George Washington and slavery

The history of George Washington and slavery reflects Washington's changing attitude toward the ownership of human beings. The preeminent Founding Father of the United States and a hereditary slaveowner, Washington became increasingly uneasy with it. Slavery was then a longstanding institution dating back over a century in Virginia where he lived; it was also longstanding in other American colonies and in world history. Washington's will immediately freed one of his slaves, and required his remaining 123 slaves to serve his wife and be freed no later than her death, so they ultimately became free one year after his own death.

In the Colony of Virginia where Washington grew up, he became a third generation slave-owner at 11 years of age upon the death of his father in 1743, when he inherited his first ten slaves. In adulthood his personal slaveholding grew through inheritance, purchase and the natural increase of children born into slavery. In 1759, he also gained control of dower slaves belonging to the Custis estate on his marriage to Martha Dandridge Custis. Washington's early attitudes about slavery reflected the prevailing Virginia planter views of the day, which included few moral qualms, if any. In 1774, Washington publicly denounced the slave trade on moral grounds in the Fairfax Resolves. After the war, he continued to own slaves, but supported the abolition of slavery by a gradual legislative process, a view he shared widely though always in private.

Washington had a strong work ethic and demanded the same from both hired workers and slaves. He provided his enslaved population with basic food, clothing and accommodation comparable to general practice at the time, which was not always adequate, and with medical care. In return, he forced them to work from sunrise to sunset over the six-day working week that was standard at the time. Some three-quarters of his enslaved workers labored in the fields, while the remainder worked at the main residence as domestic servants and artisans. They supplemented their diet by hunting, trapping, and growing vegetables in their free time, and bought extra rations, clothing and housewares with income from the sale of game and produce. They built their own community around marriage and family, though Washington allocated the enslaved to his farms according to business needs, causing many husbands to live separately from their wives and children during the work week. Washington used both reward and punishment to manage his enslaved population, but was constantly disappointed when they failed to meet his exacting standards. A significant proportion of the enslaved population at the Mount Vernon estate resisted their enslavement by various means, such as theft to supplement food and clothing or to provide income, feigning illness, and escaping.

As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in 1775, he initially refused to accept African-Americans, free or enslaved, into the ranks, but bowed to the demands of war, and thereafter led a racially integrated army. In 1778, Washington expressed moral aversion to selling some of his enslaved workers at a public venue or splitting their families. At war's end, Washington demanded without success that the British respect the preliminary peace treaty which he said required return of all escaped slaves. Politically, Washington felt that the divisive issue of American slavery threatened national cohesion; he never spoke publicly about it even in his speeches addressing the new nation’s challenges, and he signed laws that protected slavery as well as laws that curtailed slavery.

Privately, Washington considered freeing his enslaved population in the mid 1790s. Those plans failed because of his inability to raise the finances he deemed necessary, the refusal of his family to approve emancipation of the dower slaves, and his aversion to splitting the many families that included both dower slaves and his own slaves. By the time of Washington's death in 1799 there were 317 enslaved people at Mount Vernon. 124 were owned outright by Washington, 40 were rented, and the remainder were dower slaves owned by the estate of Martha Washington's first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, on behalf of their grandchildren. Washington's will was widely published upon his death, and provided for the eventual emancipation of the enslaved population owned by him, one of the few slave-owning founders to do so. He could not legally free the dower slaves, and so the will said that, except for his valet William Lee who was freed immediately, the use of his enslaved workers was bequeathed to his widow Martha until her death. She felt unsafe amidst slaves whose freedom depended on her demise, and freed them in 1801, but neither Martha nor George Washington had any legal power to free the dower slaves, the use of whom was inherited by her grandchildren when she died in 1802.