“Upon the decease of my wife it is my will and desire that all the slaves which I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom—­To emancipate them during her life, would, tho’ earnestly wished by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their intermixture of marriages with the Dower negroes as to excite the most painful sensations—­if not disagreeable consequences from the latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same proprietor, it not being in my power under the tenure by which the dower Negroes are held to manumit them—­And whereas among those who will receive freedom according to this devise there may be some who from old age, or bodily infirmities & others who on account of their infancy, that will be unable to support themselves, it is my will and desire that all who come under the first and second description shall be comfortably cloathed and fed by my heirs while they live and that such of the latter description as have no parents living, or if living are unable or unwilling to provide for them, shall be bound by the Court until they shall arrive at the age of twenty five years....  The negroes thus bound are (by their masters and mistresses) to be taught to read and write and to be brought up to some useful occupation.”

In this connection Washington’s sentiments on slavery as an institution may be glanced at.  As early as 1784 he replied to Lafayette, when told of a colonizing plan, “The scheme, my dear Marqs., which you propose as a precedent to encourage the emancipation of the black people of this Country from that state of Bondage in wch. they are held, is a striking evidence of the benevolence of your Heart.  I shall be happy to join you in so laudable a work; but will defer going into a detail of the business, till I have the pleasure of seeing you.”  A year later, when Francis Asbury was spending a day in Mount Vernon, the clergyman asked his host if he thought it wise to sign a petition for the emancipation of slaves.  Washington replied that it would not be proper for him, but added, “If the Maryland Assembly discusses the matter; I will address a letter to that body on the subject, as I have always approved of it.”

When South Carolina refused to pass an act to end the slave-trade, he wrote to a friend in that State, “I must say that I lament the decision of your legislature upon the question of importing slaves after March 1793.  I was in hopes that motives of policy as well as other good reasons, supported by the direful effects of slavery, which at this moment are presented, would have operated to produce a total prohibition of the importation of slaves, whenever the question came to be agitated in any State, that might be interested in the measure.”  For his own State he expressed the “wish from my soul that the Legislature of this State could see the policy of a gradual Abolition of Slavery; it would prev’t much future mischief.”  And to a Pennsylvanian he expressed the sentiment,