DID GEORGE WASHINGTON EVER HAVE OR OWN SLAVES?
No, George Washington never owned, had, employed, or did any kind of business in any way with slaves...
As a young boy, George lived on his family's 2000 acre tobacco farm known today as Mount Vernon...
His parents, who owned the farm, did have slaves to work the 2000 acres at the time, it was a big farm and mostly slaves were used to plant, grow, and harvest the tobacco...
There was a neighboring farm of 4000 acres also growing tobacco, that farm was owned by the Custis family, they had a young daughter named Martha...
As a young boy and into his teenage years, George had three hobbies, they were horsemanship, fencing, and dancing...
George excelled in all three of his hobbies, there were not many fencing competitions at the time but he was exceptional at the sport...
George's dancing interests were primarily the typical 1700's ballroom type dancing which he very much enjoyed...
The western square dancing that developed 100 years later in the 1800's is really a sort of hip hop version of the 1700's more formal ballroom dance...
George courted Martha and they did finally marry...
When George's parents passed away, the 2000 acre farm was then handed down to George's older step brother...
When George's older step brother became ill and died relatively young, the 2000 acre tobacco farm and the slaves were then handed down to George...
When George finally did inherit the family farm, he asked Martha if she wanted the slaves, she said she didn't want to have anything to do with owning slaves...
George also didn't want to have anything to do with owning slaves, so upon taking ownership of the farm he immediately released all the slaves and hired paid employees to work the farm...
Martha finally inherited her family's 4000 acre tobacco farm, so George and Martha Washington together now had a 6000 acre tobacco farm...
There were no wholesale tobacco businesses in the colonies, so George had to sell his crops to a British company and he was paid very little because the British looked down on those people living in the colonies...
So, George Washington never had or owned any slaves despite the ignorant claims of the lunatic left politicians of today...
Unfortunately, none of this true history is taught in schools today and for that reason so much of our wonderful history is lost...
In a week or so I'll discuss another interesting personal piece of our great American history...
GZ |
