Note Z — Chapter III

With all my unbounded reverence for Washington, I have, I confess, sometimes found it hard to forgive him for not manumitting his slaves long before his death. A fact which has lately come to my knowledge, gave me great joy; for it furnishes a reason for what had appeared to me unpardonable. It appears that Washington possessed a gang of negroes in right of his wife, with which his own negroes had intermarried. By the marriage settlement, the former were limited, in default of issue of the marriage, to the representatives of Mrs. Washington at her death; so that her negroes could not be enfranchised. An unwillingness to separate parents and children, husbands and wives, induced Washington to postpone the manumission of his own slaves. This motive is briefly, and as it were accidentally, referred to in his will.