Washington [439]
Washington’s moral confusion over slavery was also apparent in his directives to stewards at Mount Vernon. Despite the enormous demands of the presidency, he continued to exercise close scrutiny of his overseers through elaborate weekly letters. Even as his mind was consumed with affairs of state, he forgot nothing about Mount Vernon. After an unusually large number of slaves died during the winter of 1790-91, possibly from influenza, Washington wrote fervently to his estate manager, Anthony Whitting, about the timely care of sick slaves. Saying the subject was “foremost in my thoughts,” he instructed Whitting to “be particularly attentive to my Negroes in their sickness and to order every overseer positively to be so likewise.”41 Washington saw himself as a benevolent master who deplored cruelties practiced elsewhere. To Arthur Young, he made the revealing (if questionable) point that farmers who had only two or three slaves lived not much differently from their slaves. He went on to say that “far otherwise is the case with those who are owned in great numbers by the wealthy, who are not always as kind . . . as they ought to be.”42
Still, Washington remained a tough master. Slavery depended on exerting a sizable degree of terror to cow slaves into submission. Before the war Washington had shipped two difficult slaves to the West Indies, where life expectancy was short in the tropical climate. In March 1793, when Whitting told Washington about a refractory slave named Ben, Washington replied that, if he persisted in his misbehavior, Whitting should warn Ben that “I will ship him off as I did Waggoner Jack for the West Indies, where he will have no opportunity to play such pranks.”43 While Washington ordinarily did not allow slaves to be whipped, he sometimes condoned it if all else failed. Such was the case in January 1793 with a slave named Charlotte, whom Martha had found “indolent” and “idle.”44 “Your treatment of Charlotte was very proper,” Washington advised Whitting, “and if she, or any other of the servants, will not do their duty by fair means or are impertinent, correction (as the only alternative) must be administered.”45 It is unnerving to find the president of the United States writing such cold-blooded sentences.
In the army, in his cabinet, and on his plantation, Washington demanded high performance and had little patience with sluggards and loafers. But in the army and the presidency, Washington fought in a noble cause, whereas that same diligence was repugnant when applied to the loathsome system of slavery. The president never lightened up on his tough demands. “Keep everyone in their places and to their duty,” he lectured Whitting, warning that slaves tended to slack off and test overseers “to see how far they durst go.”46 If slaves were crippled, he still demanded their participation. Of his slave Doll, who was apparently lame, he told Whitting that she “must be taught to knit and made to do a sufficient day’s work of it. Otherwise, (if suffered to be idle) many more will walk in her steps. Lame Peter, if nobody else will, must teach her and she must be brought to the house for that purpose.”47 When Billy Lee returned to Mount Vernon, Washington assigned him to be the overseer of the house slaves. At the same time he made clear to Whitting that those slaves must “be kept steadily to work at that place under Will, or some other, if he cannot keep them to their business.”48 When two slaves died, Washington tossed off this heartless remark: “The death of