in England is a sort of idol; people are bred up in the belief and love of it, but see little of its doings.  They walk about freely, but then it is between high walls; and the error of its government was in supposing that after a portion of their subjects had crossed the sea to live upon a common, they would permit their friends at home to build up those walls about them."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Lodge, II, 338, 339.]

We find among the allusions of several strangers who travelled in Virginia in Washington’s later days, who saw him or perhaps even stayed at Mount Vernon, some which are not complimentary.  More than one story implies that he was a hard taskmaster, not only with the negroes, but with the whites.  Some of the writers go out of their way to pick up unpleasant things.  For instance, during his absence from home a mason plastered some of the rooms, and when Washington returned he found the work had been badly done, and remonstrated.  The mason died.  His widow married another mason, who advertised that he would pay all claims against his forerunner.  Thereupon Washington put in a claim for fifteen shillings, which was paid.  Washington’s detractors used this as a strong proof of his harshness.  But they do not inform us whether the man was unable to pay, or whether the claim was dishonest.  Since the man paid voluntarily and did not question the lightness of the amount, may we not at least infer that he had no quarrel?  And if he had not, who else had?

Insinuations concerning Washington’s lack of sympathy for his slaves was a form which in later days most of the references to his care of them took.  But here also there are evident facts to be taken into account.  The Abolitionists very naturally were prejudiced against every slave-owner; they were also prejudiced in favor of every slave.  Washington, on the contrary, harbored no prepossessions for or against the black man.  He found the slaves idle, incompetent, lazy, although he would not have denied that the very fact of slavery caused and increased these evils.  He treated the negroes justly, but without any sentimentality.  He found them in the order in which he lived.  They were the workmen of his plantation; he provided them with food, clothing, and a lodging; in return they were expected to give him their labor.  It does not appear that the slaves on Washington’s plantation endured any special hardship.  A physician attended them at their master’s expense when they were sick.  That he obliged them to do their specified work, that he punished them in case of dishonesty, just as he would have done to white workmen, were facts which he never would have thought a rational person would have regarded as heinous.  In his will he freed his slaves, not for the Abolitionist’s reason, but because he regarded slavery as the most pernicious form of labor, debasing alike the slave and his master, uneconomic and most wasteful.