Washington [550]
After Billy Lee was crippled, Washington had turned to a young slave, Christopher Sheels, as his body servant. After Washington stepped down as president, Sheels had been bitten by a rabid dog. Washington valued him so highly that he sent him back to Pennsylvania for treatment, informing the doctor there that “besides the call of humanity, I am particularly anxious for his cure, he being my own body servant.”11 When Sheels asked Washington for permission to marry a mulatto slave on another plantation, Washington blessed the match, even though it opened up fresh temptations for Sheels to escape. In September 1799 Washington discovered that Sheels indeed intended to flee with his bride aboard a ship. Although Washington must have reprimanded him, there is no evidence that he punished him. The incident surely made him question anew the wisdom of owning human beings who naturally yearned to be free, no matter how well treated. Over the previous four decades, at least forty-seven slaves belonging to George and Martha Washington had made a brave dash for freedom.12
Always a methodical, well-organized man, George Washington experienced the “greatest anxiety” about leaving his affairs in order after he died. No less than in life, he craved the world’s posthumous approval and was eager “that no reproach may attach itself to me when I have taken my departure for the land of spirits.”13 In early July 1799 he summoned up the courage, in the seclusion of his study, to draft a remarkable new will. He did not use a lawyer and laboriously wrote out the twenty-nine pages in his own handwriting, disclosing his plans to nobody. In the text, he mentioned that “no professional character has been consulted,” observed that it had taken many “leisure hours to digest” the document, and hoped it wouldn’t “appear crude and incorrect”—an odd apology for an ex-president, harking back one last time to his insufficient education.14 Everything was spelled out with painstaking precision, including an inventory that listed 51,000 acres of land.
In a comprehensive catalog of his slaves, Washington divided them by farms and jotted down their names and ages. These statistics offered dramatic proof that, without prompt remedial action, his slave population would burgeon. Of the 277 slaves he and Martha controlled, no fewer than 98 were under the age of twelve. The trickiest issue he faced was strikingly evident: 90 slaves were reported as married. Many of Washington’s slaves had married Martha’s dower slaves or else slaves at nearby plantations.
The portions of the will relating to the slaves stand out as written with special vigor. At the outset, Washington referred to Martha as “my dearly beloved wife” and gave her the use of his whole estate.15 He made clear that he did not want to deprive her of income generated by the slaves as long as she lived: “Upon the decease [of] my wife, it is my will and desire th[at] all the slaves which I hold in [my] own right shall receive their free[dom].”16 While he had “earnestly wished” to free them upon his own death, that would entail breaking up marriages between his own slaves and dower slaves, provoking “the most painful sensations, if not disagreeable consequences.”17 Of course, waiting to free the slaves he owned until Martha died only postponed the problem instead of solving it. (Martha could not free the dower slaves, who were committed to the Custis heirs.) Mindful of the young and elderly slaves who might have difficulty coping with sudden freedom, Washington made special provision that they “shall be comfortably clothed and fed by my heirs while they live.”18 At a time when black education was feared as a threat to white supremacy, Washington ordered that the young slaves, before being freed, should “ be taught to read and write and to be brought up to some useful occupation.”19 He also provided a fund to care for slaves too sick or aged to enjoy the sudden fruits of freedom. Unlike Jefferson,