8 Agriculture and the Path to Emancipation

In the fall of 1793, Washington drafted a map that documented much of what he had accomplished since his introduction of a new system of farming on his estate in 1785. Employing his oldest skills as a surveyor and relying on his detailed knowledge of the landscape, Washington, probably during his visit to Mount Vernon in September and October, confirmed the latest improvements at each of the four working farms. The map, completed in December, delineated the division of each farm into seven fields of roughly equal acreage, with additional meadows and clover lots. At the center of the map of each farm appeared suggestions of the recently clustered cabins of the enslaved families, the overseers’ houses, and the new barns. Washington included a table of the “Farms and their Contents,” with the dimensions of all the fields and meadows, totaling over 3,200 acres of arable land. In a separate table of references, he described four adjacent areas of land that might be organized as new farms, and one that was already occupied by a family member. The map showed the location of the Mansion House farm at the center of the estate, but the focus of the survey was the land devoted to crop rotations and commercial agriculture. The map was a testament to the scope of Washington’s vision and his attention to every detail in the organization of labor and farming. It was created, however, not to record the successful implementation of the principles of British husbandry, but rather as a first step toward the breakup of the farms at Mount Vernon. The leader who so carefully staged his farewells and transitions was, by the close of 1793, thinking about how he would exit from his agricultural estate in a way that would lead to freedom for the enslaved people under his control.

The map was intended for Arthur Young, in whom Washington confided a dramatic and surprising plan to transform his estate one more time. The plans “were not even in embryo” when he had last written Young several months earlier, but in December 1793 Washington proposed to surrender his direct management of the farms and to lease all but the Mansion House farm to tenants. His stated motivation was to find a steady income that would allow him to “live free from care, and as much at my ease as possible,” in what he described as the “advanced time of my life;” he also referred to other aims “not necessary to detail.” He solicited Young’s assistance in finding capable farmers from Great Britain to lease the farms. In Philadelphia, Washington had observed the many farmers arriving in the United States from Great Britain and Ireland, and he had received letters from individuals in Britain and Europe seeking opportunities to farm in the new nation. He hoped that Young, who had already inquired about the advantages of farming in the United States, would be able to coordinate the lease of all of the working farms and to “carry my plan into complete execution.” Washington refused to relinquish his current system of farming “without a moral certainty of the substitute which is contemplated: for to break up these farms—remove my Negroes—and to dispose of the property on them upon terms short of this would be ruinous.”¹

Washington’s preference was to lease the farms to “four substantial farmers, of wealth & strength sufficient to cultivate them.” His description of the farms, which ranged in size from 476 to 1,207 acres, emphasized the advantages of renting each in its entirety, and Washington anticipated that farmers with their own capital would continue to improve the system of agriculture. Hundreds more adjoining acres might be added to those already under cultivation. The barns and other farm buildings constructed since 1785 would allow British tenants to carry on their familiar system of husbandry. Washington assumed the tenants he had in mind would not be comfortable in the existing overseers’ houses and would choose to construct brick residences, and with the ready supply of mud and thatch, there would be no limitations on building. Washington would provide any tenants with a portion of his substantial holdings of livestock, including the horses, oxen, and mules trained for draft work. He added, almost as an aside, that “many of the Negroes, male & female, might be hired by the year as labourers, if this should be preferred to the importation of that class of people,” but Washington did not specify any terms of hire.

In his letter to Young, Washington offered no other details about the anticipated status of the enslaved, adding only the suggestion that, if the tenants preferred to bring laborers with them, “it deserves consideration how far the mixing of whites & blacks together is advisable; especially where the former, are entirely unacquainted with the latter.” Other details of the plan were still uncertain or flexible when Washington sent it to Young. If the farms were too large or the rents too high for the sort of farmers willing to emigrate, Washington would consider an association of farmers who would lease smaller units, even single fields, as long as the members of the group built the additional residences needed. If Young organized such a society of farmers, Washington stipulated that the rent would be 25 percent higher, and he insisted again that each of the four farms be included. Washington would reserve “the mansion house farm for my own residence—occupation—and amusements in agriculture.”²

Washington made his intentions regarding the enslaved at his estate much clearer in a confidential letter to his long-time secretary, Tobias Lear. While still waiting for a response from Young, Washington in May 1794 sent Lear a duplicate copy of the letter describing the plan to lease the farms at Mount Vernon. Lear was traveling in Great Britain to explore private mercantile opportunities, and Washington correctly anticipated that Young might speak to Lear about the plan. Fearing that Young, by then secretary of the Board of Agriculture and loyal to the government of William Pitt, might be reluctant to promote the idea, Washington asked Lear to spread word of the plan during his travels through England and Scotland. He also shared with Lear, as he had not with Young, an apparently related plan to sell his settled lands in western Pennsylvania, and he explained to Lear that he hoped to establish a fixed income from the leases and sales. Then, in an extraordinary effort to preserve the confidentiality and anonymity of his message, Washington wrote on a separate, unsigned sheet of paper marked “private” the most compelling incentive for the reorganization of his estate and the sale of his western landholdings.

After describing the financial advantages of the leases and sales, Washington continued “besides these, I have another motive, which makes me earnestly wish for the accomplishment of these things—it is indeed more powerful than all the rest—namely to liberate a certain species of property which I possess, very repugnantly to my own feelings; but which imperious necessity compels; & until I can substitute some other expedient, by which expences not in my power to avoid (however well disposed I may be to do it) can be defrayed.” Washington did not tell Lear or anyone else how his plans would specifically lead to the freedom of the slaves he owned, but the message to Lear was the boldest and most direct commitment to emancipation that Washington ever made before writing his will in the summer of 1799. Whatever the plan Washington had in mind, he was, by his second term as president, determined to proceed on his own without waiting for a legislative act of general abolition.³

In drafting what became known as the five-farms map, Washington applied to his estate a nomenclature that he and his manager had only recently adopted. Before 1793, he almost invariably referred to the agricultural units of the estate as plantations, in common with so many estates in the Chesapeake and to the south. When he joined together the adjacent Ferry and French’s plantations in January 1793, Washington had told his manager the property would “henceforward be called ‘Union Farm, or Plantation’ instead of Ferry & French’s.” The subsequent weekly reports listed each division of the estate as a farm, and over the next few months the term plantation disappeared from Washington’s usage when discussing agriculture at Mount Vernon. In English usage, “plantation” had before the late seventeenth century referred to colonial settlements but had since shifted in use to describe a private agricultural unit devoted to a staple crop and reliant on enslaved labor. By suddenly adopting the designation of farm, Washington made a revealing break with the language of slavery and brought his estate in accord with both the great, improving landowners in Great Britain and the employers of free labor in the United States.⁴

Most of Washington’s property east of the Appalachians was leased to tenants, and he presented his plan to Young as an effort to extend a similar organization of land to the working farms at Mount Vernon. The form of tenantry he proposed, however, bore no resemblance to the leases for his other land and had no parallel elsewhere in Virginia or in most of the United States. The tenants on Washington’s lands in Virginia and Pennsylvania were small farmers who cultivated their crops with their own family labor and perhaps the assistance of a few hired or enslaved workers. When Washington divided his Bullskin Plantation in Frederick, later Berkeley, County in 1766, he created tenancies of around two hundred acres. Those in Fauquier and Loudoun Counties were even smaller. Of the twelve farms created out of the land Washington purchased in 1767, all but two comprised fewer than one hundred and sixty acres; five were just one hundred acres. Most of the leases were for three lifetimes, and although in 1794 Washington received £315 in rent from thirty-seven tenants in the Piedmont and Shenandoah counties, the collection of the rents was a chronic challenge requiring the services of an agent. Many of the tenants were frequently in arrears, and several fled to avoid payment. Improvements of the properties were modest, and even years after entering their leases, tenants would demand credit on their accounts for simple maintenance such as fence repairs.⁵

*Fig 8.1* `“Survey and plot of Mount Vernon and neighboring farms, 1793, Dec.” (Five Farms Map). The survey of 1793 documented the transformation of the agricultural landscape at Mount Vernon after the introduction of a new system of farming. Washington prepared his most detailed survey of the estate to illustrate the four farms he hoped to lease to British farmers, and he sent the map, with its description of fields under cultivation, to Arthur Young.` `mssHM 5995, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.`

