SocraticGadfly: James Madison was no Thomas Jefferson

March 31, 2021

James Madison was no Thomas Jefferson

Allegedly, James Madison (childless by Dolly) had one or more kids with a slave. An alleged descendant speaks. I've never heard of this before, although it appears to be at least 15 years old and so, unlike Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, where rumor abounded long before DNA testings pretty well confirmed it, I reject this.

Per that second link, it's maybe possible that his father had slave children. And, other links say that's been claimed.

Otherwise, the Kearse oral tradition resorts to special pleading with claims like "maybe Dolly had miscarriages" when she had children by her first husband. Beyond such special pleading, it simply wanders, as shown here. Maybe the Black Lives Matter surge led Bettye Kearse to write this again last year. That said, Medium, by letting the "she descends from James Madison" stand, diminishes itself.

And, "interestingly," neither Bettye nor other Kearses participated in an archaeology dig at Madison's Montpelier plantation led by descendants of his slaves. 

At this point, I think we're into a grifting story more than anything else, with the grift in this case being for fame and name far more than for money.

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