During nearly eight-and-a-half years of service as commander of the Continental Army, Washington was, with the exception of one brief visit, absent from Mount Vernon and removed from the direct supervision that he considered essential to the successful management of labor and farming on a Virginia estate. After he accepted the commission as commander in June 1775, Washington depended on his long-time farm manager, Lund Washington, to assume greater responsibility for the operation of his estate. As much as he disliked turning over supervision of Mount Vernon, Washington had more faith in his cousin, who had over ten years’ experience on the estate, than he could ever have had with the “common hands” that he considered the only alternative, and he praised Lund for his fidelity and hard work, traits he seldom attributed to overseers. After three years away from Virginia, and anticipating several more years before he returned, Washington in February 1778 wrote from Valley Forge to assure Lund that his care of the estate was the only thing that made it tolerable to be absent. Fearful that something would “induce you to leave my business, whilst I, in a manner, am banished from home,” Washington offered to increase Lund’s wages. Washington was confident that Lund understood his vision for farming at Mount Vernon. “To go on in the improvement of my Estate in the manner heretofore described to you—fulfilling my plans—and keeping my property together, are the principal objects I have in view during these troubles.” No one who worked for Washington ever completely escaped his criticism, and before he returned to Mount Vernon, he severely chastised Lund for failing to send more regular accounts of the estate’s business and for his poor judgment in boarding a British naval vessel anchored off Mount Vernon in 1781. Through most of his long absence, however, Washington trusted Lund and confided in him about the most sensitive matters as he came to insist that the management of his private estate reinforce his public reputation.1
Despite his experience and his knowledge of the estate, Lund was at least initially overwhelmed by the new responsibility and his perception of the demands from Washington. During the first winter away from Mount Vernon, Washington expected the work of the estate to continue with little interruption, and he sent detailed instructions for new improvements. Lund did not understand how he could oversee the transplanting of cherry trees, the replanting of a vineyard, and the clearing of swampland while he was attempting to manage the construction of a fence around the pasture, the preparation of flax for weaving, and the threshing of harvested wheat. At the same time, Lund directed the work on the expansion and redesign of the Mansion House, including the making of bricks and hauling of stones for the chimneys. His frustration fell on the enslaved laborers at the Home House farm, whom he characterized as lazy or too old for work, while others were incapacitated by injury. Lund also assumed responsibility for many of Washington’s business affairs, including the ongoing efforts to recover debts owed by the Mercer family and the collection of rents from tenants. Although Lund claimed that he wrote every week, Washington, as he had during every previous absence from his estate, demanded ever more frequent and detailed reports from his manager.2
Whenever Martha Washington was in residence at Mount Vernon, Lund deferred to her direction, as well. Washington regularly conferred with his wife about the estate’s business and entrusted her with management of the household accounts in his absence. In the first years of the war, Martha distributed the cash that Lund used to pay for the daily expenses of the estate, and Lund delivered all sums paid into Washington’s account to her just as soon as he was able to count the money. She held the keys to Washington’s closely guarded study and to his even more restricted desk, and Lund relied on her to provide important business documents to him. Although Martha left the keys in Lund’s custody when she went away, Lund was uncomfortable with the privilege. He told Washington he declined to look in the desk or other parts of the study without her presence. At times, Lund seemed to consider Martha one supervisor too many. With barely disguised condescension, he reported to Washington the repeated times that Martha was unable to find a document or left business correspondence unanswered. He complained that “Mrs Washingtons Charitable disposition increases in the same proportion with her meat House,” leaving him with insufficient food for the laborers in the harvest fields. After Martha began to spend winters with her husband at the army’s encampment, Lund assumed control over the distribution of the household cash.3
Little would be routine about managing the Mount Vernon estate and Washington’s properties during the Revolutionary War. As early as October 1775, Lund prepared to defend Mount Vernon against a possible British raid and a reported plot to kidnap Martha Washington. While Martha organized her husband’s papers and books for safekeeping, Lund searched for a secure storage location away from the Potomac shoreline. He assured Washington that fifty well-armed men could defeat a raiding party of four times that number if it attempted to scale the steep hill below the Mansion House. In the event of a British attack, Lund, if he had the muskets, “woud endeavour to find the men Black or White, that woud at least make them pay dear for the attempt.” When in January 1776 rumors spread of a threatened British attack near Alexandria, Lund predicted that a hundred men would come from throughout Fairfax and the surrounding counties to defend Washington’s estate. Already, upon hearing of the threat, William Stevens had crossed the ice-covered Potomac from Maryland, prepared to defend Washington’s property. (Stevens also came to collect his wages for recent work on Washington’s lands in the Ohio country.)4
Lund faced another potential threat to the security of the estate and his authority over its labor force when Virginia’s last royal governor, Lord Dunmore, in November 1775 issued a proclamation offering freedom to any slave or indentured servant who left a rebel’s possession to serve with the British Army. In the spring and summer of 1775, Dunmore’s repeated threat to emancipate slaves in Virginia had alarmed whites in the colony and beyond, and persuaded slaves and servants to join his force. Among the white servants who fled to Dunmore was Joseph Smith, an English-born painter indentured to Washington. Smith ran off in the summer of 1775, while working under the supervision of Washington’s brother-in-law, Fielding Lewis. Lund and Lewis advised that it would be impossible to recover Smith from Dunmore, but Lund assured him that “if he comes up here and indeavours to Land at mt Vernon Raising the rest, I will shoot him, that will be some Satisfaction.” After Smith was wounded and taken prisoner by Virginia forces, Lund advised Lewis to sell the servant to the backcountry “after Whipg him at a Publick whiping Post.”5
