remiss if i did not mention sally hemmings.hile i have no new research to contribute, it is a relationship will never cease to be fascinating. for those of you who watch scandal there is a great episode where olivia gets mary met it fits for pursuing her. she says something to the effect of feeling like sally hemmings. which angers the very powerful white president. sally hemmings is still very much a part of popular culture. it also subject of debate. to deny this dna evidence and say was disproved by other things. storyy ways jefferson's remains unresolved in this case. invention of the late 20th century as far as accusing jefferson of sleeping with this woman or maybe forcing her to lie with him. this is something that people and contemporaries accused him of doing. this is not something that was a secret. propagandaolitical were accusing him of having relationships with sally hemmings. i don't think he was ever in that it he did take her with him to france and he seemed somewhat open with the relationship. i usually tell my

she said she felt very sally hemming. so come at sally hemming was very much a part of popular conscience, but also on a debate. i listen to radio programs. people would try to deny this dna evidence. but, in many ways, jefferson's story remains unresolved. knowhing that we have to is that this was not an invention of the late 20th century as far as accusing jefferson of sleeping with his woman or forcing her to lie with him. this is something that his contemporaries accused him of doing. not just something people accused him of doing. while i do not think you would ever admit it, he did take her with him to france. he seemed somewhat open with the relationship, and they usually tell students to garner their interest in history, if you want , scholarsp opera propose that sally hemmings was the half-sister. so, she won a very scandalous relationship. that is one of them. must reckon with reality that the designer of the declaration of independence held hundreds of people in slavery. most of him he never freed. the vast maj

. >> sally hemmings a slave. a man who owned many slaves. had a long-standing relationship with her. >> this book, written with a jefr sop scholar at the university of virginia. sally hemmings he wrote in his diary or a letter referred to sally hemmings as jefferson's substitute wife. so even as a contemporary time, that was acknowledged. so what this book is about is really the con tro dixs of jefferson. trying to understand the contradictioning s of a man who could write the declaration of independence and who had slaves or kept slaves. not freeing anyone when he died other than the hemmings' family. how he living at monticello, there's so many great details, this is not a birth to death biography. it is around several subjects to try to understand in almost like a whitmanesque way. they quote him. do i contradict myself? i am large, i c tain multitudes. that's how jefferson lived. one of the great details, i thought, once he retired after he was president, he never left the state of virginia again. but he never left virginia. in a certain

charlie: knowing jefferson's history and sally hemmings and the controversial aspects of his life doeshat say anything to you? >> yeah. you know what is fascinating is, when we meet jefferson his house is being prepped by all of his slaves. we meet sally briefly, but the audience still falls in love with him. that is telling. that is what i wanted. i wanted to create a character where you could absolutely fall in love with this guy. a few hours later be like, wait a minute. that is not really ok. charlie: that is not the whole man. >> i think that is in the text. it is also part of the story of our country. i love that we do not gloss over it. even know it is not part of the story that we are telling. there is a third battle that was all about slavery that has been cut from the show that is great. it borrows heavily from tupac's "hail mary." it is an awesome song. it makes sense it is not in this version of the show. i think that knowing that about jefferson helps me find that dangerous aspect of him. the aspect that is important in his dealings with hamilton. having jefferson be dange

the rumors about sally hemmings and sleeping with his slaves had not come out in 1800 but they would come out shortly in the next couple elections. james calendar, the writer thomas jefferson had hired turned against jefferson when he refused to give calendar a patronage post and began to write diatribe, and soon after found floating in the james river, no one knew what happened, when i think, people are surprised by the physical attack donald trump makes, in the 19th century, there were no holds barred about what they were saying about people. davy crockett who many people remember was a congressman, said martin van buren was a transvestite, many pages about a transvestite, you had james buchanan, democratic president in 1856 had a congenital birth disorder which causes head to tilt to the left, you can see it in pictures and his opponents claimed it wasn't congenital but he tried to hang himself and failed. therefore, of course, you couldn't elect somebody who couldn't even commit suicide right. in a more machiavellian fashion, one of the presidents was said to be gay, andrew jacks