The plan for leasing entire farms at Mount Vernon more closely resembled what had become the preferred organization of large, improved estates in England and, more recently, in Scotland. British leaders of agricultural improvement, including, in England, the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Egremont, and Thomas Coke, and in Scotland, the Duke of Buccleuch, managed Home Farms for the public display of agricultural innovations, but they relied on highly capitalized tenants to direct most of the market-oriented farming on their estates and to hire laborers as needed. On estates as expansive as thirty thousand acres, the individual farms were seldom larger than five hundred to seven hundred acres, smaller than some of the farms at Mount Vernon, and the tenants who leased these farms often introduced new methods of cultivation and shared the results of their experiments with one another. William Peacey, for whom the English farmer James Bloxham worked before arriving at Mount Vernon, typified this sort of tenant. Peacey, a highly respected farmer, rented land on Lord Sherborne’s Gloucestershire estate, where he undertook experiments with crops and livestock and corresponded with the Board of Agriculture. If Washington could succeed in finding the accomplished farmers with capital, as he described them for Arthur Young, he would have moved his estate that much closer to the most advanced models in Great Britain.6

When he sent the plan to Young, Washington prefaced his letter with a request that if anything about the proposal was improper, such as its invitation to good farmers to emigrate from Great Britain to the United States, Young should “burn this letter and the draught which accompanies it, and the whole matter will be consigned to oblivion.” Young found no such impropriety and immediately set out to inquire about farmers who might be interested. Young thought the plan worthy, with the only drawback being “the stock of negroes,” but he had misinterpreted Washington’s reference to the possible hire of Black laborers as a requirement of any lease. He lauded Washington’s insistence on leaving the enslaved in place and pleaded ignorance of conditions in America, but observed that any such requirement “must have its difficulties.” Young considered the requirement for leaseholds the most significant obstacle. Most of the farmers with whom he discussed the plan had no interest in leasing farms in the United States, since ownership of land was the primary incentive for moving there from Great Britain.⁷

Young identified a few farmers for Washington’s consideration, most of whom had already decided to emigrate, but none of them appeared at Mount Vernon. Washington fully realized that the acquisition of land was among the main attractions “if not the first inducement to emigration to the United States,” and admitted to Young, “I never was sanguine in my expectation of obtaining tenants from England.” In this final letter to Young, Washington clarified the misunderstanding about his intention “respecting the Negros which reside on my farms.” He had never meant to make it a condition of the lease of a farm that the laborers “should be annexed as an appendage thereto”; in fact, he added without explanation, “I had something better in view for them than that.” Washington had only suggested that a farmer leasing one of his farms might “hire them, as he would do any other labourers.”⁸

While at Mount Vernon in September and early October 1795, Washington discussed with David Stuart some plan regarding the future of the enslaved on the estate, and he returned in earnest to his proposal to lease the four working farms to tenants from England or Scotland. He was encouraged by the visit of an accomplished young Scottish farmer who had applied to manage a farm on the president’s estate. John Bell had been recommended by Washington’s correspondent in Edinburgh, James Anderson, and he had worked for Dr. Andrew Coventry, the first professor of agriculture at the University of Edinburgh. Anderson assured Washington that, in addition to understanding the business of managing a farm, Bell had considerable practical experience in agriculture. He brought the plowing skills and the knowledge of new crops that Washington was always eager to introduce from Great Britain, even though Bell presumably had no experience in supervising enslaved laborers. Washington offered Bell a position as overseer at Dogue Run farm once the agreement with the current overseer expired at the end of the year. Bell declined to wait, but before he departed, Washington shared with him the earlier plan to lease the four farms. Bell informed Washington “that a number of honest & reputable farmers were disposed to emigrate to this Country, if they could set down at once on improved farms, at a moderate rent & for a term of years.” This report about the interest in emigration confirmed what Washington heard from others, including Tobias Lear, about the large number of English and Scottish farmers hoping to move to the United States. He had himself observed in Philadelphia the near daily arrival of farmers from Great Britain, but was aware that most came as families or unassociated with one another, and lacked the capital to assume management of a farm at Mount Vernon. Washington wanted assistance in attracting wealthier individuals or an association of small farmers to lease the whole of his farms.⁹

Bell’s enthusiasm for that plan persuaded Washington to ask James Anderson for help in locating farmers to lease the Mount Vernon farms. In December 1795, Washington sent Anderson a copy of the original plan as outlined for Young and reiterated that he would only agree to lease the farms “provided the whole were taken by men of competent means,” or by an association of farmers of more modest means. In the two years since he had first sent the proposal to Young, the price of American grain and the cost of land in the vicinity of the proposed federal city had risen to such heights that Washington expected a fifty percent increase in the annual rents. Even at that rate, the lease of the land made sense to Washington only because of the larger goals he was pursuing by relinquishing management of his farms.¹⁰

In the first weeks of 1796, as he gathered information from his manager, William Pearce, for the first public advertisement of the farms, Washington explained that he hoped to secure a fixed income and to place his “farms in the hands of a number of Tenants (if it can be accomplished agreeably to my publication) who are professed farmers, who understand and will cultivate them in the manner most approved in England, with allowance for the differences of climate.” He offered Pearce no indication of the “something better” he had in mind for the enslaved laborers on the estate, but his queries revealed that he was planning some change in the status or condition of the slaves under his control. At the same time that Washington requested information about the rents paid by tenants on neighboring lands and the potential value of a lease on the gristmill, he asked Pearce to compile a list of “the Dower Negros that are grown, have husbands and wives, and who those husbands and wives are. That is—whether these connections are—one Dower Negro with another Dower Negro; whether they are with other Negros on the Estate, or whether with the Neighbouring Negros.” After he received the list, Washington asked Pearce to compile similar information about all of the remaining enslaved people on the estate, distinguishing between those hired from Penelope French and the others.¹¹

Once the lease of the farms was advertised, Washington offered some further hint of the changes he expected in the working conditions and lives of the enslaved. More than two years after sending his original proposal to Young, Washington told Pearce that he did not intend to lease slaves with the farms, and added, “One great object with me, is to separate the Negros from the Land; without making the condition of the former worse than it now is.” Pearce apparently agreed that the lease of slaves would require his frequent attention, and Washington worried that the slaves would be subject to various kinds of abuse. Their “perpetual complaints” would “defeat in all probability the main objects which I aim at—viz.—tranquillity with a certain income.” Although he wanted Pearce to inform him about any offers to lease the land, laborers, and livestock together, a month later he was more emphatic that he did not “want the Land and Negros to go together.” Potential tenants from Virginia might well bring their own enslaved laborers or hire others, both of which possibilities Washington privately hoped to discourage. In the lease terms that Washington prepared for Pearce’s instruction and sent to a few others, he commented, “although the admission of Slaves with the Tenants will not be absolutely prohibited; It would, nevertheless, be a pleasing circumstance to exclude them; If not entirely, at least in a great degree: To do which, is not among the least inducements for dividing the farms into small lots.”¹²

In communication with David Stuart, Washington revealed that the fate of the enslaved at Mount Vernon was at the very center of his plan to lease the farms and sell his western lands. Washington offered Stuart his preliminary thoughts “in confidence” while at Mount Vernon in the early fall of 1795, and the following February, he sent Stuart a copy of the public advertisement which he described as “an essay” to ascertain the feasibility of leasing the farms and accomplishing the objectives they discussed in the fall. The lease would be only a preliminary step to a much bolder plan that he expected to carry out in two stages. The first part, which was all he expected to accomplish within the next year, was “to give up the Dower Negros … upon terms below what impartial men shall say their hire is worth.” In his reply, Stuart made clear that the second part of the plan involved some step toward freeing the slaves Washington owned. In his written communication with Stuart, Washington avoided any direct reference to emancipation, stating only that the second part of the plan was for him the more compelling. For reasons that were political, “indeed of imperious nature,” the second part of the plan would need to be delayed, presumably until the close of his term as president a year later.¹³

Washington was still considering how he might carry out this second stage when Stuart responded with extended thoughts on possible ways to manage the transition from slavery to freedom. Stuart considered Washington’s proposal part of a broader movement among Virginia planters “to get released from their slaves at least,” and if Washington succeeded, Stuart expected his model would inspire others who hoped to escape “from the immense trouble and small profits from lands and negroes.” Stuart, like Washington, also anticipated that the growth in population and the rise in land values would soon make it possible for large landowners to live comfortably on the rent of their lands. Stuart often served as a confidante of Washington, and he had a direct interest in any decision regarding the dower slaves, since he was married to Eleanor Calvert Custis, the widow of John Parke Custis, and was thus stepfather to the four Custis children who would inherit property rights to these slaves. Washington needed to begin any discussion of the dower slaves with Stuart if he were to give them up “in any manner tolerably convenient & satisfactory” to all who had an interest in them. Stuart was also a critic of slavery as it existed in Virginia, and like Washington, believed a shift away from reliance on enslaved agricultural labor was inevitable. As indirect and veiled as much of their language was, the written exchange between Washington and Stuart opens a rare window on the type of discussions among slaveholders that were usually confined to undocumented conversations.¹⁴

