SLAVERY AND THREE COLONELS

By: Hugh J. Schwartzberg

As read to the Chicago Literary Club, March 9, 1998

(c) Hugh J. Schwartzberg, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., 1998

Introductory remarks, as read:

“The original title of this paper was to have been "The Colonel is Still Our Hero." That became "Slavery and the Colonel." It now comes to you as "Slavery and Three Colonels." I continue to believe that no title of a Chicago Literary Club address should declare much of the "real" topic in advance, so this is really no help at all.

“Particular gratitude is due for borrowing from the prior work of Charles Page Smith, John Chester Miller, Joseph Ellis, Fritz Hirschfeld, Garry Wills, and others, as well as to numerous libraries and librarians. Special gratitude goes to Jenny Schwartzberg, the author's daughter, who did some original research on choosing the Commander of the Continental Army while a freshman at Princeton, and still remembered some of it.

“This paper is related to last year's paper on Justice James Wilson. Anyone who missed that paper should, nevertheless, have no great difficulty with this one. We are, once again, largely concerned with the World of 1775, and what followed from it.

"I am a lawyer who almost always welcomes clients, and this is, I believe, my seventh paper for the Literary Club. This paper will last just under an hour, but it's cold outside, and warm in here."

We were founded, in the name of freedom, by slave‑holders. There is talk in the land of stripping George Washington's name from a high school or two because he held slaves. Certainly, the founders of our nation were not as perfect as we see ourselves. Irony aside, I have no doubt they would see our views on slavery as a sign of human progress. It is important that we see our founders as they were, complete with slaves and indentured servants. It is also important that we see them as they meant to become. James Wilson was the principal designer/architect of our structure of government, the inventor of the American Presidency and direct election, and the Supreme Court. Thomas Jefferson was our principal wordsmith, the man who talked us into our civil liberties, and perhaps even our faith in democracy itself. George Washington was the sine qua non of the Republic itself, our Cincinnatus, and then our first political guide and leader as well.

Wilson and Jefferson and Washington were each slave‑holders. Can they still be our heroes?

At least during part of that great Second Continental Congress, they were also all colonels in their State Militias. The state‑based designation of Colonel comes down to us, as bearing the sense of high military rank, but with loud political overtones. Later, the grant of this rank by state government became something of a joke (as in Kentucky Colonel), but it was no joke in the eighteenth century. State colonels usually oversaw state militias.

For both Washington and Jefferson, being a colonel also symbolized their rank in the gentry as of the opening of that session of Congress. James Wilson, an immigrant who had married into society, was elected colonel by his fellows after that session began, a "new man", but with a similar role.

This nation had committed itself to civilian control of the military and against a standing army in that lesser Bill of Rights which the First Continental Congress adopted, before Jefferson and Wilson reached the national scene. Most of these colonels probably saw themselves as civilians. It was a standing, Regular Army which was one of the things Wilson and Washington succeeded in establishing; in part because they had learned about the ineffectiveness of militias, the hard way.

Jefferson would soon earn the title of Governor. During his term as war Governor, he would be forced to retreat from his own State capital. Wilson's role in the war period included service on the national War Board, and also administrative service as colonel in the Pennsylvania Militia. The only time Wilson heard shots fired may have been during an armed revolt by a portion of the militia directed against himself and his own home, late in the war.

[Because Wilson was the subject of an earlier presentation to the Literary Club, he will be given less attention here.]

Colonel James Wilson at one point held three slaves. This man who taught us that "all men are by nature free," and who believed in the rights of "all free men, including blacks and those of other colors," did not free his one last slave until 1794, five years after he had become the first of our Supreme Court Justices, and he did so then at the urging of his new wife.

In between the Second Continental Congress of 1775‑1776 and the year 1794, the nation was to fight and almost win several of the most important revolutions in the history of humankind: the right of free suffrage, i.e. the right of all males (at least) to vote; the first effective separation of church and state; publicly supported education; and the concept of a single‑person executive to be elected directly by the people, at periodic elections, an individual who would return to private life upon political defeat. All this was, to a considerable extent, the result of the leadership provided by these three men.

In addition, George Washington had wrought another revolution almost single‑handedly. As a successful general capable of declaring himself king or emperor or first consul, who did not take advantage of that opportunity, he inaugurated a profound revolution in history. "If he does return to his farm," George the Third is reported to have said, "he will be known as the greatest of men." This was an attitudinal revolution as to what humans would judge to be, or not to be, "heroic".

But Washington continued to hold slaves long past that point. These slaves lived in mere huts, most of them, enduring, at little more than a subsistence level, the horror that was slavery.