By early December, Lund was more concerned about the impact of the “much dreaded proclamation” on other indentured servants and slaves. “What effect it will have upon those sort of people I cannot tell—I think if there was no white Servts in this family I shoud be under no apprehensition about the Slaves.” A hired craftsman working on the redesign of the Mansion House confided in Lund that nearly all the indentured servants would leave if they could make their escape. Lund acknowledged that “Liberty is sweet,” and promised Washington that he would make an example of anyone who tried to create unrest. A month later, he reported that the servants behaved as well as usual. “As to the Negroes I have not the least dread of them.” Washington made no reference to the bound laborers on his own estate, but he was far more fearful than Lund that slaves in Virginia would join “that Arch Traitor to the Rights of Humanity, Lord Dunmore.” He warned that Dunmore “will become the most formidable Enemy America has … if some expedient cannot be hit upon to convince the Slaves and Servants of the Impotency of His designs.” In particular, it was the possibility of slaves joining the British forces that convinced Washington that it was necessary for Dunmore to be “instantly crushd, if it takes the force of the whole Colony to do it.” Washington told John Hancock, then president of the Continental Congress, that the fate of America depended on the removal of Dunmore from Virginia.6
Following Dunmore’s Proclamation, as many as a thousand enslaved men, women, and children sought refuge with the British forces, and many of the men fought in the Ethiopian Regiment organized by Dunmore. Most of the slaves who fled to the British were from the lower Tidewater, many of them maritime laborers, but few from as far away as Mount Vernon had any realistic chance of reaching Dunmore’s protection. Through most of the war, intermittent British raids into the Chesapeake, including the lower Potomac, and the passage of Sir William Howe’s fleet to the head of the bay in August 1777 did not directly affect Mount Vernon, but any appearance in the region of British forces usually attracted slaves seeking refuge from other estates in the Chesapeake. On the rare occasions that British ships or troops came near Mount Vernon before 1781, they offered a chance for servants and slaves to escape. Lund’s fears about the indentured servants proved justified in July 1776, when three servants from Mount Vernon went off with the HMS Roebuck, which was part of Dunmore’s fleet looking for provisions along the Potomac. As isolated as the incident was, the flight of the servants, like the widely circulated reports of the slaves who escaped to Dunmore and the British forces, demonstrated how quickly war could open previously unimaginable paths to freedom for the enslaved.7
From his encampment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Washington in the summer of 1775 instructed Lund to prepare the estate for the possibility of a prolonged conflict that would disrupt all familiar commerce. The Continental Association, in effect since the previous December, prohibited the importation of British manufactures and British-traded goods, making it imperative that the spinners on the estate increase their output. The production of cloth, most of it distributed to the enslaved laborers, would be a central enterprise of the estate throughout the war years, diverting labor and requiring expanded cultivation of the flax used in the weaving workshop. As spinning wheels became increasingly scarce, Lund hastened to buy more and soon had nine working. Enslaved carpenters made hemp brakes, formerly imported from England. Lund set what he called “a parcel of Little people”—enslaved children—to spinning, only to complain that their work was slow and awkward. By January 1776 the spinners had enough thread to make 150 yards of linen, and by year’s end, William Keaton, the hired weaver, had supervised the enslaved spinners and weavers in the manufacture of more than 750 yards of woolen and linen cloth. Lund, however, complained that Keaton did “not weave fast enough for our family.” By 1779, another hired weaver, Hugh Archer, was overseeing the weaving of cotton sheeting and tablecloths as well as coarse woolens and linen, yet still these home manufactures never met all of the estate’s needs. The hired tailor, Andrew Judge, used the woven fabric to make clothes for enslaved laborers and provided the enslaved house servants with livery suits similar to those formerly imported from Great Britain.8
The enforcement of the Continental Association’s provision for nonexportation of American commodities began September 10, 1775, closing off the most profitable markets for flour from Mount Vernon’s mill. In anticipation of the export ban, which he had strongly supported, Washington in August 1775 directed Lund to cease buying wheat from neighboring growers, and he expected a prolonged decline in sales of the grain on which he and so many Virginia planters had come to depend. When his brother Samuel proposed buying a gristmill in the fall of 1775, Washington asked incredulously, “Have you considered the times? where are you to get a Market for anything you raise?” Washington encouraged Lund to continue sowing wheat at his estate, and even to undertake experiments in newly prepared fields, but crop yields fell precipitously under Lund’s management. Washington and Lund discussed selling wheat and corn to traders in New England or in the French islands of the Caribbean, and Washington delegated such decisions to Lund, who could respond to local opportunities as they appeared.9
From 1773 to 1775, the last three years in which Washington supervised the cultivation of wheat, the estate produced on average more than 5,500 bushels a year; in 1776 and again in 1777, the combined plantations at Mount Vernon delivered to the mill fewer than 1,900 bushels. In 1778 and 1779, the crop was reduced to several hundred bushels, and some plantations produced no marketable wheat. In 1776, Lund reported that a weevil had begun to destroy wheat in Fairfax County, and three years later, more out of desperation than any realistic expectation, he insisted “there surely must be an End to the Fly” that continued to destroy wheat. Without Washington’s careful supervision of ditching and draining, fields were often too wet to plow or to sow. Lund admitted that “it gives me Real concern and uneasiness, that we are mak[in]g nothing—all our Wheat destroyd, our Mill idle, and but a short Crop of Corn.” When wheat prices rose in 1778, Lund had little to sell and found the most recent crop worse than those of previous years.10
Early in the war, Lund thought it strange to pay the miller high wages while the mill stood idle, but the miller, William Roberts, had a signed contract with Washington, and he was, all agreed, a remarkably skilled miller and millwright. By late summer 1778, after the succession of miserable wheat crops, Lund asked Washington if they should consider replacing Roberts with someone who would work for lower wages, perhaps someone with “a more Happy disposition.” Lund added that “Roberts has Faults—he is fond of Drinkg too much & when in Liquor is apt to be ill natured,” and that he spent much of his time trading horses, which he then pastured at Washington’s expense. Roberts delivered to Washington his own version of his management of the mill, and, whether because of that representation or Lund’s acknowledgment that few millers were as good as Roberts, he was still in place as miller and millwright when business revived following the war.11
