Virginia, the Birthplace of American Slavery

An 18th Century Slave Cabin in Northern Virginia

The population of England rose from three million in 1500 to four-and-one half million in 1650 without any corresponding growth in the capacity of the island’s economy to support the people. Colonization efforts were, among other things, an effort to alleviate demographic pressures in England.

At first, Virginia absorbed the new immigrants and appeared to be successfully creating a New World community on the English model. An emerging planter class, speculating in land, however, constrained access to good land in Virginia by the many.

The development of slavery in Virginia set the pattern for the development of slavery throughout the South and laid the foundations for the development of race relations in America.

In the late summer of 1619 a storm beaten Dutch ship (possibly a pirate ship) appeared in the harbor at Jamestown.  The ship had nothing to trade except twenty Africans recently taken from a Spanish vessel.  An exchange for food was made and the Dutch ship sailed away.  It is not clear if the Africans were considered slaves or indentured servants by the English settlers. There was no precedence in England for enslaving a class of people for life and making that status inevitable.  It is clear, however, that by 1640, at least one African had been declared a slave. This African was ordered by the court "to serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere."

Although blacks were held in hereditary servitude long before Virginia laws specifically recognized slavery, a large number of Virginia’s blacks worked as servants for a limited term or otherwise earned their freedom just like whites.  White and black servants worked together in the fields, shared the same punishments, the same food, and the same living quarters.  The most remarkable evidence of a racially open society comes from the records of Northampton County.  These records indicate that some twenty nine per cent of the county’s blacks were free and that a least two of these, Francis Payne and Anthony Johnson were planters (Johnson even becoming a slave owner himself). 

During the second half of the 17th century, the British economy improved and the supply of British indentured servants declined as poor Britons had better economic opportunities at home.  To lure cheap labor to America, terms of indentures became fixed and shorter.  By the 1670s Virginia had a large number of restless and relatively poor white men (most of them former indentured servants) threatening the established order of the wealthy and propertied.  A popular revolt in 1676, the so called Bacon’s Rebellion, led Virginia planters to begin importing black slaves in large numbers in preference to the more expensive and politically restive white indentured servants. 

The increasingly high price of free labor was incompatible with the profitable running of plantations. The landowners turned to slave labor, encouraging the first massive introduction of slaves from Africa in 1698.  The new labor force was more controllable because blacks, as a group, were not normally thought to be naturally guaranteed the “rights of Englishmen” accorded to white freemen.  In short, the system was to be based purely on force, and Virginia’s laws soon reflected this.

The need for long term forcible control of a large slave population (some 40% of the population of Virginia by the late 1700s) was an unintended consequence of short term decisions made by many individual for their own immediate economic gain.  From sometime ambivalent views about dark-skinned people held by Virginia’s whites, racism quickly developed as a buttress to the economic institution of slavery.

Hidden History of Northern Virginia

Read about the Rebel blockade of the Potomac River, the imprisonment of German POWs at super-secret Fort Hunt during World War II and the building of the Pentagon on the same site and in the same configuration as Civil War, era Fort Runyon. Meet Annandale's "bunny man," who inspired one of the country's wildest and scariest urban legends; learn about the slaves in Alexandria's notorious slave pens; and witness suffragists being dragged from the White House lawn and imprisoned in the Occoquan workhouse. 

Secrets of Early America 1607-1816

These are the often overlooked stories of early America. Stories such as the roots of racism in America, famous murders that rocked the colonies, the scandalous doings of some of the most famous of the Founding Fathers, the first Emancipation Proclamation that got revoked, and stories of several notorious generals who have been swept under history’s rug.

Shoes! Shoes! Shoes! Prada Shoes!

John Brown at Harpers Ferry: Psychology and History

John Brown

The culminating event of the 1850s was John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. To white Virginians, Brown’s raid was emblematic of an evil outside influence trying to disrupt the harmony enjoyed by Virginia’s white and African American communities.

