George Washington was cruel to slaves, Indian land was stolen, whites were not slaves, and other lies you have been taught.

History is complicated.

Tour in America in 1798–1800 (Volume 1) by Richard Parkinson

A scholar should view something that challenges his worldview as a gift. Either the challenge will be refuted or cause the scholar to revise his opinions. Either way, the scholar learns, which is the goal of scholarship.

A case in point was a recent post on Medium about “Life as a Slave At George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate.” What caught my eye was this paragraph:

Based on everything you’ve read so far, you may believe that George Washington, as a slave owner, was merely a product of his time, treating his enslaved workforce just like any other slave master would back then. However, evidence suggests that Washington was especially cruel to his slaves, even by the standards of the other slave masters of the era. One of Washington’s neighbors, Richard Parkinson, claimed that most of his neighbors, him included, felt that Washington was harder on his enslaved workers than any other slave owner.

So, the author claims that “evidence” “suggests” that Washington was “especially cruel” because a “neighbor” claimed that “most” of Washington’s neighbors “felt” that Washington was “harder” on slaves than other slave owners.

This could be true, although Washington freed his slaves on his death, suggesting he was not entirely comfortable with slavery.

The author linked to a web page at the Mount Vernon Society on “George Washington and Slavery.” That page offers:

Various sources offer differing insight into Washington’s behavior as a slave owner. Richard Parkinson, an Englishman who lived near Mount Vernon, once reported that “it was the sense of all his [Washington’s] neighbors that he treated [his slaves] with more severity than any other man.”3

Conversely, a foreign visitor traveling in America once recorded that George Washington dealt with his slaves “far more humanely than do his fellow citizens of Virginia.” It was this man’s opinion that Virginians typically treated their slaves harshly, providing “only bread, water and blows.”4

Washington himself once criticized other large plantation owners, “who are not always as kind, and as attentive to their [the slaves’] wants and usage as they ought to be.”5 Toward the end of his life, he looked back on his years as a slave owner, reflecting that: “The unfortunate condition of the persons, whose labour in part I employed, has been the only unavoidable subject of regret. To make the Adults among them as easy & as comfortable in their circumstances as their actual state of ignorance & improvidence would admit; & to lay a foundation to prepare the rising generation for a destiny different from that in which they were born; afforded some satisfaction to my mind, & could not I hoped be displeasing to the justice of the Creator.”6

The Medium author seems to have been spinning the source material to say more than it said; there is no agreement in the “evidence.” Moreover, there is no statement about “cruelty”; the criticism of Washington was that he was viewed as being “more severe.”

Really? A former general being more severe with his subordinates than civilians? Unimaginable.

The Mount Vernon page cites the following source for the “Washington was viewed as more severe” claim:

3. Richard Parkinson, A Tour in America, in 1798, 1799, and 1800 (London: Printed for J. Harding and J. Murray, 1805), 420.

Parkinson’s book is obscure, but there are copies at the Internet Archive.

This is what the cited page said:

The curing of tobacco is a nice very process: and, for want of and care, knowledge there are every year many hogsheads spoiled and worth nothing. And, besides all that, the management was of negroes was a great obstacle: for, notwithstanding the great inhumanity” so generally spoken of by those who are not acquainted with them, they will not do without harsh treatment. Take General Washington for an example: I have not the least reason to think it was his desire, but the necessity of the case: but it was the sense of all his neighbors that he treated them with more severity than any other man.

(Parkinson p. 418–419 (Not p. 420.)

Parkinson then offers his view on the shiftless laziness of the slaves, which, by the way, can you blame them? The lack of incentives for slaves to put effort into labor was a perennial complaint about the slave system as an economic system prior to the Civil War. Parkinson notes this on page 419:

They are so lazy by nature, that they would do little or nothing but take pleasure in fine weather, cook victuals, and play on music and dance all winter, if they had no master. I think them as unfit to conduct themselves as a child — thoughtless in the extreme, and therefore requiring a severe master: and a man unused to them, and who is of a humane disposition, is unfit to employ negroes. I had much rather do the work myself than have to force continually others to do it.

On page 420, we get to Washington’s “especial cruelty.” Parkinson observes:

The first time I walked with General Washington among his negroes, when he spoke to them, he amazed me by the utterance of his words. He spoke as differently as if he had been quite another man, or had been in anger.

Or maybe as he would treat an insubordinate colonial infantry soldier?

We have no idea.

