The Jefferson–Hemings controversy is a historical debate over whether there was a sexual relationship between the widowed U.S. president Thomas Jefferson and his slave and sister-in-law, Sally Hemings, and whether he fathered some or all of her six recorded children.

In 1997, the controversy was reopened when Annette Gordon-Reed published an analysis of the historiography on this issue, deconstructing previous versions and detailing oversights and bias.

[3] In June 2018, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, with introduction of the new exhibit on Sally Hemings, asserted the relationship is "settled historical matter".

[14]Jefferson made no public comment on the matter, although most historians interpret his cover letter from 1805 to Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith as a denial alluding to a fuller reply, which has been lost.

He [Randolph] said in one instance, a gentleman dining with Mr. Jefferson, looked so startled as he raised his eyes from the latter to the servant behind him, that his discovery of the resemblance was perfectly obvious to all.

[17]Randolph told Randall that the late Peter Carr, Jefferson's nephew by his sister and a married man at the time, had fathered Hemings' children, as an explanation for the "startling" close resemblance that every visitor to Monticello could see.

[24] In 1874, James Parton published his biography of Jefferson, in which he attributed the content of Madison Hemings' memoir to the political motives of a journalist who interviewed him.

Lerone Bennett, in his article, "Thomas Jefferson's Negro Grandchildren," published in Ebony in November 1954, examined the current lives of individuals claiming descent from this union.

It was based on material from the Farm Books, as well as a detailed timeline of Jefferson's activities developed by historian Dumas Malone in his extensive biography.

Graham noted that Hemings conceived her children only when Jefferson was in residence at Monticello, during a time when he traveled frequently and was away for lengthy periods.

His documentation in his multi-volume biography (published 1948–1981) provided the details that Pearl Graham analyzed to show Jefferson was at Monticello for the conception of each of Hemings' children.

[41][42] In 2001, the Scholars Commission Report of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society criticized the study, as they said Neiman had not accounted for the possibility of multiple fathers.

Monticello's overseer Edmund Bacon (1785–1866) noted in his memoir (published after Jefferson's death) that people were talking about Harriet's departure.

[60] Dr. Daniel P. Jordan, president of the foundation, committed at the time to incorporate "the conclusions of the report into Monticello's training, interpretation, and publications."

[63] One article had the results of an analysis by Fraser D. Neiman, who studied the statistical significance of the relationship between Jefferson's documented residencies at Monticello and Hemings' conceptions.

In several articles, its specialists concluded that, as the genealogist Helen M. Leary wrote, the "chain of evidence": historical, genealogical, and DNA, supported the conclusion that Thomas Jefferson was the father of all of Hemings' children.

In it they unanimously agree that the allegations were "by no means proven", and also state that they find it "regrettable that public confusion about the 1998 DNA testing and other evidence has misled people.

The report states that it is a matter about which reasonable people can disagree but by a margin of 12 to 1 their final views "ranged from 'serious skepticism' about the charge to a conviction that it is 'almost certainly false'."

[71] The Monticello Jefferson-Hemings Report found that from its "research it was determined that, other than Thomas Jefferson, twenty-five adult male descendants of his father Peter (1707-1757) and his uncle Field (1702-1765) lived in Virginia during the 1794-1807 period of Sally Hemings's pregnancies.

[72] In August 1807, a probable conception time for Eston Hemings, Thomas Jefferson wrote to his brother about visiting, but there is no evidence that the younger man arrived.

[74] In the fall of 2001, articles in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly criticized the TJHS Scholars Commission Report for poor scholarship and failure to follow accepted historical practices of analysis, or to give sufficient weight to the body of evidence.

[75] Jeanette Daniels, Marietta Glauser, Diana Harvey and Carol Hubbell Ouellette conducted research and in 2003 concluded that Randolph Jefferson had been an infrequent visitor to Monticello.

Any lineal descendant of Thomas Jefferson who applies for membership, and annually pays dues as stated in the By-Laws of this Association, shall be a Regular Member of the Association. . . ."

In the 1940s, Julia's father and his brothers changed the family oral tradition and told their children they were descended from an uncle of Jefferson, as they were trying to protect them from potential racial discrimination related to their descent from Sally Hemings.

In the 1970s, a cousin read Fawn McKay Brodie's biography of Jefferson and recognized Eston Hemings' name from family stories.

[84] In his last book before the DNA test results were published, Andrew Burstein wrote that Jefferson could not have been the father of Hemings' children.

In an interview on NPR about the book, Hitchens discussed Jefferson's pessimistic views of the possibility of the co-existence of whites and blacks in the United States.

He said, Then there's the odd, of course, fact that he had a very long love affair with a woman who he owned, who he inherited from his father-in-law, who was his wife's half-sister, and produced several children by her, whose descendants have mainly been brought up on the white side of the color line.

Both the United States National Park Service and the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs note in their online biographies that Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children has been widely accepted.

CBS aired the television film Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (1999), also portraying this relationship; it was not challenged by any major historian.