George Washington’s Journey to Emancipation

As a young adult, George Washington purchased several additional enslaved people, but it was his January 1759 marriage to Martha Dandridge Custis that increased his overall wealth and, with it, his slaveholdings dramatically. His bride’s first husband, 46-year-old Daniel Parke Custis, died suddenly in the summer of 1757 without leaving a will—a failure that had serious ramifications for both his family and the people he enslaved for decades into the future. This unexpected death left his 26-year-old widow with two very young children to raise alone, plus the responsibility of managing more than 17,000 acres of land and almost 300 enslaved people.

Her “dower” share of the Custis estate brought her a life interest in one-third of her late husband’s property, including 84 enslaved people; the remainder of the estate was divided between her two children. Of the dower slaves, 12—at least six who worked in the house, a child, and several tradespeople—appear to have accompanied Martha Washington to her new home at Mount Vernon shortly after the marriage. The others remained in southern Virginia to work Martha Washington’s dower lands. Still others were brought up to Mount Vernon later, including 22 people who came north from the Custis plantations in 1770.

In addition to the enslaved people from the Custis estate, during the 21 years prior to the start of the Revolution, George Washington purchased more than 60 enslaved people. In all these transactions, there is no evidence that Washington viewed the people he enslaved as anything more than property.

First Hints of Opposition 

George Washington may well have been in his thirties before he ever heard a philosophical critique of slavery. That criticism came from his longtime friend and neighbor, George Mason of Gunston Hall Plantation. Mason wrote to Washington in 1765 that “The Policy of encouraging the Importation of free People & discouraging that of Slaves has never been duly considered in this Colony, or we shou’d not at this Day see one Half of our best Lands in most Parts of the Country remain unsetled [sic], & the other cultivated with Slaves.”

Mason believed that the preference for the use of enslaved workers had an “ill Effect …. upon the Morals & Manners of our People” and went on to say that “one of the first Signs of the Decay, & perhaps the primary Cause of the Destruction of the most flourishing Government that ever existed was the Introduction of great Numbers of Slaves—an Evil very pathetically described by the Roman Historians.”

Washington’s first public statement on the subject, nine years later, was less a critique of slavery than one of the slave trade. As tensions mounted with Britain, and after Virginia’s royal governor dissolved the House of Burgesses, Washington served as chairman of a “general Meeting of the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the County of Fairfax,” to determine what action he and his fellow citizens were willing to undertake to support Boston, especially in regard to banning commerce with the mother country. The document they drew up and signed in July 1774, known as the Fairfax County Resolves, included, as the 17th item, the statement “that during our present Difficulties and Distress, no Slaves ought to be imported into any of the British Colonies on this Continent; and We take this Opportunity of declaring our most earnest Wishes to see an entire stop for ever [sic] put to such a wicked cruel and unnatural Trade.”

About a decade later, Washington refused to purchase a particular person, commenting that he already had “as many Slaves as I wish,” and that he was not willing to exchange others for him, “because I do not think, it would be agreeable to their inclinations to leave their Connexions [sic] here, and it is inconsistent with my feelings to compel them.”

During the war, Washington had traveled to parts of the country that were, in the words of historian Ira Berlin, “societies with slaves.” In contrast to Virginia, in New England and the mid-Atlantic colonies, “slaves were marginal to the central productive process; slavery was just one form of labor among many.”

It was also during the war that Washington saw black soldiers fighting alongside whites in the Continental Army. In fact, within seven months of taking command, Washington approved the enlistment of free black soldiers, something he and the other general officers had originally opposed. The process began in late 1775 by re-enlisting free blacks who had fought in the army previously and been let go, much to their disappointment, when Congress disapproved of their presence.

Five years later, Washington proposed a method for reorganizing two Rhode Island regiments, noting that objections could best be handled by dividing the black soldiers who made up the one unit evenly between the two and making up the difference with new recruits, so “as to abolish the name and appearance of a Black Corps.”

In essence, he had integrated the army.

Following the Revolution, Washington continued to be exposed to arguments about abolishing slavery, expanding on his wartime experiences. He was approached directly, both in person and through correspondence, by abolitionists in Britain and the United States, who often sent him copies of their writings. 

As a result, by the end of his life, Washington’s library contained a small collection of works by such authors as Anthony Benezet, George Buchanan, Thomas Clarkson, Bryan Edwards, and Granville Sharp. In responding to them, Washington stated over and over his conviction that the best way to affect the elimination of slavery was through individual state legislatures, which he hoped would set up a program of gradual emancipation, and for which he would gladly give his vote.

In 1786, Washington assured his friend and Pennsylvania Senator Robert Morris that he hoped that no one would read his opposition to the methods of certain abolitionists as opposition to abolition as a concept:

I hope it will not be conceived from these observations, that it is my wish to hold the unhappy people who are the subject of this letter, in slavery. I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it—but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, & that is by Legislative authority: and this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting.

A few months later, he told another friend, “I never mean (unless some particular circumstance should compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase; it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by slow, sure, and imperceptible degrees.”

Unfortunately, while other states to the north had either abolished slavery entirely or set up plans for gradual manumission, Virginia did not. Thus, Washington would eventually have to act privately to free the 123 enslaved people who belonged to him personally, as opposed to those who were part of the Custis estate. In his will, Washington made arrangements to free his longtime valet William Lee immediately upon his death. The document also required that the remainder people Washington owned be emancipated following the death of Martha Washington.

However, a series of suspicious fires at Mount Vernon following Washington’s death convinced Martha and her family that one or more of those people was trying to kill her, and concerns for her safety prompted the manumission to occur on January 1, 1801. 

Sadly, the 153 remaining dower slaves—representing nearly half of the enslaved population at Mount Vernon—belonged to the Custis estate and could not be freed by either George or Martha Washington. On Martha’s death, they were dispersed among her grandchildren, even though the action meant splitting up families, dividing husbands, wives, and children.

Slavery at Mount Vernon