Download or read book The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret written by Mary V. Thompson and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "American historians began producing in-depth studies of slavery and slave life shortly after World War II, but it was not until the early 1980s that the country's museums took the first tentative steps to interpret those same controversial topics. Perhaps because of the tremendous amount of primary material related to George Washington, almost no one looked into the lives of Mount Vernon's enslaved population. Incorporating the results of detailed digging, of both the archaeological and archival varieties, the number of chapters grew as further questions arose. While a few scholars outside Mount Vernon turned their attention to Washington's changing ideas about slavery, they largely overlooked the daily lives of those who were enslaved on the estate, a subject about which visitors expressed a desire to know more. The resulting book makes use of a wide range of sources, including letters, financial ledgers, work reports, travel diaries kept by visitors to Mount Vernon, the reminiscences of family members, former slaves, and neighbors, reports by archaeologists, and surviving artifacts to flesh out the lives of a people who left few written records, but made up 90 percent of the estate's population. The book begins with a look at George and Martha Washington as slaveowners, before turning to various facets of slave life ranging from work, to family life, housing, foodways, private enterprise, and resistance. Along the way, readers will see a relationship between Washington's military career and his style of plantation management, learn of the many ways slaves rebelled against their condition, and get to know many of the enslaved people who made Mount Vernon their home"--

Download or read book George Washington and Slavery written by Fritz Hirschfeld and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because General Washington - the universally acknowledged hero of the Revolutionary War - in the postwar period uniquely combined the moral authority, personal prestige, and political power to influence significantly the course and the outcome of the slavery debate, his opinions on the subject of slaves and slavery are of crucial importance to understanding how racism succeeded in becoming an integral and official part of the national fabric during its formative stages.

Download or read book Slavery at the Home of George Washington written by Philip J. Schwarz and published by George Washington Bookshelf. This book was released on 2001 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Washington inherited his first slave at the age of eleven, and he was the only founding father to free his slaves in his will. This highly readable selection of articles focuses on Washington's changing attitudes toward the institution of slavery and his everyday relationships with the slaves who shared his Mount Vernon estate. Along with his insightful introduction, editor Philip J. Schwarz has included James C. Rees's essay "Looking Back, Moving Forward: The Changing Interpretation of Slave Life on the Mount Vernon Estate," Dennis J. Pogue's essay "Slave Lifeways at Mount Vernon: An Archaeological Perspective," and Lorena S. Walsh's essay "Slavery and Agriculture at Mount Vernon," as well as essays by Jean B. Lee, Mary V. Thompson, and Edna Greene Medford.

Download or read book Never Caught written by Erica Armstrong Dunbar and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of “extraordinary grit” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property. “A crisp and compulsively readable feat of research and storytelling” (USA TODAY), historian and National Book Award finalist Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked everything to gain freedom from the famous founding father and most powerful man in the United States at the time.

Download or read book A Birthday Cake for George Washington written by Ramin Ganeshram and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expoloration of fifty influential and inspirational women who changed the world. Everyone is buzzing about the president's birthday! Especially George Washington's servants who scurry around the kitchen preparing to make this the best celebration ever. Oh, how George Washington loves his cake! And, oh, how he depends on Hercules, his head chef, to make it for him. Hercules, a slave, takes great pride in baking the president's cake. But this year there is one problem--they are out of sugar. This story, told in the voice of Delia, Hercules' young daughter, is based on real events, and underscores the loving exchange between a very determined father and his eager daughter who are faced with an unspoken, bittersweet reality.

Download or read book Master George s People written by Marfe Ferguson Delano and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the first President of the United States of America and the Commander in Chief who led a rebel army to victory in the Revolutionary War, George Washington was a legendary leader of men. He had high expectations of his soldiers, employees, and associates. At his Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, his expectations of his workers were no different: "I expect such labor as they ought to render" he wrote. Except there was a big difference. The workers who kept Mount Vernon operating were enslaved. And although Washington called them "my people," by law they were his property. But the people of Mount Vernon were so much more, and they each have compelling stories to tell. These are fascinating portraits of cooks, overseers, valets, farm hands, and more- essential people nearly lost in the shadows of the past- interwoven with an extraordinary examination of the conscience of the Father of Our Country.

