Slavery at Mount Vernon: Grappling with Our Founding’s Complex Story | BRIdge from the Past

0:03 Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Bridge from the Past, art across US history. I’m your host, Mary, and as you can probably see today, we are not using a two dimensional image to jump into the past, but we’re using a place. I am on location at George Washington’s Mount Vernon in Alexandria, Virginia. This Constitution Day,

0:25 we are shining a light on founding principles of liberty and equality. Right, these beautiful founding principles at the core of our nation. Beautiful. Like this garden. Mount Vernon is a fascinating place to think about these ideas. On the one hand, it’s the home of the father of our country, our first president. On the other hand, slavery was deeply ingrained in Washington’s world.

0:48 Slavery at Mount Vernon is a complex story that challenges us to think about our nation’s history as both positive and negative. If we’re talking about founding principles of liberty and equality, we have to talk about slavery. How can visiting places like Mount Vernon help us grapple with this complex story? I’m delighted to be joined by Jeremy Ray,

1:10 mount Vernon’s Director of Interpretation, to think about these questions. Jeremy, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. So, as you watch this video, think of questions you’d like to ask Jeremy and me. We’ll be bringing him back on Constitution Day to look at all of your questions and answer them live. You can follow the link below to submit questions and you’ll receive a variety of resources leading up to Constitution Day.

1:34 Let’s take a look at the greenhouse slave quarters on the other side of this building. Come with us. So, Jeremy, can you orient us? So where are we on Mount Vernon? Yes, excellent question. So Mount Vernon itself, as a property was five separate farms on 8000 acres of land. And we are here at the Mansion House Farm, one of those five farms.

1:57 And just right behind the camera, off to the side is the mansion house itself. We are on the north side of that here at the greenhouse slave quarters. So on the other side of this building is the upper garden. It’s a big, beautiful garden space that Washington would entertain guests at. But of course, on the other side of that other side

2:17 of that brick structure was the home of around 45, 50 enslaved human beings. That’s really interesting. So the garden and the mansion are on the other side of us. So this area here, this is not what visitors would see if they came to the estate in Washington’s time. So Washington was the landscape architect of the grounds, and he designed it to have a leisure space for entertainment.

2:41 The bowling green, the mansion, the view of the river, the gardens. Right. And this is a space where very wealthy high society individuals visiting the Washington would entertain themselves with walks and discussions. The garden here itself on the other side of this building is large and beautiful with a big centerpiece that is the greenhouse, where you would see tropical plants, a very impressive space.

3:03 But marking off the boundary of that space were these living quarters on the other side of the building itself, where the living spaces for enslaved men, women, and children. There were about 90 enslaved people here at the Mansion House Farm, and a good proportion of them lived in these barrack like structures over here.

3:23 So it was not typical for guests to come over to this space. But we have a lot of our written descriptions of what life was like and the living conditions in these spaces from visitors who came over and wrote down what they saw. So when we think about on BRIdge From the Past, we think about using your observation to form questions.

3:44 So I see this is a brick building, and there’s doors, there’s glass windows. Is this typical of a structure for where enslaved people would live? So this is very atypical for enslaved structures. But even here at Mount Vernon, as I mentioned before, mount Vernon was five farms on 8000 acres of land. And on those outlying farms, what the typical structures were were

4:07 wooden huts or buildings or enslaved people to live in. Even here at the Mansion House Farm family units, it was typical to live in a wooden structure. We know that Botswane and Martilla and their children lived in a wooden cabin structure closer to the west gate. This structure is more of your military style barracks,

4:30 and it actually was constructed in the 1790s, and it replaced a larger, multistory wooden structure that’s about right here where we are standing. So brick structures with the fireplaces like this were fairly atypical. Okay. And it’s divided between a men’s side and a women’s side. So were these people not living with their families, or we’re just not sure.

4:52 Right. So as far as living with their families, washington wanted his enslaved people to live where they worked. So, for example, behind us is the blacksmith shop. Nat and George were enslaved blacksmiths. They more than likely lived here in these quarters where their wives,

5:13 Lucy and Lydia, actually lived on the outlying farms because they were working as field hands in those spaces. So they were separated out. The only time that they could see each other was on Sundays, their day off, or if they would walk through the night to see them during the night. Washington called this habit night walking.

5:36 He absolutely despised it because he felt it made the enslaved people unproductive. But for the enslaved community, this was an intentional decision to take control over their lives, to see their families, to see the ones that they love. Now, as for the men’s and women’s bunk, that’s actually a decision that our curatorial staff here has made

5:57 to highlight the differences in the lives of enslaved men and enslaved women. We actually don’t know if it was separated men’s bunk, women’s bunk, or if it was mixed between the two. I want to go back to the idea of being separated from your family and this idea of night walking.

6:17 So I think just that example is such a powerful reminder of making a decision for yourself and, like, the idea of what it must have been like to not be able to be with your family. I think if we just sort of stop and think about that for a second, it’s really powerful. Really powerful. But you mentioned that your staff has

6:38 decided to display it as men and women to highlight what they did. So I’d like to talk a little bit about some of the artifacts in the room. So one thing that really draws my attention when I go into the men’s side is it looks like a trap made out of twigs or something like that. Could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. It was a trap for catching animals.

