Note: The following is based completely on statements and works by Black Americans. Some of it is cut and pasted straight from Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Assata Shakur and Randall Robinson. Other important sources: Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Annette Gordon-Reed, Kai Wright and Washington descendant Linda Allen Bryant.
George Washington (1700s) was an American president, the leader of the Continental Army during the so-called American Revolution and a Southern slave owner.
He was famed for his valour but his virtues more, first in peace and honours. He was engaged in a great cause. Yet he also defrauded the labourer of his hire.
Washington did not give a damn about black people. He was fighting for the freedom of “whites only”. Rich whites, at that. After the so-called Revolution, you could not vote unless you were a white man and you owned a plot of land. The Revolutionary War was led by some rich white boys who got tired of paying heavy taxes to the king. It didn’t have anything at all to do with freedom, justice, and equality for all.
Timeline:
1775: Washington opposes blacks joining the Continental Army, but is forced by Congress and circumstance to admit them. At least 3,000 black soldiers help to make him Father of the Country. They mainly fight in racially integrated New England regiments. Some were at Valley Forge. But blacks also fight for the British, who promise freedom to all who join their ranks. Some black soldiers on the British side have “Liberty to Slaves” emblazoned on their uniforms. Some of Washington’s own slaves run away to fight with the British.
1781: Washington blocks the beaches with soldiers to prevent runaway slaves who had fought with the British from leaving America with the redcoats. At least 30,000 try to leave with the British as they pull out after the war. Some succeed and are resettled in Nova Scotia.
1784/5: Washington sleeps with a black woman named Venus, his brother’s slave. She gives birth to his only son, West Ford.
1786: Washington writes to Robert Morris saying he would be for the abolition of slavery if it ever came to a vote, but says what the Quakers are doing (the Underground Railroad) is inhumane. It is an act of “oppression” against slave owners. It makes slaves discontented and unhappy and “seduces” them to run away.
1787: Washington presides over the writing of the Constitution. Remains silent on the subject of slavery.
1790: Washington sides with Southern slave owners when Ben Franklin, in his last public act, asks Congress to end the slave trade.
1799: Washington owns 277 slaves with his wife. In his will he frees them after her death, providing for the care of the old and the education of the young (in reading, writing and “some useful occupation”). This sort of thing was common in New England but not in the South.
1800s: His monument is built like that of an Egyptian sun god. It is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men, shout – “We have Washington to our father.”
Washington owned slaves like his father did before him and his father’s father before that. He gave them his castoff plates and cups. He buried them in unmarked graves behind an outbuilding.
See also:
- The white mythology of George Washington – what I was taught at school
- West Ford
- American slavery
- sources
- Phillis Wheatley
- Assata Shakur
- American abolitionists – Frederick Douglass among them
- darkies
- drapetomania
- Haiti: a brief history
- Tuskegee Airmen
- Eleven Nations of North America
- Black people according to Thomas Jefferson (1787) – his views at the time the Constitution was being written
Thank you, Abagond for providing us with the ACCURATE facts about George Washington.
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In light of this:
“1799: Washington owns 277 slaves with his wife. In his will he frees them after her death, providing for the care of the old and the education of the young (in reading, writing and “some useful occupation”). This sort of thing was common in New England but not in the South.”
It is hard to believe this:
“1786: Washington writes to Robert Morris saying he would be for the abolition of slavery if it ever came to a vote, but says what the Quakers are doing (the Underground Railroad) is inhumane. It is an act of “oppression” against slave owners. It makes slaves discontented and unhappy and “seduces” them to run away.”
I guess he was just getting while the getting was good.
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Oh, that way of thinking was fairly common in the slave days “It isn’t fair that those slaves aren’t free and paying taxes, but it would be worse if the state stole all those slaves of their rightful owners, who have worked them so hard to own them all. THAT would be downright robbery.”
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I am glad you presented the real facts about George Washington. This man sure was a racist crook just like the others!
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Washington did not give a damn about black people.
Can I get an amen?
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Read about Salem Poor, the slave who was a war hero. George Washington, was a racist. smh.
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“Harsh Life of Washington’s Slaves Revisited”
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The part about the British offering freedom to slaves who defected seems to fit with other issues that preceded the revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somersett%27s_Case
Some say the real reason for the revolutionary war was to avoid being held to British laws abolishing slavery.
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@mary
I just looked salem poor up thanks, I also saw an article about another man named peter salem. very interesting to read stories like these.
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I would love to read more about:
Do any of you have a link for this?
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@ Legion
Washington’s letter to Robert Morris:
The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, by John C. Fitzpatrick, ed. 1754-1799, Vol. 28 (Washington, 1938)
Eyewitness: The Negro in American History
Touchstone Edition, by William Loren Katz,1995 Ethrac Publications Inc.
