whether Mason "loathed slavery" seems open to question. See the article
on Mason and slavery by the Virginia Tech historian Peter Wallenstein in
Va. Magazine of History and Biography, April, 1994. He make the careful
distinction between the slave trade which he did loathe ( but which also
lowered the market value of his own slaves) and slavery, which he did
not loathe all that much.
paul finkelman
Stephan A. Schwartz wrote:
> Washington appears to have followed the plan espoused by George
> Mason, his former friend, and mentor. Mason loathed slavery, and
> deplored the deliberate policy on the part of many planters of
> keeping slaves illiterate and uneducated. Sending slaves back to
> Africa, to Mason, seemed cruel, and very unlikely to be successful.
> Also he didn’t think the slaves would want to go back, and he was
> right. (By 1847, even with free passage, only 13,000 former slaves
> had made the trip back to Africa.) In his typical blunt style he
> wrote, “. . . that slow Poison, [slavery] . . . is daily
> contaminating the Minds & Morals of our People. Every Gentlemen here
> is born a petty Tyrant. Practiced in Acts of Despotism & Cruelty, we
> become callous to the Dictates of Humanity, & all the finer feelings
> of the Soul. Taught to regard a part of our own Species [note this
> recognition, quite different from Jefferson's equivocations - SAS] in
> the most abject & contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of
> the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for
> great & useful purposes. Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon
> the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment,
> if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds. And in such an
> infernal School are to be educated our future Legislators & Rulers.”
> Although the evidence is spotty it seems very probable to me that
> Mason's ideal was compensated emancipation, in which the planter
> class was reimbursed from the public treasury for the value of their
> "property", in return for which they set aside money to train their
> former slaves so that they could read and write, and have the
> rudiments of civic knowledge -- not much different than most of the
> lower income whites -- to be productive citizens. This would have
> had the effect of limiting social disruption, which Mason saw as a
> major source of concern, of assuring that the leadership class was
> not destroyed, and of giving the Africans a chance to make a place
> for themselves. I have seen figures that this would have cost about
> $24 million, a huge sum for the times, but a pittance when considered
> against the costs of the Civil War, which Mason foresaw. Mason,
> himself, could not do it; he realized that a single planter would
> beggar his children through manumission, and destroy their place in
> society (as important as the money). But Washington, childless,
> appears to have learnt the lesson, and followed through almost
> exactly the plan Mason had conceived.
>
> -- Stephan
>
>
> Stephan A. Schwartz
> 932 North Oriole Drive * Virginia Beach, Virginia 23451
> Schwartzreport: http://www.schwartzreport.net
> Personal Website: http://www.stephanaschwartz.com
>
> On 5 Dec 2005, at 20:33, Henry Wiencek wrote:
>
>> With the TJ/Hemings issue in full conflagration again, I would like
>> to roll
>> back to Jurretta Heckscher's eloquent post on GW. She wrote: "I
>> would argue
>> that Washington . . . must be presumed to have believed almost
>> inevitably
>> in white racial superiority. That was, quite simply, one of the bedrock
>> foundations of the world that made and sustained him--and if he broke
>> extensively with that belief in his own mind, as I at least would
>> need to
>> see demonstrated by an unambiguous pronouncement."
>>
>> He did break with that world by freeing his slaves and he did make a
>> "pronouncement" in his will, in which he not only freed his slaves but
>> specified that they be taught to read & write, be "brought up to
>> some useful
>> occupation," and further ordered that no slave be transported out of
>> Virginia "under any pretence whatsoever." This is my interpretation
>> of that
>> pronouncement: Washington believed that blacks had a right to
>> freedom; that
>> formerly enslaved blacks were quite amenable to education and training;
>> furthermore, he clearly believed that they had a claim to education and
>> decent work; finally, he seems to have believed that with education and
>> training the freed children of slaves could immediately take a
>> fruitful and
>> productive place in Virginia society as free people because he
>> emphatically
>> specified that no one should be exiled. I don't think a racist of
>> the 1790s
>> variety would write such a will.
>>
>> Henry Wiencek
>>
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>
>
>
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--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, OK 74104-3189
918-631-3706 (office)
918-631-2194 (fax)
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