Not a worry to these people that there is more slavery on the planet now than at any other time in history, and to blazes with the Anglo-Saxon world’s efforts to ban it, right? Hypocrites.
Posted on 02/16/2015 4:36:11 PM PST by dennisw
When he was 11 years old, Washington inherited 10 slaves from his father’s estate. He continued to acquire slaves — some through the death of family members and others through direct purchase. Washington’s cache of enslaved people peaked in 1759 when he married the wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis. His new wife brought more than 80 slaves to the estate at Mount Vernon. On the eve of the American Revolution, nearly 150 souls were counted as part of the property there.
In 1789, Washington became the first president of the United States, a planter president who used and sanctioned black slavery. Washington needed slave labor to maintain his wealth, his lifestyle and his reputation. As he aged, Washington flirted with attempts to extricate himself from the murderous institution — “to get quit of Negroes,” as he famously wrote in 1778. But he never did.
Washington developed a canny strategy that would protect his property and allow him to avoid public scrutiny. Every six months, the president’s slaves would travel back to Mount Vernon or would journey with Mrs. Washington outside the boundaries of the state. In essence, the Washingtons reset the clock. The president was secretive when writing to his personal secretary Tobias Lear in 1791: “I request that these Sentiments and this advise may be known to none but yourself & Mrs. Washington.”
The president went on to support policies that would protect slave owners who had invested money in black lives. In 1793, Washington signed the first fugitive slave law, which allowed fugitives to be seized in any state, tried and returned to their owners. Anyone who harbored or assisted a fugitive faced a $500 penalty and possible imprisonment.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Author teaches Black Studies at University of Deleware...Professor at http://www.udel.edu/csd/people/faculty-scholars.html
Can we blame the crusades?
If it was such a “murderous institution”, there wouldn’t have been so many. Never mind their cousins back in Africa were making a fortune off the trade.
There are black people today who are enslaved in Mother Africa. Why don’t liberal focus more attention on this problem where it still manifests itself and people are still personally affected by it?
Gotta appreciate how the beheading Achmeds picked up on Zero's "misspeak", using the term crusades as they did their whacking.
I'm glad I have trademarked my "Phockobama@gmail.com" junk addy....
Martha was my great great great grandmother by marriage. She was a young widow when she married George and took the family inheritance with her. George got it all, slaves, acreage (about 10% of Va on the eastern shore) and the family wealth. We had by then been acquiring property since 1660. This marriage made George the wealthiest landowner in the colonies.
As is typical the NYT has it all wrong. They are a bunch of yellow muckrakers, nothing more.
Just for the record, Washington also had quite a few WHITE Indentured servants.
The plight of the indentured servant was worse than the slave as the “owner” knew that when the terms of indenture were fulfilled, the servant got freedom. So the owners often worked the indentured ones for all they could before they were free.
Don't know where the FEB came from, but she is quite the progressive ...
Washington owned slaves, therefore, it is necessary for all of us, in order to redress this situation, to dissolve all our institutions and enslave ourselves. All Caucasians will be servants to the entire third world.
Should have picked our own cotton.
Who is most upset about slavery in the colonys?...
MULATTOS... like the author... i.e. Obama, Holder, Jesse JAckson..
They are desperate to prove their blackness....
Most so-called “blacks” are in fact tan or off white..
So much.... they buy total bull sperm about slavery...
and the conditions of the times.. inherited from King George..
These articles are meant for ne thing - to delegitimize the United States.
...and yet today - Islam is enslaving Africans left and right - and the ones they don’t - they kill....
Where’s the protests and “Black Lives Matter” people discussing what is going on RIGHT NOW IN AFRICA???
These liberals make me sick...they tout events so far removed as if they are relevant today...instead of looking right in the face of the present to deal with the reality of right now...
nonsense idiots....ramblings....nothing more...
Yes, slavery was alive and well in America 180 years ago and George Washington owned some. Still, the descendants of those slaves live far better lives in America than people in Africa.
Washington was a man of his times. What, exactly, is the author’s point?
Gee, did any Democrats own slaves? I wonder...
as if she was one of 700,000 who perished in our Civil War
” Martha was my great great great grandmother by marriage.”
Interesting.
” As is typical the NYT has it all wrong”
Their stock in trade.
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