This biography of George Washington is one of the more interesting ones I have read focusing as it does on Washington's record with regard to slavery. Therein lies one of the great what ifs of history.
Alone among his contemporaries GW freed his slaves after his wife's death. None of the other Founding Fathers freed their slaves. Perhaps alone among his contemporaries GW before he died perhaps in the 1790's or perhaps earlier came to morally oppose slavery, seeing slaves as human beings, believing that they could be productive citizens in this country, indeed, perhaps he because truly morally repulsed by slavery.
What if he had freed his slaves during his Presidency before he died? How might this have moved action toward emancipation forward? What effect would it have had on American history? Of course we will never know.
Despite his emancipating action, Washington WAS a huge slaveholder. In his lifetime he bought and sold slaves. He was initially opposed to blacks in his continental army, but had to change his mind due to manpower needs just as Lincoln had to change his mind during the Civil War. There is no such thing as a benevolent slave master. The brutality of chattel slavery eliminates any room for benevolence. Washington had slaves at the constitutional convention. He had slaves in his executive mansion as President. He was a man of his times, a slaveholder in slaveholding Virginia.
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