Stuart offered Washington the outline of a plan that “would effect the abolition of slavery on terms more satisfactory to the Masters, and beneficial to the slaves too, from it’s gradual operation, than any which has been tried.” He acknowledged to Washington that with regard to “your intentions respecting your negroes, it is a delicate and perplexing subject,” but he was convinced that both “their wellfare and the safety of the country” depended on a gradual transition. Stuart proposed to begin the plan with the selection of what he called “one of the most intelligent and responsible negroes” who would rent a farm and be provided with sufficient field laborers and implements. The laborers would each receive some compensation “as an encouragement for them to work, and do their duty without violence.” If the slaves selected for the experiment “conducted themselves well they should be at perfect liberty at the expiration of two or three years either to remain on the farm, or seek employment elsewhere.” Stuart reiterated his expectation “that they should enjoy perfect liberty.” He thought many of the freed persons would choose to remain as tenants on the land, rendering the associations Washington sought unnecessary. “To prevent uneasiness among the rest, who have been equally deserving, and to interest them all in encouraging those with whom the first experiment was made to industry, and good behaviour,” Stuart recommended that at the beginning of the plan, the slaveowner announce that all of the enslaved would in succession be offered the same opportunity until all were free. The prospective benefits of the plan would go well beyond Mount Vernon or other estates where it was implemented; Stuart predicted that a few successful examples of the plan “would bring it into such general use, that the Legislature might ultimately recommend it, or take steps for introducing it.”

Stuart anticipated not only freedom for the enslaved, but also economic self-sufficiency. Within the period of the supervised rental of a farm, “the minds of the negroes would be better prepared for directing and governing themselves at the end of the term fixed on.” Payments of moderate amounts of money during the interim would teach habits of saving and frugality, and make it less likely that, as free people, they would “fall into bad habits, and become dangerous to society.” Stuart went so far as to propose that, “to give this experiment a fair chance,” the Virginia Assembly should grant to the slaves during the interim of the rental the right to testify against whites in a court of law, at least in cases involving trespass or robberies at their farms. He cited the example of free Blacks in Fairfax County who had been victims of theft and subsequently deprived of all redress because they were not permitted to testify against the white men they knew to be the culprits. Even with limits, this proposed grant of a legal privilege normally restricted to citizenship reflects the extent to which Stuart had considered the implications of gradual emancipation and of the presence of an increased number of free Blacks in Virginia.

In defense of the practicability of his proposal for gradual emancipation, Stuart drew an analogy between the condition of the enslaved in Virginia and that of “the lower classes of people in Europe” under feudalism. The poor of Europe were once as debased as the slaves were in Virginia, subject to their master’s right to deprive them of their very lives if he saw fit, and “perhaps still more humiliating, of having the first night with the daughters of all his vassalls when married.” It was not clear if Stuart was drawing an explicit parallel or was oblivious to the violence and sexual assault that the enslaved in Virginia regularly confronted, but he was one of several commentators who saw the laboring poor of Europe as a model for the future status of freed slaves. The historical lesson for Stuart was that the descendants of those poor in feudal Europe “at present form the substantial yeomanry of those Countries.” “That the same will happen to our negroes,” Stuart declared, “I have no doubt.” He acknowledged that distinctions of color presented further obstacles to assimilation, but thought that “time which applies a remedy to all things, will no doubt soon find one for this.” (Stuart appeared significantly more pessimistic and far less benevolent in a later conversation with a European visitor who recorded Stuart’s account of the failed attempts to rent land to freed slaves, who, he claimed, would neither work nor pay rent. By this account, Stuart believed Blacks in Virginia would always remain a separate and inferior caste.)¹⁵

By the time Washington approached Stuart about his plans for the enslaved on his own estate, he was aware of several models of emancipation and employment of freed slaves as tenants or hired laborers. He was most familiar with the proposal of Lafayette, who in 1783 had invited him to join in an experiment to establish slaves as tenants on a small estate as a first step toward their freedom. Although Washington declined the offer, Lafayette kept him apprised of his similar experiment in the French colony of Cayenne. On his return to Europe, Lafayette conferred with leading antislavery advocates in France and Great Britain; he met with Wilberforce and read works by Clarkson, Sharp, and Condorcet. In December 1785, with the endorsement of Condorcet and the assistance of French colonial officials, Lafayette purchased property and slaves in Cayenne, and he prescribed a program by which the enslaved would earn an increasing share of profits from crops they produced and learn the skills that would prepare them for independence. He provided education, he encouraged marriage, and he prohibited whipping. “In a word,” he summed up his objective, “the fate of the blacks will progressively become similar to that of our peasants.” When he sent Washington the news of his land acquisition and decision “to free my Negroes in order to Make that Experiment which you know is My Hobby Horse,” Washington replied that the announcement of “your late purchase of an Estate in the Colony of Cayenne with a view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity.” Washington again shared with Lafayette his support of gradual emancipation of the enslaved: “To set them afloat at once would, I really believe, be productive of much inconvenience & mischief; but by degrees it certainly might, & assuredly ought to be effected & that too by Legislative authority.”¹⁶

The Virginia Assembly in 1782 enacted a law that allowed slaveholders to free slaves without the legislative approval previously required for any act of manumission. The law permitted the manumission of female slaves between the ages of eighteen and forty-five and male slaves between twenty-one and forty-five. Before the law was amended in 1806 to require freed slaves to leave the state, as many as ten thousand slaves in Virginia received their freedom. Either through a deed of manumission or in a will, a wide range of slaveholders took advantage of the act. Many acted out of religious conviction, while others simply wanted to rid themselves of the responsibility of provisioning a few enslaved individuals. Most owners, especially those who owned a large numbers of slaves, provided for a gradual process of emancipation, which, like the age restrictions imposed by the law, was intended to minimize the public burden of freed persons who could not support themselves. The largest single act of emancipation, and one certainly known to Washington, was that of Robert Carter of Nomini Hall in Westmoreland County. His manumission deed submitted in a district court in 1791 provided for the eventual freedom of more than four hundred and fifty slaves. In a complicated succession of manumissions over twenty years, the enslaved at Carter’s plantations in five counties were to receive not only their freedom but also wages or leases as tenants. By 1797, some of Carter’s entire plantations were farmed by the freed slaves living as tenants on the land. In the face of opposition from white tenants, neighbors, and even his children, who were heirs to the estate, Carter made further efforts to protect the freedom of the former slaves and to ensure they could support themselves by their own labor.¹⁷

John Beale Bordley, an associate of Washington’s from the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, freed some slaves at his farms on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and sold others as indentured servants, to be freed after a set term of service. Bordley, like Washington, with whom he corresponded about farming, considered enslaved labor inefficient and inadequate to the objectives of the improved husbandry they were both pursuing. He also thought that enslavement fostered a corrosive mix of indolence and dishonesty, and the families of the enslaved were a burden to the slaveholder. Bordley expected slavery would either decline or be abolished, and he was among the first to address the need to establish other organizations of labor as a replacement. In an essay published in 1801, Bordley drew on his ten years of experience in managing a transition from slavery to other forms of labor. He advocated that landowners offer freed slaves a presumably more benign kind of dependency as cottagers, based on the practice of many British estates. In return for modest housing, a small amount of land to tend gardens for their own provisions, and occasional cash or credit, the freed slaves would, as cottagers, provide a steady source of labor without imposing on the landowner the costly practice of maintaining more laborers than they needed.¹⁸

Carter’s offer of tenancies for freed slaves and Bordley’s advocacy of a system of cottagers mirrored David Stuart’s expectation that most freed slaves would remain on the land as self-supporting renters. All of these ideas for private initiatives, however, stood in contrast to the several publicized proposals for general abolition in Virginia, almost all of which called for expatriation of freed slaves. Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia and all his later writings on the subject supported abolition on the condition that freed slaves would be resettled outside the United States. Ferdinando Fairfax, a godson of Washington, in his 1790 proposal for a congressional program of gradual abolition, cited “the propriety, and even necessity of removing them to a distance from this country.” St. George Tucker believed that any forced removal was impractical, but his plan for gradual abolition called for a denial of all citizenship rights, a kind of “civil slavery,” which he thought would compel freed people to leave the state.¹⁹

Whatever precise path to freedom Washington had in mind for the enslaved, he expected that the freed slaves would remain in Virginia. Shortly after Washington’s death, the Earl of Buchan recalled a more specific plan for the emancipation of the slaves at Mount Vernon and for their life in the community. Buchan, to whom Washington sent his plan to lease the Mount Vernon farms, shared some of Washington’s letters with the author of an obituary published in The Farmer’s Magazine of Edinburgh. The author described Washington’s estate and reported “his black people never felt the chains of bondage; and his deeply sagacious plan was, by education and time, to render them capable of citizenship and freedom. Great difficulty he had to encounter in the cultivation of his land, where tenantry is almost unknown; but he performed much more than could have been expected: and his last aim, in corresponding with the Noble Lord [Buchan] already alluded to, was to create a free tenantry in America, upon the most liberal principles of unfettered meliorating leases, with a rent to be estimated according to the value of the fruits of the earth.”²⁰

