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The journalist who exposed Jefferson drowned
The author
The author was James Callender, a Scottish immigrant. He had started out as a Jeffersonian attack dog, then been turned down for a job he wanted and become a vituperative writer for the Federalists. His article added that the eldest son of this woman, Tom, bore a striking resemblance to the president.
His death
Jefferson never answered the charge personally. People lower down the Jeffersonian food chain ran a campaign against Callender instead, casting him as a miserable drunk, and Callender did have trouble with drink. Over the following year he was seen staggering through the streets of Richmond one evening, and that same night he was found drowned in the James River. A hurried inquest found no evidence of foul play.
The rumor's roots
The story itself was no invention. Callender had made public a rumor that had circulated among people in the know for several years and kept circulating long after his death. Years later, shortly before the Civil War, John Hartwell, a Virginia planter and abolitionist who had known Jefferson, wrote of the practice of keeping an enslaved woman as a substitute for a wife. He added that Mr. Jefferson's example could be pleaded in its defense.
How did Callender end up in jail under Adams?
Callender wrote a pamphlet in 1800 called The Prospect Before Us, attacking President John Adams. He was prosecuted under the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a crime to publish false or malicious writing against the government, and was sentenced to nine months in prison. The Federalist-backed law was used mostly against Republican editors. Jefferson, who opposed the Act, pardoned those convicted under it after he took office.
How did the rumor spread across the country?
Federalist newspapers in cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia reprinted the Richmond story through 1802 and 1803. Opponents turned it into verse and song, including a ballad about Jefferson and Sally that circulated for years. The coverage kept the claim in public view even though Jefferson gave no public reply. He was reelected in 1804 by a wide margin.
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