Washington’s Final Act of Statesmanship: Confronting Slavery

George Washington sits at the center of American civic memory, but the hardest truths about him often sit at the edges of what we’re taught. We talk with Dr. Paul Carrese about Washington as an owner of enslaved people and the complicated story behind his decision to free those he legally could through his 1799 will. It’s a conversation that doesn’t look away from the moral contradiction at the founding, and it also refuses to flatten history into easy heroes or easy villains.

We trace what Washington seems to understand as early as the imperial crisis: that demanding liberty while holding people in bondage is an injustice that undermines the nation’s claims. Dr. Carrese explains why slavery is politically untouchable during Washington’s presidency, how the Northwest Ordinance draws a boundary around expansion, and why Washington turns to a private act of statesmanship instead. We also dig into the real-world mechanics of manumission at Mount Vernon: family separation risks, Virginia legal constraints, the Custis estate’s ownership, and the costly commitment to support people after emancipation.

From there, we zoom out to the civic lesson. If even well-educated Americans rarely hear this story, what does that say about how slavery shaped political culture and historical memory? Dr. Carrese offers two tools for listeners who care about American democracy and civic education: civic humility and reflective patriotism, the Tocqueville-inspired idea that love of country should include honest debate about its failures and its progress.

If this changed how you think about George Washington, share the episode with a friend, subscribe for more American history and civics, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. What part of the story do you think schools should teach more directly?

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Transcript

Framing Washington And Enslavement

0:01

Welcome back to Civics in here. Today we're talking to Dr. Paul Caree about our first president, George Washington. But we're not talking about George Washington as president, we're talking about him as an owner of enslaved persons. So Dr. Kreese, I'm so a little sad that this will be the last episode for now that you and I record. But George Washington, we do know that he owns people. If you go to Mount Vernon, they have excellent exhibits talking about it. But what is kind of the story about George Washington's decision to free the enslaved people he owned? Maybe talk a little bit too because I know that Martha Washington also owned enslaved people. So when we talk about Washington manumitting or freeing the enslaved people, it's not all of them. So that was a really long question. But what's kind of the story behind that? Thanks, Flays. And I did think it was important to mention in the 250 episodes you've done this year about American civics, this final act, you might consider it of Washington's effort as founding father to do what he could as a leader, but as you mentioned, a private citizen to redress the glaring contradiction, the injustice of the perpetuation of enslavement of slavery in America, given the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Arguably, Washington did more to make those principles real and possibly perpetual than any other person. This was recognized in his day, being called the founding father, two capital F's, while he's still alive, his birthday being said, while he's still alive. Everybody recognized he had an extraordinary role in making America what the Declaration

The Founding Contradiction He Saw

2:20

pledged it should be, an independent nation-state among the nation-states of the world according to these principles. And we know from Washington's own writings that during the what the scholars call the imperial crisis, during the period in which the Americans are increasingly frustrated with and increasingly opposing King George III and the Parliament in London, we know from his writings that he makes references to enslavement, slavery, loss of freedom, and specifically to the injustice of any human being owning another human being. This is what we're complaining about. I'm paraphrasing him, what we're complaining about is the kind of injustice we are inflicting on enslaved peoples, right? So we know from 1774 at least he's aware of this glaring contradiction before the declaration. So the challenge, of course, is that slavery is so deeply embedded in all, I'll make this statement, in all civilizations that we know of. And certainly, and particularly paradoxically, for European civilization, given the the inheritance of Christianity and then the Enlightenment, these two things together, you would have, one would have thought would have made more headway against the practice of one human being being able to own another human being. But it had not. So you know, fast forward almost, you know, not quite 25 years from the Declaration of Independence, Washington is coming to the final what he thinks is the final years of his life. And as president, he my reading of him and having read various biographies, it's just too contentious a topic to address as president of the United States. His own ownership of slaves and and any any remedies that would be clearly redressing the existence of slavery in the new states of the Union. The one thing that Washington and the first Congress do is to repass the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which is striking, the federal government taking kind of the authority that the states have over it, right? The police power. The Northwest Ordinance has these striking statements about education, for example, like right, but it also abolishes slavery in those territories, right? So that's a dramatic statement by Washington and the Congress, but it doesn't touch anything about slavery where it currently exists in the States. It's just too sensitive, the union is too fragile. He doesn't even mention it in his farewell address, which is rather striking because we know he's thinking about it and writing about it. So what I wanted to share more widely, I think, is the not so widely known story, that in his final will in 1799, Washington has, as the third item, a very dramatic statement that all of the slaves that Martha Custis Washington and George Washington own will be manumitted at her death. And it's very dramatic because it's the third item after some kind of boilerplate items, and it's it's charged with language, implying that he knows this is going to be controversial. He knows that the members of his family, the estate, will challenge this because this is an enormous part of the wealth of the Mount Vernon plantation and the other plantations in the estate. And in particular, he knows that because the terms of it are for all the slaves to be manumitted, freed.