Washington knew that hiring out the dower slaves from Mount Vernon would sever the family ties he had promised to protect, and he admitted that separating them from their spouses and children at his estate would be “an affecting, and trying event.” Stuart agreed that this part of Washington’s plan would be “more painful and perhaps difficult” than any other part, “altho’ unavoidable, and what happens every day.” Stuart was unwilling to commit to hiring those dower slaves, even at the low rate promised by Washington, because of his other financial commitments and reduced income from his farms, although he reaffirmed that those dower slaves would revert to the Custis heirs after the deaths of both George and Martha Washington. In the meantime, any progress toward the separation of the dower slaves or the emancipation of slaves owned by Washington depended on the lease of the farms at Mount Vernon.²¹

Washington never lost sight of his parallel goal of perpetuating the system of farming he had introduced at Mount Vernon, and he insisted that any tenants continue his agricultural improvements. He defined a good tenant as one “who will do justice to the land.” Tenant leases negotiated by Washington had long included requirements for such improvements as the planting of orchards and limitations on the use of timber. The terms drafted for Mount Vernon in February 1796 included those conditions and far more. The leases would protect the land from what Washington considered the most ruinous practices of Virginia farmers. Tenants would be forbidden to grow any tobacco for commercial sale, they could devote no more than one-sixth of the arable land to corn, and they were prohibited from letting hogs run wild. If the farms were leased to an association of small farmers who required new residences, the tenants would provide their own building materials, with minimal use of the surrounding timber. Washington stipulated that tenants adhere to a six-year, six-field rotation of crops that he devised, or he would consider an alternative rotation as long as it did not impose greater demands on the soil. The prescribed rotation was a distillation of much of what Washington had learned over the past decade about the soil on the farms. It specified a mix of grain crops, clover, buckwheat, and potatoes, and required one year for pasturing and manuring. Washington was now confident that such a system could be applied to a small farm of just one hundred arable acres, with fields of no more than sixteen acres. Here was a model for small, independent landowners largely dependent on their own labor. Washington even projected that tenants would be left with an annual income of £97 after paying their rent. This he hoped would be an incentive for English farmers who were accustomed to paying two-thirds of their income to taxes and rents. Washington’s requirement that rents be paid in cash or wheat reaffirmed the centrality of that grain in his vision of responsible and productive agriculture.²²

A combined advertisement for the lease of the farms at Mount Vernon and for the sale of Washington’s lands to the west was printed as a broadside and appeared in numerous newspapers, from Connecticut to Virginia, and in western Pennsylvania and the Northwest Territory. Washington prefaced the advertisement with the condition that he would lease only to “real farmers of good reputation and none others need apply.” The notice described the acreage of each farm, variations in soil, existing housing for overseers and families of enslaved field laborers, and the condition of barns. Potential tenants would find level fields, free of any stones or stumps that might obstruct a plow or harrow. Those leasing the farms would be offered reasonable terms if they wished to purchase draft animals, field livestock, “ploughs, (of the best kind) harrows, and every kind of implement, necessary on a farm.” The advertisement made no reference to hiring enslaved laborers currently working the land, the possibility that Washington had mentioned to Arthur Young in his first iteration of the plan. Although the advertisement indicated the number of “black labourers” usually employed on each farm, it offered no indication of their fate if the farms were leased.²³

William Pearce would be available at Mount Vernon to show the farms and explain the terms of leases, and interested persons in Philadelphia could apply to the president’s secretary to examine a copy of Washington’s survey of the farms. Washington asked Jeremiah Wadsworth, an ardent proponent of agricultural improvement himself, to publish the advertisement three times in the Hartford newspaper. He called on other fellow officers from the Continental Army to distribute it in the West. Rufus Putman was asked to post it in Marietta and Cincinnati, Ohio. Washington wanted Isaac Craig to publish it three times in the Pittsburgh newspaper, and to post it at the most popular tavern.²⁴

Soon after the advertisement appeared in newspapers in late winter 1796, William Pearce and Tobias Lear received multiple inquiries, but serious applicants, particularly those from Great Britain, were few. One of the first promising inquires came from Joseph Gallop and his brothers, tenants on a farm in Harford County, Maryland, one of whom visited William Pearce to inspect River Farm. The Gallop brothers offered to rent the land, the livestock, and the enslaved laborers on the farm for little more than what Washington expected for the lease of the land alone. Washington learned from mutual acquaintances in Philadelphia that the brothers were industrious and capable farmers, but he doubted he could come to any agreement with them because he did not want to lease the slaves and the offer was too low. He had already set the terms of the lease below what he estimated to be the real value of the farms because he wanted to attract good farmers who would “do justice to, and improve the premises; which will be a primary object with me.” A year later, the new farm manager, James Anderson, negotiated the lease of River Farm to an English farmer, but the man failed to return. The farmer may have been Stephen Milburn, who had been referred by two Fairfax County friends and who met with Washington at Mount Vernon to discuss the plan to lease the several farms. After several days’ reflection and fearing that he might never be able to rent the four advertised farms at the same time, Washington offered Milburn a lease on the River Farm alone. As further enticement and in consideration of the great expense of outfitting such a large farm, Washington was willing to advance to Milburn some or all of the stock and implements on River Farm at a reasonable valuation. Milburn worried that he would not be able to raise the capital, but he assured Washington “I would like to Farm under you as I hear you would e[n]courage the improvement of Agriculture in this Country.”²⁵

However wide the dissemination of the advertisement, limiting its publication to newspapers in the United States ran counter to Washington’s repeatedly expressed preference for renting to farmers from Great Britain rather than to any of the “slovenly farmers of this country.” Although Arthur Young and others had assured him that no laws in Great Britain restricted the emigration of farmers or artisans, Washington was hesitant to create any appearance of enticing people to move to the United States. Anticipating that the publication of his proposal in Great Britain would attract great attention, Washington reiterated to Young, “I have no desire that any formal promulgation of these sentiments should be made.” Washington expected, however, that its extensive publication in newspapers in the United States would increase the likelihood that some copies of the advertisement would reach Great Britain. He hoped it would encourage associations of farmers to consider the opportunity in Virginia, “for I have no idea of frittering up the farms for the accomodation of our country farmers, whose knowledge—practice at least—centres in the destruction of the land, & very little beyond it.” Washington asked Tobias Lear to spread word of the plan among his English and Scottish mercantile acquaintances, and he sent the printed notice to Thomas Pinckney, the United States minister to Great Britain, so he might also share the information. Another copy went to Gouverneur Morris, then in London.²⁶

More realistic efforts to recruit English or Scottish farmers would depend almost entirely on the efforts of Washington’s several agricultural correspondents in Great Britain. Washington sent copies of the advertisement or broadside to his closest confidantes, with the notable omission of Arthur Young. To James Anderson, Washington described the advanced plan for leasing the farms and for selling his land in the West. For the “peaceable, industrious & skilful farmers” he hoped to find as tenants, Washington explained, “I must resort to some other country than this—where little knowledge of husbandry is possessed, and less care used in the practice of it, to keep the land from a ruinous course. For many reasons, the similarity of language not least, I would prefer those of yours.” Sir John Sinclair, as president of the Board of Agriculture, was well placed to inform any farmers interested in moving to the United States, and Washington asked Sinclair to explain the terms of the offer. The Earl of Buchan had previously provided references to several persons from Scotland whom Washington had hired; now Washington sent Buchan the terms of the proposed lease that he might apprise anyone planning to move or interested in forming an association of farmers. He also sent the advertisement to William Strickland, who, alone among the British correspondents, had visited Mount Vernon when he was preparing his report on agriculture in the United States. To all of the British agriculturalists, Washington repeated some version of his “unequivocal declaration that, it is not my intention to invite Emigrants—even if there be no prohibitary act of your Government opposed to it.”²⁷

The Earl of Buchan praised Washington’s intentions and promised to continue his support for emigrants to the United States. Buchan and the others promised their assistance in finding talented farmers to settle at Mount Vernon, but none of them offered much hope of success. Buchan cautioned Washington that it would be difficult to persuade farmers with capital to emigrate since their ambitions were to be owners of their own lands and cultivators of their own freeholds. Strickland had observed in his agricultural tours of Great Britain and the United States that farmers were in general unlikely to relocate. They were attached to their familiar soil, and in Great Britain they enjoyed the greatest respect of any profession. Anderson was the least optimistic. Interest in emigration had declined, and for farmers of sufficient means, the only appeal of the United States would be the opportunity to purchase land at prices far below those to be found in Great Britain. Anderson also warned that radical British supporters of the French Revolution were now the likeliest to leave for America.²⁸

