Reviews

• An Authentic View of Slavery

  I really enjoyed reading An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America because it is both deeply insightful and exceptionally well researched. The book not only brings George Washington to life in all his complexity but also confronts the difficult truths about slavery and its role in the nation’s founding. Its thorough documentation and balanced perspective made the history feel vivid, honest, and thought-provoking.

• A fascinating topic and a fresh look at Washington

  This book is definitely "different". In it, the author examines how President George Washington went from a man steeped in the belief that slavery was acceptable to one who seemed to be deeply troubled by it. Unlike most history texts of the period, this one spends a lot of time constructing arguments and making educated guesses. Although at times the arguments seemed to be a little bit of a stretch, the author presents a lot of apparently fresh research and his ideas were definitely new and insightful. Bravo! It is fairly interesting how the author pours through seemingly uninteresting records of slave sales and otherwise uninteresting personal correspondences of Washington and his family in order to discover what Washington's true thoughts were and what he actually did when it concerned his slaves. Slavery was not a topic that Washington liked to talk about publicly, and he seemed to have thoughts both pro and con, so we're frequently left with no definite answer. Furthermore, he seemed to part company with his wife on this subject! Martha, it appears, had no problem with the continuation of slavery, while Washington clearly did. In his will, Washington freed most of his slaves. We also discover that Washington had thoughts about doing so during his presidency. That would have set quite a precedent. It never happened, but things would have been different if it did. In the first half, the author spends time explaining how slavery evolved in the United States. Slavery just didn't happen overnight. It evolved and changed over the years, finally becoming that brutal institution we all now recognize. These sections were quite interesting and well done, too.

• I enjoyed reading this book

  Wiencek presents Washington as a closet abolitionist,a man who has grown to abhor slavery but is helpless to suppress it.This spiritual awakening is due to his experiences in the revolutionary war serving with African soldiers.I don't buy it.Why not just give the slaves a salary? Why house them in hovels and work them dusk to dawn?I enjoyed reading this book,it is well researched and brings to light many sad truths about the founding fathers. Washingtons' will freeing his slaves upon the the death of Martha is Hitchcockian.She wisely told them that there was no need to wait.

• It happened in 1769, Williamsburg

  The author is Henry Wiencek, and what is required of him is the fine line of racial sensitivity and historical perspective. What may help is that most of the slaves discussed in this book are of dubious racial distinction, including more than one black who could not be seen as one. What may also help is that Wiencek feels he has sufficient evidence to paint Washington as shameful, such as the chapter about Williamsburg and the lottery, and refined, such as the resolution first to keep families together and then to free them in his will. A precise moment or a precise slave is not available as the center of Washington’s epiphany. Ona Judge is offered as the divide in opinion between George and Martha, as Martha seems to be as resistant to emancipation as Thomas Jefferson or the typical South Carolinian. I seem all the more disappointed in the rarity of books about Washington and slavery because this looks like “a” book about Washington and his slaves. Wiencek prefers to write about the Washington family, including so many Custis and Dandridge surnames, too many for me to keep up with and my least favorite part of the reading. In Westmoreland County, or at Mount Vernon, or as president in New York or Philadelphia, Washington is not depicted talking to slaves, hunting with them, or with any individual correspondence. The slave I thought I have read about, Washington’s fox hunting equal, is not here. The closest we come is Washington’s diligent daily schedule, riding around the several farms composing the estate, when he debated how to separate the wheat from the chaffe, and when he measured that un-monitored slaves cleared forest at half the pace compared to when he timed them. This leads, of course, to Washington’s displeasure with slack overseers. Part of the book is a travelogue. Wieneck visits the birthplace, then the estate, and also Williamsburg. Depicters on the streets, mostly since 1979, are brilliant for their interaction with tourists, and much credit goes to the Rockefeller family, dating back to 1924. There is an army of the purveyor of the Washington legacy, all within a framework but entitled to expressive nuance. The other “Rockefeller” in the book, incidentally, is the incomparable Marquis de Lafayette, who is said to have underwritten the Revolution at 1 million pounds, and then taught Washington a thing or two about equality within the ranks. I marked a page about Landon Carter, but his story did not prevail later. I also marked Washington’s reading influences from an early age: The Rules of Civility, Morals, and Cato. I also marked Mason Locke Weems. The books established Washington’s attention to stoicism. On page 104, Washington is credited with inventing the mule. And as general, Washington let his integration opinions be dictated by acceptance of others, and sometimes, desperate need. A prominent outfit from Rhode Island is said to have been 75 percent black. Further reading should also be about Gabriel Prosser.

• A Early History of Black Slavery in America

  This book details the change in G. Washington's attitude toward the institution of black slavery and his efforts to free the slaves under his control and the many reasons why he could not just free them all in his life time. (Many were not 100% his. But the property of his wife and her children (his adopted children and grandchildren). The author gives insight how slaves could earn money by which they could purchase their freedom. That slave owners used various tools to motivate their slaves , from the whip to rewards as incentives. This book also reveals the hard hearted attitude many slave holders developed even toward slaves who would today be recognized as half sisters having the same father but different mothers . An excellent book on the nature and early history of black slavery in the Colonies . Slavery as we understand it today as a birth to death existence only developed about the late 1730s - 1865 in the 13 colonies and later the U.S. Prior to this people of every race could be sold into indenturement which was a limited servitude of a set term usually 7-9 years after which they were free to pursue their own interests . The poor in England often would sell themselves into indenturement as a way to get to America . Another source of indentured servants was the English prisons. As these sources dried up land owners looked to African slavers to provide them with laborers. These too were originally treated in a similar way as the British laborers gaining their freedom after 7-9 years of labor.(This is the origin of many the early free American Negros by the time of the American Revolution.) As greed took over, owners of the indentured began took look for ways and reasons to keep their servants longer thus between 1720-1740 a view that blacks were not really fully human but more like animals was developed by those in power. This allowed a false morality to developed that said Negros and their offspring could be kept, bought and sold into slavery not indenturement Thus if only Negros could be kept in a lifetime of slavery Greed (follow the money) led to owners to define that to be negro only required that they be as little as 1/8 some as little as 1/16 negro to be bought and sold in slavery. .It is a great book in explaining slavery historically and how Washington opinions about slavery evolved over his life. Another good book on this early period that is out of print is "America at 1750: A Social Portrait" by Richard Hofstadter. But Can now be found Amazon new/used books.

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