John Philip Adams repeats a commonly-held misperception when he writes:

"while we are all ripping into TJ and other slave holders, like Washington
who freed his family's slaves upon his death. Martha's were her 
'property' and he could or would not interfere with the Custis's family's 
property."

Actually, GW did try to bring about the emancipation of the Custis family
slaves, along with his own, in 1796 by proposing an
emancipation/sharecropping plan to a Custis heir, Dr. David Stuart. This
plan was unknown until I found the details of it in unpublished letters in
the LoC. I have a section about it, with all the documentation, in my book
"An Imperfect God." The impediments to freeing the Custis slaves have been
overstated by biographers and historians--George Washington did not regard
these obstacles as insuperable, and I would tend to trust Washington's
judgement on this point.

Henry Wiencek
Charlottesville

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