Context in comments

Sally Hemings gets all sorts of weird though. For one we don’t actually know her age (nor did she) and the actual source says she met up with Jefferson after escorting his daughter to Paris at age “15 or 16”; that’s what the letter to Jefferson says putting the start of their relationship at 17 to 18.

The relationship also began, weirdly enough, when she was legally a free woman. Yes, literally. Jefferson was paying wages in Paris to comply with French law along with his other “servants”. France decisively was against slavery on French soil and was open that they would free any slave brought by an Englishman or American to the country

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