To compensate for the diminished crops, Lund resumed the purchase of wheat, and the mill produced enough flour to sell to merchants as well as supply the estate. Lund purchased over nine hundred bushels of wheat from area farmers in 1777, and another four hundred in 1778. Most of the flour sales were to merchants in Alexandria, where Josias Watson purchased the largest amount—over a thousand barrels between 1777 and 1783—but the volume remained a mere fraction of prewar sales. Watson and other Alexandria merchants, including Robert Hooe, also purchased corn from the Mount Vernon plantations. Corn production fared better than wheat, but much of it went to provisioning enslaved and hired laborers on the estate and to fattening hogs and cattle.12
After the nearly complete failure of the wheat crop in 1778, Washington, stating the obvious, told Lund he could not support himself if he made nothing. For several years Lund considered reintroducing tobacco, and asked the enslaved overseers, Morris and Davy Gray, to prepare land for the old staple at the plantations under their supervision. Although Washington encouraged tobacco at other plantations, as well, Lund expected a poor crop. Lund also needed to reserve the same “Strong Land” required for tobacco for growing the flax that was essential for supplying the estate with cloth. When Morris finally grew tobacco, which he did for several years toward the end of the war, he and the field laborers produced no more than could be used to pay taxes and church duties. At Washington’s suggestion, Lund explored the production of saltpeter made from barnyard litter, and he paid “a Dutch Man” for staying six days and instructing him in the art of distilling whiskey. When Lund read about New Englanders making rum and molasses from cornstalks, he reasoned that this use of a readily available commodity could produce more revenue than tobacco. By August 1778, he had overseen the construction of a mill for pressing cornstalks and put up kettles to boil the juice for molasses, but in the next month he abandoned the experiment as too expensive. Such projects, arising out of wartime austerity, showed Lund to be resourceful and inventive in searching for ways to supply the estate and to keep the enslaved laborers productively employed, but they introduced no sustainable production for market.13
Lund took advantage of isolated opportunities to sell the estate’s produce to armies. In 1776, two Virginia regiments purchased corn; over the next two years Lund sold corn, shad, and bacon for the use of the Continental Army. With salt in short supply, Lund found a way to cure more fish with brine and smoke so that he could meet the demand of the army and still supply the enslaved at Mount Vernon, recognizing that “our people being so long acustom’d to have Fish when ever they Wanted woud think it very hard to have none at all.” When soldiers of the French army came through Northern Virginia in 1781, they purchased corn and livestock from Mount Vernon.14
A more lucrative wartime enterprise was the joint investment made by Washington, John Parke Custis, and Lund in a mercantile ship, fitted out and armed under the direction of Alexandria merchants Jenifer & Hooe and commissioned to intercept British vessels. Together, Washington and his partners owned a one-eighth interest in the privateer General Washington, which after its launch in April 1778 carried a small amount of corn from Mount Vernon on its first voyage to Nantes. The partners invested not to market their own crops, however, but to profit from the capture of British prize ships and their cargoes, several of which the General Washington brought into United States ports. After returning from France, the ship made voyages to St. Eustatius, Amsterdam, and Newport, providing varying profits for the investors. Washington also bought goods out of the return cargoes, including fine women’s clothing and large quantities of rum, sugar, and salt from St. Eustatius. The proceeds from these voyages could never offset the decline in the sale of agricultural produce or the loss of other sources of revenue. Neither was Washington able to rely on the once steady rental income from his lands in Fauquier, Loudoun, and counties beyond the Blue Ridge. Some tenants refused to pay rents as long as the war closed markets, and others were emboldened by a rent strike led in part by James Cleveland, formerly an overseer at Mount Vernon and more recently the manager of Washington’s effort to settle lands in the Ohio country.15
The organization of the plantations at Mount Vernon, and also the residences of the slaves, remained largely unchanged during the war, except that the Mill Plantation, at which Davy Gray had served as overseer since 1770, ceased to be organized as a separate unit by 1778. Gray, who became overseer of the Muddy Hole Plantation, and the other enslaved overseer, Morris, continued to receive small cash payments in acknowledgment of their responsibilities, and the first wartime payment was presented to Morris by “Order of Mrs Washington.” Morris and Gray also received supplemental provisions of pork, as provided to white overseers, and Lund purchased for each of them a pair of leather breeches. Soon after Lund assumed management of the estate, he found many of the slave cabins to be in such derelict condition that he ordered the carpenters to make them habitable for the winter, and Washington directed that some new cabins be constructed. When the estate weavers could not keep up with the need for clothing to distribute to the enslaved, Washington encouraged Lund to purchase the least expensive linen, “without making the poor Negros suffer too much,” although he made the distribution of provisions conditional on what he expected in return. The enslaved laborers, he wrote, “certainly have a just claim to their Victuals and cloaths, if they make enough to purchase them.”16
As the war continued, Lund came to understand his service to Washington and his protection of the interests of the estate as a kind of civic responsibility. He declined when Washington proposed to increase his salary, and later refused another offer to compensate for the depreciation of currency as the war went on for years. He assured Washington that he would never leave his employ or expect additional pay “while you are encountering every danger and difficulty, at the Hazard of your life and repose, give[in]g up all domestick happiness, to serve the publick and me among them.” Although he thought of establishing his own home, “all this I will forego and endeavour the best I can for you whilst you are away.” So too did Lund recognize that his management of the estate and its business would affect the public reputation of General Washington. He assured Washington “I find my self equally anxious to discharge a Debt against you, as I am to pay one of my own.”17
