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An American Controversy Summary

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In 1997, NYU law professor Annette Gordon-Reed undertook the duties of a historian without abandoning her legal background. An American Controversy examines two relationships: The alleged one between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, and, more importantly, that between Jeffersonian historians and this potential stain on the legacy of the third President. At the time the book was written, the consensus among historians was that this alleged liaison between master and slave was nothing more than a myth. Reed's work attacks the journey to this consensus as much as it does the consensus itself, building up the argument for the affair's existence and ruthlessly attacking the ways in which and reasons why the possibility of the affair …show more content…

This caused a shift in the consensus among historians, and it is now generally held that Thomas Jefferson indeed fathered all of Sally Hemings' children. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which operates the museum at Monticello, changed their exhibits to reflect this consensus. Reed released a second volume of An American Controversy in 1999, with an author's note addressing the new findings and what it meant for the significance of her book. The DNA results are a victory for Reed, but she brushes them aside, continuing to focus on the process by which conclusions were reached even after her own conclusion was proven right. But the knowledge that those whom she criticized were ultimately proven wrong does perhaps allow Reed to be even more scathingly critical of them in her second …show more content…

"Reed ferrets out evidence as only the best historians can," writes reviewer Suzanne Jones, "but she mounts her argument as if she were in court." Jones praises Reed's writing style, saying, "Her story is dramatic, her argument is provocative, and her writing is engaging, but her presentation of the evidence is scrupulous, methodical, and even-handed." Ultimately, Jones feels that Reed makes an "excellent case" that the previous historians who studied Jefferson and Hemings have done a "disservice" to "all Americans." William Pease, writing before the DNA findings, says that while Reed's anger is "understandable" given her "firm convictions as an African-American, her book "might be effective before a jury [but] as history is less persuasive." Kathleen Brown writes that the DNA findings should allow all future readers to take the same approach Reed did "by reviewing the historical evidence unburdened by the presumption that a Jefferson-Hemings relationship was an impossibility." While Reed is highly critical of many historians for unfair treatment of their subject, Virginia Beth Paulk commends the first-time author for her making sure that "all sides of the story are thoroughly investigated." Jewel Spangler credits Reed for "pointing out the serious error of giving privileged weight to testimony based on class or

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