Whatever their misgivings, these British friends made efforts to find individual farmers for Washington and some tried to organize associations that might lease the lands on the terms set out in the advertisement. William Strickland, who lived in the East Riding of Yorkshire, visited the quayside in Hull to interview departing emigrants who might be interested in becoming tenants on the terms offered by Washington. The Earl of Buchan contacted a knowledgeable friend in the vale of Berwickshire, where he thought the land was similar to Mount Vernon’s, and encouraged him to share Washington’s plan with capable farmers who might be interested in moving to America. A year later, Anderson discovered renewed interest in emigration from Great Britain, and although he did not successfully recruit any tenants, he was instrumental in hiring a Scottish gardener for Washington. Sinclair presented what was surely the least expected inquiry about the plan when he suggested that he and his family might like to rent one of the farms for an extended term as a refuge from the political turmoil of Europe. In reply, Washington wrote, “to have such a tenant as Sir John Sinclair, however desirable it might be, is an honor I dare not hope for,” but explained that he did not want to separate one farm from the others. He encouraged Sinclair instead to consider the neighboring Fairfax estate, Belvoir, which was one of the most beautiful properties on the Potomac and for sale.²⁹

Sinclair subsequently recommended an English farmer who appeared in his letter of introduction to be an ideal prospect for the lease of one of the Mount Vernon farms. Richard Parkinson announced in the summer of 1797 that he would be greatly honored to be sponsored by such eminent men as Sinclair and Washington, and he planned to travel to Virginia to examine the farms before entering any agreement. He forwarded to Washington a prospectus for his forthcoming publication, “The Experienced Farmer,” for which he claimed to have been encouraged by “the first Men in Agriculture, in this Kingdom, and by the Nobility of the first Rank.” Parkinson was from Lincolnshire, a center of agricultural improvement and the advanced breeding of livestock. His brother John was the farm manager for Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist of whom Washington had read. Parkinson’s expression of interest and his request to view the farms gave Washington renewed hope of placing his farms “in the hands of skilful Agriculturalists, who are able, & willing, to manage them properly.” He welcomed Parkinson to visit, and urged him to recruit other English or Scottish farmers to join in the venture. If they were farmers of sufficient capital, Washington assured Parkinson that he would be able to provide them with farming implements and stock of every kind, including draft animals, on reasonable terms. He cautioned Parkinson that, unlike Great Britain, Virginia did not have a large number of laborers available for hire and therefore the wages of workers could be expensive, “unless you were to employ slaves, and these are not to be had but by the year, and not always then.” He again made no mention of the possible hire of enslaved laborers from his own estate.³⁰

Whatever hope Washington had of finding a proper tenant must have been shaken by his receipt of a letter from Parkinson in November 1798. With no explanation of his delays and silence, Parkinson informed Washington that he had shipped to Mount Vernon an enormous and spectacularly expensive assortment of livestock and that he would soon be following on his own. The shipping charge alone was £850, an amount he asked Washington to forward him until he was able to sell some of the most valuable racehorses. Parkinson was persuaded that Washington would welcome the best breeds of England, and the animals included “5 Stallions of the first Blood,” eight mares of “good Extraction,” a hunting mare reputed to be the fastest trotter in England, four sorts of bulls and cows, the best kind of boars and sows, and sheep bred by Robert Bakewell, Britain’s most renowned breeder of improved livestock. With evident exasperation, Washington informed his manager that he had neither the cash to pay the freight nor adequate facilities to house the animals and their keepers. He was, however, so eager to lease River Farm on good terms that if Parkinson agreed to all of his lease conditions, he was inclined to accommodate the animals. The two men, however, would never reach any terms of agreement.³¹

The only account of Parkinson’s visit to Mount Vernon was his own, published upon his return to England after a short-lived attempt to manage a farm in Maryland. Parkinson presented A Tour in America as “an account of my disappointments in America” and as a warning for any English farmer considering a move to the United States. While its content was critical of almost everything about farming in the United States, Parkinson reserved his greatest scorn for the new nation’s most famous farmer. Repeatedly in his two-volume account, he criticized Washington’s alleged ignorance of English farming practices. His caustic descriptions of Mount Vernon and of the Washingtons—he clashed with Martha as well—contradicted almost all other visitors’ accounts and holds little credibility, but the tone is surely revealing of how thoroughly the negotiations regarding River Farm must have broken down. Washington did not live to read the account published in 1805, but the entire engagement with Parkinson was for him further evidence of the unlikelihood of attracting farmers of capital to lease the farms at Mount Vernon.³²

At every stage in the formulation of the scheme to lease the farms, Washington admitted his doubts about its practicability, yet as late as November 1798, nearly two years after resuming the full-time management of his estate and five years after first describing his plan to Arthur Young, he remained interested in any promising offer from an experienced British farmer. For all of its implausibility, the plan reflected the seriousness of Washington’s determination to perpetuate his example of farming and to end his reliance on enslaved agricultural labor. The proposed terms of the leases were characteristically meticulous, devised in the midst of the pressures of his second term as president, but Washington left no record to explain how he would grant freedom to the enslaved or who would subsequently provide the labor on the leased farms. He acknowledged repeatedly that white field laborers were scarce in Virginia and very expensive to hire. In some descriptions of the plan, he expected British tenants might bring laborers with them; at other times he implied the enslaved currently working the land would be available for hire like “any other labourers.” The limited record of his discussion with David Stuart reflects Washington’s reluctance to put in writing the specifics of any plan for emancipation, but the exchange reveals enough to indicate he had devoted considerable thought to the status and labor of the enslaved following emancipation. Whatever transition to freedom Washington envisioned, his decisions to require the continuation of his innovations in farming and to secure British rather than American farmers as tenants moved the plan from the improbable to the nearly impossible.

On the evening of Washington’s resignation from the presidency in March 1797, over two hundred federal officeholders, diplomats, and prominent business leaders gathered at a celebratory dinner in Philadelphia. Above the diners was displayed a large, illuminated image of Washington relinquishing the symbols of military and civil authority on the throne of liberty. With outstretched arm, the figure of Washington pointed to a recognizable depiction of Mount Vernon. In front of the mansion, an unattended plow and yoke of oxen awaited the return of Washington. On his resignation of public office and his resumption of farming at his estate, Washington was again heralded as the Cincinnatus of the age. The version of the illuminated image printed in 1799 was one of the manifold images and published references to Washington as Cincinnatus, and once again, Washington happily resumed his life as a farmer. He wrote the Earl of Buchan “At the age of 65 I am recommencing my Agricultural pursuits & rural amusements; which at all times have been the most pleasing occupation of my life, and most congenial with my temper.” A dedication to farming, always the most promising art of peace, would provide the fitting close to his life. Politics yielded “to the more rational amusement of cultivating the Earth.”³³

Retirement, however, brought no end to the appeals for Washington to free his slaves, and the virtuous example of Cincinnatus could easily be turned against Washington the slaveholder. One of the harshest political attacks on Washington came from the Republican newspaper editor William Duane, who in December 1796 reminded his readers that “the great champion of American Freedom, the rival of Timoleon and Cincinnatus, twenty years after the establishment of the Republic, was possessed of FIVE HUNDRED of the HUMAN SPECIES IN SLAVERY, enjoying the fruits of their Labour without remuneration.” In June 1797, the New York Time Piece, a newspaper published by the Republican editor Philip Freneau, printed a poem begging Washington to explain “How hast thou who to thousands freedom gave, Endur’d the ungrateful service of a slave?” The poet reminded Washington that the original Cincinnatus “Till’d his own ground and kept no man enslav’d.” Just days earlier, the same newspaper had reprinted the Liverpool edition of Edward Rushton’s scathing “Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, of Mount Vernon, in Virginia, on his Continuing to be a Proprietor of Slaves.” In his preface to the letter, Rushton explained that he had sent it to Washington in the summer of 1796, only to have it returned to him “without a syllable in reply.”³⁴

*Fig 8.2* `George Washington’s Resignation,` `engraved by Alexander Lawson, after Barralet, January 1799. As Washington relinquishes the symbols of power on the throne of liberty, an unattended plow and team of oxen at Mount Vernon await his return to farming, like Cincinnatus. The Lawson engraving was based on an image originally designed as a backdrop at a dinner honoring Washington on the evening of his resignation from the presidency.` `Courtesy of Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.`

