"The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret": George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon
- ISBN-10
- 0813941849
- ISBN-13
- 9780813941844
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 520
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019
- Author
- Mary V. Thompson
Description
"American historians began producing in-depth studies of slavery and slave life shortly after World War II, but it was not until the early 1980s that the country's museums took the first tentative steps to interpret those same controversial topics. Perhaps because of the tremendous amount of primary material related to George Washington, almost no one looked into the lives of Mount Vernon's enslaved population. Incorporating the results of detailed digging, of both the archaeological and archival varieties, the number of chapters grew as further questions arose. While a few scholars outside Mount Vernon turned their attention to Washington's changing ideas about slavery, they largely overlooked the daily lives of those who were enslaved on the estate, a subject about which visitors expressed a desire to know more. The resulting book makes use of a wide range of sources, including letters, financial ledgers, work reports, travel diaries kept by visitors to Mount Vernon, the reminiscences of family members, former slaves, and neighbors, reports by archaeologists, and surviving artifacts to flesh out the lives of a people who left few written records, but made up 90 percent of the estate's population. The book begins with a look at George and Martha Washington as slaveowners, before turning to various facets of slave life ranging from work, to family life, housing, foodways, private enterprise, and resistance. Along the way, readers will see a relationship between Washington's military career and his style of plantation management, learn of the many ways slaves rebelled against their condition, and get to know many of the enslaved people who made Mount Vernon their home"--
Get the book
Similar books
-
The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret": George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon
By Mary V. ThompsonThe book closes with Washington’s attempts to reconcile being a slave owner with the changes in his thinking on slavery and race, ending in his decision to grant his slaves freedom in his will.
-
Slavery at the Home of George Washington
By Philip J. SchwarzGeorge Washington inherited his first slave at the age of eleven, and he was the only founding father to free his slaves in his will. This highly readable selection of...
-
Experiencing Mount Vernon: Eyewitness Accounts, 1784-1865
By Jean Butenhoff LeeThis book constitutes the only eyewitness chronicle we have of the Washington estate's ascent to the status of national shrine, and it offers the closest possible evidence of Mount Vernonís singular role in helping forge American national ...
-
Criminal Injustice: Slaves and Free Blacks in Georgia's Criminal Justice System
By Glenn McNair... 1822); C. S. Morehead and Mason Brown, A Digest of the Statute Laws ofKen- tucky (Frankfort: A. G. Hodges, 1834); Richard ... 1860); Henry Bullard and Thomas Curry, A New Digest ofthe Statute Laws ofLouisiana (New Orleans: E.Johns, ...
-
"In the Hands of a Good Providence": Religion in the Life of George Washington
By Mary V. ThompsonArtisansand Merchantsof Alexandria, Virginia,1780–1820. 2vols. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books,1991. ———, ed.Pen Portraits ofAlexandria, Virginia, 1739–1900. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1987. Minutes of the Vestry: Truro Parish Virginia, ...
-
Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest
By Barbara J. HeathIn Hidden Lives, Barbara J. Heath re-creates the daily life of slaves at Jefferson's second home from 1773, the year he inherited the plantation, until 1812, when his reorganization of its landscape resulted in the destruction of a slave ...
-
Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington's Mount Vernon
By Scott E. Casper, Mary V. Thompson, Philip D. MorganThe text illuminates three key themes: first, the lives, families, and experiences of the enslaved people of Mount Vernon; second, Washington's changing views on slavery, culminating in his pioneering action to free his slaves per the terms ...
-
You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington
By Alexis CoeAlexis Coe combines rigorous research and unsentimental storytelling, finally separating the man from the legend."--
-
Jefferson and the Virginians: Democracy, Constitutions, and Empire
By Peter OnufIn Jefferson and the Virginians, renowned scholar Peter S. Onuf examines the ways in which Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Virginians—George Washington, James Madison, and Patrick Henry—both conceptualized their home state from a ...
-
Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America
By Karen Cook BellSee also revolutionary idealism; Revolutionary War Black women's fugitivity and, 1–7, 9–14, 160–68 refutation of slavery during, 61 rhetoric of, 7, 46, 62, 70 Amey (runaway), 54 Anderson, Elizabeth, 91 Anderson, Isaac, 169 Anderson, ...