George Washington's Evolving Views About Slavery

From the CBS News show, "Sunday Morning" (Feb. 15, 2004):

Announcer: It's SUNDAY MORNING on CBS, and here again is Charles Osgood.

CHARLES OSGOOD, host:

George Washington was famously first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen. But it is his own Change of Heart that attracts our attention this morning. Martha Teichner has the story of a momentous decision he made just before he died.

(Footage of Mt. Vernon; paintings of George Washington; footage of Washington's will)

MARTHA TEICHNER reporting:

(Voiceover) George Washington died in winter, on December 14th, 1799, at Mt. Vernon. Months before, he had awakened in the night and told his wife, Martha, he'd had a dream he was convinced was a premonition of his own death. It was then he began to write his will with the urgency of a man racing against fate, and in absolute secrecy, because in it, he would do what not one of the other slaveholders among the founding fathers dared to do: He would free his slaves.

Mr. HENRY WIENCEK (Historian): There are a number of striking things about it. One is the ferociousness of the language.

(Footage of book cover illustration)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Researching his recent book on Washington, historian Henry Wiencek uncovered revealing documentation that helps to explain why Washington did what he did.

Mr. WIENCEK: He says that this clause respecting slaves must be carried out religiously, without evasion, neglect or delay. He said no slaves were to be sold.

(Footage of paintings of Washington)

TEICHNER: For most Americans, George Washington is an icon, not a man. But what his will makes clear is that he was a man of deep feeling, whose decision to free his slaves was the result of profound soul-searching. As a young man, he supported slavery.

Mr. JIM REES (Executive Director, Mt. Vernon): You start by inheriting slaves when you're 11, you know. It's--it's thrust on you. It's a part of your life, if you're a Southerner.

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Jim Rees is executive director of Mt. Vernon.

(Footage of Mt. Vernon interior; slave quarters)

Mr. REES: I don't think I'd characterize Washington as that different from the average slave owner. I think he--he wasn't incredibly harsh on his slaves, but he wasn't terribly good to them, either. There was no question in my mind that the ones who worked here at this home were the lucky slaves, because they had light duty, in most cases, compared to the slaves who had to work on the outlying farms.

Mr. WIENCEK: They only got clothes once a year. They got two shirts, a jacket, two pairs of pants, and they got two pairs of socks, and those wore out very quickly from working outside all the time.

(Footage of Washington's wedding portrait; illustrations of slaves)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) When George Washington married Martha Custis, the young widow of one of Virginia's richest men, slaves were more than just a source of labor. They represented wealth and status, and they were a source of revenue, if sold.

Mr. WIENCEK: The slave masters called the birth of children 'the increase.' It's like getting a dividend every year. If you owned a large number of slaves, it's as if you had an enormous self-replenishing bank account that you could dip into to pay off your debts, to build a new house.

(Footage of ad from Colonial newspaper)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) It was common practice to break up families in these sales. Henry Wiencek found an ad in a Williamsburg newspaper demonstrating that George Washington once did something even more callous. In 1769, he took part in a raffle of slaves to collect on a debt owed to Martha's relatives.

Mr. WIENCEK: They raffled off some families intact. In other cases they just raffled off the children, one by one or--or two by two. It was shocking.

Mr. REES: He made many mistakes as a young person but seldom made the same mistake twice.

(Illustrations of Revolutionary War battles; Washington; footage of slave quarters)

Mr. REES: (Voiceover) I think George Washington saw, during the revolution, that the black soldiers fought beside the white soldiers and--and that's what helped change his mind.

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) When the Revolutionary War ended, General George Washington came home to Mt. Vernon uncomfortable with anything having to do with slavery. So he hid his new slave quarters in plain sight, next to his greenhouse.

Mr. WIENCEK: That's the great genius of Washington the architect. You don't know that those are the slave quarters. There are no doors, there are very small windows. He made it invisible. I mean, this is kind of a symbol of his struggle with slavery, architecturally, right here in front of us.

(Footage of painting of Mt. Vernon; drawings of West Ford and his mother, Venus)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Part of this struggle may have been because of something very personal.

Mr. WIENCEK: He--he may have seen a slave named West Ford, who was definitely his blood kin.

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) West Ford was the son of a slave named Venus, who belonged to Washington's brother, John Augustine.

(Footage of descendants)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) His descendents are convinced he was George Washington's son.

Ms. LINDA BRYANT (Washington Descendant): George Washington is my fifth great-grandfather.

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Linda Bryant is West Ford's great, great, great, great granddaughter.

Ms. BRYANT: West Ford was very fair, with blue-gray eyes and reddish hair, and he shared those same features with George Washington.

(Footage of Wiencek and Teichner; portraits of West Ford; Washington)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Historian Henry Wiencek considers it more likely that one of George Washington's nephews was West Ford's father.

Mr. WIENCEK: The resemblance to Washington's family is startling, so if Washington did met him and looked on that face, even when West Ford was a child, he would have seen that this was blood kin. It could have been one of the things that drove him to try to find an end to slavery.

(Footage of paintings of Washington)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) In 1789, just before George Washington was sworn in as president, he told an aide the time had come to free his slaves. General Lafayette, who was like a son to Washington, pressured him to do it as an example to the nation. But then Washington decided not even he could pull it off.

Mr. WIENCEK: If he emancipated his own slaves, privately, he was afraid that it would have political repercussions which could cause a split in the country.

(Footage of Wiencek at Library of Congress)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) In the Library of Congress, Henry Wiencek was shown an extraordinary document, notes handwritten by Thomas Jefferson about a conversation Washington had with his secretary of State, Edmund Randolph.

Mr. WIENCEK: (Reading) 'The president, speaking with Randolph on the hypothesis of a separation of the Union into Northern and Southern, he said, he had made up his mind to remove, and be of the Northern.

(Footage of Thomas Jefferson's note; portrait of Washington)

TEICHNER: So let me get this straight. Washington would have sided with the North.

Mr. WIENCEK: That's right.

(Footage of ceremony; memorial stone; portrait of a slave)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) Every September, ceremonies are held in the old slave cemetery at Mt. Vernon, next to a memorial honoring the men, women and children who served the plantation. Many of the participants are descendents of those whose names are read out.

Unidentified Man: Simon...

Unidentified Woman: Diana...

(Footage of slave roster; painting of Washington family)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) There were more than 300 slaves at Mt. Vernon. George Washington only owned about a third of them. He could not free the rest, because they belonged to the heirs of Martha Washington's first husband, who were utterly opposed to ending slavery.

Mr. WIENCEK: This was the house that was built by George Washington's granddaughter, Martha Custis Peter.

(Footage of Tudor Place; portrait of Washington; illustration of slaves at work)

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) At her Georgetown home, Tudor Place, Henry Wiencek found her husband's orderly accounting of slave sales, his record of lives listed as property.

Mr. WIENCEK: He was in the common run of slaveholders of that time. But that's the interesting thing about Washington is that he stood out and he tried to persuade his family not to do that.

Mr. REES: The real issue was money. The slaves were worth a tremendous amount of money, and they just did not want to give that up. Washington was the one who actually had a change of heart, who came to the conclusion that it's more important to free our slaves than it is to keep this economic system going.

(Footage of memorial site; bust and portrait of Washington)

Mr. WIENCEK: So we can look back and wish that he had pushed a little bit harder, but we can credit him for tremendous moral insight.

TEICHNER: (Voiceover) So in the end, it seems, George Washington, the man, was worthy of George Washington, the icon.