The great revulsion against slave‑holding found its true beginnings, like those of the other revolutions I have cited, in the last third of the eighteenth century. Each of the three colonels played a role in that revolution as well.

The anti‑slavery revolution was not yet very far advanced by the time of that Second Continental Congress in 1775. Colonel Thomas Jefferson entered national political life with his attendance at that Second Congress, arriving late to the meeting. To our eyes, he would have seemed something of a rich fop, although an unforgettable one. He arrived in his best coach, with a fine pair of horses, and with two or three slaves, as a last‑minute substitute within the Virginia delegation. This was not the modest entrance he was to affect at the time of his Presidential Inauguration. As a delegate, he was playing the role of one of his country's rich, and he carried the part well.

Colonel Wilson was a tall man, but both Colonel Jefferson and Colonel Washington were six feet two or more in height, both topped with red hair. You may wish to note that two other figures in our story, the Marquis de Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton, also had red hair.

If Colonel Jefferson seemed an easy and exact symbol of the Virginia slave‑holder, there was a hidden difference. He had already risked his political career on at least two occasions in an attempt to begin the destruction of slavery.

In 1769 Jefferson advertised for the return of a slave, who had stolen a horse and run away.

But in that same year of 1769, in Jefferson's first session at the Virginia House of Burgesses, at the age of twenty‑eight, Jefferson prepared a bill to allow the manumission of slaves. Let me repeat that, because it is crucial to our understanding. Jefferson was attempting to secure legislative permission for what was then an illegal act in his state, and remained so until well into the nineteenth century, i.e. setting a slave free. An older friend, and a cousin, tried to talk Jefferson out of this form of political suicide. Jefferson allowed himself to be convinced that his cousin should make that motion, with Jefferson only seconding it. Jefferson saw his cousin's political career almost destroyed. The cousin was accused of being an enemy of the province, and was "treated with the grossest indecorum." Jefferson was less badly singed.

This incident did not prevent Jefferson's continuing attempt to fight against slavery. If the legislative route would not work, he would try the judiciary. In 1770, about a year later, as a fledgling lawyer, he tried to create a new common law rule against long‑term slavery. Jefferson argued that a grandchild of a slave should not be bound by his or her parent's slavery, that slavery should not be allowed to be extended to a third generation. It was an interesting theory, but Jefferson lost his case. Two years later, Jefferson was appointed counsel for another slave, a mulatto, who also sued for freedom, but that slave's death mooted that second case.

In 1774, Jefferson published his pamphleteering attack on the British Parliament, "A Summary View of the Rights of British America," and in it he attacked the British role in the slave trade.

During this period, Jefferson clearly believed that it was the British Parliament and the King's appointees who were forcing the American Colonies to accept British trafficking in, and profiteering from, the trade of slaves. Until his experience of actual American democracy taught him otherwise, Jefferson clearly believed that a democratic form of government would put an early end to slavery, on a transitional basis.

That Second Continental Congress, in effect, set 1808 as the possible date for an end to the importation of slaves. It also opened the door to the creation of geographical areas which would be free of slavery. Steps like these, together with Jefferson's experience of men like Colonel Wilson who presented the actual arguments in support of these positions, probably strengthened Jefferson's early and easy optimism about the eventual death of slavery.

Nevertheless, there appears to be no one who actually ran a slave‑holding plantation in eighteenth century Virginia, who was also free from the fear of slave revolt. They feared that fire‑bell in the night which would mark the beginning of a bloody slave uprising. The southern colonels feared, both for themselves and for their slaves, the effect of any sudden unplanned end to slavery, whether by legislative fiat or otherwise. In Jefferson's words, slavery was like holding "a wolf by the ears." One couldn't just let go. The war was to be a test case for that fear.

Our image of Colonel Wilson from that period is that of the great, tall Philadelphia lawyer. It seems that the contemporary popular image provided a tall wig upon his head, and eye‑glasses perched uncertainly upon his nose, thereby ensuring a somewhat forbidding gait which served to separate him from his fellows.

Our image of Colonel Jefferson should be that of the tall, rich, red‑haired young aristocrat, quite shy of public oral debate (unlike Wilson) but like Wilson, already well known for his pamphleteering pen.

These were not the only colonels. Even in the Virginia delegation, George Mason (for one) was also a colonel. There is little excuse for Mason's general foolishness a decade later in other matters, but this plantation owner was also a publicly avowed opponent of slavery. Colonel Mason believed that "every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a country."