On his return to Mount Vernon, Washington found neglect and disrepair wherever he looked across his estate, and after six months in residence he admitted that at no time in his life had he been more engaged in the recovery and the reorganization of his private affairs. He continued to bemoan the general state of agriculture in the United States—“it is indeed wretched”—but he resumed his own experiments intended to demonstrate the merits of settled agriculture and the restoration of soil fertility that too many of the nation’s farmers disregarded as they abandoned exhausted grounds and moved west. His final retirement proved to be a period of enormous innovation, even as he searched for tenants who might relieve him of the daily management of the farms and make possible the first steps toward emancipation of the slaves.35

The famous and the curious continued their pilgrimages to Mount Vernon, and from many of them Washington learned about improved livestock and plant material collected from the farthest reaches of the British empire. Following his visit to Washington, James Athill, speaker of the Antiguan assembly, sent more than fifty plants along with a ram and four ewes from the island. In return, Washington sent five of his own sheep for an experiment about the effect of climate on the animals. A British merchant on an extended stay in the United States shipped Washington sheep, a machine for separating chaff from wheat, and several new types of farming implements. Closer to home, some Maryland estate owners known for their excellence in livestock breeding offered cattle and sheep, from which Washington expected to restore his own stock. He was disappointed that a Maryland friend had no more healthy stock of sheep imported from South Africa’s Cape Colony, but the man sent Washington a young bull of his “improved Breed.” Edward Lloyd, from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, sent Washington the gift of a calf bred from the first Bakewell bull imported into the United States.³⁶

At the start of his retirement, Washington considered converting much of his land to meadows for grazing, which he predicted would reduce his reliance on enslaved laborers while maintaining profit and restoring the land. He determined to improve his cattle and to obtain the good rams necessary for replenishing the flocks of sheep that he considered the most valuable of his livestock. Washington found the most satisfactory results from his decade-long effort to breed mules. After numerous disappointments, he at last had enough mules to supply each farm, and by 1797 these draft animals outnumbered working horses. He also increased his breeding stock of asses, which netted more than £50 in stud fees in 1797, and he offered jacks for sale to planters in Virginia and South Carolina.³⁷

While residing in Philadelphia, Washington learned about advances in mechanized farm equipment that promised to make his laborers more efficient. Within days of Washington’s return to Mount Vernon in March 1797, the enslaved carpenters were preparing hickory cogs for a threshing machine based on a model imported from Scotland by Jefferson. Washington pursued every report of improved threshing machines, searching for one “upon a simple plan & not easily put out of order in the hands of ignorant Negros, & careless Overseers.” Despite his disparaging remarks, Washington relied on enslaved carpenters to construct several iterations of threshing machines and on enslaved laborers to operate the machines, which became the primary means of threshing at Union Farm and then River Farm. Washington brought William Booker, the inventor of a new threshing machine, to oversee the carpenters in its construction and in the installation of new works that proved successful. Although Washington was unsuccessful in finding the manufacturer of a wheat-raking machine he saw demonstrated at a farm outside Philadelphia, he remained alert to any innovations in harvesting. Just before the harvest of 1798, he hired a man to instruct the cradlers to cut wheat in the more efficient manner practiced on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.³⁸

The most notable new enterprise of Washington’s retirement was the distillery that quickly became one of the largest producers of whiskey in the nation. This addition had been proposed by the new farm manager, James Anderson, originally from Scotland. Washington approved the project in January 1797 before he returned to Mount Vernon in March, and by early summer he decided to expand production. The production of whiskey added substantial value to the grains produced on the estate, and production increased so much that the operation soon required the purchase of additional grains from local farmers. The distillery was further integrated with agricultural production and livestock husbandry at the estate by feeding hogs with the mash and distributing their manure to the fields. The distillery was Anderson’s most valuable contribution in what was otherwise a complicated relationship with Washington.³⁹

Anderson was in many ways an unusual choice to be manager of the estate. By the time he met Washington, he was in his early fifties and had been a substantial farmer, mill owner, and grain trader in his native Scotland. Forced into bankruptcy after the widespread failure of Scottish-owned distilleries in 1788, Anderson and his family emigrated to Virginia in 1791. For two years, he rented his own farm near Mount Vernon, which he visited in Washington’s absence. He then managed two larger estates in succession, where he supervised between fifteen and twenty-five enslaved laborers. At the second estate he also operated a distillery in which he had a financial interest, and he employed the services of an assistant. Anderson was accustomed to a degree of independence and discretion that no earlier managers at Mount Vernon had exercised, and he asked Washington for unprecedented benefits and wages. Washington, despite his disappointing experience with British managers, was again persuaded of the value in hiring someone who professed to have been bred since his youth to “the practical parts of Farming in Britain,” and he offered Anderson a starting wage of £120, the promise of a raise within a year, horses for him and his wife, and the services of three young enslaved servants. Washington rejected Anderson’s request for an assistant, but following the enormous success of the distillery he allowed the manager the services of his own writing clerk.⁴⁰

Anderson quickly demonstrated his knowledge of farming, and he agreed to Washington’s request for more regular and systematic accounting of every unit on the estate. For the first time, Washington received an annual balance of expenses and revenue for each of the four farms involved in commercial production. He also drew on his experience as president by instituting quarterly accounts. At the same time, Anderson began to chafe under Washington’s demands, and in a series of lengthy letters sent the short distance from his house at Union Farm to Washington in the Mansion House, he complained about Washington’s intrusive oversight and seeming distrust. Washington responded with uncharacteristic patience and offered assurances that he had no intention of replacing Anderson, but he made it clear that he remained in charge of the estate. “Strange, & singular indeed would it be, if the Proprietor of an Estate (than whom no one can be so good a judge of the resources as himself) should have nothing to say in, or controul over, his own expenditures.” By May 1798, Washington proposed that Anderson assume responsibility for the operation of the distillery, the mill, and the fishery while serving as a consultant but not manager of the farms. He was confident that the full attention of Anderson might make the mill and distillery as profitable as the remainder of the estate combined. After another series of demands and concessions, Anderson remained as manager, but Washington was increasingly dissatisfied, not just with his manager’s moodiness, but, more significantly, with his direction of work routines and particularly his allocation of enslaved laborers.⁴¹

Although he brought to Mount Vernon enormous farming experience, Anderson barely met Washington’s usual requirement for familiarity with the management of enslaved laborers. Early in his service as manager, Anderson announced his aversion to working with slaves as well as his readiness to enforce with the whip his demands of their labor. He continued to exhibit a striking callousness and severity toward the enslaved. When two young children in the slave quarters died within the same week, Anderson assured Washington he had called for medical assistance, but he added the general observation that “the mothers are very inattentive to their Young.” Rather than divert healthy laborers from fieldwork, Anderson proposed to Washington that he employ the elderly and infirm among the enslaved in cleaning the hedges, even if it depended on the threat of violent coercion. “If the Invalids could be made to do this work, to them it might be no hardship, And to Us a convenience, a little of the Rod would be necessary to set the business agoing.” Within a few weeks, Old Sam, who had been making baskets in the spinning shop, faced a summer of weeding along the thorn tree hedges.⁴²

Anderson’s worst fault, from the perspective of Washington, was his lack of “system,” and the inability to pursue any systematic plan of work was most evident in Anderson’s supervision and control of enslaved labor, despite his harsh exercise of punishment. Washington had seen Anderson shift the ditchers from one kind of work to another, so that nothing was done well. Anderson ordered field laborers from the farms to come to the Mansion House where they waited half a day before receiving orders to work. He sent the carters to Alexandria for “trifles,” with resulting injury to the teams and waste of labor. “The work of the Carpenters, & waste of their materials,” Washington complained, “have suffered much by shifting them from thing to thing, & compleating nothing.” The work reports submitted by Anderson revealed the near-weekly reassignment of field laborers from one farm to another, despite Washington’s long-standing insistence that each farm be self-sufficient in labor except at harvest. From his long experience managing enslaved laborers who found few rewards for incentive and self-direction, Washington had concluded that “more work will be done in the sametime when people are kept steadily at it, than when they are taken from, & return to it again.”

