THE WASHINGTONS AS SLAVE OWNERS

This paper will not focus on the Washington family as many other historians have done, instead, it will focus on the enslaved artisans that contributed to the success of the Washington family. But it is still important to understand the people that held these enslaved individuals in bondage. The scholarship that mentions George Washington as a slave owner is quite extensive. There are a few scholars that have come to a consensus that Washington’s changing views on slavery during his lifetime is what eventually leads to him becoming a man with conditional anti-slavery views.1 But there are others, like Dr. Minsha Singh, who argue that because George Washington never made an active effort during his lifetime to free the enslaved individuals in the United States, let alone on his own plantation, he cannot be considered an abolitionist.2 To understand Washington’s internal conflict and changing views on slavery, we must go back to the beginning, when he first inherits enslaved individuals. Washington inherited his first group of enslaved individuals at 11 years old, after the death of his father in 1743. By the eighteenth century, Virginia had been using slave labor for a hundred years. It was ingrained into the social, economic, and political lives of most Virginia gentry members. Virginia was known for growing tobacco as its cash crop during the colonial period. Tobacco was a time- and labor-intensive crop that facilitated the need for enslaved labor. Farmers that had the means utilized enslaved labor to care for the tobacco crop. There were few individuals in eighteenth-century Virginia who opposed morally to using enslaved labor, and George Washington was no different. For the next twenty years of his life, Washington would continue to expand the number of enslaved individuals at Mount Vernon through inheriting, purchasing, renting, and natural increase.

For members of the upper class, owning enslaved individuals was commonplace by the eighteenth century.3 But we cannot excuse their actions of enslaving people as it is something that everyone did and accepted. By the eighteenth century, there were people who had abolitionist thinking and tendencies.4 Edward Rushton is an

1 Fritz Hirschfeld, George Washington, and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal (University of Missouri Press, 1997), 3; François Furstenberg, “Atlantic Slavery, Atlantic Freedom: George Washington, Slavery, and Transatlantic Abolitionist Networks,” William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 247 – 286. Thompson, Mary V., The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon (University of Virginia Press, 2019), 28. Note- Mary Thompson does not consider Washington an abolitionist, instead she believes that by studying Washington’s struggles to do what is right, we are able to use this to educate future generations.

2 Manisha Sinha, “Transatlantic Slavery Symposium: Transatlantic Abolition and Law,” streamed August 9, 2021, by the Benjamin Franklin House, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, and the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, London and Virginia, video, 52:10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b_7v4WF-0&list=PLr40fFkNNADFP3KYVwAIUtsX-BaBFHZEo&index=11&t=3117s

3 Lori Glover, Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 175.

4 Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003) — many mentions of John Laurens and Marquis de Lafayette’s abolitionist efforts, most specifically during the example of a contemporary of the time pointing out Washington’s shortcomings in the abolition movement. Advertised in The Time Piece and Literary Companion is Rushton’s expostulatory letter to George Washington, in which he writes against Washington’s continuation of being a proprietor of slaves.5 For years, scholars have written about George Washington’s private struggles on slavery.6 There are a few primary sources that they have looked at extensively, but none more so than his will and the letter he writes to Lund Washington that indicated his desire to “get quit of negroes.”7 There is one member of the Washington Family that historians most often overlook, but who was just as integral in keeping the enslaved people at Mount Vernon in bondage.

Upon her marriage to George Washington, Martha Washington, her children, and her dower slaves moved from the home she had shared with her first husband to Mount Vernon. As mistress of the house, Martha Washington oversaw the hiring of both free and enslaved people to work for her and her husband.8 It is believed that Martha Washington never had the same moral challenges to slavery as her second husband did. It does appear that she shared her husband’s deep-seated racial prejudices.9 If one were to pay closer attention to the primary sources available, they would notice how critical and skeptical of the enslaved people she was.10 Martha Washington understood the significance that slavery played in the economic, social, and political world, and accepted this as a reality of life. Whether she was concerned about the institution of slavery or not, her primary concern was ensuring the success of her family.11

The existing historiographical literature on enslaved artisans has only just started to become something that more scholars are taking interest in. There is not a lot of scholarship available on enslaved artisans at Mount Vernon, but scholars have been examining enslaved artisans in a broader lens in various areas. Lori Glover’s “Founders as Fathers” does not examine enslaved artisans specifically but does talk about the revolutionary era.