There were other delegates of greater or lesser military ranks in the various delegations. Washington was hardly the only candidate for Commander of the Continental Army. His record in the French‑and‑Indian War was not a great one. One possible alternative, Charles Lee, had been part of the British Regular Army, with a far more illustrious military career. Lee, however, was not clearly a full‑fledged "American." Horatio Gates was another possibility. He had a finer military reputation, as did several in the North, and others from overseas. Washington's rank as colonel was assumed by some to be largely honorary, rather than earned. But Washington presented himself as the candidate of the largest and richest colony, and as a prize for Massachusetts, which was desperate to convince the rest of the colonies that this war affected those who had not yet experienced gunfire.

The Continental Army at this point was little more than a group of Massachusetts volunteers looking for a strong symbolic head, which John Adams preferred to come from some other colony.

None of these colonels, nor those holding other military ranks, were a match for the imagery which Colonel Washington chose to employ. George Washington, never "Hail‑fellow‑well‑met," offered himself by a single simple expedient: unlike every other military figure in that Congress, George Washington entered that session resplendent in his full‑dress Colonel's military uniform, and he continued to wear it.

From the beginning, Washington was himself advancing his own candidacy for military leadership. If he had not done so, from the very beginning, if he had not been a Virginian, some other figure might well have proved to be the first commander of the American revolutionary forces.

He did have other things going for him, of course. He was "old money," a descendant of that John Washington who, as Prior, had built one of England's greatest cathedrals. He had married very well, a rich older woman with four children, and his inability to father a child of his own did not seem to harm his career. His height was of greater consequence in a shorter society. He had the looks of a Plantaganet; that is, he looked like a king or at least the descendant of one. Towards the end of the war, George III offered him a dukedom, although not a hereditary one, and perhaps that was also a tribute to his manners.

The sense of his presence was such that no one ever slapped him on the back, except for one unlucky soul who did so on a bet, and seems never to have forgiven himself afterwards. The contemporary discussion indicates that Washington's willingness to serve without pay (except for the infamous expense account) was also a meaningful incentive.

In all fairness, Washington as colonel had become Commander of the Virginia Militia for five counties in the fall of 1755, twenty years earlier, and was at that early date responsible for the defense of Virginia's frontier. That same year, as Aide de Camp to General Braddock in the French and Indian Wars, he had had two horses shot out from under him, and four bullets passed through his coat, but that imagery then didn't prevent his being defeated for election to the Virginia House of Burgesses, also that same year, and again in 1757. Nevertheless, by 1775, he had already served in the Virginia legislature for 16 years. And he had already survived the pox.

Washington would eventually be viewed as the greatest horseman of his age, but we are not in a position to judge when that reputation solidified. At home, he had been a great man of the hunt, in an age when the Virginia Hunts were already in full cry. His own favorite huntsman in the pre‑war period was Billy Lee, a black slave of Washington's who was famous for his own horsemanship.

When Washington went off to war, Billy Lee accompanied him as valet de chambre and remained with him throughout the duration. Lee was never called his military aide, but in all respects seems to have fulfilled that role, or so concludes the historian Fritz Hirschfeld. But we are getting away from our story. We return to 1775

Although there is a record of discussion of the virtues of other possible candidates, there appears to have been no discussion of Washington's role as a slave‑holder, no public recognition that a slave‑holding general made a less than perfect symbol for a nation allegedly fighting for freedom, even though our national rhetoric would soon become drenched with the claim that this revolution was one in which Americans sought to prevent their being "enslaved" by Britain.

Let us pause for a moment to look at Washington as slave‑holder. In 1774, Colonel Washington paid taxes on 135 slaves. He had inherited his first ten slaves at the age of eleven, through the death of his father, and acquired eighteen more, nine years later, at the death of his half‑brother, Lawrence. The great bulk of his slaves, were acquired by marriage to Martha Custis. Technically, these Custis slaves were not owned by Washington, but were part of the Custis estate, destined for her children. They were treated by Washington as if his own, but were formally inventoried by Washington as being dower estate slaves.

He bought slaves as early as 1754. At some point, perhaps after his purchase of five slaves in 1772, he began to question, privately, the purchase of human flesh. Even in 1786, while referring to his "great repugnance to encreasing my Slaves by purchase," he was still willing to consider taking in slaves as part of settlement of a debt. Breaking up slave families seems to have concerned him the most.

This decision to try to set moral limits, this willingness to own slaves but not to purchase them, almost became a broken resolution when a slave, who had been his cook, ran away. At first, finding that he was unable to hire anyone, black or white, to replace his cook, he decided to break his resolve, which he found "disagreeable". His moral stance, however, was repaired, when he found that he could hire a white cook, and was therefore not "required" to buy a slave.

