On the Paradox of Mt. Vernon

The other big thing I able to see in Virginia this last weekend is George Washington's estate at Mt. Vernon.  The view of the Potomac from the back is spectacular, and the non-profit that owns the property has done an admirable job of preserving it for prosperity.

Nevertheless, my experience there was highly fraught.  For in one of the rooms, the tour guide points out a large key encased in glass; it is the key to the infamous Bastille, sent to General Washington as a token of friendship between the United States and the newly-christened French Republic.  "This key is the sign of French liberty," read the accompanying letter, "and it deserves to be with the father of all human liberty."

 

The fact that the 1st French Republic soon collapsed into the Reign of Terror and gave rise to Napoleon is not the only thing that complicates that gesture considerably; for the estate (to its credit) also makes no bones about the fact that Mt. Vernon was first and foremost a slave plantation, and that for all of Washington's entrepreneurial innovation and drive, it was still upon the backs of enslaved Africans that his wealth was accumulated.   Yes, he did free them when he died (not even Jefferson did that!), but, you know, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that that was small comfort to his slaves while he was still alive.

And yet George Washington really was remarkable; he is that ultra-rare leader who really did voluntarily walk away from absolute power.  Alexander, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, etc and etc, all led ostensible Democracies to glory, only to then crown themselves Emperor for life.  The crown of the United States was likewise offered to Washington, but he really did turn it down and retire after only 2 terms in office, of his own free-will and volition, and that solely to preserve everyone else's freewill and volition as well.  For all of our grade-school pontificating and hagiography, that is truly astounding, and far more than mere lip-service to liberty!

Yet he also really did own slaves; even if he did actually despise the institution, still he never could quite bring himself to wean himself away from it, could he.  He was keenly aware of all the precedents he was setting as our first president, but he couldn't set the one precedent that could have prevented the Civil War less than a century later (and given the Confederate flag on the sleeve of the young man who shot up that Black church in Charleston last summer, that legacy is still with us).

The man Washington seemed to neatly encapsulate the founding paradox of these United States from its inception: a land based not upon race and ethnic identity but upon the ideals of freedom and liberty, but whose prosperity is nonetheless rooted in the most appalling slavery.

And not just in the African slavery that defined these colonies first 3 century's of existence: the shirt on my back was sewn by sweat-shop child laborers in Southeast Asia; the phone in pocket is made of rare minerals mined by child-slave laborers in Afghanistan, and assembled by Taiwanese workers in such a miserable environment that they need suicide-nets outside the top-story windows; the food in my belly was harvested by Mexican migrants making less than a dollar an hour in the searing hot sun.  We didn't end slavery, we outsourced it.  Perhaps it is less that we shouldn't judge Washington's era by the standards of our own than that we shouldn't think our own is so much better to begin with (at least Washington knew he lived off slavery...).

And yet the Western world is undeniably freer overall because the United States survived, and that is thanks in no small part to this here General Washington.  Such are the queasy contradictions that still define my country, and they refuse to be disentangled.

These are the thoughts that ruminated through my mind as I stood before the tomb of George and Martha, the couple for whom my home-state is named, who still influences my national identity, and by extension, the whole entire world.