His final judgment on slavery is expressed in his will. "Upon the decease of my wife it is my will and desire," he wrote, "that all the slaves which I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom--To emancipate them during her life, would tho earnestly wished by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their intermixture by marriages with the Dower negroes as to excite the most painful sensations,--if not disagreeable consequences from the latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same proprietor, it not being in my power under the tenure by which the dower Negroes are held to manumit them."
The number of his own slaves at the time of his death was one hundred twenty-four. Of dower negroes there were one hundred fifty-three, and besides he had forty leased from a Mrs. French.
He expressly forbade the sale of any slave or his transportation out of Virginia, and made provision for the care of the aged, the young and the infirm. He gave immediate freedom to his mulatto man, calling himself William Lee, or if he should prefer it, being physically incapacitated, he might remain in slavery. In either case he was to have an annuity of thirty dollars and the "victuals and cloaths he has been accustomed to receive." "This I give him as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me and for his faithful services during the revolutionary War."
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Washington preferred to free her own and the General's negroes as soon as possible and it was accordingly done before her death, which occurred in 1802.
One of the servants thus freed, by name Cary, lived to the alleged age of one hundred fourteen years and finally died in Washington City. He was a personage of considerable importance among the colored population of the Capital, and on Fourth of July and other parades would always appear in an old military coat, cocked hat and huge cockade presented by his Master. His funeral was largely attended even by white persons.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FARMER'S WIFE
Martha Dandridge's first husband was a man much older than herself and her second was almost a year younger. Before she embarked upon her second matrimonial venture she had been the mother of four children, and having lost two of these, her husband, her father and mother, she had known, though only twenty-seven, most of the vital experiences that life can give. Perhaps it was well, for thereby she was better fitted to be the mate of a man sober and sedate in disposition and created by Nature to bear heavy burdens of responsibility.