Part 11

Dogue Run Farm 397.11.02 Union Farm 529.10.11½ River Farm 234. 4.11 Smith’s Shop 34.12.09½ Distillery 83.13.01 Jacks 56.01 Traveller (studhorse) 9.17 Shoemaker 28.17.01 Fishery 165.12.0¾ Dairy 30.12.03

Cr. lost.

Mansion House 466.18.02½ Muddy Hole Farm 60.01.03½ Spinning 51.02.0 Hire of head-overseer 140.00.0

By Clear gain on the Estate £ 898.16.4¼

A pretty poor showing for an estate and negroes which had certainly cost him over fifty thousand dollars, and on which there was livestock which at the lowest estimation was worth fifteen thousand dollars more. It is not strange that in 1793 Washington attempted to find tenants for all but the Mansion farm. This he reserved for my “own residence, occupation and amusement,” as Washington held that “idleness is disreputable,” and in 1798 he told his chief overseer he did not choose to “discontinue my rides or become a cipher on my own estate.”

When at Mount Vernon, as this indicated, Washington rode daily about his estate, and he has left a pleasant description of his life immediately after retiring from the Presidency: “I begin my diurnal course with the sun;… if my hirelings are not in their places at that time I send them messages expressive of my sorrow for their indisposition;… having put these wheels in motion, I examine the state of things further; and the more they are probed, the deeper I find the wounds are which my buildings have sustained by my absence and neglect of eight years; by the time I have accomplished these matters, breakfast (a little after seven o’clock)… is ready;… this being over, I mount my horse and ride round my farms, which employs me until it is time to dress for dinner.” A visitor at this time is authority for the statement that the master “often works with his men himself—strips off his coat and labors like a common man. The General has a great turn for mechanics. It’s astonishing with what niceness he directs everything in the building way, condescending even to measure the things himself, that all may be perfectly uniform.”

This personal attention Washington was able to give only with very serious interruptions. From 1754 till 1759 he was most of the time on the frontier; for nearly nine years his Revolutionary service separated him absolutely from his property; and during the two terms of his Presidency he had only brief and infrequent visits. Just one-half of his forty-six years’ occupancy of Mount Vernon was given to public service.

The result was that in 1757 he wrote, “I am so little acquainted with the business relative to my private affairs that I can scarce give you any information concerning it,” and this was hardly less true of the whole period of his absences. In 1775 he engaged overseers to manage his various estates in his absence “upon shares,” but during the whole war the plantations barely supported themselves, even with depletion of stock and fertility, and he was able to draw nothing from them. One overseer, and a confederate, he wrote, “I believe, divided the profits of my Estate on the York River, tolerably betwn. them, for the devil of any thing do I get.” Well might he advise knowingly that “I have no doubt myself but that middling land under a man’s own eyes, is more profitable than rich land at a distance.” “No Virginia Estate (except a very few under the best of management) can stand simple Interest,” he declared, and went even further when he wrote, “the nature of a Virginia Estate being such, that without close application, it never fails bringing the proprietors in Debt annually.” “To speak within bounds,” he said, “ten thousand pounds will not compensate the losses I might have avoided by being at home, & attending a little to my own concerns” during the Revolution.

Fortunately for the farmer, the Mount Vernon estate was but a small part of his property. His father had left him a plantation of two hundred and eighty acres on the Rappahannock, “one Moiety of my Land lying on Deep Run,” three lots in Frederick “with all the houses and Appurtenances thereto belonging,” and one quarter of the residuary estate. While surveying for Lord Fairfax in 1748, as part of his compensation Washington patented a tract of five hundred and fifty acres in Frederick County, which he always spoke of as “My Bull-skin plantation.”

As a military bounty in the French and Indian War the governor of Virginia issued a proclamation granting Western lands to the soldiers, and under this Washington not merely secured fifteen thousand acres in his own right, but by buying the claims of some of his fellow officers doubled that quantity. A further tract was also obtained under the kindred proclamation of 1763, “5000 Acres of Land in my own right, & by purchase from Captn. Roots, Posey, & some other officers, I obtained rights to several thousand more.” In 1786, after sales, he had over thirty thousand acres, which he then offered to sell at thirty thousand guineas, and in 1799, when still more had been sold, his inventory valued the holdings at nearly three hundred thousand dollars.

