Page:The Slave Struggle in America.djvu/14

 British troops. And yet this just and kindly man was a slaveholder, but a slaveholder by birth and not by inclination. He belonged to a class of men habituated to a system now properly regarded with horror and indignation. We are told that "he treated his negroes with kindness, attended to their comforts, was particularly careful of them in sickness, but never tolerated idleness, and exacted a faithful performance of all their allotted tasks." But although born and educated a slaveholder, as Washington advanced in years slavery became more and more distasteful to him, as we may see by his letters to Mr. John F. Mercer and later to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis. His will provided that all his slaves were to be liberated on the death of his wife.

Why did Washington hold slaves at all? Why did he not manumit them during his life-time? It was because he was born of slave-holding parents, educated as a slaveholder, and accustomed all his life to slaves. Before his marriage he was not sufficiently alive to the evils of slavery. After his marriage, as we see by the terms of his will, he thought the emancipation of his slaves during his wife's life-time would be attended with almost insurmountable difficulties. But so anxious was he about the manumission of his negroes that he made it the subject of the second clause of his will, the first providing for the welfare of his wife.