’appliquait aussi aux ambassadeurs." (Jefferson the minister plenipotentiary of the United States, 1784–1789, did not declare his servants of color, James and Sarah Hemings, even though Minister Sartine, some years before, had clearly specified that the law applied to ambassadors.) Sue Peabody, who has also done extensive work with the registers of blacks, confirmed to me that Jefferson did not register either Hemings sibling.

21.
See Peabody, "
There Are No Slaves
," chap. 8, "Erosion of the
Police des Noirs
," 121–36.

22.
See Doyle,
Origins
; William Doyle, "The Parlements of France and the Breakdown of the Old Regime, 1771–1788,"
French Historical Studies
6 (1970): 415–58, on the parlements’ role in opposition to royal authority. For a highly critical view of the parlement, see Thomas Carlyle’s classic, extremely retrograde and dated but entertaining,
The French Revolution: A History
(New York, 2002), 72–76, 88–89.

23.
The drafters of the
Police des Noirs
correctly assumed that the Parlement of Paris would not register the act if it was seen to be regulating slaves. So the declaration proscribed conduct "based upon skin color alone, not slave status." Peabody, "
There Are No Slaves
," 106. See also Boulle, "Racial Purity," 28, on the Parlement of Paris’ likely objection to a law that mentioned slavery. Peabody, "
There Are No Slaves
," 5 and 134–36, on the Parisian Admiralty Court’s commitment to the Freedom Principle.

24.
Peabody, "
There Are No Slaves
," 135.

25.
Ibid.

26.
Ibid.

27.
It is probably impossible to come up with a precise figure for the number of blacks in Paris during the Hemings siblings’ time there. In
Race et esclavage
, 126, Pierre Boulle used the registrations of Parisian blacks between 1777 and 1790 and counted "765 non-Blancs personnes de couleur à Paris et en banlieue entre les années 1777 et 1790." That figure is probably better seen as a minimum, since there is evidence of widespread noncompliance with the law on registration. Boulle notes the "relative absence de déclarations issues de la haute noblesse." See also his table (p. 128) listing the statuses of male and female
gens de couleur
in Paris.

28.
Boulle also analyzed the neighborhoods where blacks lived and found that, for the most part, blacks lived in the richest neighborhoods. Ibid., 137–38 (map of Parisian neighborhoods with the concentration of blacks).

29.
Peabody, "
There Are No Slaves
," 84–85. Boulle,
Race et esclavage
, 138.