Ron Chernow - Washington: A Life (2)

The one thing that is disappointing as I read this definitive biography of our first president is that despite Washington's obvious brilliance, his record on slavery is disturbing. He owned hundreds of slaves during his lifetime, bought and sold slaves, and he did not free them until his wife Martha's death. He had runaways, and he always went after them. In the war the British freed thousands of slaves, and Washington supported returning them to their owners after the war. During the war, seventeen of his slaves ran away, and Washington tried to catch every one of them. I wonder how historians have treated his less than exemplary record on slavery.