7:00 Again, the enslaved population here worked sun up to sun down monday through Saturday. They had Sundays off. That time was their time. Most spent it spending that time with their family, getting caught up in other work on the outlying excuse me, on their garden plots to grow additional food for themselves.

7:21 And others would actually go into the wooded spaces in between the farms and would trap or go fishing and whatever they caught, sometimes fowl, birds, fish. They could even sell that to George Washington if they caught anyone poaching. So illegally hunting on Washington’s land, they could confiscate the weapons and then

7:41 sell those back to George Washington as well. So that trap is kind of a typical homemade trap for catching animals on their day off. Okay. And that sort of brings me into the other thing that I noticed, which is the food. So you have the fish, you can see the game hanging by the fireplace, and you have these bags with George Washington’s initials. So is that they’re supplementing their

8:02 diet with the food that they grow and that they trap on their own, correct? Yeah. So Washington is required to provide food for the enslaved population. And it’s not much. We would look at it as kind of mere subsistence. We have it set up. There a bowl of a little bit of cornmeal and then a couple of fish, about five to 8oz of a protein of cornmeal a day.

8:28 So Washington dispensed that in big, large bags with his initials on it. That was about a month supply of the cornmeal. And then they had to divide that up. So, yes, a lot of that trapping what they’re growing in garden plots is supplementing their diet, going fishing and things like that. Okay. And on the women’s side, I’m struck by the laundry.

8:49 It looks like laundry hanging. So I’m assuming that was a large part of their tasks here at mansion house. Right. So Washington provided one set of summer clothing, one set of winter clothing a year. And the installation people had to maintain that, do repairs, and, of course, have to keep it clean. So it’s a constant process. They’re keeping their clothing clean.

9:12 They go and work sun up to sun down. Those evenings are at a time where they’re taking care of themselves and their family. That’s another again, just to think about humanizing this, that you have the same foods that you’re allotted in the same clothing, it’s just to stop and think about what that means. It’s a very small thing, but I think it’s also very powerful.

9:34 And the other thing that I think is striking in the women’s quarters is it looks like a child’s mattress on the floor, which for me, as a mom of a little one, is again driving home that there are children being born into this world. And what is that experience like for them here? What do we know about that? Yeah, well, the story of enslaved children is very tough one to hear because going

9:58 back to the 17th century, virginia law stated that the child of an enslaved woman was also enslaved and belonged to their master or enslaver. So you’re looking at a system where children are born into this concept of being a commodity, being this thing that is eventually going

10:20 to be for the use of another person to bring them profit and goods to sell. Right. So you talked about that little mattress that’s on the ground. We actually have a writing of that from a Polish visitor who came to Mount Vernon, Julian Nimchevitz, who said that the enslaved people slept on cots that were lower than what

10:46 the lowliest of peasant would sleep on in Europe. And the children slept on a pallet on the floor. So that’s kind of the description of these little bedrolls or just some straw and hay or something that was laid out with blankets that the children were sleeping on close to family, those cots, I think they wrote that there were multiple adults sleeping to them.

11:07 Whether or not those were family members or just individuals needing a bed space, we’re not entirely sure. So we’ve been talking about the structure and the things inside it and what we can see and what that might mean for the men and women and children who lived here. But what doesn’t this building and these artifacts inside it, what doesn’t it tell us? Right. And that’s a great question because a lot of our guests come here to Mount Vernon

11:33 and they see a brick structure with windows and things, and we hear this comment fairly often, oh, this isn’t that bad. Right. And they’re just looking again at the material structure itself. They think, well, this probably affords a warm space. It provides some sort of protection.

11:54 But that ignores the fact that enslavement itself is a system that only works through fear and dehumanization. While it may have a fireplace and it may be made of brick, we don’t know how many people are actually in this space. We do know that, again,

12:14 children are sleeping on pallets on the floor, multiple adults into a bunk. And another thing to remember is that the only way you can compel another human being to do work against their will is for them to fear something. Fear of physical abuse, punishment, fear that at any point in time,

12:35 they or one of their family members could be sold away and never seen again. While there may be doors on these structures, it does not prevent the fear that society has been weaponized to a point to maintain this system of enslavement. At any point in time, an overseer or somebody could come into this room, check and see what’s going

12:59 on, remove a person, arbitrarily decide they’re going to be punished. Washington could decide, take them out, they’ve run away, I’m selling them. So this constant idea of fear is not present when looking at this brick structure, right? And it’s really interesting. So we have looked at in past episodes, when we start with a painting or we start

13:23 with a cartoon, we can make observations, we can ask questions. And the more you think about it and the more you probe deeper, the more you realize, oh, these people didn’t have the privacy, they didn’t get to see or spend as much time with their family. So it’s really almost like the longer you sit and think about it, the more you learn, the more questions that you have.

13:46 So I am going to throw it back to you guys. So we’ve covered a lot of ground in our conversation. So, Jeremy, thank you so much and be sure to send us your questions. We’ll be back on Constitution Day Live to talk with you about the questions that you have about how we can talk about a system like slavery and still talk about

14:06 founding principles of liberty and equality. These are really difficult questions and it’s a really hard conversation, but it’s one that we definitely need to have. So thank you again. Be sure to submit your questions through the link below and follow us on social media so you get all of the good information about Constitution Day Live. Thanks, guys. Take care.