A Paradox in the History of U.S. Slavery

A paradox in the history of slavery in the United States is that many of the opponents of slavery were themselves slave owners (Johnson and Johnson, 2002). One example is George Mason, a slave owner who was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and authored Virginia’s Bill of Rights. He refused to sign the Constitution because it did not free the slaves, and did not have adequate safeguards against slavery. Yet he kept his slaves, planning to free them when he died, but on his deathbed his children persuaded him not to do so, as they argued it would leave them penniless.

Another example is Benjamin Franklin, who at one time owned at least six household slaves. Franklin was a slave owner from as early as 1735 until 1781. His ownership of slaves was not the only way he benefited from slavery. As the editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette, he profited from the domestic and international slave trade, benefitting financially from the advertisements for runaway slaves and slave auctions paid for by slave owners and traders. However, he also published antislavery ads from Quakers. In 1759 he joined Dr. Bray Associates (by donating money), a philanthropic association affiliated with the Church of England, that among other things conducted schools for Black children. Franklin freed his slaves in 1781 and also promoted the idea that freed slaves should be educated so that they could survive and participate in society.

In 1787, Franklin became the President of the Philadelphia Abolition Society (i.e., Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage). The Society was formed by a group of abolitionist Quakers and Anthony Benezet in 1774 and, as the first abolitionist society in America, served as an inspiration for the formation of abolitionist societies in other colonies. In "Address to the Public," a letter of Nov. 9, 1789, Franklin argued against slavery, stating that slaves had long been treated as brute animals beneath the standard of human species. Franklin asked for resources and donations to help freed slaves adjust to society by giving them education, moral instruction, and suitable employment. A few months prior to his death, he wrote strongly against slavery, calling it an ‘atrocious debasement of human nature.” By that time, Franklin believed that the slave trade should be illegal and that all slaves should be freed. On Feb. 3, 1790, less than three months before his death, Franklin petitioned Congress to provide the means to bring slavery to an end. While most everyone would agree that Franklin was against slavery, he certainly owned slaves for a substantial period of his life.

A third example is George Washington. Washington grew up on a plantation on which slaves were the major source of labor. Washington (and Madison) rejected the notion of innate Black inferiority (Leibinger, 2001, p.183). His history as a slave owner, however, began when he was 11 years old. Upon his father’s death, he inherited 10 slaves. By the time of Washington's death in 1799, the population of slaves at Mount Vernon was 317, including 143 children. Of that total, Washington owned 124, leased 40 more, and controlled 153 dower slaves (Hirschfeld 1997 pp. 16–17; Morgan 2000 pp. 281–282, 298). He freed all his slaves in his will. While he owned slaves throughout his life, he also opposed slavery during much of that time. Late in his presidency, George Washington told his Secretary of State, Edmund Randolph, that in the event of a conflict between North and South, he had "made up his mind to leave Virginia and move up north” (Wiencek 2003 pp. 361–362). In 1798, he said, "I can clearly foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union" (Hirschfeld, 1997, pp. 72–73).

The next year, he instructed his secretary Tobias Lear to sell his western lands, ostensibly to consolidate his operations, and put his financial affairs in order. Washington concluded his instructions to Lear with a private message in which he expressed repugnance at owning slaves and declared that the principal reason for selling the land was to raise the money that would allow him to free his slaves (Twohig 2001 p. 128; Wiencek 2003 pp. 273–274). Upon being freed, some of Washington's former slaves were able to obtain land, support their families, and prosper as free people. In his will, Washington also authored a bill of rights for Black Americans, in which he stated that they were Americans, had the right to live in the United States, should be taught to read and write, and had the right to work productively as free people. Washington seemed to believe in an integrated society in which whites, Blacks, and Native Americans all owned land in the same communities and lived in harmony as equals.

It is interesting that the State of Virginia produced the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom and equality in the entire United States (e.g., Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison), yet they were all slaveholders and remained so throughout their lives (Morgan, 1978). Today their behavior seems paradoxical, yet it is not clear how paradoxical it appeared to them at the time. It perhaps provides us with the choice of whether we view them as heroes or villains.