The Newsweek article can be read in full beginning here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20427884/site/newsweek/

--Jurretta Heckscher


On Sep 1, 2007, at 10:08 AM, Jon Kukla wrote:

> This excerpt was posted yesterday on History News Network:
>
> GW's slaves? Mount Vernon confronts the issue now
>
> Source: Michael Beschloss in Newsweek (9-3-07)
>
> Shortly before George Washington retired as president in 1797, two  
> of his
> cherished house slaves—Martha's helper Oney Judge and their chef,
> Hercules—ran away. Tracked down at Washington's order, Oney tried  
> to set
> strict conditions for her return, which the old general refused. As  
> for
> Hercules, he just disappeared.
>
> Despite Washington's indignation over the "disloyalty" of his  
> "Negroes,"
> slavery was one of the few subjects in his life that the first  
> president
> was ambivalent about. Financially he knew that he and Martha could  
> not run
> the presidential house in Philadelphia or his beloved estate Mt.  
> Vernon in
> Virginia without their several hundred slaves. But in his later years,
> Washington came to hate slavery for dividing families and  
> undermining the
> best ideals of the Revolution.
>
> The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, which in 1858 heroically rescued
> Washington's by then weedy, decaying estate (the front portico was  
> being
> held up by a sailboat's mast), was itself long ambivalent about how to
> treat the subject—especially during the civil-rights era of the  
> 1950s and
> 1960s.
>
> This month a replicated Mt. Vernon slave cabin—home to Washington's  
> slaves
> Silla and Slamin Joe and their six children—will open, one of the  
> final
> touches on a $100 million effort to augment Washington's mansion and
> gardens with exhibits providing context for Americans who, with each
> passing generation, sadly seem to know less and less about their first
> president.
>
> Posted on Friday, August 31, 2007
>
>
>
> -- 
> Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
> Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
> 1250 Red Hill Road
> Brookneal, Virginia 24528
> www.redhill.org