Sally Hemings

Sally Hemings was born into slavery in Virginia and lived within the extended Hemings family at Monticello. She travelled to Paris while young and later negotiated conditions under which her surviving children would eventually be freed, although she herself remained legally enslaved during Jefferson’s lifetime.

In Barbara Hambly’s Patriot Hearts, Sally’s constrained choices and relationship with Thomas Jefferson expose the contradiction between revolutionary language about liberty and the continued power of slavery within a founding household.