That the slave trade (the enslavement, the importation, the sea trade) was evil was an easier moral decision. Washington and Mason had both embraced the Fairfax Resolves in 1774, which pointed in that direction.

The next stage in Washington's moral advance, was to acquire scruples about his "offering these people at public vendue." That was how he described his reluctance to sell slaves on February 4, 1779. Much later, in 1794, he also wrote of this same moral resolve, "I am principled against selling Negroes, as you would do cattle in the market."

But a reluctance to buy slaves, and an unwillingness to sell slaves, did not mean that he was willing to allow a runaway slave to escape him. As late as 1796, he plotted to find, kidnap, and provide for the return, of one of his escaped slaves. The slave in question offered to return on assurance that she would be freed from slavery on Washington's death, but Washington refused this arrangement, on the grounds that it would be offering a preference to one who had secured it by breaking her bond.

But we are again getting ahead of our story, let us return to the Second Continental Congress, and the year 1775.

The internal discussions in that Second Continental Congress produced a set of decisions which served both to outline the problem of slavery and to freeze the potential solutions for dealing with it which were acceptable to these three colonels and others. The Second Continental Congress, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitutional Convention, all reached essentially the same decisions. Most of these decisions came into effect in 1774 and remained through 1789 and beyond:

· 1. The die date for slave trade was assumed to be 1808; The slave trade would be an issue on which a majority of the then Congress could act in 1808, but not before that;

· 2. Slaves were to be allowed, in the southern states at least, until that time;

· 3. Representation would be reduced for the slave states;

· 4. . Escaped slaves would have to be returned to their masters even if they were found in free territory; and

· 5. There would be a body of land on this side of the Mississippi and up to that river in which slavery would not be allowed.

This set of compromises for the slavery problem remained in effect for most of the early history of the new nation. It is when these compromises fail, that the nation finally begins to face a real threat of civil war.

To ignore the eighteenth century history, is also to ignore the way in which slavery became a moral issue of increasing weight in the North. Haim Solomon, that son of liberty, was, as a citizen of Philadelphia, perfectly capable of advertising for a runaway slave. Robert Morris also held slaves. New England, which was still somewhat troubled by the possibility of Jews or Turks or infidels participating in the political process as late as the period of ratification of the 1787 Constitution, did not become a political bastion of anti‑slavery feeling until after the revolutionary war.

The struggle for racial equality begins at this very beginning of the nation. To understand slavery in the American mind, it is useful to begin at the beginning of the United States, and it is at least somewhat instructive to begin with the mind of George Washington. So once again, let's return to 1775.

You will recall that the war begins in '75 and not '76, and you will recall that George Washington takes command of the army a full year prior to the Declaration of Independence. He is elected on June 15, 1775, and takes command in July.

One of the first questions that the new army faced was whether or not it would allow the enlistment of free blacks or slaves. That decision is initially made in a council of war under General Washington (no longer Colonel Washington), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 8, 1775. The decision was unanimous. The army was to be a white army, and African‑Americans were to be barred from it. This was despite the fact that there had already been black volunteers in the State Militia of Massachusetts. So Washington's first step is to reverse the fact of an already integrated army.

That fully segregated army does not last very long.

The very next month, on November 7th, the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, announces that any slave or indentured servant who will take up arms against the rebels is to be set free. Here are his words:

"And I do hereby further declare all indented Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels) free that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining His Majesty's Troops as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper Sense of their Duty, to his Majesty's Crown and Dignity."

Here was the greatest single fear of the slave colonies made real. There were half a million African American slaves in 1774 in the New World, roughly 20% of the total population of 2,600,000.

In response to Dunmore, Washington almost immediately countermanded his own orders, and allowed the signing up of free African Americans. Just how Washington viewed Dunmore's action was spelled out in a letter of December 15, 1775, to his military secretary, Joseph Reed:

“If the Virginians are wise, that arch traitor to the rights of humanity, Lord Dunmore, should be instantly crushed if it takes the force of the whole colony to do it. Otherwise, like a snow Ball enrolling, his army will get sieved ‑ some through Fear ‑ through Promises ‑ and some from Inclination, joining his Standard ‑ But that which renders the measure indispensably necessary, is, the Negro, for if he gets formidable, numbers of th(e)m will be tempted to join who will be affraid to do it without."

Lord Dunmore soon succeeded in getting at least 300 former slaves into a special British uniform, which bore the slogan "liberty to slaves!", They were known as Lord Dunmore's "Ethiopian Regiment."

