James Callender was the publisher of the Richmond Examiner and a friend who helped Jefferson get elected to the Presidency. But Callender wanted a job in Jefferson’s administration. Tom, however, knew his background, that he’d been run out of Great Britain for sedition and libel, and had been charged in America under the notorious Alien and Sedition Act, and that he was not a particularly honest person.

Calllender reminded Jefferson of all the hard work and writing he had done to assure Tom of his election. But Tom refused him as a member of his cabinet nevertheless. James reminded Tom of his control of the newspaper and threatened to print stories about Jefferson that would do him damage.

Jefferson told him that his life story was public knowledge, that the citizens knew him, and that any false stories would not be well received. Callender went ahead with his threat. He printed stories, false stories, about Tom’s dalliance with his black slave, a slave that he had inherited from Martha’s father.

This slave had given birth to a child that had some characteristics similar to Tom. During Tom’s life, his nephew was the acknowledged father, so Tom thought the story would die an early death. Which it did.

That is until about 1956, when a pseudo-biographer, one Fawn Brodie, got a hold of the newspaper that printed these sordid made up details, in her “research”. She published the sordid details in her book as if they were proven facts. Tom had a slave mistress! The public suddenly and eagerly grabbed on to this fabrication with all their might, anxious to bring down one of our greatest heroes in history. He was after all a man.

In 1998, “Nature” magazine even published an article, a scientific (?) article, about this, new (again) aspersion. The headline was misleading. The scientific study only proved that some DNA could have come from someone with Thomas Jefferson’s father’s genes. Not Tom specifically. This study, and its careless procedures, was renounced by 13 distinguished scholars and scientists from several Universities, including Yale and others, and was repudiated and invalidated.

Thomas Jefferson didn’t say anything publicly, one way or another, about these allegations, although they infuriated him. Privately he disavowed them. He thought that people that knew him, knew his character, and that should be the end of it.

And it was—until our salacious generation!

For more information about this disdainful myth, see my book: “Founding Fathers—Uncommon Heroes”, 2003, by Steven W. Allen, pages 257-263.