news and views MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY Founding father Eric S Lander and Joseph J Ellis Almost two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson was alleged to have fathered a children by his slave Sally Hemings The charges have remained controversial Now DNA analysis confirms that Jefferson was indeed the father of at least one of Hemings children F BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY or two centuries Thomas Jefferson s legacy has been haunted by the first US presidential sex scandal the charge of an illicit relationship with his mulatto slave Sally Hemings From the day the story broke in a Richmond newspaper in 1802 Tom and Sally has become the longest running mini series in American history Because the evidence was all circumstantial no authoritative resolution has been possible Until today that is On page 27 of this issue Foster et al 1 report that DNA testing of Y chromosomes offers strong evidence that Jefferson fathered at least one of Hemings children The saga begins in the mid 1780s in Paris where Jefferson served as ambassador to France after the death of his wife Sally Hemings then 14 years old was sent to accompany Jefferson s youngest daughter to Paris in 1786 There is no evidence of what transpired there but Hemings returned to the United States with Jefferson in 1789 and she eventually bore at least five children starting with Tom in 1790 and ending with Eston in 1808 At least three pieces of evidence support a relationship between Jefferson and Hemings First several of the children bore a striking physical resemblance to Jefferson Second Sally s fourth child Madison testified late in life that Sally had identified Jefferson as the father of all her children Finally Jefferson was in residence at his mansion in Monticello in Virginia at the time when each of the children was conceived But many historians have expressed doubts and Jefferson family tradition has implicated a maternal cousin as the likely father To a geneticist the obvious solution short of exhuming the principals is to compare Y chromosomes from modern day male line descendants Most of the Y chromosome is passed intact from father to son so it can be used to trace paternal lineages However such studies require enough polymorphic markers small regions of DNA that vary among individuals so that Y chromosomes can be distinguished by the haplotype set of specific variants that they carry Researchers from several laboratories have identified a collection of suitable markers from the Y chromosome over the past two years and this collection is now fuelling an explosion in male line genetic studies Foster et al 1 examined a haplotype containing 19 polymorphic markers Jefferson s haplotype inferred from male line descenFigure 1 Thomas Jefferson 1743 1826 third president of the United States DNA analysis by Foster et al 1 shows that he fathered at least one child by his slave Sally Hemings NATURE VOL 396 5 NOVEMBER 1998 www nature com Figure 2 A portion of Jefferson s farm book in which he recorded the distribution of slave rations by family dants of his paternal grandfather seems to be quite rare inasmuch as it was not seen among a sample of 670 Europeans or 1 200 people worldwide The authors found that this rare haplotype perfectly matches that of Eston Hemings male line descendant The probability of such a match arising by chance is low safely less than 1 Together with the circumstantial evidence it seems to seal the case that Jefferson was Eston Hemings father Interestingly Jefferson s haplotype does not match male descendants of Sally s first son Tom Woodson The simplest explanation is that Jefferson was not Tom s father An alternative explanation would require nonpaternities among Tom s offspring The jury remains out with respect to Sally s other children but the burden of proof has clearly shifted Nothing in Foster and colleagues study and nothing in the vast historical literature sheds any light on the character of the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings Was it as his contemporary critics charged a tale of lust and rape Was it as several twentieth century scholars and novelists have suggested a love story rooted in mutual affection Or was it something inbetween These questions are open to endless interpretation but in a broader sense the new findings give blacks and whites alike an opportunity to confront a largely secret shared history Politically the Thomas Jefferson verdict is likely to figure in upcoming impeachment hearings on William Jefferson Clinton s sexual indiscretions in which DNA testing has also played a role The parallels are hardly perfect but some are striking Both improper relationships involved women about 28 years younger although there is a world of difference between a slave and master at the close of the eighteenth century and a White House intern and a married man at the end 13 news and views of the twentieth Both presidents seem to have engaged in politically reckless conduct in Jefferson s case fathering Eston six years after allegations appeared in the national press And both offered evasive denials to the charges In 1805 the Massachusetts legislature staged a mock impeachment trial of Jefferson citing several grievances including the accusations about Sally Hemings Jefferson acknowledged one charge propositioning a married woman in his youth but asserted that all the others were false Otherwise he remained silent leaving denials to political supporters and family Nor did the scandal affect Jefferson s popularity He won the 1804 election by a landslide and his abiding position was that his private life was nobody else s business and should have no bearing on his public reputation Foster and colleagues findings renew questions about Jefferson s tortured position on slavery If Jefferson s relationship with Hemings began in the late 1780s it would mean that he began to back away from a leadership position in the anti slavery movement just around the time that his affair with Sally Hemings started Jefferson s stated reservations about ending slavery included a fear that emancipation would lead to racial mixing and amalgamation His own interracial affair now personalizes this issue while adding a dimension of hypocrisy Over the past 30 years research into Jefferson has cast a shadow over his credibility as America s prophet of freedom and equality Recent work has also emphasized his massive personal contradictions and his dexterity at playing hide and seek within himself The new