As I read southern history, ownership of that many slaves would make Washington and his family among the very wealthiest in their society. My understanding is that only a few “super-rich” families owned more than 200 slaves. (Jefferson Davis, later president of the Confederacy, owned only about one hundred on his Mississippi landholdings; genealogists report that they found only one man in 1860 census and property records as owning more than one thousand; the next ten largest moved quickly down toward 500.)
This suggests that Washington’s family was very wealthy in enslaved “human capital.”
So would this mean that, by the logic explored in the previous post, it’s time to consider renaming the city that makes up the District of Columbia, popularly described as “the nation’s capital”? And what about the state of Washington, a continent away, anchored by the very progressive city of Seattle in the corner of the Pacific Northwest?
Washington as a younger slaveowner.So would this mean that, by the logic explored in the previous blog post, it’s time to reconsider renaming both the city that makes up the District of Columbia, popularly described as “the nation’s capital”? And what about the state of Washington, a continent away, anchored by the very progressive city of Seattle in the corner of the Pacific Northwest?
That’s the initial reaction.
But when I reviewed some of the material gathered by the foundation that now owns Mount Vernon (MV) about Washington’s life there, some challenging data turned up.
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