Washington encouraged Lund in his consideration of the public appearance of ostensibly private business dealings. By 1779, Washington was especially distressed about the impact of depreciated currency on standing financial obligations. He feared that his refusal to accept paper money could by his closely watched example injure public credit, but he also found himself the great loser when debts contracted before the war could be discharged at the face value of the currency. These personal losses deepened his pessimism about the decline in public virtue as manifested in “the infamous practices of Speculators, monopolizers, & all that tribe of gentry.” As Lund reported, even the miller William Roberts was demanding that his wages be adjusted to make up for the depreciation. Washington insisted that “No Man has, nor no man will go further to serve the Public than myself—if sacraficing my whole Estate would effect any valuable purpose I would not hesitate one moment in doing it.” He recognized that, if he alone honored the depreciated currency in settling old debts, “it is not serving the public but enriching individuals and countenancing dishonesty.” Since he was too far removed from Virginia to understand prevailing business practices, Washington suggested that Lund “pursue the advice of, some sensible Whigs.” Although his inclination was to refuse such payments in future, Washington would agree to accept the paper money for old debts if the others believed it would advance “the great cause we are imbarked in.”18
The tension between Washington’s private interest and his regard for public reputation was never greater than when he approached the most dramatic change in his estate management during the Revolutionary War. In the early months of 1778, Washington for the first time considered selling slaves for financial gain. Even more significant was his professed desire to lessen his reliance on enslaved labor, or as he put it, “to get quit of Negroes.” Washington asked himself whether, in the event of American victory in the war, it would be in his interest “to have negroes, and the Crops they will make; or the sum they will now fetch and the interest of the money.” As a financial calculation, he had no doubt of the advantage to be gained by selling slaves, assuming he sold them after the devaluation of currency had reached its lowest level. His greater misgiving was selling slaves at a public venue.19
Over many months in dialogue with Lund, Washington struggled to define the conditions under which he would be willing to sell slaves. He strongly preferred private sale or the barter of slaves for one of the adjoining parcels of land he was so eager to add to Mount Vernon. Washington wanted to sell only slaves who gave their consent, and he did not want any sale to result in the separation of husband and wife, or parents and children. Lund agreed he would attempt to negotiate a private sale or an exchange of land for slaves, but he reminded Washington the most advantageous way to sell would be at a public sale. He also discovered that the enslaved had their own strategies for avoiding or delaying sale. By early April 1778, Lund had reached an agreement for the sale of Bett to a man from Botetourt County, “but her Mother appeard to be so uneasy about it, and Bett herself made such promises of amendment, that I coud not Force her to go with the Man.” When Lund negotiated the sale of Phillis to another man, he could “not get her to utter a Word of English,” and the buyer left, thinking she could not speak. Lund then concluded that he would be unlikely to sell slaves unless he held a public sale with no regard for the consent of the individuals offered for sale.20
Months later, a frustrated Lund twice implored Washington to “tell me in plain terms, whether I shall sell your Negroes at Publick sale or not, & how many of them & indeed Who.” After a hasty note that he feared did not reflect the care and thought required of so important a subject, Washington in late February 1779 sent Lund his lengthiest comments about the sale of slaves, but still he hesitated to make a decision. If Lund had not acted as a consequence of the earlier message, Washington asked for more time to “revolve the matter in my mind more fully,” and “to draw some more precise conclusions than at present.” The message arrived too late; more than a month earlier, Lund had recorded the cash sale of nine slaves for £2,303, far less than the amount Washington had anticipated. Included in the sale were Bett and Phillis, as well as Orford, who had recently returned to Mount Vernon with other slaves who had remained in Pennsylvania following their evacuation from the Ohio country three years earlier. Another of the nine, Jack, was probably the man of that name who had been in Pennsylvania with Orford. Lund left no indication of how the five women and four men were selected for sale, although in a letter now lost he had referenced individuals who might be sold. Bett’s earlier promise of “amendment” likely referred to some behavior that had drawn the disapproval of Lund, but the long discussions of the potential sale had focused largely on prices and the terms of the sale, with no mention of removing individuals Lund considered troublesome.21
When Washington told Lund that every day he longed “more & more to get clear of ” slaves, he did not explain his intent beyond the immediate financial calculation. On the eve of the Revolutionary War, Washington had shown neither an inclination to reduce his investment in enslaved laborers nor any reluctance to participate in public slave sales, such as the widely advertised Mercer sale he managed in November 1774. As late as 1775, he was purchasing slaves and finding new ways to extract their labor on his lands to the west. In those ventures and at Mount Vernon, Washington found enslaved laborers to be far more reliable workers than the indentured servants, whom he considered a much higher risk of running away or disrupting other laborers. The diversification of the estate had created work for all but the youngest and oldest of the enslaved at Mount Vernon, but the disruptions of the war had greatly lessened the demand for labor. The first discussion of slave sales came as Washington recognized that his estate was barely able to support itself. Yet his expressed wish “to get quit of Negroes,” not just sell a group of slaves for needed cash, arose from something more than wartime expediency.22
