George Washington was a slave owner for practically all of his professional life. His will ultimately emancipated his slaves upon the death of his widow Martha Washington. Although Washington personally opposed the institution of slavery after the American Revolutionary War while he was President, he gave emergency financial and military relief to French slave owners in Haiti to suppress a slave rebellion.[1] Washington also signed bills into law that allowed slave owners to recapture their slaves in any state and protected white U.S. citizenship. Washington signed the Northwest Territory Act that banned slavery in the Northwest Territory in 1789.
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When Washington was only eleven years old, he inherited ten slaves;[2] by the time of his death there were 316 slaves at Mount Vernon, including 123 owned by Washington, 40 leased from a neighbor, and an additional 153 "dower slaves" which were controlled by Washington but were the property of his wife Martha's first husband's estate. As on other plantations during that era, his slaves worked from dawn until dusk unless injured or ill and they were whipped for running away or for other infractions. They were fed, clothed, and housed as inexpensively as possible, in conditions that were probably quite meager. Visitors recorded contradictory impressions of slave life at Mount Vernon: one visitor in 1798 wrote that Washington treated his slaves "with more severity" than his neighbors, while another around the same time stated that "Washington treat[ed] his slaves far more humanely than did his fellow citizens of Virginia."[3] Washington's writings show that he had a low opinion of the honesty and willingness to work of his slaves, as well as of the ability of his overseers to control them. The overseers were given written authorization to whip those slaves he considered to be in need of such "correction," including female slaves.[4]
Before the American Revolution, Washington expressed no moral reservations about slavery, but by 1778 he had stopped selling because he did not want to break up slave families. Historian Henry Wiencek speculates that Washington's slave buying, particularly his participation in a raffle of 55 slaves in 1769, may have initiated a gradual reassessment of slavery. According to Wiencek, his thoughts on slavery may have also been influenced by the rhetoric of the American Revolution, by the thousands of blacks who sought to enlist in the army, by the anti-slavery sentiments of his idealistic aide John Laurens, and by the enslaved black poet Phillis Wheatley, who in 1775 wrote a poem in his honor. Wiencek also argues that in 1778, while Washington was at war, he wrote to his manager at Mount Vernon that he wished to sell his slaves and "to get quit of negroes", since maintaining a large (and increasingly elderly) slave population was no longer economically efficient. Washington could not legally sell the "dower slaves", however, and because these slaves had long intermarried with his own slaves, he could not sell his slaves without breaking up families, something which he had resolved not to do. Confronted with this dilemma, his plan to divest himself of slaves was dropped.[5]
In 1782 the Virginia legislature repealed its law prohibiting the private manumission of slaves. Slaveholders were then allowed, either by executing a deed or adding provisions to a will, to free any adult slave under the age of forty-five.[6][7] The laws in Virginia were designed to discourage and prevent the emancipation of slaves.[8]
After the war, Washington often privately expressed a dislike of the institution of slavery. In 1786, he wrote to a friend that "I never mean ... to possess another slave by purchase; it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this Country may be abolished by slow, sure and imperceptible degrees." To another friend he wrote that "there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see some plan adopted for the abolition" of slavery. He expressed moral support for plans by his friend the Marquis de Lafayette to emancipate slaves and resettle them elsewhere, but he did not assist him in the effort.[9]
The excess number of slaves which he held was economically unprofitable for Mount Vernon.[8] Washington wrote "It is demonstratively clear that on this Estate (Mount Vernon) I have more working Negroes by a full [half] than can be employed to any advantage in the farming system." Washington could have sold his "surplus" slaves and immediately have realized a substantial income.[8] Historian James Truslow Adams observed, "One good field hand was worth as much as a small city lot. By selling a single slave, Washington could have paid for two years all the taxes he so complained about." Washington himself acknowledged the profit he could make by reducing the number of his slaves, declaring "[H]alf the workers I keep on this estate would render me greater net profit than I now derive from the whole."[8]
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was passed by Congress and President Washington in 1789. Though its language seemed to exclude slavery in the Northwest Territory, Americans practiced slavery there until the Civil War.[10] One result of the the law was the provision requiring the government to return runaway slaves, a key provision slave owners had not had under the Articles of Confederation, and one that now partially protected their right to reclaim human property or slaves.[11][12]Although the Ordinance banned slavery, the law was evaded by slave owners in Indiana and Illinois.[13]
In 1790, President George Washington signed the Naturalization Act. This act limited U.S. Citizenship to only free white persons. Those persons considered white were defined as Caucasian.[14]
In 1793, President George Washington signed the Fugitive Slave Act. This act gave slave owers the right to capture fugitive slaves in any U.S. State. This act was done to allow the recapture of fugitive slaves who escaped into any "safe harbors" or slave sanctuaries.[15]
According to historian Alfred Hunt, President Washington issued $400,000 and 1,000 weapons to French colony Saint Domingue (Haiti) slave owners as emergency relief in order to put down a slave rebellion. The monetary relief and weapons counted as a repayment for loans granted by France to the Americans during the Revolutionary War. [16]
Washington was the only prominent, slaveholding Founding Father to emancipate his slaves. He did not free his slaves in his lifetime, however, but instead included a provision in his will to free his slaves upon the death of his wife. William Lee, Washington's longtime personal servant, was the only slave freed outright in the will. The will called for the ex-slaves to be provided for by Washington's heirs, the elderly ones to be clothed and fed, the younger ones to be educated and trained at an occupation. Washington did not own and could not emancipate the "dower slaves" at Mount Vernon.
Prior to 1782, Virginia law prohibited slave owners from emancipating slaves, the only exception being for "meritorious service" and only at the approval of the Governor and his council.[17][18] This law was repealed by the 1782 law allowing slave emancipation by will or deed.[19][20] Washington never manumitted any slaves by deed after the liberal 1782 law was passed, with the exception of his will.
Washington's failure to act publicly upon his growing private misgivings about slavery during his lifetime is seen by some historians as a tragically missed opportunity. The major reason Washington did not emancipate his slaves after the 1782 law and prior to his death was because of the financial costs involved. To circumvent this problem, in 1794 he quietly sought to sell off his western lands and lease his outlying farms in order to finance the emancipation of his slaves, but this plan fell through because enough buyers and renters could not be found. Also, Washington did not want to risk splitting the new nation apart over the slavery issue. "He did not speak out publicly against slavery", argues historian Dorothy Twohig, "because he did not wish to risk splitting apart the young republic over what was already a sensitive and divisive issue."[21]
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