“ Not a Slave Insurrection!”, proclaimed an editorial in the Alexandria Gazette,

“ The recent outbreak at Harper’s Ferry was, in no sense, an insurrection. The slaves had no part nor lot in the matter, except in so far as some of them were forced to take part ….There were five free negroes engaged in the affair, but not a single slave! And even the free negroes thus engaged were not Virginia free negroes”

Two days later, the editor of the Alexandria Gazette elaborated on his claim that the Brown raid was not an insurrection. The editor asked, “What single feature or circumstance characterized it as an ‘insurrection’?” After pointing out that “abolition invaders” found not “one single abettor or sympathizer in the State”, the editor pointed out that to call John Brown’s raid an insurrection disguised the enormous truth, “that Virginia has been invaded…actually, deliberately, and systematically invaded…by an organized band of miscreants, white and black, from Free States, under the lead of a Kansas desperado, at the instigation and appointment of influential and wealthy Northern Abolitionists!”

The sense of being surrounded by enemies, without and within, had become so intense that even white Virginians could be held under suspicion.   In October 1859 T.H. Stillwell of Alexandria while in some in conversation with some gentlemen on the subject of the Harper’s Ferry incident , “…expressed sentiments denunciatory of Southern institutions and people, and of a seditious nature, for which a peace warrant was issued for his arrest at the instance of the Commonwealth’s Attorney”.  Stillwell was required to post a bond of $500 to keep the peace.

In 1959, Stanley M. Elkins’ Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life compared slavery in the United States to the brutality of the Nazi concentration camps.  Elkins delved into the psychology of slavery and soon found himself challenged by most other historians who found his conclusions too simplistic.   Elkins did however raise an important issue, the importance of taking individual and group psychology into account when analyzing historical events. Actions are informed by values.  These values are manifestations of personal psychology.  It is, therefore, important to appreciate the forces at work on both individual and group psychology to understand what motivates action in a society.  A need for a sense of economic well-being and moral legitimacy, coupled with fears of internal violence and external incursions had tremendous psychological impacts on antebellum Virginia which manifested themselves in concrete responses by Virginians towards both slaves and Northerners.

Abolitionist by aiding slave escapes were carrying on what amounted to psychological warfare against slaveholders.  Abolitionists believed that by assisting escapes they would render “property in slaves…so insecure that it would hasten emancipation.” Writings of the time indicate that slaveholders were very vulnerable to this type of psychological warfare, especially regarding the issue of runaway slaves.  Ultimately the psychological tensions produced by the internal contradictions of slavery as it faced both economic modernization and hostile outside forces found catharsis in secession and war, a war which cost 600,000 lives (six million lives today if the number of dead is calculated as a percentage of population). 

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

A brief look at love, sex, and marriage in the Civil War. The book covers courtship, marriage, birth control and pregnancy, divorce, slavery and the impact of the war on social customs.

The Great Northern Rebellion of 1860 (alternate history)

In 1860, disgruntled secessionists in the deep North rebel against the central government and plunge America into Civil War. Will the Kingdom survive? The land will run red with blood before peace comes again.

Gifts for Dogs and Dog Lovers

The Slave Auction Block

Fueled by speculation, the total value of slave property across the South in 1860 was enormous compared to other sectors of the economy. It was nearly three times larger than the total amount of capital invested in manufacturing throughout the entire country, almost three times the amount invested in all railroads, and seven times the amount invested in all banks. It was three times the value of all livestock, twelve times the value of all farm implements and machinery and forty eight times larger than the total annual expenditures of the Federal government. Slave owning Virginians worried about the loss of this huge investment. Northerners, such as Ambert Remington of New York, foretold that, “…a man that owns ten, twenty, or thirty thousand dollars in slaves, ($150,000-$450,000 in current dollars) will not give them up without a struggle….”

The case of Hickory Hill is illustrative. Hickory Hill, owned by the Wickham family, was a 3,500 acre plantation located in central Hanover County, near Richmond, Virginia. The plantation practiced the most up to date agricultural methods. The most important pillar of the Wickhams’ financial security however, was the increasing value and number of slaves at Hickory Hill. In 1852 there were two hundred slaves valued at $70,000, an average of $350 each at Hickory Hill. In 1860 there were 275 slaves, averaging slightly more than $650 each, worth $180,000. In eight years the value of the Wickham’s slave property increased two and one half times. Low crop yields were not something the Wickhams had to worry about. If the Wickhams had to endure several consecutive years of crop failures, they could always sell some of their slaves. The Wickham family was not alone however, slave owning in Virginia was not only for wealthy planters, but was quite widespread.