Washington’s desire to “be clear of” or “to get quit of” the enslaved at his estate was in 1779 more of a sentiment than a plan, but its expression alone indicated a striking new perspective on slavery that Washington had gained since entering service in the Continental Army. As commander of the army, Washington was at the center of unanticipated discussions about the potential role of free Blacks and of slaves in the military conflict with Great Britain. After he and his council of generals in October 1775 unanimously agreed to prohibit the enlistment of enslaved men in the Continental Army and by a large majority agreed to prohibit the reenlistment of free Blacks, Washington two months later authorized the reenlistment of free Blacks after learning “that the free negroes who have Served in this Army, are very much disatisfied at being discarded.” Faced with a choice that would recur throughout the war, Washington also recognized that the alternative to the enlistment of free Blacks and slaves was the risk that the African American recruits might join the British forces to secure the advantages or freedom they expected from military service. In 1778, Washington acceded to requests from military and civilian leaders in Rhode Island who proposed to organize a battalion of free Blacks and slaves, and several other states followed with the enlistment of both free Blacks and slaves. Discussion of the enlistment of slaves, and the provisions for their emancipation at the end of their service, exposed Washington to new antislavery arguments that emerged during the Revolution. The most impassioned appeal for the enlistment of slaves came from Washington’s highly trusted aide-de-camp, John Laurens, who spoke with Washington about his proposal to organize a battalion of slaves from his native South Carolina. Laurens argued that bringing slaves into military service would “advance those who are unjustly deprived of the Rights of Mankind to a State which would be a proper Gradation between abject slavery and perfect Liberty.”23
Washington had no expectation of improving the condition of the enslaved or extending rights to them when he considered sales as the first step toward disengagement with slavery on his estate. Rather, he assured himself that “if these poor wretches are to be held in a state of slavery, I do not see that a change of masters will render it more irksome,” as long as families stayed together. (Washington certainly knew that this was not true. He knew that some slaveholders were far more brutal than others and that no sale agreement could ensure that family units remained intact.) In his protracted indecision about selling slaves, Washington was concerned above all with the appearances of any such sale. His protection of slaves from the destruction of immediate family ties or forced removal was not entirely new; Washington in 1773 had agreed not to send an enslaved man to his Pennsylvania lands when that unnamed individual protested leaving Fairfax County, and recently Lund had on Washington’s behalf sold a man who wished to live closer to his family in Maryland. But by 1778 what had been an occasional regard for the pleas of individual slaves became a principle that Washington aspired to observe in his management of enslaved laborers. He was even more insistent that he not be involved in the public sale of slaves. The terms and conduct of a slave sale would thus ensure that his public reputation reflected his determination to disassociate himself from what he saw as some of the worst cruelties of slavery.24
Although Washington disingenuously claimed that the social ramifications of enlisting slaves was “a subject that has never employed much of my thoughts,” he believed that arming slaves presented a threat to American military success and ultimately to the property of slaveholders throughout the theater of war. His greatest fear was that if the states organized battalions of slaves, the British would do the same, leading to a contest to see “who can Arm fastest.” Washington also worried that the enlistment and subsequent emancipation of enslaved men would “render Slavery more irksome to those who remain in it” and “be productive of Much discontent in those who are held in servitude.” When he recommended that the army hire Blacks as wagoners, he added that any hires “ought however to be freemen, for slaves could not be sufficiently depended on. It is to be apprehended they would too frequently desert to the enemy to obtain their liberty; and for the profit of it, or to conciliate a more favorable reception, would carry off their waggon-horses with them.” Washington, like many of his officers, believed the British always held the greater appeal for slaves hoping to escape bondage, and he would see dramatic evidence of that when the British sailed up the Potomac in 1781.25
The HMS Savage anchored a quarter mile from Mount Vernon in April 1781 after the ship had taken on board more than thirty slaves seeking refuge from the estate of Robert Carter in Westmoreland County. The captain, Thomas Graves, sent a party ashore seeking provisions from Mount Vernon, but Lund initially rebuffed the crew. While anchored near Mount Vernon, Graves recorded that thirteen slaves, followed two days later by another five, reached the shelter of the Savage. All but one of the individuals had escaped from Mount Vernon. Lund, apparently hoping both to recover the slaves and to save the estate’s buildings from destruction, accepted the captain’s invitation to meet on board, and he later offered the ship a large supply of provisions. Lafayette, by then an ardent opponent of slavery, wrote Washington from Alexandria that news of the escape of “Many Negroes” from Mount Vernon did not concern him “as I little Value those Concerns,” but he was extremely disturbed that Lund, “who in Some Measure Represents you at your House,” would supply the same British sailors who just a few days before had burned several houses on the Maryland shore. Washington confided in Lafayette that Lund had mistakenly seen himself as “more the trustee & guardian of my property than the representative of my honor.”26
Before Lafayette’s letter arrived, Washington received a full report from Lund, to whom he sent the harshest reprimand. “To go on board their Vessels—carry them refreshments—commune with a parcel of plundering Scoundrels—and request a favor by asking the surrender of my Negroes, was exceedingly ill-judged,” he wrote. “It would have been a less painful circumstance to me, to have heard, that in consequence of your non compliance with their request, they had burnt my House, & laid the Plantation in Ruins.” Washington had little doubt that unless a superior naval force arrived in the Chesapeake, the British incursion would result “in the loss of all my Negroes, and in the destruction of my Houses—but I am prepared for the event.” He would, however, make every effort to recapture the slaves who had absconded with the British, and in that he would rely on Lund, who owned several of the slaves.27
