Posted on 06/19/2020 7:21:28 AM PDT by 11th_VA
George Washington was a slaveowner and Founding Father who became uneasy with the institution of slavery but provided for the emancipation of his slaves only after his death. Most of his slaves worked on his Mount Vernon estate. They built their own community around marriage and family, and resisted the system by various means, from feigning illness to absconding. As a young planter, Washington demonstrated no qualms about slavery. His first doubts about the institution were economic, prompted when the transition from tobacco to grain crops in the 1760s left him with a costly surplus of slaves. After the American Revolution, he privately expressed support for the abolition of slavery by a gradual legislative process but never spoke publicly on the issue. In the mid-1790s, he considered plans to free his slaves, but his business remained dependent on slave labor. He stipulated in his will that his slaves were to be freed on the death of his wife. (Full article...)
He also would not sell a slave who did not want to be sold. He would not break up families. Eventually, his slaves became a liability to him because he was not involved in trading them, and as they kept multiplying, he had more mouths to feed and clothe.
Sure, before the Wikipedia editors change it back. But at least the screenshots can live forever.
Wow — can I write the biography about MLK?
A slave owner who agonized over freeing his slaves.
He really wanted to do it. But he was afraid that they were unprepared to make their own way in the world and might starve.
Towards the end they were more of a financial burden on him than an asset.
Apparently we all were. Or are. Slave owners that is.
Wikipedia gets worse and worse.
For common topics, it gets dominated by the Leftist mob
For more abstruse topics, like philosophy, it seems to get dominated by very narrow academics who take information in their own particular and bizarre descriptions.
One of the co-founders of Wikipedia has actually admitted that it’s a lost cause. His initial vision of neutrality and objectivity has been totally plowed under by digital activists.
I thought his will liberated his slaves on his own death, not Martha’s (Martha iirc outlived George by 4 years).
So when is the Evergreen State going to officially change its name?
Outrageous that the first words about Georg Washington on his Wiki is “slave owner”.
But when you go back in history, almost any Roman citizen of means had a slave or two.
The Julius Caesar wikipedia entry says nothing about his slaves. But several paragraphs down the page it casually mentions that he 1 million people from Gaul slaves.
Slavery was an accepted way of life for centuries. Automation and technology changed that.
Trump was right. We can’t live as a nation with political correctness.
“Automation and technology...”
Yep. I was taught in 4th grade that the inventions of the internal combustion engine and the cotton gin made the abolition of slavery *possible* for the first time.
We were also taught that Africans had been considered good farm workers because they didn’t sunburn like white people did.
AND p.s. we were taught the US was an agrarian economy which was rapidly transforming to industrialization, but in fact, most white people only farmed their own little subsistence plots or worked as sharecroppers.
In fact, only about 2% of white men owned plantations & slaves.
I learned this stuff in 4th grade.
Tell me about it. Four years ago, I move to sunny Georgia from the Northeast.
And last year the doctor had to cut out a pre-cancerous mole that was growing on my back. I’ve since learned it’s always smart to wear black or dark clothes in the hot sun to block those hazardous rays.
Dermatologists is the idea occupation here.
Sounds like you went to an enlightened school as a 4th grader.
My old school is now an innercity magnet school. Even with dumbed down standard & participation trophies, the students test in the state’s bottom 20 percentile.
Presently it states in the intro, with zero references.
George Washington, a Founding Father of the United States, was a slaveowner. He became uneasy with the institution of slavery but only provided for the emancipation of the people he kept in slavery after his death. Slavery was ingrained in the economic and social fabric of colonial Virginia, and Washington inherited his first ten slaves at the age of eleven on the death of his father in 1743. In adulthood his personal slaveholding grew through inheritance, purchase and natural increase. In 1759, he gained control of dower slaves belonging to the Custis estate as a result of his marriage to Martha Dandridge Custis. Washington’s early attitudes to slavery reflected the prevailing Virginia planter views of the day and he initially demonstrated no moral qualms about the institution. He became skeptical about the economic efficacy of slavery before the American Revolutionary War. Although he expressed support in private for the abolition of slavery by a gradual legislative process after the war, Washington remained dependent on slave labor. By the time of his death in 1799 there were 317 slaves at his Mount Vernon estate, 124 owned by Washington and the remainder managed by him as his own property but belonging to other people.
Washington was a demanding master. He provided his slaves with basic food, clothing and accommodation comparable to general practice at the time, which was not always adequate, and with medical care. In return, he expected them to work diligently from sunrise to sunset over the six-day working week that was standard at the time.
Note that out of 8 references, only 8 are actually linked to a accessible page.
Edit, out of 276 references, only 8 are actually linked to a accessible page.
More Wikinazi fake history.
Internal combustion? Steam power was/is external combustion, but that was the power provider for the industrial revolution.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.