Washington was most concerned that Anderson failed to implement the new crop rotations, which were the foundation of any regular course of farming and without which there would be nothing but “Jumble, & confusion.” Washington reminded Anderson of his guiding principle in managing an agricultural estate: “System in all things is the soul of business. To deliberate maturely, & execute promptly is the way to conduct it to advantage.” He expected his manager to exercise the same foresight and determined command that he always applied to his plans for the farms. Only by adhering to a considered, long-term plan could a manager or estate owner secure the labor on which the success of farming depended. Washington suggested Anderson vary his daily ride of the estate to ensure that all was in order, livestock enclosed, farming implements protected from the weather, and fences in repair. “Examine the houses, seeing what is amiss therein—particularly the Graineries—Inspecting the Negro quarters, as well for the purpose of detecting improper conduct in them, as to see if they are kept clean (being conducive to their health)—to provide for the sick when they are really so, & to drive out those who are not so.”⁴³

In his own daily observation of the work of the enslaved, Washington thought he could discern the same lack of discipline and order he had suspected throughout much of his time in Philadelphia. Within six months of his return to residence at Mount Vernon, Washington rejected Anderson’s proposals to save more than £120 a year by reducing the number of hired overseers and relying more on enslaved overseers or foremen. Washington advised his manager, “I have always found, however, that Negroes will either idle or slight their work if they are not closely attended to; & for that reason have doubted the propriety of one man overlooking two places.” A year later, he still wanted to hire an additional overseer to avoid further empowering the enslaved foreman at Dogue Run. “When I perceive but too clearly, that Negros are growing more & more insolent & difficult to govern, I am more inclined to incur the expence of an Overseer than to hazard the management, & peace of the place to a Negro.” Washington briefly considered making Will, who formerly supervised work at Dogue Run, the overseer of the Mansion House farm, but he instead hired white men for the position. Rather than accede to the hired carpenter’s demand for higher wages, Anderson recommended that Isaac share management of the carpenters’ work with another enslaved and skilled artisan, James, but Washington hired another white carpenter and joiner.⁴⁴

As early as 1794, Washington had privately shared a concern with a friend about the long-term threat of unrest among the enslaved, writing, “I shall be happily mistaken, if they are not found to be a very troublesome species of property ’ere many years pass over our heads.” During the winter of 1798, two of the most valuable breeding asses “died in most violent agonies,” and Washington suspected they had been poisoned. When his nephew reported a runaway slave in 1797, Washington advised, “these elopements will be much more, before they are less frequent; and that the persons making them should never be retained, if they are recovered, as they are sure to contaminate and discontent others.” The same report prompted another privately expressed wish by Washington for the Virginia Assembly to enact gradual abolition, but at his estate the short-term response was an enforcement of greater control and supervision. Washington advised Anderson to turn “an investigating Eye” on suspected “idleness and roguery.” He also urged Anderson to establish rules for the distribution of grain and hay, “without which, wastes, if not embezzlement, is more to be expected than œconomy.” Anderson redoubled efforts to prevent the theft of articles that the enslaved might sell in the local markets that increasingly provided opportunity for them to barter or obtain cash. After he discovered that the cooper Moses had sold barrels of fish in Alexandria, Anderson announced in the newspaper that to guard against those who “make improper use of their privileges,” enslaved workers from Mount Vernon would henceforth carry certificates specifying the purpose of their errands in town.⁴⁵

Anderson’s shifting allocation of field laborers and tradesmen may have reflected the challenge of efficiently assigning work to the growing number of enslaved laborers on the estate. Once the new course of farming was implemented and the new division of fields was in place, the labor requirements of the farms were fixed, and the number of field laborers at each farm remained relatively stable throughout the 1790s. The number of enslaved carpenters, coopers, and bricklayers was also steady, while the number of slaves on the estate would increase by one hundred people between 1786 and 1799. Early in his service at Mount Vernon, Anderson proposed a reorganization of the farms to reduce the number of field laborers, in part by curtailing the number of acres under cultivation, but the reorganization was never put in place. The distillery provided work for relatively few laborers, and Anderson found that the transfer of field laborers to the distillery or to the larger corps of ditchers had no adverse effect on work at the farms from which they came. In 1798, Anderson proposed the establishment of a new farm and separate quarters for enslaved families on land adjacent to the mill. There the work of some ten to twelve enslaved field laborers, with equal numbers of men and women drawn from each of the existing farms, would be coordinated with the nearby distillery and produce new sources of revenue such as the breeding of thoroughbred horses. In June 1799, Anderson more explicitly addressed the dilemma of finding productive work for the larger number of enslaved on the estate. After sketching out a plan to make the Mount Vernon farms more profitable with fewer laborers, he acknowledged the proposal raised the question : “what is to be done with the Surplus hands?” Anderson’s suggestion was either to hire them out “to Advantage,” or perhaps to find even more profit by employing many of the slaves in settling Washington’s lands in the West. There they would produce revenue within a few years, and by their improvement of the land make the property more valuable for either sale or lease.⁴⁶

Later in the summer of 1799, Washington finally acknowledged, “it is demonstratively clear, that on this Estate (Mount Vernon) I have more working Negros by a full moiety, than can be employed to any advantage in the farming System.” He refused to sell any slaves, “because I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species,” and he was reluctant to hire out the laborers because it would be impossible to do so without breaking up families. He pleaded with his nephew Robert Lewis, “What then is to be done? Something must, or I shall be ruined.” Having abandoned any expectation that he might lease the four farms, Washington proposed to relocate many of the enslaved under his control. He was convinced that by placing half of them on new farms—far from Mount Vernon—he would gain more income from their labor than he currently made from the entire estate. Relying on Lewis, who had managed the collection of rents from his tenants, Washington explored the possibility of buying out leases from tenants on his lands in Virginia counties west of the Blue Ridge. He asked Lewis to visit a tract of land in Berkeley County and to assess how many laborers could be employed there. At the same time, he attempted to reduce the number of enslaved laborers under his supervision. In July he proposed to return to Penelope French the forty slaves he hired from her in accordance with a land sale agreement. In September, he offered another nephew, Lawrence Lewis, and his wife, Martha’s granddaughter Nelly Custis, the lease of Dogue Run farm and adjoining property, and he proposed that they hire the enslaved laborers who worked and resided on that valuable farm. Washington valued the annual hire of six men, thirteen women, and eight working children at £192, £18 more than the annual rent for the land, and the Lewises would assume the care of fourteen younger children and three women who were infirm or “passed labor.” If he could also lease the mill, the distillery, and the fishery at Union Farm, Washington thought he would be able to manage the remaining components of the estate by himself.⁴⁷

Over the fall months, Washington offered James Anderson several opportunities to serve him in some reduced capacity while he planned for a further reduction in the number of enslaved field laborers on the remaining farms. While he continued to praise Anderson’s enterprise and hard work, Washington frankly told him that the responsibility as manager of the estate was beyond his capabilities, especially given the recent decline in his health. Washington offered him a lease of the mill and distillery and the hire of the enslaved workers there, even though he preferred to put those valuable operations under Lawrence Lewis once he took up residence at Dogue Run. He also offered to let Anderson remain in his employ for another year. By late fall, Lawrence and Nelly Lewis agreed to lease Dogue Run farm, the distillery, and the mill. Anderson chose to remain as manager of the farms at Mount Vernon until Washington put them under his own direction.⁴⁸

Washington assured Anderson, “I shall find no difficulty in superintending my Farms, myself; if not with skill, at least with œconomy.” In early December he prescribed an exhaustively detailed program for managing the three remaining farms over the next four years with an anticipated reduction in the number of enslaved laborers. He asked Anderson to assist in the transition by explaining the design to the overseers and supervising their implementation of the latest revision in the system of farming. In addition to detailed instructions for every acre of cleared land on the three farms, Washington offered Anderson a summation of his lifelong approach to the combined management of improved agriculture and enslaved labor. It was the “indispensable duty” of a manager “to take a prospective, and comprehensive view of the whole business which is laid before him, that the several parts thereof may be so ordered and arranged, as that one sort of work may follow another sort in proper Succession, and without loss of labour, or of time.” A regular course of action, “made known to all who are actors in it,” made easier the job of the overseers and “would be less harassing to those who labour.” With a system in place, “the Overseers, & even the Negros, know, what is to be done, and what they are capable of doing, in ordinary seasons: in short every thing would move like clock work.”⁴⁹

In the farming plan forwarded to the white overseers at River and Union Farms, Washington announced, “The hands next year may be reduced at all the Farms a little; and the year following, and thence forward, very considerably, as plowing will constitute almost the whole of the work, except at Harvest, and in getting out the Grain, and in Fencing.” Once Anderson had reviewed the plans and consulted with the overseers, Washington wanted him to advise on the number of laborers who could be moved from the remaining farms to new lands as early as 1800. Washington also directed Anderson to travel in early spring to his western lands to report on their current condition and the potential for improvement. On December 12, 1799, Washington rode his customary circuit of the farms that he intended to assume the sole management of in another year, and in the worsening winter weather, he personally delivered the farming plan to the overseer at River Farm. The following morning, he awoke with symptoms of the respiratory infection of which he would die a day later. The last letter Washington ever sent was that transmitting the plan to Anderson.⁵⁰