In addition, Washington was a partner in several great land speculations,—the Ohio Company, the Walpole Grant, the Mississippi Company, the Military Company of Adventures, and the Dismal Swamp Company; but all these ventures except the last collapsed at the beginning of the Revolution and proved valueless. His interest in the Dismal Swamp Company he held at the time of his death, and it was valued in the inventory at twenty thousand dollars.

The properties that came to him from his brother Lawrence and with his wife have already been described. It may be worth noting that with the widow of Lawrence there was a dispute over the will, but apparently it was never carried into the courts, and that owing to the great depreciation of paper money during the Revolution the Custis personal property was materially lessened, for “I am now receiving a shilling in the pound in discharge of Bonds which ought to have been paid me, & would have been realized before I left Virginia, but for my indulgences to the debtors,” Washington wrote, and in 1778 he said, “by the comparitive worth of money, six or seven thousand pounds which I have in Bonds upon Interest is now reduced to as many hundreds because I can get no more for a thousand at this day than a hundred would have fetched when I left Virginia, Bonds, debts, Rents, &c. undergoing no change while the currency is depreciating in value and for ought I know may in a little time be totally sunk.” Indeed, in 1781 he complained “that I have totally neglected all my private concerns, which are declining every day, and may, possibly, end in capital losses, if not absolute ruin, before I am at liberty to look after them.”

In 1784 he became partner with George Clinton in some land purchases in the State of New York with the expectation of buying the “mineral springs at Saratoga; and … the Oriskany tract, on which Fort Schuyler stands.” In this they were disappointed, but six thousand acres in the Mohawk valley were obtained “amazingly cheap.” Washington’s share cost him, including interest, eighteen hundred and seventy-five pounds, and in 1793 two-thirds of the land had been sold for three thousand four hundred pounds, and in his inventory of 1799 Washington valued what he still held of the property at six thousand dollars.

In 1790, having inside information that the capital was to be removed from New York to Philadelphia, Washington tried to purchase a farm near that city, foreseeing a speedy rise in value. In this apparently he did not succeed. Later he purchased lots in the new Federal city, and built houses on two of them. He also had town lots in Williamsburg, Alexandria, Winchester, and Bath. In addition to all this property there were many smaller holdings. Much was sold or traded, yet when he died, besides his wife’s real estate and the Mount Vernon property, he possessed fifty-one thousand three hundred and ninety-five acres, exclusive of town property. A contemporary said “that General Washington is, perhaps, the greatest landholder in America.”

All these lands, except Mount Vernon, were, so far as possible, rented, but the net income was not large. Rent agents were employed to look after the tenants, but low rents, war, paper money, a shifting population, and Washington’s dislike of lawsuits all tended to reduce the receipts, and the landlord did not get simple interest on his investments. Thus, in 1799 he complains of slow payments from tenants in Washington and Lafayette Counties (Pennsylvania). Instead of an expected six thousand dollars, due June 1, but seventeen hundred dollars were received.

Income, however, had not been his object in loading himself with such a vast property, as Washington believed that he was certain to become rich. “For proof of” the rise of land, he wrote in 1767, “only look to Frederick, [county] and see what fortunes were made by the … first taking up of those lands. Nay, how the greatest estates we have in this colony were made. Was it not by taking up and purchasing at very low rates the rich back lands, which were thought nothing of in those days, but are now the most valuable land we possess?”

In this he was correct, but in the mean time he was more or less land-poor. To a friend in 1763 he wrote that the stocking and repairing of his plantations “and other matters … swallowed up before I well knew where I was, all the moneys I got by marriage, nay more, brought me in debt” In 1775, replying to a request for a loan, he declared that “so far am I from having £200 to lend … I would gladly borrow that sum myself for a few months.” When offered land adjoining Mount Vernon for three thousand pounds in 1778, he could only reply that it was “a sum I have little chance, if I had inclination, to pay; & therefore would not engage it, as I am resolved not to incumber myself with Debt.” In 1782, to secure a much desired tract he was forced to borrow two thousand pounds York currency at the rate of seven per cent.