Runaway Slaves in Virginia

Slave flight, “running away,” the most common form of slave resistance, called into question the notion of benevolent paternalism and struck particularly hard at the idea that slaves were basically happy.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in the Civil War

A brief look at love, sex, and marriage in the Civil War. The book covers courtship, marriage, birth control and pregnancy, divorce, slavery and the impact of the war on social customs.

Gifts for Dogs and Dog Lovers

Slavery in Northern Virginia

Interior of Slave Pen in Alexandria, Virginia

The vast majority of male slaves worked as farmhands.  Others worked as laborers, waiters, blacksmiths, drivers and servants at inns.  Although the free labor of the slave was the most obvious economic benefit to the owner, slaves were also a liquid asset.  The selling or hiring out of excess slaves to the labor hungry cotton plantations of the Deep South was a source of revenue for many slaveholders in Virginia.  A slave woman was commonly esteemed less for her laboring qualities, and most for those qualities which gave her value as a broodmare.  In 1857, a Richmond newspaper price list quoted the price of a “number one man…extra (fine)” at $1,450 - $1,550.  “Good” at $1,200 - $1,250.  Women sold for twenty percent less.

     To appreciate the hold that slavery had on the sense of economic well-being of both the slave owning and the general populations, it is important to recognize the economic pervasiveness of slavery in Virginia.  In 1860 Virginia had the largest number of slaves of any state in the Union. One out of every three white families in what is modern day Virginia owned slaves, making it similar to such Deep South states as Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia.     A slave worth $1,800 in 1860 would have a current value of some $49,000, the price of a new luxury car.   So, even a modest slave owner would have a large economic stake in perpetuating the institution.

       Even a cursory examination of the writings of the time suggests that slavery led many slave owners not to empathize with the humanity of slaves.   The Alexandria Gazette of January 2, 1850, for example, put reward notices for a runaway slave named Wallace aged twenty one and a missing black horse aged seven years side by side, as though these notices belonged in the same category.

     Non-slave owners, without the motive of economic self-interest blinding them, could recognize the inherent problem of slavery in Virginia.  The Benevolent Society of Alexandria for Ameliorating and Improving the Condition of the People of Color, for example, published a statement stating,

     “These enormous cruelties cannot be practiced among us, without producing a sensible effect upon the morale of the community: for the temptation to participate in so lucrative a traffic, though stained with human blood, is too great to be withstood by all; and even many of those who do not directly participate in it, become so accustomed to its repulsive features, that they cease to discourage it in others.”

Hidden History of Northern Virginia

Women Doctors in the Civil War

A quick look at women doctors and medicine in the Civil War for the general reader. Technologically, the American Civil War was the first “modern” war, but medically it still had its roots in the Middle Ages. In both the North and the South, thousands of women served as nurses to help wounded and suffering soldiers and civilians. A few women served as doctors, a remarkable feat in an era when sex discrimination prevented women from pursuing medical education, and those few who did were often obstructed by their male colleagues at every turn.

Free Blacks in Prince William County Virginia in 1860

 The Robinson Farm

Although only about one tenth the size of the slave population, Virginia had the largest free black population in the Union (some 30,000 plus).  Freedom was the greatest gift a master could bestow upon a slave, but the situation of the free black was only a little better than that of the slave.

Free blacks could not vote in Virginia, they were required to register every three years, and to pay for certificates of freedom.  It was unlawful for free blacks to organize their own schools.  Free blacks were feared and mistrusted.  They were accused of being unwilling to work, of spreading discontent among the slaves, and of causing a disproportionate amount of crime.  Several Virginia governors advocated that all free blacks be forcibly expelled from the state.  The Assembly did not enact this legislation but did pass laws providing for voluntary re-enslavement.

