Today America celebrates President’s Day to honor past presidents, but especially George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. New York only recognizes George Washington on his birthday of February 22, 1732 almost three hundred years ago. Gilbert Stuart painted the Father of the Nation as a white man as had countless other artists, however historically many English male colonists sired children with female Africans, because White women couldn’t survive the climate or the summer fevers. Not all of the forefathers were white. They were only painted white. Was George Washington white?
The Virginian owned 123 slaves.
His views on slavery changed through the years.
“Here is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for this abolition of slavery but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by Legislative authority.”
-GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1786
According to mountvernon.com Washington also explored ways to reduce the number of enslaved people at Mount Vernon without selling them. Most ideas involved renting or selling land to finance an emancipation. He was unable to execute any of these plans during his lifetime.
Were it not then, that I am principled against selling negroes, as you would do cattle in the market, I would not, in twelve months from this date, be possessed of one, as a slave.
-GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1794
Only the year before he had a slave woman whipped for refusing to work.
Her name was Charlotte.
There was no good in slavery.
No good in owning slaves.
Washington freed them all at his death in 1799.
Slavery remained the GM of the South until 1865 and thereafter with the Jim Crow laws subjected Africans to enslavement of another kid.
Father of a Nation.
No slave owner can claim that title.
Us against them.