In 1788, “the total loss of my crop last year by the drought” “with necessary demands for cash” “have caused me much perplexity and given me more uneasiness than I ever experienced before from want of money,” and a year later, just before setting out to be inaugurated, he tried to borrow five hundred pounds “to discharge what I owe” and to pay the expenses of the journey to New York, but was “unable to obtain more than half of it, (though it was not much I required), and this at an advanced interest with other rigid conditions,” though at this time “could I get in one fourth part of what is due me on Bonds” “without the intervention of suits” there would have been ample funds. In 1795 the President said, “my friends entertain a very erroneous idea of my particular resources, when they set me down for a money lender, or one who (now) has a command of it. You may believe me when I assert that the bonds which were due to me before the Revolution, were discharged during the progress of it—with a few exceptions in depreciated paper (in some instances as low as a shilling in the pound). That such has been the management of the Estate, for many years past, especially since my absence from home, now six years, as scarcely to support itself. That my public allowance (whatever the world may think of it) is inadequate to the expence of living in this City; to such an extravagant height has the necessaries as well as the conveniences of life arisen. And, moreover that to keep myself out of debt; I have found it expedient now and then to sell Lands, or something else to effect this purpose.”

As these extensive land ventures bespoke a national characteristic, so a liking for other forms of speculation was innate in the great American. During the Revolution he tried to secure an interest in a privateer. One of his favorite flyers was chances in lotteries and raffles, which, if now found only in association with church fairs, were then not merely respectable, but even fashionable. In 1760 five pounds and ten shillings were invested in one lottery. Five pounds purchased five tickets in Strother’s lottery in 1763. Three years later six pounds were risked in the York lottery and produced prizes to the extent of sixteen pounds. Fifty pounds were put into Colonel Byrd’s lottery in 1769, and drew a half-acre lot in the town of Manchester, but out of this Washington was defrauded. In 1791 John Potts was paid four pounds and four shillings “in part for 20 Lottery tickets in the Alexa. street Lottery at 6/ each, 14 Dollrs. the Bal. was discharged by 2.3 Lotr prizes.” Twenty tickets of Peregrine and Fitzhugh’s lottery cost one hundred and eighty-eight dollars in 1794. And these are but samples of innumerable instances. So, too, in raffles, the entries are constant,—“for glasses 20/,” “for a Necklace £1.,” “by profit & loss in two chances in raffling for Encyclopadia Britannica, which I did not win £1.4,” two tickets were taken in the raffle of Mrs. Dawson’s coach, as were chances for a pair of silver buckles, for a watch, and for a gun; such and many others were smaller ventures Washington took.

There were other sources of income or loss besides. Before the Revolution he had a good sized holding of Bank of England stock, and an annuity in the funds, besides considerable property on bond, the larger part of which, as already noted, was liquidated in depreciated paper money. This paper money was for the most part put into United States securities, and eventually the “at least £10,000 Virginia money” proved to be worth six thousand two hundred and forty-six dollars in government six per cents and three per cents. A great believer in the Potomac Canal Company, Washington invested twenty-four hundred pounds sterling in the stock, which produced no income, and in time showed a heavy shrinkage. Another and smaller loss was an investment in the James River Canal Company. Stock holdings in the Bank of Columbia and in the Bank of Alexandria proved profitable investments.

None the less Washington was a successful businessman. Though his property rarely produced a net income, and though he served the public with practically no profit (except as regards bounty lands), and thus was compelled frequently to dip into his capital to pay current expenses, yet, from being a surveyor only too glad to earn a doubloon (seven dollars and forty cents) a day, he grew steadily in wealth, and when he died his property, exclusive of his wife’s and the Mount Vernon estate, was valued at five hundred and thirty thousand dollars. This made him one of the wealthiest Americans of his time, and it is to be questioned if a fortune was ever more honestly acquired or more thoroughly deserved.

VI MASTER AND EMPLOYER

In his “rules of civility” Washington enjoined that “those of high Degree ought to treat” “Artificers & Persons of low Degree” “with affibility & Courtesie, without Arrogancy,” and it was a needed lesson to every young Virginian, for, as Jefferson wrote, “the whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most insulting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.”

