'The Hemingses of Monticello' by Annette Gordon-Reed

Thomas Jefferson is an American icon. Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, minister to France, our first secretary of State, vice president and ultimately the third president. But it has become de rigueur to point to a necessary asterisk: that Jefferson, like all Southern aristocrats, was a slaveholder.

By Glenn Speer

November 14, 2008