By his will Washington gave Lee his "immediate freedom or if he should
prefer it (on account of the accidents which have befallen him and which
have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment) to
remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so—
In either case however I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars during his
natural life which shall be independent of the victuals and cloaths he
has been accustomed to receive; if he chuses the last alternative, but
in full with his freedom, if he prefers the first, and this I give him as
a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me and for his faithful
services during the Revolutionary War."
Two small incidents connected with Washington's last illness are worth
noting. The afternoon before the night he was taken ill, although he had
himself been superintending his affairs on horseback in the storm most of
the day, yet when his secretary "carried some letters to him to frank,
intending to send them to the Post Office in the evening," Lear tells us
"he franked the letters; but said the weather was too bad to send a
servant up to the office that evening." Lear continues, "The General's
servant, Christopher, attended his bed side & in the room, when he was
sitting up, through his whole illness.... In the [last] afternoon the
General observing that Christopher had been standing by his bed side for a
long time—made a motion for him to sit in a chair which stood by the bed
side."
A clause in Washington's will directed that
"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, "I
hope it will not be conceived from these observations, that it is my wish
to hold the unhappy people, who are the subject of this letter, in
slavery. I can only say, that there is not a man living, who wishes more
sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it;
but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be
accomplished, and that is by legislative authority; and this, as far
as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting."
