George Washington was not a hero when it came to his slaves. But his lifelong ambivalence about slavery can teach us something.
Today seems like an appropriate day for me to write about George Washington again.
George Washington was a remarkable individual with many admirable qualities. He was also a slave owner. He started being a slave owner at the age of eleven, when his father died, making him the heir to a farmhouse, some acreage in Virginia, and a handful of human beings.
When Washington first took up the office of the Presidency in Philadelphia, he had a problem: only visitors to Philadelphia were permitted to keep their slaves. Permanent residents were not. Stay in the city longer than 6 months, and your slaves were automatically freed. Washington maneuvered around this loophole by keeping certain slaves with him for a time, then exchanging them for other slaves from his Mount Vernon plantation, just before the 6 month term that would have freed them expired.
Nonetheless, a few of his slaves took advantage of the abolitionist community in Philadelphia to make good their escape. You may remember that a few years ago Scholastic published, then pulled, a children’s book called “A Birthday Cake for Washington”. The subject of that book was a Washington slave named Hercules, an extremely talented chef whose culinary skills had made him something of a celebrity in Philadelphia. Washington was deeply wary that Hercules, who had a lot of freedom to move around the city, would take the chance of escaping. He was mollified when Hercules declared himself offended that Washington would ever think that he would be so “disloyal” as to flee his rightful master — which proves that Hercules was clever and knew Washington well, because Washington honestly could not understand why slaves who were “well treated” should have any desire to forsake their masters. Washington chose not to send Hercules back to Mount Vernon, and unsurprisingly, Hercules escaped a short time later. He was forced to leave behind his family when he did so, including a small daughter. When the little girl was asked whether she was sorry that Hercules had left her, she said no: he was free, and that was more important than anything.
Other slaves also escaped the Washington household in Philadelphia. One of them was a pretty, light-skinned girl who’d been his wife’s maid. In Washington’s own words, the maid had been treated more like a member of his family than like a slave — given pretty gowns, taught a lady’s graces, etc. His advertisement for her recapture emphasized that she appeared well bred and might pass for white. He eventually tracked her down to the home of the abolitionists who were shielding her. He asked her to return with him, but she refused, even though she was destined for a life of poverty in the free black community, compared to the material luxury she had access to in the President’s house. Washington chose not to pursue the matter further for fear of causing a scandal.
There were other, less “civilized” retrievals of escaped Washington slaves. After a British defeat, Washington boarded a British warship and recaptured two slave girls who had fled there on the British promise of freedom for all slaves who abandoned their American masters. Unlike his wife’s maid, they had no white friends to defend them, so they had no choice but to return with him. As far as we know, he didn’t punish them when he brought them back — but then, we wouldn’t necessarily know if he did, would we?
So that’s one side of George Washington, the slave owner. About 2/3rds of the slaves on Mount Vernon were not, strictly speaking, his property — they belonged to the Custis estate, entailed on his step-son Jack Custis, and Washington was no more than the steward of that estate until Jack came of age. Any Custis slaves who escaped or were freed were Washington’s financial responsibility, meaning that he would have to compensate the estate in cash if he could not recover them. Washington was perpetually cash poor, so he could not easily afford to do this, which is part of the reason he pursued his escaped slaves so vigorously. But of course, that wasn’t the only reason he pursued them. It was expected of him — it was what a “responsible” slave-owner had to do, for his own sake and the sake of his fellow slave-owners.
Washington had already begun to feel ambivalent about slavery before the Revolutionary War. He didn’t believe in breaking up slave families, so the slave population at Mount Vernon grew until he was responsible for about 300 people who, for some mysterious reason, didn’t feel the need to work all that hard — almost like they couldn’t see the point in putting their full effort into labor they weren’t being compensated for. Wild, right? Being responsible for so many human beings was a mental and financial hassle that Washington felt he would rather do without — but of course, freeing the slaves, even the ones who belonged to him outright, was unthinkable.
During the war, Washington’s feelings about slavery evolved somewhat. His personal staff was studded with anti-slavery proponents and abolitionists. (There’s a difference between the two.) One of these was Alexander Hamilton, who saw slavery as an absolute moral evil, but like so many of his peers, believed too strongly in the sanctity of the rights of property owners to espouse radical abolition. Another was the Marquis de Lafayette, who was a radical abolitionist. Lafayette and Washington were extremely close, like father and son, and Lafayette’s enthusiastic championing of abolitionism made Washington so uneasy in his own conscience that it led directly to his drafting the copy of his will that ordered all the slaves belonging to his own estate to be freed upon the death of Martha Custis Washington. This wasn’t the only copy of his will. There was a second, that made no such provision for freeing slaves. The two copies sat side by side in his desk until Washington was on his deathbed.
Lafayette’s dream, after the Revolution, was to return to Virginia with his family and buy a plantation next to Washington’s, after which both he and Washington would free all their slaves and keep on all those who wished to remain — for a proper wage. Lafayette wrote to Washington about this proposal, and it made him deeply uncomfortable. His reply to Lafayette was encouraging, but vague about timelines; he avoided any absolute commitment to the project. (Needless to say, this joint scheme came to nothing — but as it happened, Lafayette did eventually buy a plantation, free its slaves, and hire some of them back, just as he proposed in his letter. He just couldn’t do it in America.)
Washington was only hours from death when he finally made up his mind which of the two versions of his will to finally authorize. He chose the version that would free the slaves of the Washington estate after Martha Washington’s death. The Custis slaves remained beyond his reach.
