Jefferson's decades-long relationship with Sally Hemings was inherently and massively coercive, since he legally owned her as property and began the relationship when he was in his mid-40s and she was a teenager, creating a colossal power imbalance.

(00:54:02) Hemings and her other children were Jefferson's children. Um and this has been accepted by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation which runs Montichello. So that effectively I think is case proven. So let's get into their relationship. So obviously there's so much I mean h it's impossible to ever know the truth about anybody's relationship I suppose even your own but um their relationship is surely I mean the fact that they are as

(00:54:28) it were master and slave can never be separated from the reality of their relationship. No, it is obviously massively coercive. I mean I mean Jefferson owns Sally as property and as you said, you know, he's in his mid-4s when they begin their affair and she's, you know, in her mid- teens. So in every way there is a colossal power imbalance there. So I I suppose the question that

(00:54:55) can't be answered which people must be wondering is why Sally agreed to go back with Jefferson to Virginia and to slavery. So was it homesickness, you know, for the place that she'd grown up in for her her mother for >> Yeah. >> the rest of her family? Nervousness at at starting a new life in France? I mean, maybe she'd been in France a few years, but I mean a big ask perhaps.

(00:55:20) >> Yeah. She's she's still a teenager, right? So >> yeah, >> I mean do many 16-year-olds or whatever choose to start an entirely new life cut off from their their I mean we know from sport to people who do that that they find it very daunting and overwhelming and that's when they have support around them. So you can imagine this is a big ask for her to stay in Paris even though