Following Washington’s death, word quickly spread of the momentous provisions of his will. Prominently included near the beginning of the document written in his own hand and completed in July 1799 was the dramatic announcement that “it is my Will & desire that all the Slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their freedom.” Washington finally granted the enslaved the liberty that he had endorsed in principle and in private for at least sixteen years. Although he “earnestly wished” to make the emancipation effective soon after his death, Washington decided to delay freedom for the enslaved until after the death of Martha so as to spare her, in his words, the “most painful sensations” that would surely accompany the disruption of the many marriages between slaves owned by Washington and those controlled by the Custis estate. Washington reminded readers of the will that it was not in “my power, under the tenure by which the Dower Negroes are held, to manumit them.” Only William Lee, Washington’s longtime valet, received immediate freedom and an annual stipend, “as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.” Once Martha died, the enslaved owned by Washington would face one last condition on their freedom. In his final instruction as a farmer, Washington further delayed the freedom of the laborers until “after the Crops which may then be on the ground are harvested.”⁵¹

In his prescribed support for the children and the elderly among the freed slaves, Washington went well beyond the requirements of Virginia law. All who were too old, too infirm, or too young to support themselves were to be clothed and fed by Washington’s heirs. Washington instructed his executors to establish a permanent fund to support the former slaves as long as any required assistance. Any of the young freed people who were orphans and those whose parents were unable to support them would be bound out as indentured servants until they reached the age of twenty-five. Washington insisted that a court set the terms of servitude and determine the age of the freed children if there was no written record. Washington further required that the “Masters or Mistresses” teach the children bound to them to read and write, and that the children “be brought up to some useful occupation, agreeably to the Laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, providing for the support of Orphan and other poor Children.” Washington’s choice to extend to the freed Black children the same legal protections that applied to dependent white children was the clearest indication of his expectation that the former slaves would be self-supporting and able to live independently within Virginia. The education and training of the children also made it far more likely that as adults they would be able to pay the minimal taxes and thereby avoid the risk of being detained and bound as servants under the terms of the 1782 manumission act.⁵²

By the time Washington wrote his will in the summer of 1799, the first wave of emancipation in Virginia had generated popular opposition and numerous proposals to curtail manumission and restrict the rights of freed slaves. Large-scale and sweeping emancipations, like that prescribed by Robert Carter’s deed of manumission, faced serious challenges from family members deprived of an inheritance of the labor that made land valuable. In various ways, the terms of Washington’s will protected the freedom of the former slaves from the likeliest challenges. Washington forbid, “under any pretence whatsoever,” the sale or transportation out of Virginia of any slave he owned at his death. He ordered his executors “to see that this clause respecting Slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place; without evasion, neglect or delay.” The establishment of the fund for support of the freed people was intended to eliminate the possibility of any “uncertain provision to be made by individuals.” The first clause of the will required that Washington’s few debts be paid “punctually and speedily,” thereby shielding the estate from any claims of creditors who might be paid in slave property, as was permitted under a recent change in Virginia law. The delay of emancipation until after Martha’s death protected the enslaved from any action based on a 1795 law that allowed a widow to claim a dower right to one-third of a husband’s slaves, “notwithstanding they may be emancipated by his will.”⁵³

While preparing his will in June 1799, Washington simultaneously conducted a census of all of the enslaved people on the estate, noting those he owned, those who were dower slaves, and those hired from Penelope French. Based on that list, the will would have freed 124 persons at Mount Vernon. The census recorded more than twenty married couples that would be divided by the separation of the dower or French’s slaves from those owned by Washington. In the will, Washington also provided for the eventual freedom of more than thirty slaves he had accepted ownership of in 1788 as payment on a long-standing debt owed by the estate of Martha’s brother, Bartholomew Dandridge. Washington allowed Dandridge’s widow to retain custody of the enslaved on her New Kent County land, without any further charge for their hire. At her death, all of the enslaved who had passed the age of forty would be freed immediately. According to the schedule determined by Washington, those between seventeen and thirty-nine would serve an indenture of seven years, and those sixteen and younger would serve until the age of twenty-five. Washington made no further provision for the kind of support or education that he had ensured for the freed slaves from Mount Vernon.⁵⁴

By the terms of his will, Washington provided for the division of the Mount Vernon farms among several of his nephews and his adopted granddaughter. He explained each bequest in terms of family connections and obligations rather than any regard for farming abilities or commitment to agricultural improvement. Bushrod Washington, by then an associate justice on the Supreme Court, would receive the center of the estate, including the Mansion House, Union, and Muddy Hole farms, in recognition of his father John Augustine’s management of the estate during the French and Indian War and in fulfillment of Washington assurances that if he fell in battle, his favorite brother would receive Mount Vernon. The young sons born to Washington’s nephew George Augustine and his wife, Martha’s niece Fanny Bassett, were to receive the large River Farm and an adjacent farm of 360 acres, in consideration of their “consanguinity” with both Washingtons as well as in acknowledgment of their father’s management of the estate during Washington’s public service at the Federal Convention and as president. As he had informed Lawrence Lewis and his wife, Nelly, they jointly received most of Dogue Run Farm and adjoining lands, along with the gristmill and distillery. These various divisions would take effect following the death of Martha, to whom Washington bequeathed “the use, profit and benefit of my whole Estate, real and personal, for the term of her natural life.”⁵⁵

Had Washington lived long enough to remove enslaved people from the Mount Vernon farms and to settle many, perhaps half, of them on his tenancies or lands further west, it would have vastly complicated the terms of the will. He formulated the plans to reorganize the estate and reduce the number of field laborers at the remaining farms only in the months after he wrote his will and made the decision to free the slaves after his death. Throughout the fall of 1799 Washington had searched for new ways to employ the enslaved people still under his control, apparently abandoning any plan to emancipate them during his lifetime. Once he completed his will in July 1799, Washington focused on ways to reduce the number of enslaved laborers under his immediate supervision, beginning with his proposal to return those hired from the French family and continuing with his offer to let the Lewises hire the enslaved at Dogue Run, the mill, and the distillery. The anticipated removal of other field laborers to western lands would have left Washington with the minimum number of laborers and tradesmen for the experimental rotations that he outlined with such care in December 1799, but still reliant on enslaved field workers to implement his vision of improvement.⁵⁶

Freedom came to the Washington slaves at Mount Vernon on January 1, 1801, not as a result of the former president’s will but rather by a deed of manumission submitted by Martha Washington in the Fairfax County court in December 1800. At least as early as the previous April, Martha indicated that she would free her husband’s slaves during her lifetime, perhaps, as several contemporary accounts suggested, out of fear that as long as she stood between the slaves and their liberty, she would not be safe. By early March 1801, most of the freed people had left the estate. Many remained in Fairfax County, and some were able to purchase land. Several households of freed slaves from Mount Vernon formed the core of a sustained and cohesive free Black community not far from the estate. Some of those individuals may have been able to maintain contact with their family and friends among the dower slaves who were relocated either to the nearby estate of Lawrence and Nelly Custis Lewis or to George Washington Parke Custis’s estate at Arlington. Many of the freed people who continued to live in the county or in nearby Alexandria registered as free Blacks in accordance with a Virginia statute of 1793. Washington’s executors continued to provide support for the older and infirm freed people until the last of them died in the 1830s.⁵⁷

Within six months of Washington’s death, James Anderson drew a bleak picture of the farms and the burdensome costs of operating the estate. With the lease of the valuable Dogue Run farm to Lawrence and Nelly Custis Lewis, revenues from the estate fell well below expenses. Anderson wrote Martha Washington that the estate had been unproductive since he assumed management and that he now considered it “my Duty to resign,” as of the end of December. Near the close of the year, Anderson placed in an Alexandria newspaper notice of his impending departure and a request to settle all debts on his or Martha Washington’s accounts. As early as March 1800, the executors of Washington’s estate began to sell livestock, and following the death of Martha in May 1802, much of the farm equipment was put up for sale. With the emancipation of the Washington slaves and the dispersal of the dower slaves among the Custis children, Mount Vernon lost the agricultural experience and skill of the scores of field workers and artisans. Bushrod Washington shared none of his uncle’s interest in agricultural improvement, and under his ownership the farms surrounding the Mansion House went into quick decline.⁵⁸

By the early 1830s, an agricultural reformer visiting Mount Vernon found only poignant reminders of the great ambitions of Washington. “Any, curious to mark the operation of time upon human affairs, would find much for contemplation by riding through the extensive domains of the late General Washington. A more wide spread and perfect agricultural ruin could not be imagined; yet the monuments of the great mind that once ruled, are seen throughout. The ruins of capacious barns, and long extended hedges, seem proudly to boast that their master looked to the future.” The visitor recognized that Washington had directed his agricultural improvements toward the future of the nation. The legacy of Washington’s commitment to improvement, however, would be found not in any enduring system of farming, but rather in the example of both his determination to make his estate a model for the nation and his belated grant of freedom to the enslaved laborers who had made possible his pursuit of enlightened farming.⁵⁹