Washington – The keepers of George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon have unveiled their highest-profile slavery exhibit in years, a 16-by-14-foot log cabin modeled on the field hands’ quarters on Washington’s vast estate along the Potomac River in Virginia.
The exhibit is the first to show how the majority of Washington’s slaves lived, Mount Vernon officials said.
In recent years, Mount Vernon – the most visited historic home in the country – has undertaken a pricey effort to renew interest in the life of the nation’s first president, culminating with the opening of a $110 million orientation and museum center last year. Yet officials say visitors have always craved more information about slavery, one of the most troubling aspects of Washington’s life.
“It’s a complex story. His attitudes about slavery changed over time,” said Dennis Pogue, Mount Vernon’s associate director for preservation, who oversaw the slavery project. “It’s not the brightest spot in Washington’s record. But it’s part of his story and America’s story and one that needs to be told.”
Washington inherited his first slaves when he was 11, records show. But his attitude about the practice, then pervasive on the plantations of Virginia, soured over the years. In 1797, he wrote, “I wish from my soul that the legislature of this State could see a policy of a gradual abolition of slavery.” On his death, he freed 123 personal slaves.
Mount Vernon, which has 1 million visitors annually, was among the first of Virginia’s historic properties to re-create slave life, depicting it in the brick quarters of the house staff, not far from the elegant white mansion. But more than 200 of the estate’s 316 slaves – many of them women – worked fields of wheat and corn on four nearby farms owned by Washington. The little cabin, made of logs and mud, is an attempt to show how their families lived, interpreters said.
Working off such historical evidence as a faded 1908 photograph of a decaying outbuilding, Mount Vernon officials had one of Washington’s slaves, a woman named Silla, in mind when they created the cabin.
Silla, a mother of six, was married to a slave named Slammin’ Joe, who worked at the mansion. Their story had a tragic ending after Washington’s death. Silla and the children were freed, but Joe belonged to the estate of Washington’s wife. He was sold, and his family split up.
Visitor Tina Blanchard, an event planner from Mount Vernon, stood outside and breathed in the wood smoke from the chimney.
“Going into the quarters is quite moving,” she said. “You feel that this small family was working toward a common goal. I don’t know if it was survival or what. When they came home, that was their freedom … their own domain.”
