Free Sally Heming by Barbara Chase-Riboud

what
happened that peaceful August afternoon.
    It was several days after the much-awaited eclipse of the
sun.
     
     
    It was the same August 31,
1831, that the slave Nat Turner, property of Putnam Moore and
born the property of Benjamin Turner, and his aide-de-camp, the slave Will
Francis, born the property of Nathaniel Francis, were, with a small army of
sixty or seventy men and one woman, all born slaves, sweeping through the
County of Southampton, Virginia, and in two days and one night, murdering every
white man, woman, and child that had crossed their path, systematically burning
everything as they killed. Fifty-five men, women, and children would perish
this day because of the one favor of God they held highest and in common: being
white. Turner's goal was the arsenal in Richmond where, he, hoping to have
gathered around him an army of hundreds of runaway slaves, had planned to
organize an uprising of all the slaves of Virginia, in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He would fail.
    "If your brother doesn't want it, why don't you take
on the case, Nathan?"
    Langdon shifted nervously in his chair. He hadn't come to
see Sally Hemings today to be challenged. Confronted with a difficult decision.
One that basically went against his grain. The Hemingses were one thing.
Mulattoes were another.
    "He didn't say he didn't want it. He said it couldn't
be won in a Virginia court of law."
    "I know the atmosphere, with all these new laws, is
tense, Nathan, but perhaps you..."
    Who did she think he was, thought Langdon, Thomas
Jefferson?
    "The case, as I said, is un-winnable. It will be one
of those trials that is decided even before it begins."
    "As are all trials concerning mulattoes in
Virginia," said Sally Hemings. She had almost forgotten. If Virginia
courts condoned murder, they wouldn't blink an eye at fraud.
    "Yes, most."
    "And you can't help him?"
    "I would, if I could."
    "Jefferson once tried to defend a mulatto when he was
young...."
    "And he lost." Nathan Langdon said this not
without pleasure.
    "He lost, to be sure, but he tried." Sally
Hemings was trembling. She rarely asked for anything. She hadn't realized how
difficult it was. "It took courage at the time," she said, and looked
intently at Langdon. It had been the wrong thing to say.
    "Courage or foolhardiness? You must know that with the
situation as it is now, any mulatto who sets foot in a court is going to lose
just for having the temerity to do so."
    Sally Hemings was still looking at Nathan Langdon. There
was something in her gaze that profoundly irritated Langdon. Something childish
and stubborn. Or was it only his anger and terror at being compared with the
great Jefferson, the constant references to him as if he were a touchstone, a
holy relic?...
    "But this case is different, Nathan. This man was
never a slave. He was freeborn to begin with. You see, Master ... Jefferson's
case was one of a slave who sued for freedom on the grounds that his mother was
white, and a child by Virginia law inherits the condition of his mother. But
this man was born free because his mother was freed before he was born and left
the state. His father recognized him in court in Philadelphia, and he should
have the same rights as any citizen of the United States, being born outside
Virginia, to inherit property. In this instance, his property is his own slave
kin! Brothers and sisters and uncles!"
    "He is still legally a mulatto, therefore he cannot
testify against his white cousins in the case. It is no longer a question of
slavery but that of a black man testifying against a white man."
    Sally Hemings was silent. Nathan Langdon felt the gall rise
in his throat. Women. She still wanted a hero. The heroic age was over. Didn't
she know that? Ended with James Madison. This was the age of mediocrity,
small-mindedness, caution, calculation, money-grubbing. The age of the common
man. An age that deserved what it got: Jackson, not Jefferson. Then he heard
her say:
    "Think