The series of letters discussed in Klein’s “The Image of Absence” are beneficial to understanding how the style of communication used back then would affect the work of modern day researchers looking over the letters. The age in which Jefferson, Evans, and Hemings lived was not one in which it was easy to communicate easily between far-flung acquaintances. Therefore, the letters sent back and forth between Jefferson and Evans reveal the many issues that this form of communication cause for historians hoping to glean some information from these letters. For example, the very first correspondence between Evans and Jefferson never actually mentions the name of James Hemings, nevertheless his image is still brought up as Jefferson’s “former employee” and he cannot be overlooked since the letter revolves around Jefferson’s desire for James’s return. How can we fairly examine James Heming’s responses and decisions regarding Jefferson’s request, when we never truly see his own writing? This is reinforced by Klein’s assertion later that “in a listing of search results, these letters do little more than reinscribe the absence of James Hemings in the Jefferson archive”. By showing that Hemings is totally absent from Jefferson’s archive of direct correspondence, Klein is able to highlight the lack of a voice for slaves and ex-slaves within the historical perspective. This is extremely important for understanding how historians must formulate theories on the opinions and life perspective of slaves. Any sort of writing must be taken with a grain of salt that it was most likely altered or edited by a white man after first created by a slave.
Spencer Gill 
The meticulous way in which Thomas Jefferson preserved these letters has truly done much to further our understanding of his life and the historical setting in which these letters were written. However, I believe you are right in drawing attention to the perspectives that are left out. Because of the simple key-word and person search features of the database in which these letters are available, it is difficult to obtain the slaves’, like James Hemings, viewpoints. For example, if one wishes to learn more about Jefferson’s cook and begins to search for letters written by or to Hemings, they will find that no person named James Hemings exists in the database. Instead only a kitchen inventory written by ‘James Hemmings’, with two M’s can be found.
While many slaves may have been illiterate or their writings may have not survived to be recorded by historians, James Hemings was a literate, educated cook that traveled to and from France. And yet the little perspective that may be available in sources such as the Jefferson Letter’s about him are lost due to inadequate search methods. Therefore, as such databases exist today, Klein would like to inform researches that such database biases may exist. She hopes that through awareness of this issue, those, such as historians, that wish to shed light upon this historical context, will perform thorough searches in order to illuminate all perspectives. As Davidson students, these ideas may be especially important to our liberal arts educations.
You make a connection between the mode of communication (letters) and the difficulty of parsing out who the letters refer to. I think you’re right, but I also think the same problem exists in modern times as well. How many online exchanges do we have in which the antecedent—the person or people we’re referring to—would be unclear to any audience except for the intended recipient. In other words, historians a hundred years from now might face just as many “silences” in the archives of Twitter, Yik Yak, and Facebook posts…Reference