The Hemingses Of Monticello: An American Family - Plot & Excerpts
Elizabeth Hemings herself would have found such a possibility unimaginable. Although she knew the role that slaves played in the lives of whites, she would have had no reason to believe that the world might someday pay attention to that. And even if the young man who came courting John Wayles’s daughter had any inkling that succeeding generations might know his name, the idea that the names of enslaved people would live on as well ran counter to every tenet of the world he knew. Lower-status people (and slaves were at the bottom of the social strata) were not seen as wielding the kind of influence that would make their lives worthy of notice. Certainly few white slave owners would have acknowledged that those whom they enslaved shaped their lives. Society gave Elizabeth Hemings and her children no power to direct the course of John Wayles’s life or that of his white wives and children. Yet their very presence influenced the lives of those around them, and a household that included the master’s mixed-race children had issues that were not present in households without them.Consider Martha Wayles Jefferson’s life.
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