Download or read book Lives Bound Together written by Jessie MacLeod and published by . This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the time of George Washington's death in 1799, more than 300 enslaved men, women, and children lived on his Mount Vernon plantation. Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington's Mount Vernon, published to accompany a 2016-2018 exhibition, explores this important example of eighteenth-century slavery through brief biographies of 19 enslaved individuals, 10 essays, and 130 illustrations (including paintings, prints, objects, buildings, landscapes, documents, charts, maps, and conjectural silhouettes that suggest the presence of the enslaved). The text illuminates three key themes: first, the lives, families, and experiences of the enslaved people of Mount Vernon; second, Washington's changing views on slavery, culminating in his pioneering action to free his slaves per the terms of his will; and third, the extent to which his public career and his family's lives were inextricably entwined with the labor of Mount Vernon's enslaved people. The biographies represent a range of experiences, including men and women; natives of Africa and the Virginia Tidewater; field-workers, artisans, and domestic laborers; some who escaped and some who were recaptured and sold as punishment; some who died in slavery and some who became free. Compiled by Mount Vernon Associate Curator Jessie MacLeod, these biographies draw upon documentary references, from Washington's diaries, letters, account books, invoices, farm managers' reports, visitor descriptions, and public records, supplemented by archaeology and oral histories. The essays provide a broader context for understanding the individual life stories, focusing on George Washington's changing attitude toward slavery; the resistance actions of the enslaved; the nineteenth-century history of slavery at Mount Vernon and images created by nineteenth-century artists; the kinds of evidence found in documents, databases, archaeology, and landscapes; and personal reflections by members of families descended from individuals enslaved at Mount Vernon. Harvard law professor and historian Annette Gordon Reed contributes the introduction; an appendix presents a timeline linking key events in the lives of people enslaved at Mount Vernon with George Washington's public and private actions relating to slavery as well as landmark events of national history. Detailed reference notes and suggestions for further readings complete the work.

Download or read book Never Caught the Story of Ona Judge written by Erica Armstrong Dunbar and published by Aladdin. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A brilliant work of US history.” —School Library Journal (starred review) “Gripping.” —BCCB (starred review) “Accessible…Necessary.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction, Never Caught is the eye-opening narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington’s runaway slave, who risked everything for a better life—now available as a young reader’s edition! In this incredible narrative, Erica Armstrong Dunbar reveals a fascinating and heartbreaking behind-the-scenes look at the Washingtons when they were the First Family—and an in-depth look at their slave, Ona Judge, who dared to escape from one of the nation’s Founding Fathers. Born into a life of slavery, Ona Judge eventually grew up to be George and Martha Washington’s “favored” dower slave. When she was told that she was going to be given as a wedding gift to Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Ona made the bold and brave decision to flee to the north, where she would be a fugitive. From her childhood, to her time with the Washingtons and living in the slave quarters, to her escape to New Hampshire, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, along with Kathleen Van Cleve, shares an intimate glimpse into the life of a little-known, but powerful figure in history, and her brave journey as she fled the most powerful couple in the country.

Download or read book Taking Liberty written by Ann Rinaldi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When I was four and my daddy left, I cried, but I understood. He had become part of the Gone. Oney Judge is a slave. But on the plantation of Mount Vernon, the beautiful home of George and Martha Washington, she is not called a slave. She is referred to as a servant, and a house servant at that -- a position of influence and respect. When she rises to the position of personal servant to Martha Washington, her status among the household staff -- black or white -- is second to none. She is Lady Washington's closest confidante and for all intents and purposes, a member of the family -- or so she thinks. Slowly, Oney's perception of her life with the Washingtons begins to crack as she realizes the truth: No matter what it's called, it's still slavery and she's still a slave. Oney must make a choice. Does she stay where she is -- comfortable, with this family that has loved her and nourished her and owned her since the day she was born? Or does she take her liberty -- her life -- into her own hands, and like her father, become one of the Gone? Told with immense power and compassion, Taking Liberty is the extraordinary true story of one young woman's struggle to take what is rightfully hers.

Download or read book Washington at the Plow written by Bruce A. Ragsdale and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh, original look at George Washington as an innovative land manager whose singular passion for farming would unexpectedly lead him to reject slavery. George Washington spent more of his working life farming than he did at war or in political office. For over forty years, he devoted himself to the improvement of agriculture, which he saw as the means by which the American people would attain the Òrespectability & importance which we ought to hold in the world.Ó Washington at the Plow depicts the Òfirst farmer of AmericaÓ as a leading practitioner of the New Husbandry, a transatlantic movement that spearheaded advancements in crop rotation. A tireless experimentalist, Washington pulled up his tobacco and switched to wheat production, leading the way for the rest of the country. He filled his library with the latest agricultural treatises and pioneered land-management techniques that he hoped would guide small farmers, strengthen agrarian society, and ensure the prosperity of the nation. Slavery was a key part of WashingtonÕs pursuits. He saw enslaved field workers and artisans as means of agricultural development and tried repeatedly to adapt slave labor to new kinds of farming. To this end, he devised an original and exacting system of slave supervision. But Washington eventually found that forced labor could not achieve the productivity he desired. His inability to reconcile ideals of scientific farming and rural order with race-based slavery led him to reconsider the traditional foundations of the Virginia plantation. As Bruce Ragsdale shows, it was the inefficacy of chattel slavery, as much as moral revulsion at the practice, that informed WashingtonÕs famous decision to free his slaves after his death.

