5. Thomas Jefferson raped his dead wife’s lookalike half sister when she was 14
Thomas Jefferson penned some of the most stirring words in advocating freedom, liberty, and equality. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” has moved and inspired idealists for centuries. On the other hand, Jefferson pursued his happiness in a hilltop plantation, Monticello, leading a life of luxury that was only made possible by the labor of hundreds of chattel slaves. Their numbers included a relative, whom he turned into a sexual concubine when she was 13 or 14.
Sally Hemmings (1773 – 1835) was the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, having been fathered by Martha’s father upon one of his slaves. Sally looked like the spitting image of her older half-sister, and when Martha died in 1782, Thomas Jefferson was struck by how much 9-year-old Sally Hemmings resembled his deceased wife. So soon as she hit puberty, at age 13 or 14 – too young to consent even if she had not been a slave and withholding consent was an option – Jefferson turned his dead wife’s lookalike half-sister into his concubine.