Dear Dr. Kukula: This is good news. Jane Steele. -----Original Message----- >From: Jon Kukla <[log in to unmask]> >Sent: Sep 1, 2007 10:08 AM >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: [VA-HIST] GW's slaves? Mount Vernon confronts the issue > >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 slavesMartha's helper Oney Judge and their chef, >Herculesran 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 subjectespecially during the civil-rights era of the 1950s and >1960s. > >This month a replicated Mt. Vernon slave cabinhome to Washington's slaves >Silla and Slamin Joe and their six childrenwill 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 Lillian Jane Steele