The escape of the seventeen slaves enumerated by Lund marked an unprecedented scale of resistance by the enslaved at Mount Vernon. Only in 1761, when four African-born slaves ran away, had Washington faced an organized group flight from his estate. He had understood most of the instances of individual slaves running away as attempts to hide from likely punishment, to visit family members, or to avoid forced relocation away from family and community. In 1781, however, Washington experienced at his own estate what he knew had happened wherever British forces went throughout the United States during the war—the escape of enslaved people, often in large groups, with the aim of securing lasting freedom under the protection of the British. The greatest flight of slaves in Virginia took place in the first half of 1781 when incursions by Benedict Arnold, Lord Cornwallis, and the naval force that included the Savage offered several thousand slaves the chance to seek their freedom. Those who fled from Mount Vernon represented the diversity of the enslaved population on the estate. Frederick, “an overseer and valuable,” was forty-five and had been a foreman at River Plantation since 1765. Gunner, the same age and also “valuable,” was a brickmaker brought to Mount Vernon in 1774. Among the other tradesmen were Strephon, a cooper, and Wally, a weaver. The African-born Sambo had been among the slaves Washington sent to work on his lands in Pennsylvania. Peter, Lewis, and Frank were each described by Lund as “an old man.” Three women—Deborah, Esther, and Lucy—joined the larger group of men. Several of the men were still “lads.”28
Many of the thousands of Virginia slaves who escaped in 1781 followed the British army to Yorktown where, during the final days of the siege and in the face of dwindling provisions, Cornwallis ordered them expelled from the army’s encampment. Hundreds died of starvation and disease. The terms of capitulation allowed for Americans to repossess property, including slaves, held by the British, and Lucy and Esther were retaken at Yorktown. Six of the men who found refuge on the Savage were recaptured in Philadelphia; others from Mount Vernon may have been among the dead at Yorktown. The recaptured slaves were returned to Mount Vernon, where in 1786 Esther was a field laborer at River Plantation, Sambo worked as a carpenter, and Gunner was a laborer at the Home House farm. At least three of the slaves who fled from Mount Vernon traveled with the British to New York, and embarked for Nova Scotia in 1783. Henry Washington, called Harry by Lund, had been enslaved at Mount Vernon since 1765 and later moved from Canada to Sierra Leone, where he became a farmer.29
As the British prepared to evacuate New York in spring 1783, Washington made a personal appeal for the return of American-owned slaves in accordance with the terms of the provisional Treaty of Paris. The commanding British officer, Sir Guy Carleton, refused to comply, telling Washington that the Blacks freed by British proclamations were no longer property as defined by the treaty. To deliver up the former slaves to possible execution and severe punishment, Carleton added, “would be a dishonorable Violation of the public Faith pledged to the Negroes.” After his conference with Carleton, Washington conceded to Virginia governor Benjamin Harrison that “the Slaves which have absented from their masters will never be restored to them,” but even into his service as president, Washington would continue to seek British compensation for the lost slaves. Whatever reservations he had about owning slaves and however much sympathy he had for the antislavery appeals of Laurens and Lafayette, Washington consistently defended the property rights of slaveholders and endeavored to recover any slaves who escaped from his estate or household. In addition to his official representation to Carleton, Washington was among the slaveholders who hired a Fairfax County neighbor to travel to New York to search for escaped slaves.30
Throughout his long absence, Washington’s attention frequently turned to Mount Vernon with thoughts of the estate he hoped to reshape after the return of peace. Along with frequent instructions for Lund about routine cultivation on the plantations and the care of livestock, he also guided his manager in the design and improvement of the agricultural landscape. When the framing of the expanded Mansion House was nearing completion in the summer of 1776, Washington chose the trees to be planted in groves on either end of the house. He wanted locust trees at the north end, while the south end was to be planted with “all the clever kind of Trees (especially flowering ones) that can be got.” Crab apple, poplar, dogwood, and other native trees would be “interspersed here and there with ever greens such as Holly, Pine, and Cedar, also Ivy.” Both ends were to be planted to frame views to the working estate, in the prevailing English style that erased the distinctions between the gardens surrounding a landowner’s house and the improved farmlands around. The grove to the north was to be planted “so as to Shew the Barn &ca in the Neck,” across Little Hunting Creek at River Plantation. Also in the English style, the trees were to be set out to imitate nature, “Planted without any order or regularity.” Three years later, Washington asked Lund if he had opened the “visto” to Muddy Hole Plantation, another of the constructed views that would visually order the farming landscape for both enslaved laborers and visitors.31
Within a few months after leaving Mount Vernon, Washington was urging Lund to experiment with planting live hedges for practical use as well as ornament. Washington approved of honey locust or hawthorn hedges between cultivated fields and pastures, but thought cedar or other evergreens would look best. Lund supervised enslaved labors in their collection of cedar berries for planting these live hedges intended to replace rail fence. Washington also wanted ornamental plantings of trees to grace the working parts of the estate. He ordered Lund to plant tall, straight locust trees to define a lane to the new spinning house; a similar line of trees was to be planted along the millrace. His instructions displayed his uncanny memory of the landscape across his estate. From winter encampment in New Jersey in December 1778, he directed Lund to a stand of hickory leading to Dogue Run, and “the Corner tree on the run decayed (a Beech).”32
Even in the most difficult times of the war, Washington found diversion in the traditional pursuits of a Virginia planter, taking particular interest in the acquisition and breeding of horses. In December 1776, on the eve of the battle of Trenton, when he admitted to being “distressed by a number of perplexing circumstances,” he sent two horses to the care of Lund and announced his intention to find another for the matched team of four that pulled Martha’s coach. In early 1778, while at Valley Forge, Washington sent a breeding stallion to Lund, who requested more information about the pedigree; “if his Ancesters are of Royal Blood, & he handsome much money may be made by him.” With no other impressive horses standing at stud in the area, Lund had high expectations for “Steady,” and over the next several years he collected fees from the owners of several dozen mares bred with the stallion at Mount Vernon. Washington continued to follow the breeding business at his estate and in March 1781 asked Lund to send a list of all the mares and colts. From his headquarters in New Windsor, New York, Washington told Lund that the report on horses and other livestock, as well as an account of the landscape at the Mansion House, “would be satisfactory to me, and infinitely amusing in the recital, as I have these kind of improvements very much at heart.”33
