Ellen Schwartz's example of the Iroquois confederacy and the constitution
of the US is precisely appropriate for comparison to the Jefferson/Hemmings
story.  The principle reason that the Iroquois have been implicated in
the Constitution (which, it might be noted, William Lloyd Garrison called
a "covenant with death") is that two 18th century English commentators,
Cadwallader Colden and Benjamin Franklin, both admired described the
confederacy.  Colden wrote a history of the Iroquois while Franklin in
his discussions at the Albany Congress of 1754 compared the white colonists
unfavorably to the Iroquois.  There is no evidence that the main architect
of the Constitution, James Madison, was at all influenced by these comments.
Again, as in the case of Jefferson and Hemmings, this is a subject about
which there is some very substantial scholarship. Those of us who work in
museums ought to be insisting on the absolute requirement that our interpretive
activities rely upon the best available scholarly work -- whatever conclusions
it may lead us to. History is not merely a matter of opinion; it is a
discipline with rules of evidence and logic that ought to be respected.
Needless to say, this is not to say that historians don't frequently
disagree about matters like these. They do.  As it happens, however, the two
interpretive issues that have been raised here enjoy a fair degree of
unanimity in the scholarly literature.  To wit: there is no evidence that
Jefferson had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemmings. And there is no
evidence of an influence of the Iroquois Confederacy on the drafting of the
Constitution.  Both assertions MAY be true, in other words, but there is no
evidence to prove them.
 
Douglas Greenberg
President and Director
The Chicago Historical Society
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Chicago  Il.  60614-6099
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