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By Root 25757 0

he played billiards with Washington and enjoyed conversing with Martha, who “loves to talk and talks very well about times past.”2 He rated Washington as a relatively benevolent slave master: “G[enera]l Washington treats his slaves far more humanely than do his fellow citizens of Virginia. Most of these gentlemen give to their blacks only bread, water, and blows.”3 In some respects, Niemcewicz left an absurdly rosy picture of slave existence: “Either from habit, or from natural humor disposed to gaiety, I have never seen the blacks sad.”4 One recurring theme he overheard was far more accurate: that slavery was not only cruel but unprofitable. Estate manager James Anderson estimated that only one hundred of the more than three hundred slaves actually worked, while Washington hypothesized that, from a purely economic standpoint, his farms held twice as many slaves as needed. The growing number of slave children and elderly slaves meant more mouths to feed and fewer able-bodied hands. Dr. David Stuart, the husband of Jacky Custis’s widow, flatly asserted that it simply did not pay to own slaves: “Their support costs a great deal; their work is worth little if they are not whipped; the [overseer] costs a great deal and steals into the bargain. We would all agree to free these people, but how to do it with such a great number?”5

As it happened, George Washington, closeted in his study, was devoting considerable time to answering this most insoluble of questions. He saw, with some clairvoyance, that slavery threatened the American union to which he had so nobly consecrated his life. “I can clearly foresee,” he predicted to an English visitor, “that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.”6 Beyond moral objections to slavery, he had wearied of its immense practical difficulties. In September 1798 he regretted that his slaves were “growing more and more insolent and difficult to govern,” and he seemed to want to be free of the sheer unpleasantness of keeping so many human beings in bondage.7

Because of natural increase since 1786, the Mount Vernon slave population had soared from 216 to 317, of whom Washington owned outright 124, with 40 rented from a neighbor, Penelope Manley French. The remaining 153 dower slaves, who belonged to the Custis estate, would be inherited by her grandson after Martha died. Writing to Robert Lewis on August 17, 1799, Washington reflected on the baffling conundrum posed by the excess slaves: “To sell the overplus [of slaves] I cannot, because I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species. To hire them out is almost as bad because . . . to disperse the families I have an aversion. What then is to be done? Something must or I shall be ruined.”8 He possessed “a thorough conviction that half the workers I keep on this estate would render me a greater net profit than I now derive from the whole.”9 That he owned fewer than half the slaves himself perhaps set the stage for the most courageous action of his career. If he emancipated his own slaves in his will, he would satisfy his conscience, set a sterling example for futurity, and still leave a viable plantation behind. In 1799 a convenient convergence of economic and moral factors enabled Washington to settle the issue that had so long gnawed at his mind.

George and Martha Washington had to perceive that their smartest slaves and those in highest standing were most likely to escape, Hercules and Ona Judge being prime recent examples. In early 1798 a slave called Caesar, in his late forties and able to read and write, ran away. Partial to black-and-white clothing, he had functioned as a self-appointed preacher among Mount Vernon’s slaves. In a runaway slave notice inserted in the newspaper, Washington offered a reward for Caesar’s arrest and attested that he had fled “without having received any correction, or threats of punishment, or, in short, without any cause whatever.”10 The escape formed part of a now-familiar pattern: seemingly docile