Despite stifling restrictions, many free blacks managed to improve their lot.  A freed slave named Jim Robinson, the illegitimate son of Landon Carter of Pittsylvania, operated a drover’s tavern along the Alexandria and Warrenton Turnpike, near Manassas Junction.  Eventually he was able to purchase his wife and three of his five children as well as buy several hundred acres of land.  He was unable to purchase his sons Alfred and James, both of whom were talented stonemasons, who had been sold south and eventually ended up in New Orleans.  James’ fate is unknown, but Alfred returned to Northern Virginia in 1888.

The Robinson family continued to work their farm after the Civil War.  The farm was sold to the Department of the Interior in 1934 to become part of the Manassas National Battlefield.  Prior to selling their farm, the Robinson family acted as informal stewards of their part of the battlefield, taking Confederate remains to a small cemetery to join an estimated 500 unknown soldiers. The family philosophy was summed up in the phrase, “Just remember, these remains belonged to someone’s son who did not want to die in this manner.”

Hidden History of Northern Virginia 

Runaway Slaves in Virginia

White Virginians wanted to believe that their slaves were basically happy, to the point that they would prefer to serve their masters rather than to choose their own freedom.  

Slave flight, “running away,” the most common form of slave resistance, called into question the notion of benevolent paternalism and struck particularly hard at the idea that slaves were basically happy.

George Washington and Billy Lee

George Washington bought William “Billy” Lee, his brother Frank and two other slaves in 1768.  Billy Lee was eighteen.  Frank became the butler at Mount Vernon, while Billy became Washington’s valet.  Billy also became the keeper of Washington’s pack of hunting dogs. 

Fox hunting was an important part of the social life of Virginia’s gentry, and Billy Lee distinguished himself as a huntsman at Washington’s side.  An eyewitness described Lee during a hunt, “Will, the huntsman, better known in Revolutionary lore as Billy, rode a horse called Chinkling, a surprising leaper, and made very much like its rider, low, but sturdy, and of great bone and muscle. Will had but one order, which was to keep with the hounds; and, mounted on Chinkling ... this fearless horseman would rush, at full speed, through brake or tangled wood, in a style at which modern huntsmen would stand aghast.” 

Washington took Billy Lee to war with him, where he served at Washington’s side for eight years.  After the war, between 1785-1789, Lee injured both of his knees and found himself back at Mount Vernon.  William Lee was freed under the terms of Washington’s will for, “his faithful services during the Revolutionary War”, and received a substantial pension for the remainder of his life and the option of remaining at Mount Vernon.  Lee lived on at Mount Vernon until his death in 1828.

Who Were the Slaves of the Founding Fathers?

Who were the slaves of the Founding Fathers? What do their individual stories tell us about the Founding Fathers as men?

The Graves of Washington's Slaves

Memorial at Mount Vernon (Courtesy Library of Congress)

Here descendants of Washington’s slaves gather at the memorial dedicated to their ancestors.  When Washington died, there were some 317 slaves living at Mount Vernon.  Under the terms of Washington’s will, his slaves (not including forty who were rented or the 154 slaves belonging to Martha Washington) were to be freed upon the death of his wife.  The terms of the will created an almost immediate problem for Martha Washington. The only thing standing between 123 slaves and their freedom was her life. According to a contemporary letter, Martha Washington “did not feel as tho her Life was safe in their [slaves] Hands”. Nor was this fear groundless. The records of colonial Virginia document the trial of 180 slaves tried for poisoning. Martha freed Washington’s slaves within a year after his death. She never freed her own slaves.

Near George Washington’s tomb are the unmarked graves of some 150 slaves, including William “Billy” Lee, Washington’s personal servant during the Revolutionary War.  William Lee was freed in Washington’s will for, “his faithful services during the Revolutionary War,” and received a substantial pension and the option of remaining at Mount Vernon.  Lee lived on at Mount Vernon until his death in 1828.  Another slave buried here, West Ford, is claimed by some to be George Washington’s illegitimate son.  According to Linda Allen Bryant, a direct descendant of West Ford, there is an oral tradition in the Ford family indicating that West Ford was the child of George Washington and a slave named Venus. At the present development stage of DNA science, no direct link to George Washington can be established.  The Mount Vernon Ladies Association has pledged its cooperation with testing as DNA science progresses.