Why He Stayed Quiet As President

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In effect, who wish to be freed. All of the old, the infirm, the young, they would be paid, they would be free, but would be paid pensions. They would stay on the estate. Fast forward several decades after this happens, the the Washington estate is basically bankrupt. I mean, Mount Vernon has got holes in the roof of it. This enormous, gorgeous building that, you know, if anyone has visited or even seen pictures of it, right? This is why the Mount Vernon Ladies Association is established in the 1830s, because they they had given away so much wealth in manumitting the slaves and paying pensions. The pensions were paid out for decades. So here I turn to a great George Washington scholar, a great scholar of the American founding, uh, William Allen, Bill Allen, who's written about this, himself a descendant of American slaves, that Washington carefully planned this. There's evidence that Washington planned to give away an enormous part of his wealth by manumitting the slaves. It was against the grain, against the winds, whatever metaphor he wanted to use of Virginia law at the time. Virginia law made it very difficult to manumit slaves. He knew he couldn't do it in a way that would say, you're free, congratulations, have a great life. This is a disaster, right? He also knew he couldn't do it in his own particular circumstance in a simple way because Martha Custis, a widow, had brought a very substantial number of slaves into the Washington estate when they married. And the Custis family legally owned those slaves. She didn't. But as part of the preparation for a possible manumission, Washington had tried to change life on the Mount Vernon State to encourage marriage, to encourage literacy, to encourage the growth of a kind of economic culture of skills among the enslaved population so that they could be possibly productive as free people. So for example, Washington changed, Bill Allen documents he changes the economics of Mount Vernon and the other states that he owns. So instead of just producing staple crops, you know, cotton or something else, they produced agricultural products that could be refined and sold as finished products, right? So all the questions that get asked about, you know, hemp. Did Washington smoke pot? You know, right? Well, the hemp is turned into rope, right? And the and the wheat is milled and turned into flour, and the other grains are turned into alcohol, right? Yeah, et cetera, et cetera. So the the slaves are producing, they're becoming craftsmen. They're producing finished products, which sets them up for the possibility of being free someday. So Allen, Bill Allen just documents that this is a decades-long project that Washington has undertaken. And then at the end, there is the great hurdle that he does not own. He can't, in his own will, manumit the slaves owned by the Custis Estate. And because he's tried to encourage marriage, he he can't he and Martha can't really easily stomach the idea that they're just going to be uh family separated. So it's complicated. The clause includes the the condition that the slaves would be freed at her death. Martha decides, he died, George Washington dies not long after this will is filed, and in December 1799. She lives a few more years and she decides to free them before her death. So sh they they're freed in 1801, manumitted in 1801. She dies in, I think, in 1805. So the the larger point here is that for us 200 some odd years later to think what a stain

The Will That Promised Manumission

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this is on George Washington, what a staining is on other founders, why didn't they manumit their slaves? Why didn't they do something about slavery? Just to give a few facts. Slavery was so embedded in American culture that if you think of all the United States presidents through Abraham Lincoln, roughly three-quarters of them owned slaves. It was so deeply embedded in American political culture, right? Only two presidents manumitted their slaves. George Washington, who owned in his own name hundreds of slaves, and then with the Costa slaves as well. The other is Ulysses S. Grant, who manumitted the one slave that he owned before the Civil War, right? So there's no comparison. George Washington is the only slave-holding president to manumit his slaves. Just stop and think about that. That's how deeply embedded and accepted slavery was in American political culture. We all know how contentious it becomes. The abolition movement and the glaring contradiction to the Declaration of Independence and the success of freed or escaped slaves like Frederick Douglass in pressing the issue, right? But just it was so accepted. So Washington is doing something extraordinary against all the customs, against the laws, against the economics, against everything. But Bill Allen's point is that he wanted to do something. He was such an example, such an influence. Yes, he resigned authority. He didn't die as a king, right? But he all he but he knew how influential he was. So he wanted to say something about this. Slavery's wrong, slavery's evil, it's hard to get over it. I'm going to do what I can as a private person to show that something can be done by individuals. So why do you think then that this should be considered as a final act of statesmanship by George Washington, kind of part of his efforts as the founding father? It again, it was too contentious and difficult to do something as president during his first term, and then he agrees to serve a second term. But the the achievement of America in the two decades after the Declaration of Independence, as he re departs the presidency early, early uh 1797, is an extraordinary achievement. Right? There's been a peaceful uh transition of power. We we are a nation-state in the world. Washington has fought wars and negotiated treaties, and the economy is in better shape, and it's quite a thing. And yet there is this stain and burden that slavery has been perpetuated. So, yes, the Northwest Ordinance is an achievement, but the the principles of the Declaration. I have I have a reading, my own reading of his farewell address, that the final clause is meant to echo the final clause of the Declaration of Independence. But he gives us the last sentence about our mutual cares, labors, and dangers. To me, it's an echo of the final pledge in the Declaration, that we we do this together as citizens. We pledge our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor for this. So the sacred honor of the Declaration is besmirched by slavery. I'm putting ideas into Washington's head, but I think following Bill Allen and saying this, it bothered him that what could he do? And so he could, as a private citizen, not imposing it on anybody else, not causing a political fight, he could engage in the final act model of statesmanship. A wealthy man, a man who didn't invent slavery, he didn't go out and get to the slave, he inherited the slaves, just like the other, right? But he still had some responsibility. He ought to do something about it. And that perhaps this would set a political model. We know from his writings as president, he has a phrase early in his first term. He knows that everything he does in relation to the presidency will set a precedent. And so he's consulting

