Getting to Know GW (13): Slavery, Again

I posted earlier about Washington's discomfort with the institution of slavery. For a number of reasons he was uncomfortable with the practice and worked to mitigate some of its harshness on his own estates, but he refused to ever speak out candidly against slavery. This position put the leader of a nation striving towards individual freedom and liberty in not a little hypocritical position. George Orwell said famously in Animal Farm, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others," and something like this sentiment abound in early America as it surely does in every other political system in one way or another (Orwell was, of course, satirizing communism). 

One of the great myths of Southern slavery is that the abuses and excesses are overblown by our retroactive moralistic judging of the institution and that most slaves were treated well. What's more, they were content in their position and it was only abolitionist agitators that stirred up in their docile minds notions of freedom. Washington held to this notion as well. He believed if he treated his human chattel well and extended a certain amount of liberty to them they would be content in their status as human chattel. 

Washington was disabused of this notion toward the end of his life when two of his most trusted slaved, not to mention the two that had the easiest go of it, ran away as soon as they had opportunity. One was the personal chef named Hercules that Washington had brought from Mount Vernon to the presidential mansion in Philadelphia. The other was Martha's attendant Ona. Both decided they would rather have a harder life and be free than an easy life with bondage.

One of the little known facts of Washington's life (at least I had never heard it before) is that he wrote a will in his final months that set all of his slaves free. I couldn't help but wonder if the disappearance of two beloved slaves whom he assumed with all of the blithe ignorance of the wealthy member of a privileged class were happy in their estate finally caused Washington to see through all of the b.s. his society had constructed to justify slavery. 

Certainly part of his motivation in this benevolent act was to rectify his image with posterity. He had to know that slavery as a system was unsustainable in the long term and that future generations would judge harshly its practitioners. Washington, as we have seen, was hypercritical of his public image. But part of me thinks that there was a more human concern playing out with the old man. He had always felt uncomfortable with slavery and the disappearance of the two best treated slaves put flight to the notion that well-treated slaves will be content in their confinement. The last moral card he held in his deck was shredded. And he did what was in his power hoping that it would make a positive example to other slaveholders in the region. It did not, and 65 years later America finally had its bloodletting that Washington had helped it avoid during his remarkable career.