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

Who Were the Slaves of the Founding Fathers?

Halloween Costumes for Dogs

Martha Washington's Slave Half Sister



Martha Washington

Sexual relations between masters and slave women were common during the eighteenth century and later.  Famed Southern diarist Mary Chestnut would observe in the 19^th century, “Like the patriarchs of old our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children--and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody's household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.”

One very prominent Virginian well known to George and Martha Washington was engaged in sexual relations with a slave.  Rumors began to circulate that Thomas Jefferson had sired children by a beautiful young slave at his Monticello plantation named Sally Hemings.  Jefferson’s political opponents made much of the rumors at the time, but over the centuries historians largely dismissed the story which was preserved largely through an oral tradition handed down in the Hemings family.  In 1998, however, the British science journal Nature published the results of a DNA study linking a member of the Jefferson family, not necessarily Thomas Jefferson, to the descendents of Sally Hemings. Subsequently, in January 2000, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, the custodians of Monticello, issued a report concluding that based on all available evidence, Thomas Jefferson was, in all probability, the father of at least one and perhaps all the children of Sally Hemings. 

Author Henry Wiencek, in his 2003 book An Imperfect God: George Washington,His Slaves, and the Creation of America, argues that Martha Washington had a slave half sister, Ann Dandridge Costin, sired by her father John Dandridge.  This supposed half sister was about Martha’s age and lived at Mount Vernon according to Wiencek.  Other historians deny the existence of Martha Washington’s half sister and assert that Wiencek has accepted “lore” as fact.

How Martha Washington Lived

My titles on Amazon

My titles at Barnes & Noble

Download Free Kindle Reading Apps:

The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.

The Domestic Slave Trade in the Old South

The production of cotton in the Deep South demanded labor, and with the termination of the African slave trade, this demand for labor fueled an explosion in the price of slaves and the proliferation of the domestic slave trade.  Virginia became the single largest exporter of slaves to the Deep South exporting some 400,000 slaves during the antebellum period, (1820-29: 76,157, 1830-39: 118,474, 1840-49 : 88,918, 1850-59: 82,573).

Runaway Slaves in Virginia

Slave flight, “running away,” the most common form of slave resistance, called into question the notion of benevolent paternalism and struck particularly hard at the idea that slaves were basically happy.

My titles on Amazon

My titles at Barnes & Noble

Download Free Kindle Reading Apps: 

The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.

Did Slavery Pay? The Economics of Slavery

From : Why the South Fought the Civil War

The production of cotton in the Deep South demanded labor, and with the termination of the African slave trade, this demand for labor fueled an explosion in the price of slaves and the proliferation of the domestic slave trade.  Slavery was a dynamic institution, expanding where the economy was expanding and providing an easily convertible asset in case of need.   The case of Hickory Hill plantation is illustrative.  Hickory Hill, owned by the Wickham family, was a 3,500 acre plantation located in central Hanover County, near Richmond, Virginia.  The plantation practiced the most up to date agricultural methods.  The most important pillar of the Wickhams’ financial security, however, was the increasing value and number of slaves at Hickory Hill.  In 1852 there were two hundred slaves valued at $70,000, an average of $350 each at Hickory Hill.  In 1860 there were 275 slaves, averaging slightly more than $650 each, worth $180,000.  In eight years the value of the Wickham’s slave property increased two and one half times.  Low crop yields were not something the Wickhams had to worry about.  If the Wickhams had to endure several consecutive years of crop failures, they could always sell some of their slaves.(9) The Wickham family was not alone however; as previously noted, slave owning was not only for wealthy planters.(10)

     Fueled by speculation, the total value of slave property across the South in 1860 was enormous compared to other sectors of the economy.  It was nearly three times larger than the total amount of capital invested in manufacturing throughout the entire country, almost three times the amount invested in all railroads, and seven times the amount invested in all banks.  It was three times the value of all livestock, twelve times the value of all farm implements and machinery and forty eight times larger than the total annual expenditures of the Federal government. (11)  Slave owning Southerners worried about the loss of this huge investment.  Northerners, such as Ambert Remington of New York, foretold that, “…a man that owns ten, twenty, or thirty thousand dollars in slaves, ($4-12 million in current dollars) will not give them up without a struggle….” (12)

My titles on Amazon

My titles at Barnes & Noble


Download Free Kindle Reading Apps:
The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.