All things considered, the fact that General Washington barked orders to his slaves as if he expected his orders to be followed, and showed anger when they were not, is weak tea in terms of the “especially cruel” derby. As for the “evidence,” it seems to be hearsay and to be undefined. What were the neighbors referring to?

Nonetheless, the idea that we had a memoir from an eyewitness of George Washington got me curious. So I purchased volume 1 of Parkinson’s memoirs about his time in America.

So, who was Richard Parkinson? Basically, he was a well-connected upper-class Englishman who fancied himself as an expert on agriculture. By 1799, he had written a book called the “Experienced Farmer,’ where he advised British farmers about how to take their agricultural practices into the 19th century. His connections led him to communicate with George Washington, who offered to lease 1,200 acres near Mr. Vernon to try out his agricultural theories. Parkinson thought this was a good idea, and he might get another book and become extremely wealthy in the process.

The book is fascinating in providing details about late 19th-century life. For example, how long did a Trans-Atlantic crossing take? About a month. Parkinson arrived in November in Virginia and discovered no hay for the livestock he had brought with him. Rather, he was reduced to feeding the livestock with the tops of “Indian corn” — the stuff we pop and eat on the cob. Note that “Indian corn” was not the “corn” he used to, wheat and barley. He also describes Virginia as a desert; there was nothing green and no grass anywhere in November! The lack of grass is a constant theme, which makes you wonder what he was seeing since Virginia has lots of greenery when it is not winter.

Parkinson only stayed in America for two years. He was not a neighbor of Washington. He rejected Washington’s land as unfit and rented some near Baltimore, which was a long way from Mt. Vernon. Parkinson viewed slavery as an economic burden. In rejecting Washington’s offer, he observes:

I must confess that if he would have given me the inheritance of the land for that sum, I durst not have accepted it, especially with the incumbrances upon it; viz. one hundred and seventy slaves young and old, and out of that number only twenty-seven in a condition to work, as the steward represented to me. (p. 51.)

He constantly calculates the cost of slavery and concludes that it is more costly than it is worth.

On the other hand, labor prices were very high. Parkinson is constantly railing about the labor shortage, resulting in him being forced to farm. Conditions in America were intolerable for a gentleman. Servants didn’t know their place. White servants insisted on the perquisites of the gentry. He couldn’t even get the servants to clean his boots!

“It may be necessary to forewarn the reader, that there are some very trivial things introduced in this work ; particularly where I mention myself as doing manual labour, and even my wife and family. I hope this will be excused ; as none but those who have been in America would suppose but there are people to be had for either love or money to do the dirty work; but I have been obliged to clean my own boots and shoes when I have had four servants in the house ; and myself, wife, and family, have risen in a morning to milk the cows when our servants were in bed. I should term such very bad management in England ; but the idea of liberty and equality there destroys all the rights of the master, and every man does as he likes. (p. 30–31.)

What surprised me was Parkinson’s observations that “indentured servitude” — de facto white slavery — was still alive in 1798:

But the working-men that have emigrated have it not in their power to get back; for, if they have not money to pay their passage, the captains of ships will not bring them from America on the terms on which they are taken, because there is no one ready to pay their passage on this side. To explain this. On their first arrival in America, there are men ready to buy them as slaves for a certain time ; and as these people will want clothing, not having the means to purchase it during their stated time of servitude, they are compelled to get the money of their masters, and that keeps them in the same state the greatest part of their life. (p. 17–18.)

Parkinson offers this example:

It is precisely the same with emigrants in similar circumstances from other countries ; who are in the same manner purchased and treated as slaves. I will mention a particular instance. A Dutchman who had lost all his property, which was considerable, and was reduced to great distress, by the war with France, met with a captain of an American ship, who offered him and his two sons a free passage into America ; but at the end of the voyage the captain offered them all for sale to pay for the passage. They were bought by Messrs. Ricketts, whom I have before mentioned ; who paid the captain ready money for them, and the three emigrants had to repay those gentlemen by labour for a certain number of years. The father, finding himself so wonderfully disappointed in the great expectations held out to him by the captain, proved very obstinate and would not work; and was therefore (as was usual) whipped with the cow-hide, in the same way as the negroes. The old man, nevertheless, in spite of this great punishment, still persisting in his obstinacy, the gentlemen chose to give him his liberty, and kept the two boys to work out the sum. Now I “ only blame the captains of ships for holding out such favourable prospects to the emigrants as a persuasion, which they know at the same time to be false ; for it cannot be supposed those captains can give them passage and provisions without repayment in some way or other : but the fact is that they do this by way of profit, and on the other side the water they get the same sum as from passengers to this. As to the gentlemen who bought these three men, I can say, from my own knowledge, that better characters cannot exist : the blame in this case lay on the old Dutchman ; who, when he had brought himself into such a situation, ought with temper to have done his best, and the gentlemen would have treated him with kindness. (p. 22–24.)