Viewed strictly as a slave-owner, Washington was indistinguishable from most of his slave-owning peers, save for this final act — freeing his slaves on his deathbed. This tells us something, both about Washington and about America’s history as a slave power. Personally, I don’t think “courageous” is the proper word for Washington’s freeing his slaves, though it has often been called so. It might have been different had he freed his slaves within his own lifetime, but it is clear that he did not possess enough conviction to do so. Freeing his slaves came with considerable consequences for his family’s social standing, even their safety. It was acceptable for a slave owner to free one or two elderly slaves, at the end of many years of “faithful service” — but not to free over a hundred slaves at once. That was a terrifying prospect amongst the slave-owners of the 18th century American south. Slave owners lived in mortal dread of a mass slave uprising in which all white people would be brutally slaughtered. If one plantation owner freed all his slaves, the thinking went, all the other slaves in the area might be emboldened to demand their own freedom, and to retaliate if they did not receive it. (Coincidentally, Martha Custis Washington ended up freeing her husband’s slaves long before her death — after a series of “mysterious” fires around Mount Vernon made her fear for her life.)
If Washington had freed his slaves in his own lifetime, he would have faced extreme backlash from the peers of his social cast, and the flat truth of the matter is that he was not willing to suffer those consequences. Neither were Jefferson or Madison or any other slave owning American founders. Washington’s deathbed decision violated the social compact amongst whites, which demanded that they be unified in keeping blacks enslaved and subdued. Courageous as he was in other areas of his life, Washington did not have the strength of will to break that compact with his fellow slavers until he was about to meet his Maker. (Washington’s personal theology was hazy, but he did believe in some form of accountability in the afterlife.)
Again, I don’t necessarily think that decision reflected courage on his part. His dying was slow, but he was mentally sharp to the end — bed-bound, with nothing to do but think and reflect on his choices and his legacy. It took a literal lifetime, during which he was exposed to some of the sharpest, most persuasive anti-slavery thinkers of his age, combined with the knowledge that he was about to set the seal on his legacy for all time, for Washington to abandon an immoral social compact in order to do the right thing. But he only did it when he knew he would shortly be beyond reach of the consequences of breaking that compact.
Deathbed conversions, as moving as we tend to find them, can’t undo a lifetime of sin. Washington freed his slaves. He was alone amongst his peers in doing so. Nonetheless, it was, quite literally, the very least he could possibly do. The fact that others did not even do that much does not change this fact.
Had Washington freed his slaves during his lifetime, would he have changed anything about the society he lived in? He was extraordinarily popular, a legend to his countrymen, and his living example might have meant much. But history was about to unleash the cotton gin on American slaves, and once that happened, slavery in America became a different thing, something Washington and his peers could not have anticipated. A short-lived wave of enthusiasm for following General Washington’s example probably could not have competed in the long run with the power of the slave-based cotton industry. But that’s irrelevant to Washington himself — he could not see the future, and it had no impact on the decisions he made.
I think it goes without saying that President Trump doesn’t know anything about Washington’s complicated legacy as a slave owner. His singling Washington out during today’s nightmarish press conference was, in his mind, no doubt an ironclad argument for…something. But in my mind, of all the American presidents who owned slaves, George Washington is probably the best example a person could pick to further deconstruct the notion that we white southerners somehow owe it to ourselves to enshrine our legacy as slave owners in monuments of bronze and steel.
I am not qualified to judge whether Washington’s monuments should be treated on the same footing as monuments of Robert E. Lee and other Confederate notables. Neither I nor President Trump get to decide how black Americans should feel about Washington’s legacy. But the father of our country can teach 21st century white Americans a thing or two about how difficult it is for even a “decent” person to purge their thinking of the poison of white supremacist culture.
We can see clearly that discourse surrounding these issues, while valuable, can only accomplish so much. We know this, because the exact same discourse has been ongoing since before America was a nation. The conversations about slavery that Washington had with Hamilton and Lafayette weren’t so different from the conversations taking place amongst the left today about the Black Lives Matter movement, the removal of Confederate memorials, and other legacies of the white supremacist compact we inherited at birth.
Washington was an extraordinary individual. This country would not exist if he had been otherwise. So why did it take him so long to act on convictions that had been years in forming? Why did he wait until he was on his deathbed to free his slaves? Why not take action while he still had the chance to defend his decision with his voice and his pen, setting one last brave example for the country he founded?
The answer is simple, and shameful, and it applies as much to white Americans today as it did to Washington and his peers. He was afraid. He feared the consequences of breaking the social compact with his fellow slave owners. He feared for his family’s safety, for the loss of status, for the financial repercussions. These were not irrational fears — they were more like certainties. Yet Washington had faced down danger and taken on overwhelming odds before. It’s sort of what he’s known for. As a young officer in the British army he whistled in the face of death; as commander of the American army during the Revolution, he knew well that he would be hanged if he were captured or defeated. Yet somehow the same extraordinary individual who faced down all these dangers couldn’t cope with the prospect of making his neighbors angry with him, of facing their rejection, of knowing they would blame him for any unrest amongst their own slaves.
So by all means, let’s take the President’s suggestion. Let’s talk about the legacy of George Washington. Let’s view him through the long-angled historical lens that traces his Presidency to the Presidencies of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Let’s recognize, above all, the power of creating social repercussions for people who are beyond the reach of reason and discourse. Let’s do that, instead of continuing to stand by while white supremacists murder our citizens. After all, social repercussions made a moral coward of one America’s greatest heroes for nearly his entire life. Let’s assume that white supremacists are made of even lesser mettle than George Washington, and see what it does to them.