Soon, this becomes a situation in which no one in the Continental Army command actually questioned any black coming to join the Continentals, whether he was slave or free.

Rhode Island promptly set up a black regiment for the rebels, one which saw brave action. But for most of that Continental army, blacks and whites serve together.

Only about 3% of Connecticut's population was black, but that state provided some 752 blacks, of whom 586 saw active service. Connecticut, by 1781, had brought together a black regiment under the command of a Colonel Humphries, who was apparently white.

Washington found special use for black spies on the river.

The all‑black regiments were apparently not the rule. A Hessian officer in 1777 said: "One sees no regiment in which there are not Negroes in abundance, and among them are able‑bodied sturdy fellows."

In all, there are estimated to have been 5,000 Negro soldiers serving with Washington.

We should also be very clear that there were tens of thousands of blacks who fled to the British. Colonel Jefferson was convinced that substantial numbers of these in the early period were seized by the British and resold in the West Indies, and he so argued in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, but this seems far from certain.

Some of the young white men of the Continental Army were to become a major anti‑slavery force in the new nation. Look at those two red‑heads who accompany George Washington, almost as adopted sons. They are Alexander Hamilton, who will found an anti‑slavery society in the post‑war era, and the Marquis de Lafayette, who will later set up an experimental area in which freed slaves will be allowed to demonstrate that they can handle their own subsistence. The Marquis de Lafayette will approach George Washington on several occasions after the war about joining him in that kind of experiment.

There may be a parallel here with the "Diggers" and the "Levellers" of Cromwell's New Model Army, but we will not here pursue it.

Meanwhile, back in the Continental Congress, Jefferson is so horrified by Lord Dunmore's attempt to set off a servile rebellion, that he also concentrates a portion of his initial draft of the Declaration of Independence on his stated horror that the British, having foisted a slave trade upon the American colonies, have now set those very same slaves at the throats of their former masters. Indeed, Jefferson's insistence on the centrality of that argument results in his draft being cut up and edited by the rest of the Congress, which is less certain about treating that point as being central to the argument.

In between Washington's initial pronouncement of an all‑white army, and Lord Dunmore's triggering of the reversal of that order, something else occurs that may be worth noting. A famous Boston slave by the name of Phyllis Wheatley sends General Washington a poem on October 26, 1775, which speaks of "Freedom's Cause," and which tells Washington to:

"Proceed, Great Chief, with virtue on thy side,

Thy every action let the Goddess guide.

A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,

With gold unfading, Washington! Be thine."

I do not mean to suggest that the slave's 42‑line poem helped change Washington's mind, but in February of 1776, Washington was considering publishing the poem himself, and in April of 1776, the Pennsylvania Magazine did it for him.

If Jefferson' perspective was warped by his failure to find many minds of quality among the blacks whom he knew, it may be noteworthy that sometime in that spring of 1776 Phyllis Wheatley apparently met with General Washington, at his Cambridge headquarters, pursuant to a written invitation from the General, in which Washington referred to himself as "undeserving" of her "encomium and panegyrick."

Washington wrote that the "style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical talents. In honor of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem, had I not been apprehensive, that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public prints."

Of course, meeting with Benjamin Banneker, eminent black planner and architect, did not succeed in changing Thomas Jefferson's view as to black inferiority. Speculation about the effects of Phyllis the slave poet is only speculation.

One of the questions which arose during the revolutionary war was whether some of the slaves of South Carolina should be armed in order to oppose the British. Washington had great doubts about this strategy, fearing that if the slaves were armed, they would sooner or later seek their own freedom, the same way as the Americans had sought their freedom from the British.

Those who sought Washington's help in attempting to make this kind of arrangement with South Carolina acted as if they did have Washington's support. His then Aide de Camp, Alexander Hamilton, attempted to further this project, saying that it was

"a project, which I think, in the present situation of affairs there is a very good one and deserves every kind of support and encouragement. This to raise two, three or four battalions of Negroes; with the assistance of the government of that state, with contributions from the owners in proportion to the number they possess."

The primary author of the South Carolina slave‑soldier proposal, Colonel John Laurens, was also a volunteer aide‑de‑camp to the General, but he was soon killed in action, at the age of 27, which put a final end to this project. In fact, South Carolina had earlier indicated an unwillingness to so cooperate. Laurens' primary goal, had been to free those slaves, a project which his father had approved. The father was Henry Laurens, South Carolina Plantation owner, and third "so‑called" President of the United States, under the Confederation, who was later to serve as one of the true negotiators of the executed peace treaty. His son was a clear loss to our history.