Preparing Mount Vernon For Freedom

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with Madison and with others, you know, far and wide. How should the presidency handle this? How should this unfold, right? And I just think he's thinking he did not want to leave the earth apart from the questions of his own conscience and meeting his maker and his own religious faith. But he did not want to leave the earth not having done this final act to say America could do more, and it will take the work of leading figures. Did he think he might persuade the Commonwealth of Virginia to do something about it? I don't know. But I will say this. I can remember as a graduate student, I'm a I'm actually a PhD student. Okay. I can remember learning this about Washington when I'm in my you know mid-20s or late 20s. And I'd grown up the son of a history uh civic school teacher, and and American history was all over our household. And I'd taken courses in American history in cop in college beyond what it so you know, I wasn't a history major, but I thought I knew a fair bit. And I knew a fair bit about Washington and the founding, and I'm just like stunned to say, what? Washington? So I wasn't I wasn't enough of a Washington scholar to have read this, right? But it just struck me, wait a minute, I'm a fairly well-educated American citizen. I'm a political science major as an undergraduate, I'm not doing a PhD in political science. I've never heard this. No professor had mentioned it. It hadn't been in some general reading. It's like, what? So it to me, that was further proof of the of the deep entrenchment of the slavery culture and and that Washington had a good idea. He ought to try to set an example, but it's the one part of his legacy that no one wanted to remember. Right? It was just so ingrained. So we should we should think about that today. It was so ingrained that that he was in a he was a model, he was lauded and praised, you know, first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen when he dies, and yet no one wants to no one wants to talk about it. And obviously, people who were themselves slaveholders didn't want to talk about it. So that says to me, it's all the more extraordinary that he did it. It was all the more striking and a kind of we don't think of Washington as a reformer, but if you think about the the move from his retirement and the Articles of Confederation to being a quiet, behind the scenes leader of the constitutional reform movement, he's a reformer. We need a stronger government, right? So this is another, this is I think another moment where he's trying to be a reformer. It it doesn't, that's part of the tragedy of America that it doesn't it doesn't succeed as he might have hoped. It's so interesting that you say that because I I mean as a school teacher myself, I thought I was pretty informed. And it wasn't until and shout out to the Mount Vernon Ladies Historical Association and Mount Vernon's presidential library, I got to go to Mount Vernon to study. And I was 37 when I found out all of this stuff because Mount Vernon did an excellent job of it, and like you said, there is all of these books out there. It is it's such an incredible thing that because of how much slavery was embedded into American history, it's that people didn't talk about it. But I'm glad we're talking about it now. So, Dr. Kreese, what larger lesson can we can this offer America or about America, civic education in America, and what it means to be an American citizen? I think the effort you've made with this podcast to try to offer to a broader public resources in American history and our political development, American civic constitutional principles, and our

