Facts are Stubborn

It is completely understandable for scholars… to challenge conventional wisdom in regards to Thomas Jefferson.  Revisionist historians have won the battle to craft discourse on the Jefferson narrative.  Gone are the scholarly works of Dumas Malone and Merrill Peterson; unceremoniously replaced by the pseudo-history of Annette Gordon-Reed while the spectre of Fawn Brodie’s shabby scholarship (Garry Wills’ classic review linked here)  haunts all students of history.  The Jefferson debate is in the post DNA phase, Gordon-Reed with full support of the Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, have used the inconclusive 1998 test as the catalyst to proclaim their conjectural dribblings as fact….and America listens.   David Barton’s ridiculed book was just one of many neo-revisionists studies to hit book shelves trying to redeem Jefferson’s sullied character.  Barton had an alternative agenda, something beyond the “Sally accusations.”  While there is plenty of evidence to refute the Sally allegations, Barton stooped to the…