Midnight Rising: John Brown’s Raid (Book Review)

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War

By Tony Horowitz

A well written and informative book, but one which romanticizes and glorifies terrorism, for that was what John Brown was by the standards of his own day and by the standards of our own.

Brown, a religious fanatic, with a family history of mental illness, whom Horowitz acknowledges many of his close associates thought exhibited signs of insanity, saw himself as God’s instrument on earth. Brown was pledged to violence and declared, “The sins of this country can only be purged with blood.” Wherever Horowitz uses the word “insurgent” substitute “jihadist” and try to conjure up the same sympathy for Brown that Horowitz’s use of the milder term allows.

There is little to admire in Brown’s bloody career, which ranged from hacking five unarmed men to death in Kansas in 1856 to killing unarmed civilians at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 and trying to incite widespread murder and mayhem. Brown was disavowed in his own day by most in the North, including the Republican candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln. Despite Brown’s condemnation by the moderate elements of his own day, Horowitz, embraces the position of the most polarized abolitionists of 1859 in somehow seeing Brown as having performed a service to the nation by providing the “spark that caused the civil war.” The supposition being that only a bloody civil war that resulted in 600,000 deaths (as a percentage of population this would equate to some six million Americans today) could result in the abolition of slavery.

This supposition is wrong however. Another American slave society abolished slavery without firing a shot. The other great slave society of the late 19th century was Brazil. The Brazilian economy depended on slaves especially in mining, cotton production, and sugar cane production. More slaves were imported into Brazil over the course of three centuries than were imported into North America. By the late 19th century slavery was in decline. Slaveowners preferred to pay free immigrant labor from Europe low wages than to keep supporting entire slave communities from cradle to grave, since a significant portion of those communities (the sick, disabled, very young, and very old) were non-productive. By 1871, the sons of all existing slaves were freed. In 1885, all slaves aged over 60 years were freed. Slavery was legally ended nationwide on May 13, 1888, with the government compensating slaveowners for each slave freed. A mere twenty three years after the bloody American Civil War Brazil ended slavery peacefully, perhaps because it did not have fanatics like John Brown to foment fear and violence.

The 1865 Fall of Richmond in Pictures

The last death agonies of the Confederacy captured in pictures.

Gifts for Dogs

The Birth of Racism in America

In the late summer of 1619 a storm beaten Dutch ship (possibly a pirate ship) appeared in the harbor at Jamestown. The ship had nothing to trade except twenty Africans recently taken from a Spanish vessel. An exchange for food was made and the Dutch ship sailed away. It is not clear if the Africans were considered slaves or indentured servants by the English settlers. There was no precedence in England for enslaving a class of people for life and making that status inevitable. It is clear, however, that by 1640, at least one African had been declared a slave. This African was ordered by the court "to serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural life here or elsewhere."

The development of slavery in Virginia set the pattern for the development of slavery throughout the South and laid the foundations for the development of race relations in America.

Although blacks were held in hereditary servitude long before Virginia laws specifically recognized slavery, a large number of Virginia’s blacks worked as servants for a limited term or otherwise earned their freedom just like whites. White and black servants worked together in the fields, shared the same punishments, the same food, and the same living quarters. The most remarkable evidence of a racially open society comes from the records of Northampton County. These records indicate that some twenty nine per cent of the county’s blacks were free and that a least two of these, Francis Payne and Anthony Johnson were planters (Johnson even becoming a slave owner himself).

During the second half of the 17th century, the British economy improved and the supply of British indentured servants declined as poor Britons had better economic opportunities at home. To lure cheap labor to America, terms of indentures became fixed and shorter. By the 1670s Virginia had a large number of restless and relatively poor white men (most of them former indentured servants) threatening the established order of the wealthy and propertied. A popular revolt in 1676, the so called Bacon’s Rebellion, led Virginia planters to begin importing black slaves in large numbers in preference to the more expensive and politically restive white indentured servants.