Since 1759, Washington had sought to consolidate under his ownership all the land on what he called “my own Neck,” the area between Little Hunting Creek and Dogue Creek. The land, for which he hoped to exchange slaves, would further unify the Mount Vernon estate. Although he was determined to avoid any further debt, he was willing to acquire the property “by any means in my power, in the way of Barter for other Land—for Negroes … in short for any thing else (except Breeding Mares and Stock of other kinds).” With Lund as his liaison, Washington approached the owners of land he had long coveted. During the war years, Washington added two tracts of land to Mount Vernon. The larger was the 480 acres purchased by Lund from Thomas Hanson Marshall in 1779 and then transferred to Washington in exchange for an equal number of acres at an outlying part of the estate. In the spring of 1783, Washington purchased from William Barry 118 acres that gave him control of the land surrounding his mill. Still eluding him were the more than five hundred acres owned by Penelope French along Dogue Creek between Washington’s Ferry Plantation and the mill. Washington admitted that in these wartime purchases he was motivated more by his ideal of a unified estate than any practical need for arable land. In negotiations for one of the land sales, he feared that he might “run the hazard of paying too severely for the gratification of a mere fancy, (for it is no more) of putting the whole neck under one fence; as it is well known that I stand in no need of Land or meadow for all my purposes.”34
Still, Washington was eager for Lund to put the land bought from Marshall into meadow, and portions of both newly purchased tracts were incorporated into the existing Dogue Run Plantation. In anticipation of a life once again focused on farming, Washington began to think about how he would restore the productivity of his lands. He and Lund concluded that the three-year rotation of wheat, corn, and a fallow, which had been in use since the mid-1760s, was exhausting the soil, and the profits from the mill would depend on finding some way to prepare the land for higher yields of wheat. The entire estate, moreover, needed to be reorganized and brought under stricter management. “As my public business is now drawing to a close,” Washington confided to Lund in June 1783, “I cannot avoid looking towards my private concerns, which do not wear the most smiling countenance.” Washington had drawn no money from his estate for eight years, and the accounts he finally received in 1783 revealed that for the past five years the estate had not produced enough to pay his manager. At the close of Washington’s military service, the estate provided “the only means by which myself & family—and the character I am to maintain in life hereafter—is to be supported.” His income, as well as his reputation, would once again depend on the success of farming at Mount Vernon.35
For all of the dislocations of war, service as commander of the Continental Army exposed Washington to new farming practices and provided him with a critically fresh perspective on Virginia farming. Observing the lands surrounding Newburgh, New York, Washington learned that northern farmers, experienced in the cultivation of grasslands, had improved the land far beyond what anyone had achieved in Virginia. “Improved Meadow in this part of the country, many miles from any large towns, sells from thirty to sixty pounds or more. But my countrymen are too much used to Corn blades & Corn shucks, & have too little knowledge of the profit of grass lands.” From Juan de Miralles, the Spanish agent to the United States, Washington learned of mules bred from Spanish jackasses to be superior draft animals—longer lived, cheaper to feed, and easier to manage than horses or oxen.36
Washington returned to farming at Mount Vernon with a far deeper understanding of how agriculture would determine the new nation’s peaceful engagement with other nations. When near the close of his service as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army he reflected on what would define the United States as a nation and secure the promise of the Revolutionary War, he considered the “unbounded extension of Commerce” as one of the blessings of an enlightened age that made the time of the nation’s origin such an auspicious moment in history. If the United States hoped to engage in the reciprocally beneficial trade among nations, it needed more than a unified government that could enforce treaties and ensure the nation’s credit: it needed to produce the kind of agricultural exports that could open connections with markets throughout the Atlantic world. Commerce in Washington’s view also involved trading more than goods; it encompassed the exchange among nations of ideas and learning, including those related to the experimental farming embraced by landowners in Great Britain and much of the European continent during the last third of the eighteenth century.37
From his early reading of Lord Sheffield’s Observations On the Commerce of the American States, with its call for the continuation of navigation acts restricting American commerce and its arrogant dismissal of the United States’ capacity to respond, Washington recognized the threat that British neo-mercantilism posed to the principles of benevolent commerce and reciprocity that he hoped would prevail after the war. While he accepted the need to grant the Congress authority to protect trade with retaliatory or discriminatory regulations, Washington’s commitment to liberal commerce and to a free engagement with the enlightened world found its most important expression in his pursuit of agricultural improvement at his own estate. He shared this persistent faith most freely with his former French comrades, particularly Chastellux and Lafayette. Acknowledging that such halcyon days might now be out of reach, Washington told Chastellux that his greatest wish was that “all restrictions of trade would vanish.” “We should exchange produce with other Countries, to our reciprocal advantage: the Globe is large enough, why then need we wrangle for a small spot of it?” To Lafayette, Washington described himself at his estate “as a Citizen of the great republic of humanity at large,” hoping to see mankind “connected like one great family in fraternal ties.” Washington’s openness to the liberal thought of France, like his later confidence in the great agricultural leaders of Great Britain, shaped his expectations of the relationships among nations in the wake of the independence of the United States.38
Lafayette, among the first to inform Washington of the provisional Treaty of Paris, wrote from Cadiz in early February 1783. Along with his congratulations, he shared a vision of the peacetime role that the man he called his adoptive father could play. “Were You But Such a Man as julius Cæsar or the king of Prussia, I should Almost Be sorry for You” at the conclusion of war, Lafayette wrote, but unlike other great military commanders, Washington had waiting for him vital civic work to provide “the finishing Stroke that is Wanting to the Perfection of the temple of Liberty.” Washington’s influence would be best employed “in inducing the People of America to strengthen their fœderal Union.” But before Lafayette described the need for Washington to secure the powers of Congress and the defense of the new nation, he first suggested Washington join him in a plan “Which Might Become Greatly Beneficial to the Black part of Mankind.” Lafayette proposed to Washington that they jointly purchase “a small Estate Where We May try the Experiment to free the Negroes, and Use them only as tenants.” He told Washington that his example would inspire the emulation of others, and if they succeeded in America, Lafayette promised to carry the model to the West Indies. Lafayette added “If it Be a Wild scheme, I Had Rather Be Mad that Way, than to Be thought Wise on the other tack.”39
