George Washington: Farmer / Being an Account of His Home Life and Agricultural Activities

by Paul Leland Haworth

Some of the Mount Vernon slaves were of course more favored than were others. The domestic and personal servants lived lives of culture and inglorious ease compared with those of the field hands. They formed the aristocracy of colored Mount Vernon society and gave themselves airs accordingly.

Nominally our Farmer's slaves were probably all Christians, though I have found no mention in his papers of their spiritual state. But tradition says that some of them at Dogue Run at least were Voudoo or "conjuring" negroes.

Washington owned slaves and lived his life under the institution of slavery, but he loved it not. He was too honest and keen-minded not to realize that the institution did not square with the principles of human liberty for which he had fought, and yet the problem of slavery was so vast and complicated that he was puzzled how to deal with it. But as early as 1786 he wrote to John F. Mercer, of Virginia: "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 which slavery in this country may be abolished by law." The running away of his colored cook a decade later subjected him to such trials that he wrote that he would probably have to break his resolution. He did, in fact, carry on considerable correspondence to that end and seems to have taken one man on trial, but I have found no evidence that he discovered a negro that suited him.

In 1794, in explaining to Tobias Lear his reasons for desiring to sell some of his western lands, he said: "Besides these I have another motive which makes me earnestly wish for these things--it is indeed more powerful than all the rest--namely to liberate a certain species of property which I possess very repugnantly to my own feelings; but which imperious necessity compels, and until I can substitute some other expedient, by which expenses, not in my power to avoid (however well I may be disposed to do it) can be defrayed."

Later in the same year he wrote to General Alexander Spotswood: "With respect to the other species of property, concerning which you ask my opinion, I shall frankly declare to you that I do not like even to think, much less to talk of it.--However, as you have put the question, I shall, in a few words, give my ideas about it.--Were it not then, that I am principled agt. selling negroes, as you would cattle at a market, I would not in twelve months from this date, be possessed of one as a slave.--I shall be happily mistaken, if they are not found to be a very troublesome species of property ere many years pass over our heads."

"I wish from my soul that the Legislature of the State could see the policy of a gradual abolition of slavery," he wrote to Lawrence Lewis three years later. "It might prevent much future mischief."

His ideas on the subject were in accord with those of many other great Southerners of his day such as Madison and Jefferson. These men realized the inconsistency of slavery in a republic dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, and vaguely they foresaw the irrepressible conflict that was to divide their country and was to be fought out on a hundred bloody battle-fields. They did not attempt to defend slavery as other than a temporary institution to be eliminated whenever means and methods could be found to do it. Not until the cotton gin had made slavery more profitable and radical abolitionism arose in the North did Southerners of prominence begin to champion slavery as praiseworthy and permanent.

And yet, though Washington in later life deplored slavery, he was human and illogical enough to dislike losing his negroes and pursued runaways with energy. In October, 1760, he spent seven shillings in advertising for an absconder, and the next year paid a minister named Green four pounds for taking up a runaway. In 1766 he advertised rewards for the capture of "Negro Tom," evidently the man he later sold in the West Indies. The return of Henry in 1771 cost him £1.16. Several slaves were carried away by the British during the Revolution and seem never to have been recovered, though the treaty of peace provided for the return of such slaves, and Washington made inquiries concerning them. In 1796, apropos of a girl who had absconded to New England, he excused his desire to recapture her on the ground that as long as slavery was in existence it was hardly fair to allow some to escape and to hold others.

A rather peculiar situation arose in 1791 with regard to some of his "People," His attorney general, Randolph, had taken some slaves to Philadelphia, and the blacks took advantage of the fact that under Pennsylvania law they could not be forced to leave the state against their will. Fearing that some of his own servants might do likewise, Washington directed Lear to get the slaves back to Mount Vernon and to accomplish it "under pretext that may deceive both them and the Public," which goes to show that even George Washington had some of the guile of the serpent.

During this period he was loath to bring the fact that he was a slaveholder too prominently before the public, for he realized the prejudice already existing against the institution in the North. When one of his men absconded in 1795 he gave instructions not to let his name appear in any advertisement of the runaway, at least not north of Virginia.