Augustine Washington’s will left to his son George “Ten negro Slaves,” with an additional share of those “not herein particularly Devised,” but all to remain in the possession of Mary Washington until the boy was twenty-one years of age. With his taking possession of the Mount Vernon estate in his twenty-second year eighteen more came under Washington’s direction. In 1754 he bought a “fellow” for £40.5, another (Jack) for £52.5, and a negro woman (Clio) for £50. In 1756 he purchased of the governor a negro woman and child for £60, and two years later a fellow (Gregory) for £60.9. In the following year (the year of his marriage) he bought largely: a negro (Will) for £50; another for £60; nine for £406, an average of £45; and a woman (Hannah) and child, £80. In 1762 he added to the number by purchasing seven of Lee Massey for £300 (an average of £43), and two of Colonel Fielding Lewis at £115, or £57.10 apiece. From the estate of Francis Hobbs he bought, in 1764, Ben, £72; Lewis, £36.10; and Sarah, £20. Another fellow, bought of Sarah Alexander, cost him £76; and a negro (Judy) and child, sold by Garvin Corbin, £63. In 1768 Mary Lee sold him two mulattoes (Will and Frank) for £61.15 and £50, respectively; and two boys (negroes), Adam and Frank, for £19 apiece. Five more were purchased in 1772, and after that no more were bought. In 1760 Washington paid tithes on forty-nine slaves, five years later on seventy-eight, in 1770 on eighty-seven, and in 1774 on one hundred and thirty-five; besides which must be included the “dower slaves” of his wife. Soon after this there was an overplus, and Washington in 1778 offered to barter for some land “Negroes, of whom I every day long more to get clear of,” and even before this he had learned the economic fact that except on the richest of soils slaves “only add to the Expence.”

In 1791 he had one hundred and fifteen “hands” on the Mount Vernon estate, besides house servants, and De Warville, describing his estate in the same year, speaks of his having three hundred negroes. At this time Washington declared that “I never mean (unless some particular circumstance compel me to it) to possess another slave by purchase,” but this intention was broken, for “The running off of my cook has been a most inconvenient thing to this family, and what rendered it more disagreeable, is that I had resolved never to become the Master of another slave by purchase, but this resolution I fear I must break. I have endeavored to hire, black or white, but am not yet supplied.”

A few more slaves were taken in payment of a debt, but it was from necessity rather than choice, for at this very time Washington had decided that “it is demonstratively clear, that on this Estate (Mount Vernon) I have more working negros by a full moiety, than can be employed to any advantage in the farming system, and I shall never turn Planter thereon. To sell the overplus I cannot, because I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species. To hire them out, is almost as bad, because they could not be disposed of in families to any advantage, and to disperse the families I have an aversion. What then is to be done? Something must or I shall be ruined; for all the money (in addition to what I raise by crops, and rents) that have been received for Lands, sold within the last four years, to the amount of Fifty thousand dollars, has scarcely been able to keep me afloat.” And writing of one set he said, “it would be for my interest to set them free, rather than give them victuals and cloaths.”

The loss by runaways was not apparently large. In October, 1760, his ledger contains an item of seven shillings “To the Printing Office … for Advertising a run-a-way Negro.” In 1761 he pays his clergyman, Rev. Mr. Green, “for taking up one of my Runaway Negroes £4.” In 1766 rewards are paid for the “taking upp” of “Negro Tom” and “Negro Bett.” The “taking up of Harry when Runaway” in 1771 cost £1.16. When the British invaded Virginia in 1781, a number escaped or were carried away by the enemy. By the treaty of peace these should have been returned, and their owner wrote, “Some of my own slaves, and those of Mr. Lund Washington who lives at my house may probably be in New York, but I am unable to give you their description—their names being so easily changed, will be fruitless to give you. If by chance you should come at the knowledge of any of them, I will be much obliged by your securing them, so that I may obtain them again.”

In 1796 a girl absconded to New England, and Washington made inquiries of a friend as to the possibility of recovering her, adding, “however well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of people (if the latter was in itself practicable) at this moment, it would neither be politic nor just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference, and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow servants, who, by their steady attachment, are far more deserving than herself of favor,” and at this time Washington wrote to a relative, “I am sorry to hear of the loss of your servant; but it is my opinion these elopements will be much more, before they are less frequent; and that the persons making them should never be retained—if they are recovered, as they are sure to contaminate and discontent others.”