Source:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h66t.html
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@ NatureBeautiful
That comes from “The Debt” (2000) by Randall Robinson. He said:
He does not give a source.
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@ Solesearch
Washington was a man of contradictions. He was on the fence about whether to free his slaves. Something that took place between 1786 and 1799 that had to have affected his decision was the slave uprising in Haiti.
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I’m always puzzled by the sight of an African man in many of Washington’s portraits. One could easily say he was a slave, but slaves didn’t wear fancy turbans in early America. Anyone have any idea who this guy could be? Some people say it was Benjamin Banneker, but he never portrayed himself like that.
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Thanks for the book title, Abagond!
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@ resw77, could the African you mention be Will Lee, also known as Billy Lee?
He was said to be Washington’s favourite slave and his valet, apparently saving Washinton’s life twice.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_(valet)
“William “Billy” Lee (1750 – 1828), also known as Will Lee, was George Washington’s personal servant and the only one of Washington’s slaves freed outright by Washington in his will. Because he served by Washington’s side throughout the American Revolutionary War and was sometimes depicted next to Washington in paintings, Lee was one of the most publicized African Americans of his time.”
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There’s also a pic featuring a painting of a Black man in a red turban on the same page as the linked Wikipedia article.
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How much of the United States Constitution did Washington write, and was he responsible for any clauses that pertained to slaves, especially fugitive slaves?
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@ resw77, I’m still pondering your question, as I believe paintings of this kind have been collected for a few decades now, and uncertainty persists about the identity of some of the people painted. I asked “Could the African you mention be Will Lee?” because this is also not definite. We pretty much know Will Lee was a name in Washington’s life, but the art historians seem to say the person depicted with Washington in some paintings might be Christopher Sheels instead:
http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/details.php?categorynum=9&categoryName=&theRecord=34&recordCount=56
Will Lee could ride though. Not sure about Christopher Sheels.
As for the turban worn by Africans in Western paintings — could it be a European fantasy about, or reference, to the Almoravids?
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“Mount Vernon” is the cesspool that this murderer called home. I went there twice in elementary school, third and fourth grade.
This pinkskin cunt and that fat bitch sow of his are buried in marble sarcophagi, on a hill on the banks of the Potomac River. There is an iron gate there that reads that his slaves were buried in unmarked graves on the shore.
I vividly remember trying to imagine it. I wondered if he threw the slaves over and let their bodies tumble down the hill and rot there. He probably did. To say that they were “buried” there seems to humane for this cocksucker. Someone should vandalize his tomb and drag whats left of his body out and let it sink to the bottom of the Potomac.
Real talk.
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This is a very disturbing truth. I hope you find more of this.
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It may be apocryphal but, I heard that Washington once had the healthy teeth of a slave extracted in an attempt to make himself a set of falsies. Unbelievably cruel if true.
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@ Average Bee
Don’t hold back on that real talk! 😀
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Dang average Bee, keeping it real and all that. I never fail to get educated when I stop in abagond’s neighborhood. seems the natives here are getting angrier.
glad our tax dollars sent your punk @ss there twice as a kid, doesn’t seem to have taught you much – did you leave school shortly thereafter? How’s your blood pressure?
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[…] Notes towards a black history of George Washington […]
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Interesting interpretation of the history of Washington. Earlier I have always had difficulty to understand, why Washington, Jefferson and other so-called “founding fathers” of America were considered the founders of the most “free” and “democratic” country who so “substantially” contributed to the “progress of humanity”, since anyway the fact that they kept slaves was no secret. Many from the generation of the “founding fathers” and later “democrats” also participated in the genocide of Native Americans. So hypocritical was the entire “western democracy” – British gentlemen used to forget about their “democratic principles” while sailing to the lands east to Suez, while American “democrats” used to turn into “asiatic despots” while returning from Capitol to their plantations in the Deep South, where they enjoyed administering punishments of 100 lashes to slave workers and raping female slaves. Or enjoyed themselves in trampling the freedom of other peoples, for examples Filipinos, who similarly like Washington and Jefferson decided in 1899 that they are entitled to the “pursuit of happiness” and declared the independece of their country. What was the response of the “most democratic” American state? 20000 – 50000 Filipinos killed only in the small island of Samar during several months end 1901 beginning, while the entire number of killed Filipinos in 1899-1902 is evaluated variously from 250000 to 1 million. All these campaign was accompanied by nasty racial slurs that “brown people” is inheretntly incapable of self-governance. Black American soldier who were forced to participate in this infamous campaign, bitterly joked that they were brought to Philippines to “carry white man’s burden”.
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