A major new biography of Washington, and the first to explore his engagement with American slavery
When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret." In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman.
Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system's evil.
Wiencek's revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington's determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility--as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted--that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus; Wiencek has new evidence that this could indeed have been true.
George Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time. Henry Wiencek is the author of several books, including "The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White," which won the National Book Critics' Circle Award in 1999. Named a Best Book by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic
Winner of the "Los Angeles Times" Book Prize for History
A "Library Journal" Best Book
When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret." In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the Founding Father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman.
Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system's evil, and he understood that the problem of this "peculiar institution" would be central to the Amerian experience.
Wiencek's revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington's determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility--as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted--that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus; Wiencek has new evidence that this could indeed have been true.
George Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.
" An] honest and compelling study of Washington and slavery . . . In Wiencek's superb telling, slavery] certainly makes Washington more of a traditional planter than we have usually been willing to admit . . . Wiencek tells stories of miscegenation and incest in the Washington household that rival anything William Faulkner imagined."--Gordon S. Wood, "The New York Times Book Review" " An] honest and compelling study of Washington and slavery . . . In Wiencek's superb telling, slavery] certainly makes Washington more of a traditional planter than we have usually been willing to admit . . . Wiencek tells stories of miscegenation and incest in the Washington household that rival anything William Faulkner imagined."--Gordon S. Wood, "The New York Times Book Review" " A] revisionist new book that] rises to the challenge of turning Washington's very furtiveness into a source of fascination . . . Leaving a will that freed slaves cannot be seen as a simple, bold stroke. It makes sense only in the larger, richer context that Wiencek's book vividly creates . . . This book offers many glimpses into the ways in which intertwined black and white family histories revealed the monstrousness of slavery-sustaining laws."--Janet Maslin, "The New York Times" "The most comprehensive attempt thus far to look at Washington and slavery in all its dimensions. The book is based on a great deal of research in both primary and secondary sources and is quite readable, even absorbing."--Don Higginbotham, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, "The Journal of American History" "Surveys have shown that George Washington is remembered by most as a soldier and statesman. Few recollect that he was also a farmer-businessman, and fewer still think of him as a slaveowner. This book by Henry Wiencek, who has written widely on Southern slavery, will change that . . . He chronicles not only the indignities and

ISBN-13: 9780374529512 ISBN-10: 0374529515 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Publish Date: September 2004 Page Count: 404 Related Categories Books > Biography & Autobiography > Presidents & Heads of State Books > History > United States - General Books > Social Science > Slavery