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President Washington and Gradual Abolition In 1780, Pennsylvania passed a law about gradual abolition (freeing slaves gradually, or over a long period of time). One part of the law stated that if you lived outside Pennsylvania, owned slaves, and brought them to stay there for more than 6 months; then those slaves could go to court and file for their freedom. To get around this law, many slave owners took their slaves out of the state when the 6-month time limit approached. George Washington was aware of this law. He wanted to keep ownership of his property; in this case, his slaves. In 1791 he wrote to his secretary about sending some slaves from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon before 6 months had passed. Washington wrote that if it is "found that any of my Slaves may, or any of them shall attempt their freedom at the expiration of six months, it is my wish and desire that you would send the whole.... home. The idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist." In the same letter, the President suggests that his wife's visits to their home in Mount Vernon would "deceive both them [the enslaved] and the Public. This would naturally bring her maid and Austin, and Hercules under the idea of coming home to Cook". An Act for the gradual Abolition of Slavery (Transcriptionn) When we contemplate our Abhorence of that Condition to which the Arms and Tyranny of Great Britain were exerted to reduce us, when we look back on the Variety of Dangers to which we have been exposed, and how miraculously our Wants in many Instances have been supplied and our Deliverances wrought, when even Hope and human fortitude have become unequal to the Conflict; we are unavoidably led to a serious and grateful Sense of the manifold Blessings which we have undeservedly received from the hand of that Being from whom every good and perfect Gift cometh. Impressed with these Ideas we conceive that it is our duty, and we rejoice that it is in our Power, to extend a Portion of that freedom to others, which hath been extended to us; and a Release from that State of Thraldom, to which we ourselves were tyrannically doomed, and from which we have now every Prospect of being delivered. It is not for us to enquire, why, in the Creation of Mankind, the Inhabitants of the several parts of the Earth, were distinguished by a difference in Feature or Complexion. It is sufficient to know that all are the Work of an Almighty Hand, We find in the distribution of the human Species, that the most fertile, as well as the most barren parts of the Earth are inhabited by Men of Complexions different from ours and from each other, from whence we may reasonably as well as religiously infer, that he, who placed them in their various Situations, hath extended equally his Care and Protection to all, and that it becometh not us to counteract his Mercies. |