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


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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