Washington at one stage saw his military opposition as largely savages (which is to say the Indians who fought with the British), mercenaries (which is to say the Hessians and some Scots whom the crown also paid for), and blacks (i.e. former slaves.)

55,000 blacks are reported to have left with the British when they retreated, better than 10% of the black population of the country, and better than 2% of the whole.

Almost as soon as the British fell at Yorktown, Washington moved to try to recapture some of the American slaves who had fled to the British, and he demanded that all of the blacks to be found in the British Army were to be seized.

Nevertheless, thousands of American slaves escaped to freedom in the final stage of the war.

After the war, Benjamin Franklin, as head of the Anti‑Slavery Society in Pennsylvania, and Alexander Hamilton, as head of the Anti‑Slavery Society in New York, helped lead the fight for abolition. The Quakers, to their everlasting credit, kept pressing their attack on slavery. The Quakers had been among the least respected figures during the revolution, at least as far as the rebels were concerned, because of their unwillingness to fight. They were assumed to be Tories and traitors. Now, after the war, some were still labeled traitors, but Quaker effectiveness grew with time. Slowly, the North began to reject slavery.

By 1796, Washington was under public pamphlet attack (albeit probably from the muckraker of the "Aurora", William Duane), for continuing to be " possessed of Five Hundred of the Human Species in Slavery, enjoying the fruits of their labor without remuneration, or even the consolations of religious instructions ‑"

It is one thing to abominate slavery, as all three colonels did, at least in theoretical terms. It is something else to act upon that moral imperative. As we have seen, it is clear that Washington adopted his anti‑slavery morality into practice in successive steps. Let me reprise those, please.

Theoretical opposition to slavery; steps against the slave trade and importation; unwillingness to purchase slaves, first as to cash, later even to settle a debt; and the decision not to sell slaves; with integration of the army as a theoretical decision along the way

We can, if we will, reject all of these distinctions as meaningless. Slavery is extinct; discrimination is evil; why attempt to track a man's soul through these minute changes when human freedom and equal dignity is so clear? Can we not simply abominate the slave‑holder, or the bigot, and be done with it?

Political and moral change, even in one man's soul, often moves in successive steps, and ultimately may transform one man, or a world. The future may not understand why civil rights legislation moved from integration of the army (again) to discrimination in jobs, to housing, and from race to gender to sexual orientation, in steps. But that seems to be the nature of fundamental change.

While the deep south prospered, Washington's plantation suffered even under his own careful management. His decision not to sell slaves meant that Mt. Vernon, unlike those other Virginia estates, which profited from selling surplus slaves, was suffering in economic terms. The General tried to break Mt. Vernon apart into self‑sufficient units. He tried many things.

Meanwhile, Lafayette tried to interest him in anti‑slavery activities. Washington did not follow through, even where he offered private encouragement. He offered no public support to the anti‑slavery movement.

On July 9, 1799, George Washington wrote his will. In this will he pointed out that he did not have the power to manumit the dower slaves, that is to say the slaves who were the technical property of Martha Custis Washington's estate, and which would pass to her children. But he did have the power to manumit those whom he held "in my own right", and he provided that they would receive their freedom "upon the death of my wife". He explained that to do so earlier would cause "painful sensations and disagreeable consequences," so long as both the dower slaves and his own slaves were held by the same "proprietor." Those who were unable to support themselves were to be comfortably clothed and fed "by my heirs while they live. And if they were children with no parents living or if they had living parents who were unable or unwilling to provide for them, they should be bound by the court until the age of 25, and in the meanwhile taught to read and write, and to be brought up to some useful occupation, according to the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, providing for the support of orphan and other poor children."

He added some forceful language: " We forbid the sale or transportation of any slave I may die possessed under any pretense whatsoever. And I do, moreover, most pointedly and most solemnly, enjoin it upon my executors hereafter named or the survivors of them to see that this clause respecting slaves, and every part thereof be fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place; without evasion, neglect or delay, after the crops which may then be on the ground are harvested, particularly as it respects the aged and infirm ‑ seeing that a regular and permanent fund be established for their support so long as there are subjects requiring it, not trusting to the uncertain provision to be made by individuals."

Five months later, on December 14, 1799, he died.

Abigail Adams, came to visit Martha Washington at Mt. Vernon, after the deaths of Mr. Justice Wilson and the General. She was horrified by its condition. She assumed that that condition was itself an indictment of slavery. But Martha's advisors felt that something else was happening. By announcing the approaching freedom of some of the slaves, and in the absence of Washington himself, the plantation was now at risk, or so they thought, and Martha's advisors expressed fears of that fire‑bell in the night. They were afraid that the Mt. Vernon slaves would revolt, flee, or otherwise turn against Mrs. Washington.

