Reply #157: Bullshit

[kwassa]

PBS's Frontline
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/true/

In 1998, the scientific journal Nature published the results of DNA tests designed to shed new light on questions first asked some two hundred years earlier: Did Thomas Jefferson have a relationship with a woman who was his slave? Did that relationship produce children?
Now, the new scientific evidence has been correlated with the existing documentary record, and a consensus of historians and other experts who have examined the issue agree that the question has largely been answered: Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one of Sally Hemings's children, and quite probably all six. The language of "proof" does not translate perfectly from science and the law to the historian's craft, however. And the DNA findings in this case are only one piece of a complicated puzzle that many in previous generations worked hard to make sure we might never solve.

In November of 1998, following the release of DNA tests which, combined with the historical record, strongly point to Thomas Jefferson as the father of at least one of Sally Hemings's children, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation formed a Research Committee to verify the findings, gather all relevant evidence, and make a full assessment of the matter. This web version of the final report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings is organized into six sections, evaluating the DNA science and the documentary evidence; listing the "uncontested facts"; and investigating the possible paternity of other Jeffersons, including the Carr brothers, who were long reputed to have fathered Sally Hemings's children. The final section of the report contains the committee's conclusion: that there is a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings and probably all six of Sally Hemings's children.