In reply, Washington for the first time offered a tacit endorsement of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He wrote Lafayette that the proposal “to encourage the emancipation of the black people of this country from the Bondage in wch they are held, is a striking evidence of the benevolence of your Heart.” Although Washington refrained from putting his full thoughts on paper, he went so far as to add “I shall be happy to join you in so laudable a work; but will defer going into a detail of the business, ’till I have the pleasure of seeing you.” In the summer of 1784, after spending several weeks at Mount Vernon, the historian William Gordon reminded Washington of his expressed wish “to get rid of all your Negroes” and of Lafayette’s wish “that an end might be put to the slavery of all of them.” Knowing that Lafayette was then visiting Mount Vernon, Gordon added that he “should rejoice beyond measure could your joint counsels & influence produce it, & thereby give the finishing stroke & the last polish to your political characters.” Gordon, echoing Lafayette, asked Washington if it would be possible to establish “the industrious” among the enslaved as copyholders, similar to sharecroppers, who would have an incentive to make the produce of their labor more profitable and by their efforts “excite the lazy to exertions.” Gordon disavowed any interest in immediate emancipation of slaves, but he was “for gradually releasing them & their posterity from bonds, & incorporating them so in the states, that they may be a defence & not a danger upon any extraordinary occurrence.”40
In their private conversations, Lafayette and Gordon impressed upon Washington their belief that slaves were capable of becoming productive and independent laborers within the United States, and both Lafayette and Gordon were determined to find ways to educate enslaved people in the skills to support themselves after emancipation. Whatever Washington’s response, these conversations, as well as Lafayette’s later investment in a plan to establish slaves as tenants, offered Washington models for extricating himself from slavery in ways that extended freedom to enslaved individuals, in contrast to his earlier plan to get “quit of Negroes” by selling slaves to buyers who would continue to hold them in bondage. In their separate appeals, Lafayette and Gordon also stressed the opportunity for Washington to use his unparalleled public influence to set an example for other slaveholders and by so doing to burnish his reputation. The discussions about the proposals for some kind of tenantry for the enslaved, and particularly the ease with which Lafayette raised the ideas with Washington, were evidence of how dramatically white dialogue about slavery had changed during the Revolutionary War. Such conversations with Virginia slaveholders would have been barely imaginable before 1775. No slaveholder, particularly Washington, who had been so closely involved in debates on the enlistment of slaves and the recovery of slaves who escaped to the British, could after 1783 return to their estates without some recognition of the ways in which so many enslaved persons had in the midst of the war challenged their bondage. Washington also learned of the rise of a new form of antislavery advocacy among a small but influential group of whites as well as Blacks. Upon his return to Mount Vernon, Washington declined to embrace anything as radical as the plan proposed by Lafayette, but neither did he dismiss it out of hand. Washington understood that the management of his estate henceforth would serve as a public example, closely watched through much of the Atlantic world. That understanding would have its own impact on the new system he devised for the supervision of enslaved laborers, although not on their condition of servitude until many years later.
Washington expected that the arrival of peace and his subsequent return to farming would open a new life “under my own Vine & my own Fig tree.” That favorite biblical phrase was less a dream of a rural idyll than a reflection of Washington’s belief, shared with many of his contemporaries in Great Britain as well as the United States, that a dedication to agricultural improvement would supplant military conflict and the wasteful expenses of empire. The vine and fig tree passage from the book of Micah, so frequently quoted by Washington during and after the Revolutionary War, described for him a kind of independence rooted in the possession of one’s own productive land and in the safety of a place “where none shall make them afraid.”41
In his farewell to the troops of the Continental Army in November 1783, Washington described similar prospects for those “retiring victorious from the Field of War to the Field of Agriculture.” He recommended that only a small number of soldiers continue in the military establishment he had prescribed in detail, leaving the overwhelming majority of the Continental troops to enter civil society and “prove themselves not less virtuous and usefull as Citizens, than they have been persevering and victorious as Soldiers.” Some would find productive labor in commerce, manufacturing, and fisheries, but above all, it was farming that offered the opportunity for the troops to enjoy the blessings of the “Independence and Sovereignty” they had won through their perseverance. Washington expected “the extensive and fertile Regions of the West, will yield a most happy Asylum to those, who fond of domestic enjoyment, are seeking for personal independence.”42
Agriculture was fundamental to Washington’s vision of the United States at peace with European nations, and of the mutually beneficial commerce that would bring those nations together in common interests. That vision guided his introduction of an entirely new system of farming on his estate in the years after he resigned his command of the Continental Army. Several years after returning to Mount Vernon, Washington shared with his former comrade in arms, the Marquis de Chastellux, his enduring belief that agricultural improvement and reciprocal exchanges between nations would bring about a new era of peace. “For the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished that the manly employment of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest—that the swords might be turned into plough-shares, the spears into pruning hooks—and, as the Scripture expresses it, the nations learn war no more.” Washington hoped that his own turn from military command to enlightened farming would demonstrate how nations might fulfill that prophecy.43