5 “Advertisement” The Time Piece and Literary Companion, 5 June 1797, 3. To see the letter in its entirety see Edward Rushton’s Expostulatory Letter to George Washington of Mount Vernon, on His Continuing to be a Holder of Slaves, 1797.

6 Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God; Fritz Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 3; Phillip D. Morgan, “To Get Quit of Negroes: George Washington and Slavery,” Journal of American Studies 39, no. 3 (December 2005): 403 – 429. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875805000599; Robert F. Dalzell Jr. and Lee Baldwin Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America (Oxford University Press, 1998); François Furstenberg “Atlantic Slavery, Atlantic Freedom: George Washington, Slavery, and Transatlantic Abolitionist Networks,” William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2011): 247 – 286. DOI: 10.5309/willmaryquar.68.2.0247 relationship between the founders and their enslaved peoples. Mary Thompson’s “Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret” is one of the more comprehensive books available on enslaved people at Mount Vernon. In “Threads of Bondage,” Gloria Seaman Allen studies the Chesapeake region, an area that broadly included Northern Neck down to the Tidewater. She writes on enslaved women, textile production, and their importance to the plantation economy. Bethany McGlynn’s “Who Built the City on the Severn” aims to offer a landscape that accurately portrays the enslaved artisans in Annapolis and how they shaped the city they built.12 Further south, scholars like Phillip Morgan and his book “Slave Counterpoint” examine enslaved artisans in the Carolina Lowcountry.13 These scholars, amongst many others, are pushing forth the effort to write on the social and economic lives of enslaved artisans in the pre-and post-colonial periods.

7 George Washington, Will, 9 July 1799; George Washington to Lund Washington, 15 August 1778, GWP.Rev.Series. NoteShortly after Washington’s death there are individuals who are commending Washington’s decision to free his enslaved individuals. See Revered Richard Allen’s “Eulogy of George Washington,” 29 December 1799.

8 Kelly Fanto Deetz, “In Fame and Fear: Exceptional Cooks” in Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine (Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2017): 75.

9 George Washington and Slavery, 65.

10 Mary Thompson, “I Never See That Man Laugh to Show his Teeth” in The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret, 41.

11 Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Ties That Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 17.

These scholars write about the enslaved artisans as being fundamental in ensuring the success of their white master’s plantations. There are various jobs that an enslaved artisan could have been doing, too many to name here in this paper.14 The work that they performed ranged vastly from personal body servants of their white owners to miners. According to the social hierarchy amongst enslaved people, those that were performing fieldwork were seen as lower down on the social ladder than those that worked in the mansion directly with the owners. There are pros and cons to both situations. For the fieldworkers, they were further away from the main house, out of sight from their owners. This meant they were able to enjoy some sort of freedom that would not have been afforded to their counterparts working in the main house. For those enslaved individuals who worked in the house, they were under more scrutiny but were able to form more of a bond with their owners.15

The Economic Lives Of

12 Lori Glover, Founders as Fathers; Gloria Seaman Allen, “Threads of Bondage: Chesapeake Slave Women and Plantation Cloth Production, 1750 – 1850” (Ph.D. diss., The George Washington University, 2000); Mary Thompson, The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret; Bethany J. McGlynn, “Who Built the City on the Severn? Slavery, Material Culture, and Landscapes of Labor in Early Annapolis” (Masters diss., University of Delaware, 2020) http://mutex.gmu.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest. com/dissertations-theses/who-built-city-on-severn-slavery-material-culture/docview/2451865146/se-2?accountid=14541.

13 Phillip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Low-Country (The University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Massachusetts, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1998).

14 For examples of the different types of enslaved artisans and fieldworkers see- “Black Craftspeople Digital Archives,” Black Craftspeople Digital Archives, accessed November 9, 2021, https://archive.blackcraftspeople.org/collections/ browse.; James E. Newton, and Ronald L. Lewis, “Appendix,” in The Other Slaves: Mechanics, Artisans, and Craftsmen (Massachusetts, G.K. Hall & CO., 1978), 243 – 245.; Theresa L. Donnelly “George Washington’s Laboring Women: An Examination of the Work and the Lives of the Enslaved Female Workers at Mount Vernon’s Outlying Plantations” (Master’s Diss., ProQuest, 2014).

15 This is also partly because many slave owners wanted “mulattoes” to work in the mansion and to be seen by guests. Mount Vernon Ladies Association, “Clothing,” Accessed November 10, 2021, https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/ slavery/clothing/.