Thomas Jefferson

Happy Independence Day

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Jul 5, 2018 in American History, BOOK: The Eagle's Quill, Historical Fiction, Nonfiction, Race, Thomas Jefferson | 0 comments

How to portray a woman who did not leave a photograph or a portrait behind her? Her shadow on the wall testifies to both her presence and her absence from much of the historical record.

It’s the Fifth of July (okay, posting a day late), so it’s appropriate to take a moment to be glad–perhaps “satisfied” is a better word–that Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s planation, has opened a new exhibit to explore and explain the life of Sally Hemings.

What should we call Sally Hemings? Jefferson’s slave? His mistress? His victim? His common-law-wife? His sister-in-law? Mother of his enslaved children?

Or how about simply a woman who had independence in her grasp but gave it up, only to work hard and negotiate skillfully to achieve independence for her children.

Sally Hemings features in my adaptation of Jon Meacham’s biography of Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher.

In his farm book, Jefferson recorded the fate of his crops and the details of the lives of his slaves. He coolly noted down the births of his own children with Sally Hemings. These children did not receive the tender care that Patsy’s and Polly’s boys and girls knew from their grandfather. Jefferson was apparently able to think of them as something entirely separate from his cherished life with his white family. “He was not in the habit of showing…fatherly affection to us as children,” said Jefferson’s son Madison Hemings.

She also gets a mention in Secrets of the Seven: The Eagle’s Quill.

History Lessons

Posted by Sarah L. Thomson on Aug 13, 2014 in American History, Book: The Secret of the Rose, Children's Literature, Educators & Librarians, Nonfiction, Thomas Jefferson | 0 comments

Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher by Jon Meacham, adapted for young readers by Sarah L. Thomson

Exciting to receive in the mail recently an advance reader’s copy of Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher. I got to adapt this young reader’s version of Jon Meacham’s amazing bio of Thomas Jefferson, and it will be out in September.

Lovely to see all the art in place–portraits of all the major figures, political cartoons from the day, photos from Monticello. It’s going to be a gorgeous book as well as instructive.

Writing and adapting books is how I get my history, these days, and it’s as good a method as any, although a little haphazard at times. (I know a lot about the Elizabethan theater, for example, but only up till 1593, when my book The Secret of the Rose was set. At the moment I’m busy getting a grasp on feudal Japan.) One of the great results of adapting Meacham’s work is that I have a new understanding not just of Thomas Jefferson, but of the American Revolution as a whole, and the way our history fits into the struggle between France and England for dominance of the New World.