There is a lot to ponder in that passage. The assumptions are so alien, that it is hard to comprehend what life was like to the average person — even if they were white and free.

Parkinson also offers a body blow to partisans of the “America is Stolen Land” thesis:

When the British governed America, they used not to take the land without first treating with the Indians and paying them for it, as may be remarked in the LIFE OF GENERAL WASHINGTON ; who was employed by the British to go up into the country to treat with the Indians. He observes “ They called the British their fathers, and said they were ready to treat with him, as the British never took their land without paying them for it : but the French did not do so -, they took their land from them and called it their own, and paid them nothing for it.” Now the Indians think themselves entitled to the land ; saying the Great Man (as they call him by which they mean God) planted them there, and gave them the lands for their support. (p. 155.)

Likewise, Parkinson punctures the notion that Americans were racist as to the Indians:

As an apology for having introduced the foregoing narratives, it may be right to say, I did it by way of proving how dangerous it is for the emigrant to venture far into the country. But, although the Indians commit such cruelties on their invaders, it is the general opinion of the Americans that they are not a bad sort of people : just in their dealings, they seldom do those things without a cause, and are seldom known to break their word. (p. 154.)

On the other hand, Parkinson offers an extended description of two Americans who watched the death by torture of their fellow soldiers that is absolutely grisly. He also includes a testimonial by a woman whose entire family was murdered by Indians in a surprise attack on homesteaders during the Revolutionary War. American Indians were a sovereign entity that maintained the ethos of the hunter-gatherer culture, i.e., sneak attacks, separation of individual from groups, ready resort to violence, and the death by torture of captured individuals. This is only part of an eyewitness account of the torture execution of Colonel Crawford:

“ The fire was about six or seven yards from the post to which the Colonel was tied: it was made of small hickory poles, burnt quite through in the middle, each end of the poles remaining about six feet in length. Three or four Indians, by turns, would take up, individually, one of these burning pieces of wood and apply it to his naked body, already burned black with the powder. These tormentors presented themselves on every side of him, so that whichever way he ran round the post they met him with the burning; faggots and poles Some of the squaws took broad boards upon which they would put a quantity of burning coals and hot embers, and throw on him, so that in a short time he had nothing but coals of fire and hot ashes to walk upon. (p. 106–107.)

One of the testimonials was provided by a man who had been kidnapped and enslaved at the age of six when the Indians slaughtered his family. Indians did enslave the children of white settlers. He writes:

“ I was taken from New River, in Virginia, by the Miamese, a nation of Indians by us called the Picts, amongst whom I lived six years. Afterwards being sold to a Delaware, and by him put into the hands of a trader, I was carried amongst the Shawanese, with whom I continued six years ; so that my whole time amongst these nations was twelve years that is, from the eighth to the twentieth year of my age. At the treaty at Fort Pitt, in the fall preceding what is called Dunmore’s war (which, if I am right, was in the year 1773), I came in with the Shawanese nation to the treaty ; and meeting with some of my relations at that place, was by them solicited to relinquish the life of a savage, which I did with some reluctance, this manner of life having become natural to me, inasmuch as I had scarcely known any other. (p. 124.)

I read this book in October 2023, the same week as Hamas broke out of Gaza and raped and murdered civilians, decapitated and burned some Jewish babies, and kidnapped Jewish Israelis and Americans to take back to Gaza. The similarity of the Hamas way of war to that of the Indians is striking.

Parkinson’s book is fascinating. I skimmed the part where he discusses 18th-century agriculture, although there are some pearls in those sections. For me the real action was when he discussed his experience in infant Republic. For example, he mentions meeting Vice President Jefferson in Philadelphia, the “Federal City,” at that point, having less than 300 homes.

Parkinson did not like America. The point of his book is to advise his fellow Englishmen not to go there. He warns them that the land is poor, Englishmen might find themselves enslaved, the Indians may kill them, and servants will not clean boots.

It is a fascinating gem of a book for those with an open mind and some curiosity.