Why This Act Was So Rare

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250 years of arguments about what they mean and how they should unfold and how we should uh implement and live up to our principles. I think that is a great resource for the actual day-to-day challenge of being an American citizen in the proper sense of that word, being self-governing and to realize it requires an effort to be educated, to be informed. We have a complicated politics, we have a complicated form of government, forms of government, we have a complicated history. And there has been a great atonement and a great reckoning all during my adult lifetime. I was born in the 1960s, it started before then, about the American founding, the error, the stain of the American founding, that we uh even if you have gratitude for America, which not all people really do, I certainly don't have gratitude for the American founding, but to say that there was a stain, there was a failure, right? Even Lincoln in 1863 says we need a new birth of freedom because something was incomplete. But to have made the effort to learn the history and to learn the principles and the challenge of applying the principles, bringing the principles to life, fully living up to the principles. So to have a kind of humility rather than pride to say, what was the situation in 1776? What was the situation in 1787 when slavery was not abolished at the Constitutional Convention? What was the situation in 1799 when George Russell was writing his will? What were the actual conditions? What would I have done? Not just what would I have done thinking of my best possible self, like I had wings and you know, whatever, could fly. No. What would I have actually done if I was a living human being in that situation? Circumstance and to realize how hard it was. In this case, against the grain of the culture of slavery. So I think it teaches lessons of the importance of civic education, but also kind of civic humility and a civic commitment we need to make to be a little less easily judgmental and a little more uh aware of on the one hand the challenges of our origin and on the other the i the painful but real and substantial progress we've made. Yes, abolishing slavery, but then uh addressing one of the root issues, racism, right, and other kinds of of inequality and discrimination. We had made extraordinary progress and and to study this particular case in a granular way to say, oh my goodness, how difficult. What would you actually do? What could you actually do? If George Washington couldn't think of something better to do than just this one particular

Civic Education And Civic Humility

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example, given the how fraught this was politically and economically at the time, it's just it's a sobering moment. But again, a hopeful moment. He did it. Here we are, 250 years later, America, the American experiment has succeeded well enough that we can be sitting here talking about it. So it's a moment to think about I think I would suggest gratitude for great leaders. We use this word statesmen, statesmen and stateswomen like Washington, who do extraordinarily hard things against the grain and do leave lasting legacies for which we should be grateful. But then on the other hand, we have to take our turn now. Dr. Can I ask you one more question? And I love the term civic humility. I wrote that down. But another term I've heard you say often, and I know that it's in some reports, is reflective patriotism. And a lot of you know how you are explaining that is reflective patriotism. Can I just ask you to share your thoughts on that with our listeners? Because I think for me, that is probably one of my favorite terms that I've heard you use. And I've heard many people use because it is in the Educating for American Democracy roadmap, which you had a large hand in. But can you talk a little bit about what reflective patriotism is and how we can use that in this America 250? Thank you. So we've talked about this in at least one earlier episode. It's a phrase that comes from Alexis de Tocqueville, this wonderful resource for Americans and for civic education. When he visits in the 1830s in this extraordinary book that he writes afterward, Democracy in America, he observes fairly early in the first volume that the Americans have a distinctive kind of patriotism or public spirit. Unlike the old world where he comes from, where it's just emotion. You have a love of country or homeland, and it's sentimental. The Americans have that, but they also have this rational element because America is based on ideas and the ideas of self-government, which means discussion and debate. And is the government, is this whole politics working up for me? Am I getting what I need from it? So he comes up with this term, it could be translated considered patriotism or reflective patriotism. It's the blend of the two. You're grateful for America, and yet America is something about which you argue and you discuss and you debate, and you blend the two. And I think we have largely lost that in, I'll say it, in our colleges and universities, where patriotism is not an academically respectable term or academically respectable attitude. I think that extends to many places in American culture. It may also extend to many K-12 schools, where you know patriotism means nationalism, it means indoctrination, it means something like that. A kind of bigotry, right? And then you're worried about who we excluding and things like that. So here's this wonderful resource that Tocqueville has given us. A phrase we didn't invent about ourselves. He coined this for us. That we are we are reflective, rational, discursive patriots. And I think this question of Washington and slavery is a great example where the in my case, the more you learn, the more sobering it is, and yet the more grateful in a way you could be about America

Reflective Patriotism As A Practice

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that that, yes, it was a failing to perpetuate, allow the perpetuation of slavery after 1776. But given all of these realities and difficulties and how ingrained it was in all of human civilization, to see that at least the foundation stones were laid for progress, for amelioration. And Washington is trying to do what he can as a private person in his final will and testament. And it makes me more grateful for the declaration, for the founding generation, for Washington in this reflective, discursive way. And then there are, you know, there are many examples of that in studying the American founding period and studying American history. Dr. Creese, thank you for letting me go a little off track. I just, you know, in listening to your answers, I just that word came up. And again, I love the term civic humility, and I think that it is especially important in our America 250. Dr. Creese, not only thank you for today, but thank you for all of the expertise that you have shared with us. I know we will probably do things again for the public in the future, but just a very genuine, heartfelt thank you from myself and I'm sure from our listeners. Congratulations, Liz. What a great effort the the 250 podcasts have have been.