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Make sure you order your copy of "The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret" by Mary Thompson.
George Washington’s life has been scrutinized by historians over the past three centuries, but the day-to-day lives of Mount Vernon’s enslaved workers have been largely left out of the story.
Historian Mary Thompson's new book, "The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret": George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon explores the enslaved community. Thompson recently answered questions about her new book.
The book examines both George Washington’s relationship with slavery as an institution and with slaves as people. In addition it shines light on what daily life was like for Africans and African-Americans who were enslaved at Mount Vernon, as well as for those people of European background who were hired and indentured by the Washingtons.
Research for what became the book began in the late 1980s, when it was clear that Mount Vernon—and other historic homes/locations in Virginia—needed to learn more about and interpret the story of slavery at their particular sites. I wrote up my findings on four of the topics in 1993, as background material for staff and interns working at the Pioneer Farm site and those later involved in what we then called “The Slave Life Tour.”
There were other historians working on books about slavery at Mount Vernon, but it was taking a very long time for them to complete their works (something about which I am much more sympathetic now, than I was at the time). Two of those individuals, Henry Wiencek and Fritz Hirschfeld, completed—and published—their books, but I was disappointed in the results. Two others, both of whom were history professors, had health issues that were interfering with the completion of their work. So it eventually looked as if the only way the topic was going to be dealt with, was if I did it—and like it was for the others, there were health and other issues that impeded progress.
Make sure you order your copy of "The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret" by Mary Thompson.
The title comes from the following statement that George Washington seems to have made to one of his early biographers, his former military aide, David Humphries:
The unfortunate condition of the persons, whose labour in part I employed, has been the only unavoidable subject of regret. To make the Adults among them as easy & as comfortable in their circumstances as their actual state of ignorance & improvidence would admit; & to lay a foundation to prepare the rising generation for a destiny different from that in which they were born; afforded some satisfaction to my mind, & could not I hoped be displeasing to the justice of the Creator.
Historian Mary Thompson discusses her book, "The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret": George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon.