c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _”Jefferson, Thomas. Author of the Declaration of Independence. Third President of the United States. Purchased the land between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains from France in the Louisiana Purchase. Often said to be America’s greatest thinker and to have created the United States.*””*Must not be admired or respected because he had an African slave as his mistress.” Those who revel in the destruction of larger-than-life people can now rejoice.

They have presided over the destruction of Thomas Jefferson because it has been established Jefferson made a young slave woman, Sally Hemings, his mistress _ most politically incorrect behavior. Thus, now, it is necessary to deny Jefferson’s greatness and to look down upon him as a hypocrite. One more great man exposed as a fraud and a hypocrite.

What the male practitioners of Political Correctness would have done if they were born into a slave-owning culture with easy access to attractive and defenseless young women is not a question to raise.

Nor must we ask about university faculty members _ often politically correct _ who treat women graduate students and junior faculty as virtual slave markets. Instead, we must judge and convict a great man by prying into his private life _ just as we do with a contemporary president _ and judge him not by the culture of his own time but by the culture of our time.

Slavery of any sort is infinitely corrupting. Those who are born in a culture of slavery come into an environment which is profoundly corrupt. The atmosphere, the climate, in which they are raised tells them that it is all right to use the bodies of slaves for physical labor and monetary profit, and to enjoy the bodies of slave women for sexual pleasure.

This is a profoundly appealing situation for a male: you have proprietary rights over these women and you may do what you want to them.

The sexual appeal of slavery is perhaps as important to a slave society as the economic appeal. Men do not willingly give up such rights; they do not readily question the system that gives them such power. Indeed, they do not easily admit to themselves such behavior is morally wrong.

It is no secret that such”elite abuse,”as sociologists call abuse when the abuser has all the power and the victim none, was widespread in the slave states. One need merely compare the skin color of Africans and African Americans to comprehend how many white men sexually used slave women.

For many men the attractions of such possibilities were impossible to resist. Male human nature seems much the same today. Some men would resist it; others would not.

Jefferson apparently did not. This was an indefensible moral flaw which proves only that Jefferson was a flawed human being like everyone else.

One deplores the flaw and even more the culture which not only made it possible but actually encouraged it. Indeed, it appears Ms. Hemings was the half sister of Jefferson’s late wife _ the daughter of Jefferson’s father-in-law and a slave woman. How corrupt can a culture be?

Great humans often have deplorable flaws. That does not mean they are not great, only that they are human. Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone. Let the person, man or woman, who has never engaged in sexual exploitation or manipulation throw the first stone.

Nor do know much about the quality of the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings. She was his mistress for a couple of decades during which he could have easily found another and younger woman to replace her.

Could love emerge in such an asymmetric relationship? Let no one deny the possibility that love can transform a deeply flawed relationship.

Let us hope it did. Let us hope Jefferson, however flawed he was by his humanity and by the corrupt culture of which he was a part, was still a great enough man to rise above his abuse of absolute power and to transform the relationship into one of the basic equality which love both requires and generates. Maybe there was a kind of love at the beginning because his slave was also the sister of his wife and reminded him of his wife.

But let us leave these issues to God and not set ourselves up as gods to judge Mr. Jefferson (as currently some of us are acting as gods to judge Mr. Jefferson’s present successor). His shining legacy still shines untarnished, even though we know more now about the blemishes on his character.

DEA END GREELEY