The increasingly high price of free labor was incompatible with the profitable running of plantations. The landowners turned to slave labor, encouraging the first massive introduction of slaves from Africa in 1698. The new labor force was more controllable because blacks, as a group, were not normally thought to be naturally guaranteed the “rights of Englishmen” accorded to white freemen. In short, the system was to be based purely on force, and Virginia’s laws soon reflected this.



My titles on Amazon

My titles at Barnes & Noble

Download Free Kindle Reading Apps:

The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.

Benjamin Franklin and Slavery

At the age of 81, Benjamin Franklin became the president of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. The society, founded by Philadelphia Quakers was one of the first abolitionist organizations in America.

Franklin had not always been such an ardent abolitionist, and is known to have owned two slaves, George and King, who worked as personal servants.

Benjamin Franklin began life as an apprentice, legally bound to a master for a set term. He did not care for the restrictions and ran away from the master, settling in Philadelphia. As an up and coming businessman, however, Franklin had no problem with the institution of slavery. His newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette regularly ran notices regarding the purchase and sale of slaves.

Franklin’s views gradually changed as he grew older. After about 1770 his writings became progressively more anti-slavery, and in a letter to the London Chronicle he called slavery "a constant butchery of the human species by the pestilential detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men."

By 1789 Franklin had freed his slaves and become a fervent abolitionist.



Link to: Who Were the Slaves of the Founding Fathers?

Who were the slaves of the Founding Fathers? What do their individual stories tell us about the Founding Fathers as men?

A Plot to Kill Martha Washington?

George Washington died on December 14, 1799. At the time of Washington’s death, there were some 317 slaves living on his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia (123 were owned by Washington outright, forty were rented from a neighbor, and 154 belonged to Martha Washington under the term of her first husband’s will). Under the terms of Washington’s will, his slaves (not including the forty who were rented or the slaves belonging to Martha Washington) were to be freed upon the death of his wife. Only one slave, William Lee was freed outright in Washington’s will.


The terms of the will created an almost immediate problem for Martha Washington. The only thing standing between 123 slaves and their freedom was her life. According to a contemporary letter, Martha Washington “did not feel as tho her Life was safe in their [slaves] Hands”. Martha Washington’s fears may or may not have been misplaced, but they certainly reflected the attitudes of slave owners of her day. The closeness of house servants to their masters, for whom they cooked and washed in the very house where the master slept, made the threat of poisoning terrifying. Nor was this fear groundless. The records of colonial Virginia document the trial of 180 slaves tried for poisoning. Martha freed Washington’s slaves within a year after his death. She never freed her own slaves.

Link to: How Martha Washington Lived

Murder and mayhem at Mount Vernon

The Washington Heir

Gifts for Dogs

George Washington's Cook

Hercules

Hercules, a slave at the Mount Vernon plantation, who had been George Washington’s long time cook was summoned to Philadelphia in November 1790 to become now President George Washington’s personal cook. Hercules was a self taught culinary artist, “as highly accomplished a proficient in the culinary art as could be found in the United States,” according to those who sampled his cooking. Washington was well pleased with Hercules and allowed him to make extra money by selling leftovers from the presidential kitchen. This extra money Hercules spent on expensive luxuries and fine clothing. “…his linen was of unexceptional whiteness and quality, then black silk shorts, ditto waistcoat, ditto stockings, shoes highly polished, with large buckles covering a considerable part of the foot, blue cloth with velvet collar and bright metal buttons, a long watch-chain dangling from his fob, a cocked-hat and gold-headed cane completed the grand costume of the celebrated dandy…of the president's kitchen.”

In November 1796, during a visit of the president and his entourage to Mount Vernon, Hercules’ son was caught stealing. Washington suspected that father and son were planning to runaway. When Washington returned to his presidential duties in Philadelphia, the once renowned Hercules was left behind at Mount Vernon reduced to the status of a common laborer on the farm. On February 22, 1797, George Washington’s sixty fifth birthday, Hercules made his bid for freedom, escaping from Mount Vernon forever.

Link to: How Martha Washington Lived

My titles on Amazon

My titles at Barnes & Noble

Gifts for Dog Lovers