The matter of Washington and slavery has gained prominence in light of the modern secularist and liberal accusations against the Founding Fathers because some of them were slaveholders. Almost everywhere I speak on the Founding Fathers, I get asked about it by people of color. “If the Founding Fathers (or George Washington) were so great, how come they had slaves?” It is a legitimate question. The great English essayist, Dr. Samuel Johnson, raised it in 1775, as the War for Independence broke out: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”
Due to Washington’s status as the most famous Founding Father, his attitudes about it become important. Although space and time prohibits a thorough examination of it here, I can make some comments about Washington’s attitudes concerning slavery.
Like most of the renowned figures in human history, George Washington was a complex man. He defies simple and categorical questions about his slant on things, because, as is true of most of us, as he matured his views evolved and in some cases became more nuanced.
When he was younger his attitudes about slavery reflected the Virginia planter culture of which he was a part. He had dozens of slaves at Mount Vernon, to which Martha Custis had added a sizeable dowry of slaves when they were married.
But even in the years prior to the War for Independence, his thoughts about slavery began to change. He resolved to never sell or move a slave away from Mount Vernon without that slave’s permission. Consequently, no slaves were sold from the plantation, with the result that the slave population expanded into a work force that in later years created financial hardship for Washington.
His years of service in the War for Independence had a definite impact on his thinking about slavery. Actually, by his own telling, it was the first time that he began to examine the morality of the subject. South Carolinian John Laurens proposed the idea of arming 3000 slaves and offering them their freedom if they would serve in the Continental Army until the end of the war. Initially interested in Laurens’ idea, Washington cautioned that emancipating some of the states’ slaves could create large problems by “rendering slavery more irksome to those who remain in it.” He added the comment that “this is a subject that has never before employed much of my thoughts.” But he began thinking about it.
His thoughts were quite conflicted, however. During the war General Washington made a point of telling his Mount Vernon manager, Lund Washington, that he had decided to abandon slave labor if the war ended favorably for America. On the other hand, after the British surrender at Yorktown he insisted that all escaped slaves in British custody (four of which were his own) be sent back to their owners. When Washington was writing his manager about ending slavery at Mount Vernon he was thinking about selling all his slaves, not setting them free. This was first of all a financial issue with him, even though he was morally dead set against breaking up slave families, so at this point Washington’s thoughts about slavery were contradictory.
Three years after he retired as the General-in-Chief of the victorious Continental Army, in April of 1786, he wrote to Robert Morris: “There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it (slavery) – but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by legislative authority.” In September of that year, a man who owed him money proposed to repay him with slaves. He wrote to John Francis Mercer: “I never mean (unless some particular circumstances should compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase; it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by the legislature, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by slow, sure, and imperceptible degrees.”
Though he favored only gradual emancipation, he was becoming more morally committed against slavery. Proof of this comes from a remarkable comment he made to Randolph (Edmund?), which reveals that this issue was tearing up the roots of his Virginia soul. He said that if the Union were ever to become divided between the North and the South, “he had made up his mind to move and be of the northern (part).”
Slavery was putting him in a financial bind. He had already stopped trying to raise tobacco on the five Mount Vernon farms, because its low prices brought in very little. His plan was to diversify his agriculture to grow wheat and other crops more suited to northern Virginia. For this slaves were of no real value. Indeed, he had foreseen what other Virginia planters would conclude in another few decades – the only way a man in his position and in his locale could make any money from slavery was to sell slaves to the upcoming Deep South cotton states. But he would not do it. “I am principled against selling Negroes, as you would do cattle at a market.” From the time the War for Independence called him away from Mount Vernon until his death the slave population doubled.
In 1793, he tried another plan. He wrote to Arthur Young, the English agriculture reformer and editor of Annals of Agriculture, a journal widely read by farmers on both sides of the Atlantic. His idea was to break Mount Vernon into four farms which he would rent out, while he and Martha retained only the main house. His slaves would be turned into hired hands, to be offered to the neighboring farmers. The purpose of this, he revealed in a private letter to his old secretary Tobias Lear, was “to liberate a certain species of property which I possess very repugnantly to my own feelings.” Holding slaves was becoming a serious moral problem for him.
Why then, did he not just free all his slaves? I get asked this question all the time, and the simple answer is that the slaves themselves were against it. His slaves and those on the Custis estate were all intermarried by this time. If he set his free, none of the surrounding farmers would hire them as free Negroes, so they would have to flee north to non-slave states, and the families would be broken up. Washington was completely unwilling to force this disaster on the slaves while he was alive, so he postponed it as long as he could – to the time when both he and Martha were gone.
The summer of 1799 saw Washington forced to make a final decision about what to do with his slaves. Martha was quite ill, and perhaps he himself had some premonition that he would not survive much longer. He wrote out his will by himself, in his own handwriting – no secretary was involved with it. In the document he listed 317 slaves at Mount Vernon, of which he only owned 124 outright. Those were the only ones over which he had ultimate legal control, because the law of entail stipulated that the rest would pass to Martha’s grandchildren upon her death. Washington was quite emphatic about what he wanted done with the slaves that were legally his: “Upon the decease of my wife, it is my will and desire that all the slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their freedom.” He went on to say: “I do hereby expressly forbid the sale, or transportation out of the said Commonwealth (Virginia) of any slave I may die possessed of, under any pretence whatsoever. And I do most pointed and solemnly enjoin it upon my executors hereafter named to see that this clause respecting slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the epoch at which it is directed to take place without evasion, neglect or delay.” The force of his language here indicates that he wanted to prevent any of Martha’s family from trying to sell the Negroes into continued slavery after his death, but before hers, while she still had legal control over them.
That wasn’t all. He ordered that all the old and infirm slaves “shall be comfortably clothed and fed by my heirs while they live.” (The estate paid out support for old slaves until 1833!) He also insisted that the very young be supported until they reached the age of twenty-five, and that they must be taught to read and “brought up to some useful occupation.” Lastly, he took pains to care for the slave that had become a devoted friend to him throughout their years together in the War for Independence, Billy Lee. The old valet, who had personally helped the General break up a brawl between Virginia and Massachusetts soldiers early in the war, and who had ridden into many a battle with him, was now hobbling around Mount Vernon with two badly crippled knees.
Upon Washington’s death he was to be set free, and provided with room and board and a small stipend “as a testimony to my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.” He had now come through into moral clarity about the evils of slavery, and had taken decisive action to make sure that his wishes in the matter would be carried out after his death, which would come in little more than five months.
He was the only Virginia Founding Father who freed all his slaves.
Copyright, 2008, Peter J. Marshall. All rights reserved.
(Excerpted from: Was George Washington a Christian? Part Three)
by Reverend Peter Marshall