So Martha sat down and arranged the manumission of all of the slaves. There was still enough wealth left in the Estate to arrange to do so. In the race between insolvency and manumission, manumission had won. This was done just one year after Washington's death.

Washington had left Billy Lee a house, and a pension of $30 a year plus food and clothing, but Lee had previously become a cripple, and had been reduced to the occupation of shoemaker. Lee's annuity was to be effective whether he took his freedom or not, which Washington gave him. Billy Lee elected to stay on, and he and others were supported for many years, but he became an old drunk, occasionally visited for stories of the glory days, who died of delirium tremens. Martha Washington and her children apparently did their best to make certain that all of George Washington's wishes with respect to the former slaves were in fact carried out.

These acts of manumission were almost in accordance with the laws of the State of Virginia. By 1799 it was lawful to manumit slaves provided that one could and did allow for the former slave's upkeep after the period of their being set free, and provided they left Virginia. But one could not manumit slaves under Virginia law if one could not provide for their upkeep.

Jefferson yet lived. Jefferson's public and private attitudes towards slavery as a theoretical matter could not be more clear. In 1781 he had stated :

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other....A man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances....Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, and exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest....I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.

Colonel Jefferson, was, in some ways, a more profligate man than Washington. Jefferson, unlike Washington, had been a collector of fine wines and elegant books. The economic base of George Washington's plantation was on a far more solid basis than Jefferson's. Jefferson built Monticello, then rebuilt it, and then built it all over again.

Jefferson never really ran a profitable plantation, but instead directed a sort of experimental station fitting for a man who believed that to introduce a new fruit or a new vegetable to his country would be one of the greatest things he could do.

He long believed in the inherent inferiority of the black race, in a way which must pain any of his present day admirers. There are sections of his Notes on Virginia of 1787 which cause very great pain indeed, and in 1807, he offered similar evidence of his belief in the innate inferiority of blacks, in addressing a British diplomat, who was shocked. Just two years later, however, in a private letter of 1809, he gave evidence of a hope that his doubts as to the natural abilities of negroes would gain “complete refutation,” and that negroes would gain “re-establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.”

As a member of the first fully‑elected parliament of Virginia, one of his laws had succeeded in making slave trade, i.e. the transportation by sea and importation of slaves, illegal in Virginia.

1808, that magic date with which both the Second Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention had struggled, was finally reached, and in fact, at that time Jefferson was President. The national Congress did then do away with the slave trade, and the importation of slaves. It did not, however, do away with slavery itself.

Jefferson's presidency was, of course, also marked by the acquisition of Louisiana, and thereby opened the United States to land west of the Mississippi. That land had not been designated as either slave or free in the original compromises.

When the question of slavery in Missouri became a national issue, Jefferson was no longer bound by memory of his original conceptions. Jefferson's position was now more strongly colored by his regional political concerns and by his fear of major political opponents whom he still saw in regional terms. He had always been torn between his absolute hatred of slavery and his absolute fear of a post‑slavery country which contained both blacks and whites in it, a country which he believed would be so riven by racial hatred that one or the other race would be destroyed. His favorite solution to the slavery question, ending slavery for all born after a certain date, to be followed by proper education, training, and expatriate colonization for the former slaves and their offspring, could not garner sufficient legislative support when he was Governor of Virginia, or afterwards. When his own calculations began to place the cost of such a project at something approaching a billion dollars, he increasingly placed his faith in time, and the Almighty, to remedy slavery.

When the Missouri Question enthralled the nation, he convinced himself that the diffusion of slavery into Missouri would somehow lead to greater national understanding of the complexity of the slavery problem. This in turn, he assumed, would defuse that civil war, which he saw as rapidly approaching.

Jefferson's public comments about slavery itself became less frequent, although in private he encouraged general abolition activity by others. He had begun that great retreat from the world of public affairs which so pained James Madison. Jefferson would no longer lend his pen even to church‑state separation, or any of his other favorite causes.

When the young came to him seeking a voice against slavery he offered encouragement for them, but kept his personal silence.

As Thomas Jefferson approached death, more than a quarter century after the death of Washington and Wilson, the country itself had changed for the worst. As John Chester Miller has pointed out, when Lafayette visited the United States in 1824 and 1825, the black and white soldiers who had served together and fraternized together during the war, had been replaced by a world in which whites and blacks were rarely seen together except where the blacks were servants. Lafayette concluded that white men had been concerned only with the freedom of whites.

