Chapter Five - To France, With Complications

CHAPTER FIVE

To France, With Complications

IN 1784, JEFFERSON left America behind and boarded a ship to Europe.

Congress had tapped him to replace Ben Franklin as a minister to France. It wasn’t just a diplomatic gig, it was a reset button. After losing his wife and failing as governor, Jefferson was burned out. Paris gave him space to breathe. And he took full advantage of it.

He lived well in France. Maybe too well.

Jefferson wandered art galleries, attended scientific demonstrations, wrote long letters about architecture and agriculture, and fell in love with French cooking and wine. He geeked out over gadgets, furniture, and the design of gardens. He read everything, went everywhere, and blended in with the Enlightenment crowd like he’d been born to it.

But he didn’t come alone.

Jefferson brought a small staff from Virginia, including James Hemings, an enslaved young man whom Jefferson had trained as a chef. James would eventually master French cuisine and return to Monticello as one of the most skilled cooks in America.

But then came Sally Hemings.

Sally was James’s younger sister. She was 14 when Jefferson had her brought to Paris to accompany his youngest daughter. She was also enslaved. Though technically, under French law, she wasn’t. Slavery had been abolished in France. If she wanted to, she could have stayed and been free.

But she didn’t.

While in Paris, Jefferson began a sexual relationship with her. The details are murky. But the power dynamic isn’t. He was in his mid 40s. She was only 14. She didn’t have legal freedom, financial autonomy, or any real say in the matter. It was a relationship shaped by power and by the fact that he owned her. She could not consent. Period.

Eventually, Sally agreed to return to Virginia, under one condition: that her future children with Jefferson would be freed. He agreed. And over the years, he quietly made good on that promise.

He never spoke about it in public. Never wrote about her by name. But they had at least six children together. Four survived. All were freed. Some passed into white society. Others were tracked down generations later. But Jefferson never acknowledged the relationship officially, not once.

While all this unfolded, Jefferson was also watching France descend into revolution. At first, he was excited. The French people rising up, throwing off monarchy, and echoing the same ideas he’d written into America’s founding. But when the guillotine came out, Jefferson pulled back. He supported the ideals, not the executions.

By the end of the decade, his time in France was up.

He packed up his belongings, his books, his pasta machine, and Sally, and came back to America. The new government was forming. Washington was president. And Jefferson had a new job:
Secretary of State.

But that job came with a problem.
His name was Alexander Hamilton.