![]() ![]() In his disillusion with what he regarded as Washington’s lack of political courage, Edward Rushton spoke not only for his fellow opponents of slavery but for scores of later critics of the South’s peculiar institution. In the name of justice what can induce you thus to tarnish your own well earned celebrity and to impair the fair features of American liberty with so foul and indelibile a blot. Ages to come will read with Astonishment that the man who was foremost to wrench the rights of America from the tyrannical grasp of Britain was among the last to relinquish his own oppressive hold of poor unoffending negroes. Shame! Shame! That man should be deemed the property of man or that the name of Washington should be found among the list of such proprietors. My business is with George Washington of Mount Vernon in Virginia, a man who not withstanding his hatred of oppression and his ardent love of liberty holds at this moment hundreds of his fellow being in a state of abject bondage–Yes: you who conquered under the banners of freedom–you who are now the first magistrate of a free people are (strange to relate) a slave holder. But it is not to the commander in chief of the American forces, nor to the president of the United States, that I have ought to address. By the flame which you have kindled every oppressed nation will be enabled to perceive its fetters. It will generally be admitted, Sir, and perhaps with justice, that the great family of mankind were nevermore benefited by the military abilities of any individual, than by those which you displayed during the American contest. It was hardly the polite, respectful missive that the president of the United States normally received. In 1796 George Washington received a letter from Edward Rushton, a prominent English antislavery advocate. And, of course, Jefferson’s will provided only for manumitting Hemingses. According to the results, Jefferson probably sired at least one of these offspring. The year 1999 brought DNA testing to the subject. In the last twenty-five years, two scholars, Fawn Brodie in 1974 and Annette Gordon-Reed in 1996, produced serious if controversial books that pointed to the strong probability of Jefferson’s paternity of the Hemings children. Jefferson, on the other hand, suffered genuine embarrassment over newspaperman James Callender’s accusations that he had several children by his slave Sally Hemings. ![]() Although both the British during the War of Independence and the Republicans in the 1790s spread scurrilous stories about Washington’s private life, the rumors died almost as quickly as they appeared. And there has never been, to date at least, creditable evidence that he fathered slave children at Mount Vernon. Washington did free his slaves, as provided in his will. Washington never claimed to be a spokesman for human rights besides, it was Jefferson who principally wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s critics rightly see inconsistency between his words and deeds, not only in his eloquent phrases about the evils of human bondage but, equally significant, in his efforts to promote his image as a champion of liberty. At least a handful of American saw that as a possibility, including Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. There is no reason to think that either man thought that Africans, if free and given opportunities to advance, could have become the intellectual equals of whites. Washington said less about slavery, and what he said was expressed privately. Jefferson spoke eloquently on the evils of the peculiar institution, especially in his Notes on the State of Virginia, his only book. Although both Jefferson and Washington were lifelong slaveholders, as were the previous generations of Washingtons in Virginia, the master of Mount Vernon has scarcely received a fraction of the criticism on the subject that has fallen on Jefferson since the 1960s.
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