Alexis de Tocqueville would in a few years find that discrimination was more pervasive in the north than in the south, and he correctly predicted that matters of racial prejudice would only increase following abolition. But this is yet to come.

As Jefferson approached death he stopped reading newspapers altogether, often standing at his desk, writing away, in an almost desperate attempt to answer his correspondents.

On May 20, 1826, less than two months before his death, Thomas Jefferson was asked for "two lines" expressing his views on slavery. The easy optimism of his youth was clearly gone, and Jefferson now saw opposition to slavery almost wholly in terms of tactics and very long‑term hope. He wrote in part:

Dear Sir,

The Subject.... is one on which I do not permit myself to express an opinion, but when time, place and occasion may give it some favorable effect. The revolution of public opinion which this cause requires, is not to be expected in a day, or perhaps in an age; but time, which outlives all things, will outlive this evil also. My sentiments .... (A)lthough I shall not live to see them consummated, .... will not die with me; but living or dying, they will ever be in my most fervent prayer. This is written for yourself and not for the public...

When in France, it appeared that he had tricked his slave, Joseph Hemmings, and Jefferson may have felt guilty for doing so. By French law at that time, as Jefferson well knew, any slave who asked for his or her freedom while on French soil was free, but Jefferson did not then tell Joseph Hemmings (or for that matter, Sally Hemmings) about that rule.

By the end of his life Jefferson had nearly achieved the insolvent state that George Washington had feared during his final years. At the time of Jefferson's death, the Congress was considering establishing some sort of pension for him. It had already rescued him once before, by purchase of Jefferson's library which inaugurated what was to become the Library of Congress.

Four months before his death, Jefferson sat down to write his will. Most of the biographers, perhaps all, do not seem to have understood what they are reading. He wrote that will on March 16, 1826, and added a codicil the next day.

Unlike Washington, Jefferson had descendants about whom he had reason to be worried, and for whom he tried to make provisions. He left certain property to his grandson, and he noted that his son‑in law was insolvent, and set up a spendthrift trust for his daughter and son‑in‑law, to keep them "from want."

In the will itself there was no mention of any of his slaves. It may be that he had doubts as to the validity of his testamentary powers with respect to his slaves, and therefore kept them to a separate instrument. In the codicil, after giving James Madison his walking staff, and the University of Virginia his library, and other bequests, he gave to his "good and affectionate and faithful servant Berwell his freedom, and the sum of $300 to buy necessaries to commence the trade of glazier, or to use otherwise as he pleases." He also gave John Hemmings and Joe Fawcett their freedom, referring to them simply as "good servants" and not as slaves. [Neither Washington nor Jefferson liked to use the word "slave", and Wilson kept it out of the Constitution.] And he gave to them their tools of their respective shops or callings and asked that a comfortable log house be built for each of the three: "On some part of my lands convenient to them with respect to residence of their wives." [From this I assume they were slaves whom Jefferson could not free.] And "Convenient to Charlottesville and the University, where they will be mostly employed, and reasonably convenient also to the interests of the proprietor of the lands, of which houses I give the use of one, with a curtelage of an acre to each, during his life or personal occupation thereof." He also gave to Hemmings, Hemmings' own apprentices, Madison and Estin Hemmings, together with their freedom when they reached 21.

In doing this, he probably feared that he had violated the laws of Virginia. He had set slaves free and given them permission to remain in the state. And maybe he also feared for his own insolvency, or the fact that he had mortgaged most if not all of his slaves. He was too good a lawyer to bother to mention a similar violation of the law by George Washington's will. He must have remembered, with some bitterness, his earliest failed attempts to free up Virginia's laws as to manumission He added the following clause:

"And I humbly and earnestly request of the legislature of Virginia a confirmation of the bequest of freedom to these servants, with permission to remain in this state where their families and connections are, as an additional instance of the favor, of which I have received so many other manifestations in the course of my life, and for which I now give them my last, solemn, and dutiful thanks."

Thus he was reduced to begging from Virginia this one last favor. I do not know whether or not it was granted. I assume that it was. Or maybe no one noticed.

The last two of the men ‑ the great men ‑ of the Second Continental Congress died, as we all remember, on July 4, 1826. All three of our colonels had tried to cure the world, but none of them was really fit for the tales of Parson Weems.

Slavery made men monsters, Jefferson believed. And so it did, even these, but these three, who tried to heal the world, succeeded in changing some of it. May we continue to celebrate those who make that attempt.