"There's big trouble brewing over the May 3 cocktail party for Thomas Jefferson's descendants at his Charlottesville estate.

Jefferson descendant Lucian Truscott IV would have liked to invite dozens of the 2,500 descendants of Sally Hemings -- the mulatto slave who bore a child genetically related to the nation's third president. But Monticello Association President Nat Abeles -- whose group claims about 800 official Jefferson descendants, including Truscott -- says there's no proof of a sexual relationship between Hemings and Jefferson, despite 1998 DNA tests that Nature magazine called "strong evidence that Jefferson fathered at least one of Hemings's children."

Washington software entrepreneur Abeles plans to bar all but authorized guests -- two per Monticello Association member -- from the wine-and-cheese soiree at which revelers can venture into upstairs rooms off-limits to the public. He's also considering laying on extra security. Novelist Truscott and his allies, meanwhile, are comparing Abeles to Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus blocking the schoolhouse door -- an iconic image of the civil rights movement.

A camera-ready confrontation is shaping up.

"Ahh, the calla lilies are in bloom," Truscott e-mailed us from Los Angeles, "and as the mists rise from the mountain at Monticello, a young man's fancy turns to fighting internecine wars over slavery, race and sex in the Thomas Jefferson family."

So far Truscott, Abeles and their partisans have generated hundreds of e-mails and tens of thousands of words over this two-hour social event. They're accusing each other of all manner of dishonorable behavior unworthy of Southern gentlemen -- and worse.

"I know these guys. They're trying to exclude people of color -- just another form of burning the cross and putting on white sheets," said Truscott ally and Jefferson descendant David Works, a data systems executive in Denver. "They believe this is all a vast left-wing conspiracy to change history, and they're trying to protect Thomas Jefferson's virginity."

Hemings descendant Shay Banks-Young -- who plans to attend as Works's guest along with fellow Hemings descendant Julia Westerinen -- told us: "Unlike the Monticello Association, we have DNA evidence. They only have paper validation. They can't prove their relationship to Jefferson. I think the reason they're behaving this way is fear."

Abeles calls charges of racism "ridiculous," noting that his group claims African American and Asian American members. "The restriction on guests was necessary," he e-mailed a Truscott relative, "because members like Lucian abused this privilege -- last year inviting 26 guests. Lucian and you (and all the other Truscotts who are planning similarly dishonest schemes) will be held to the same rules as everyone else. Temper tantrums do not sway me."" (Lloyd Grove, The Washington Post, April 23, 2003).