Monday, July 13, 2009

dna evidence

we hear much about dna evidence in the criminal courts, but one president has been criminally slandered:
On July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson died at the age of eighty-three. For his tombstone, he listed the three accomplishments he desired most to be remembered: Author of the Declaration of Independence; Author of the Virginia Statutes for Religious Freedom; and Founder of the University of Virginia. Today, many Americans have no idea about his significant achievements but rather, when they hear Thomas Jefferson's name, their immediate response, "Isn't he the president who fathered slave children?"

The charge that Thomas Jefferson fathered a slave boy went back to the time of his presidency, and was given new life in Fawn Brodie's 1974 book Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. She was proved wrong in the late 1990s by DNA testing on the descendants of both Jefferson family members and slaves which demonstrated that her candidate had no genetic link at all.

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