ors concluded that Jefferson could have fathered at least one of Hemings's children, Eston Hemings. However, the study did not include the descendants of Jefferson's brother Randolph, who had five sons. These relatives carried the same Y-chromosome characteristics as Thomas. The authors of the study later conceded that any one of these relatives could have fathered one or more of Hemings's children. Jefferson argued that the British Parliament had no control over the American Colonies. He declared that when the original settlers came to America, they had used their "natural rights" to emigrate. Jefferson claimed the colonies still owed allegiance only to the king, to whom the original settlers had freely chosen to remain loyal. Jefferson said the first English settlers in America were like the first Saxons who had settled in England hundreds of years before. The Saxons had come from the area of present-day Germany. Jefferson claimed the British Parliament had no more right to govern America than the German rulers had to govern England. Most Virginians at the convention found Jefferson's views too extreme. But his views, supported by able legalistic argument, were printed in 1774 in a pamphlet called A Summary View of the Rights of British America. (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mtjhtml/mtjhome.html)Jefferson attended the Second Virginia Convention in the spring of 1775. The members of this convention chose Jefferson as one of the delegates to the Second Continental Congress. Before he left for Philadelphia, the Virginia Assembly asked him to answer a message of peace from Lord North, the British prime minister. North had proposed that Parliament would not try to tax the settlers if they would tax themselves. Jefferson's Reply to Lord North was more moderate than the Summary View. But he rejected North's proposals. Jefferson insisted that a government had been set up in America for the colonists, not for the British. The Continental Con...