Download or read book You Never Forget Your First written by Alexis Coe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AN NPR CONCIERGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “In her form-shattering and myth-crushing book….Coe examines myths with mirth, and writes history with humor… [You Never Forget Your First] is an accessible look at a president who always finishes in the first ranks of our leaders.” —Boston Globe Alexis Coe takes a closer look at our first--and finds he is not quite the man we remember Young George Washington was raised by a struggling single mother, demanded military promotions, caused an international incident, and never backed down--even when his dysentery got so bad he had to ride with a cushion on his saddle. But after he married Martha, everything changed. Washington became the kind of man who named his dog Sweetlips and hated to leave home. He took up arms against the British only when there was no other way, though he lost more battles than he won. After an unlikely victory in the Revolutionary War cast him as the nation's hero, he was desperate to retire, but the founders pressured him into the presidency--twice. When he retired years later, no one talked him out of it. He left the highest office heartbroken over the partisan nightmare his backstabbing cabinet had created. Back on his plantation, the man who fought for liberty must confront his greatest hypocrisy--what to do with the men, women, and children he owns--before he succumbs to death. With irresistible style and warm humor, You Never Forget Your First combines rigorous research and lively storytelling that will have readers--including those who thought presidential biographies were just for dads--inhaling every page.

Download or read book Washington Black written by Esi Edugyan and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • “A gripping historical narrative exploring both the bounds of slavery and what it means to be truly free.” —Vanity Fair Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash’s head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their travels, what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self. Spanning the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, London to Morocco, Washington Black is a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, and of a world destroyed and made whole again.

Download or read book An Imperfect God written by Henry Wiencek and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Imperfect God is a major new biography of Washington, and the first to explore his engagement with American slavery When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret." In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman. Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system's evil. Wiencek's revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington's determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility--as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted--that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus; Wiencek has new evidence that this could indeed have been true. George Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.

Download or read book In the Name of the Father written by Francois Furstenberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-04-24 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revelatory and genuinely groundbreaking study, François Furstenberg sheds new light on the genesis of American identity. Immersing us in the publishing culture of the early nineteenth century, he shows us how the words of George Washington and others of his generation became America's sacred scripture and provided the foundation for a new civic culture, one whose reconciliation with slavery unleashed consequences that haunt us still. A dazzling work of scholarship from a brilliant young historian, In the Name of the Father is a major contribution to American social history.

Download or read book Travels with George written by Nathaniel Philbrick and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Travels with George . . . is quintessential Philbrick—a lively, courageous, and masterful achievement.” —The Boston Globe Does George Washington still matter? Bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick argues for Washington’s unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new president through all thirteen former colonies, which were now an unsure nation. Travels with George marks a new first-person voice for Philbrick, weaving history and personal reflection into a single narrative. When George Washington became president in 1789, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative political experiment. Washington undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to ordinary citizens about his new government, and to imbue in them the idea of being one thing—Americans. In the fall of 2018, Nathaniel Philbrick embarked on his own journey into what Washington called “the infant woody country” to see for himself what America had become in the 229 years since. Writing in a thoughtful first person about his own adventures with his wife, Melissa, and their dog, Dora, Philbrick follows Washington’s presidential excursions: from Mount Vernon to the new capital in New York; a monthlong tour of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island; a venture onto Long Island and eventually across Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The narrative moves smoothly between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries as we see the country through both Washington’s and Philbrick’s eyes. Written at a moment when America’s founding figures are under increasing scrutiny, Travels with George grapples bluntly and honestly with Washington’s legacy as a man of the people, a reluctant president, and a plantation owner who held people in slavery. At historic houses and landmarks, Philbrick reports on the reinterpretations at work as he meets reenactors, tour guides, and other keepers of history’s flame. He paints a picture of eighteenth-century America as divided and fraught as it is today, and he comes to understand how Washington compelled, enticed, stood up to, and listened to the many different people he met along the way—and how his all-consuming belief in the union helped to forge a nation.

Download or read book The Widow Washington written by Martha Saxton and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insightful biography of Mary Ball Washington, the mother of our nation's father The Widow Washington is the first life of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington’s mother, based on archival sources. Her son’s biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her oldest child. But the records tell a very different story. Mary Ball, the daughter of a wealthy planter and a formerly indentured servant, was orphaned young and grew up working hard, practicing frugality and piety. Stepping into Virginia’s upper class, she married an older man, the planter Augustine Washington, with whom she had five children before his death eleven years later. As a widow deprived of most of her late husband’s properties, Mary struggled to raise her children, but managed to secure them places among Virginia’s elite. In her later years, she and her wealthy son George had a contentious relationship, often disagreeing over money, with George dismissing as imaginary her fears of poverty and helplessness. Yet Mary Ball Washington had a greater impact on George than mothers of that time and place usually had on their sons. George did not have the wealth or freedom to enjoy the indulged adolescence typical of young men among the planter class. Mary’s demanding mothering imbued him with many of the moral and religious principles by which he lived. The two were strikingly similar, though the commanding demeanor, persistence, athleticism, penny-pinching, and irascibility that they shared have served the memory of the country’s father immeasurably better than that of his mother. Martha Saxton’s The Widow Washington is a necessary and deeply insightful corrective, telling the story of Mary’s long, arduous life on its own terms, and not treating her as her son’s satellite.

Download or read book Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral written by Phillis Wheatley and published by . This book was released on 1887 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: