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“To Get Quit of Negroes”: George Washington and Slavery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2005

PHILIP D. MORGAN
PHILIP D. MORGAN
Affiliation:
Princeton University.
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Extract

George Washington died much as he lived, stoic, dignified, controlled to the very end. True to form, his last moments, much like his life, saw him surrounded by slaves. At daybreak on the day he died – Saturday, 14 December 1799 – Caroline, a housemaid, bustled into his room to make a fire. Three other slaves fetched the physicians, who ministered to the dying General. Washington's body servant, twenty-four-year-old Christopher, otherwise known as Christopher Sheels, attended his master throughout the long day of his last illness. Indeed, in the afternoon Washington motioned Christopher to take a seat by his bedside as he had been standing throughout his vigil. At the moment of death, blacks outnumbered whites in the room. Caroline, Charlotte, a seamstress, and Molly, a domestic, were all standing near the door, and Christopher was by the bed, while only three whites – Dr. James Craik, his primary physician and old friend; Tobias Lear, his secretary; and Martha Washington, his wife – were present. At Martha's behest, Christopher aroused Lear from his grief by asking him to take care of the General's keys and other personal items which the body servant had taken out of the dead man's pockets. On the day after Washington's death, Frank Lee, the family's mulatto butler, Christopher, and Marcus, another house servant, received new shoes so that they would look presentable at the funeral.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , December 2005 , pp. 403 - 429
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This article, in a slightly different form, was presented as the Journal of American Studies lecture at the British Association for American Studies Annual Conference, Manchester Metropolitan University, in April 2004. The author is grateful for the invitation and the good feedback. In October 2003 he also presented it to a lively Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Seminar at Mount Vernon, organized by Joseph Ellis. He acknowledges the helpful comments of Philander Chase, editor of the Washington Papers, of Joseph Ellis of Mount Holyoke College, and especially of Mary V. Thompson of Mount Vernon's research staff, who is a treasure trove of information on Washington's slaves. Patricia Brady, Scott Casper, Cathy Helier, Peter Henriques, Don Higginbotham, Dennis Pogue, Eva Sheppard Wolf, and Rosemarie Zagarri also provided valuable help at key points. Henry Wiencek kindly sent me an advance copy of his book, with which I disagree at several key points, although it is certainly the most comprehensive study of Washington and slavery to date. I hope to write a companion piece to this essay, exploring Washington's slaves in more depth. My primary debt is, of course, to the modern edition of the Washington Papers, the indispensable mother lode of information on which this essay rests.