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Early years
Washington owned slaves his entire adult life. He inherited his first ten slaves from his father in 1743, and by the time of his death he owned 124 slaves, leased another 40 and controlled 153 dower slaves belonging to Martha. The slaves were kept at each of the properties of the estate, which by the mid 1790s encompassed 7,500 acres and included five farms. They were allocated according to the demands of the business, which often meant that husbands and wives were separated across different properties.

Washington demonstrated no moral qualms about the institution in his early years and referred to his slaves as "a Species of Property." He considered them to be irresponsible and indolent, and he exercised strict control through his overseers. He expected his slaves to work from sunrise to sunset and demanded they be fully occupied during the winter months. He spent sparingly on their clothing and bedding and insisted on a strict meal allowance that kept them no more than sufficiently fed. Washington preferred "watchfulness and admonition" to encourage discipline and productivity in his slaves, but would punish those who "will not do their duty by fair means." He opposed the use of the lash in principle, but saw the practice as a necessary evil and sanctioned its occasional use, generally as a last resort, on both male and female slaves. Washington took seriously the recapture of fugitives, of which there were at least forty-seven over his lifetime. In the most extreme cases he sold recaptured fugitives off in the West Indies. In comparison with many other planters, Washington's treatment of slaves was relatively paternalistic. He exercised great care over their welfare, instructing his overseers to "take all necessary and proper care of the Negroes...using them with proper humanity and discretion" and to treat them "with humanity and tenderness when Sick."

Washington's concern for the health of his slaves was motivated in part by financial considerations and the lost productivity arising from sickness and death among the labor force. The economics of slavery prompted the first doubts in Washington about the institution, and marked the beginning of a slow evolution in his attitude towards it. By 1766, his transition from the labor-intensive planting of tobacco to the less demanding cultivation of grain crops left him with a surfeit of slaves and revealed to him the inefficiencies of the slave labor system. But there is little evidence that Washington seriously questioned the ethics of slavery before the Revolution. In 1769, he co-managed a lottery of fifty-five slaves which resulted in the separation of most of the families. Wiencek dates Washington's later reluctance to break up slave families by purchase or sale to this incident. Washington was a member of the House of Burgesses when it passed a petition in 1772 condemning the transatlantic slave trade on moral grounds, and a key participant in the 1774 Fairfax Resolves that did the same, but demonstrated his continued acceptance of the institution of slavery with the purchase of five slaves in 1772 and another in 1775.

Revolutionary War
As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, Washington initially refused to accept any blacks, free or slave, into the ranks. He reversed his position on the recruitment of free blacks when the royalist governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation in November 1775 offering freedom to slaves who enlisted in the British forces. Faced with acute manpower shortages, Washington approved a Rhode Island initiative to raise a battalion of African Americans in 1778. On the personal front, Washington communicated to Lund Washington, who managed Mount Vernon in Washington's absence, his desire in 1778 "to get quit of Negroes" by sale. The imperative was economic rather than moral, though in 1779 Washington made clear his desire that "husband and wife, and Parents and children are not separated from each other" as a result of purchase or sale.

Washington's actions at the war's end reveal little in the way of anti-slavery inclinations. He was concerned with the recovery of his own slaves who had fled to the British. He refused to consider compensation for the upwards of 80,000 slaves evacuated by the British and insisted, unsuccesfully, that the British return them. Before resigning his commission in 1783, Washington took the opportunity to give his opinion on the future course of the new nation in his Circular to the States, but made no mention of slavery. The same year, Lafayette proposed a joint venture to establish an experimental settlement for freed slaves which, with Washington's example, "might render it a general practise." Washington offered encouragement but nothing tangible to support the idea. By contrast, Washington signed a copy of an abolitionist tract that year, and the historian Kenneth Morgan regards the Revolution in general and this moment in particular as the turning point in Washington's attitude.

Confederation years
Washington broke his silence privately in 1786, in a series of letters in which he made clear his desire to see the institution of slavery ended by a gradual legislative process. What exactly prompted this new thinking is not clear. Ferling speculates Washington was influenced by revolutionary rhetoric, the sight of blacks soldiering for the cause and the influence of young anti-slavery officers who served with him, such as Hamilton, Laurens and Lafayette. In December 1785, the abolitionist Robert Pleasants had played on Washington's deep-rooted concern for his reputation and lectured him that it would be forever tarnished if he remained a slaveholder. Irrespective of any moral awakening, Washington did not let principle interfere with economics. He still needed slaves to work his farms, and although he cut back significantly on purchases, he acquired more in 1786.

Any thought Washington might have entertained about freeing his slaves was complicated by his determination not to separate families and the fact that the spouses of a majority of the married slaves at Mount Vernon belonged to Martha or neighbors. Another complication was the political ramifications of emancipation and abolition. The Constitutional Convention had demonstrated just how explosive the issue was, and how willing the anti-slavery faction was to sacrifice abolition to secure a country united under a strong federal government.

Presidential years
Washington's prioritisation of national unity and the success of the new federal government above abolition was reflected in an administration that provided material and financial support in French efforts to suppress the Saint Domingue slave revolt in 1791 and implemented the pro-slavery Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. Washington remained silent on slavery in his 1796 Farewell Address. There is no indication Washington ever favored an immediate end to slavery, possibly out of concern about the sudden disruption to the labor market, the increase in idle poor and the burden of care for the elderly and sick that would be placed on the community. His abolitionist aspirations for the nation were confined to the hope that slavery would disappear naturally over time with the 1808 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, agreed at the Constitutional Convention.

Washington's personal thoughts on the institution in his presidential years were driven by both moral and financial imperatives. In a 1794 letter to Tobias Lear, he wrote of his repugnance of slavery and his desire to liberate his slaves, but stated that he could not afford to do so. To another correspondent, he wrote that only his principles against selling slaves "as you would Cattle in the market" prevented him from eliminating his slave holdings. He remained committed to the retention of his own slaves in later life; in 1791, he arranged for those who served in his presidential retinue in Philadelphia to be returned to Mount Vernon before they became eligible for emancipation after six months residence per Pennsylvanian law, and in 1795 he ordered the recapture of a fugitive slave. In both cases, he gave instructions to keep the measures from the public. In the mid 1790s he considered various schemes to release himself from his dependency on slavery. None could be realised because of his failure to sell or rent land to finance them, the refusal of the Custis heirs, for whom Martha held the dower slaves in trust, to agree to them and his own reluctance to separate families.

Posthumous emancipation
According to the historian Philip D. Morgan, profit, principle and posterity all drove Washington to make provisions in his will to emancipate his slaves. Written five months before Washington's death, the will can be regarded as both private testament and public statement on the the institution. His slaves were the subjects of the longest provisions in the twenty-nine-page document, by which his valet, William Lee, was freed immediately and his remaining 123 slaves were to be emancipated on the death of Martha. Addressing the concerns that helped prevent Washington from embracing abolition during his life, he stipulated those too old, young or infirm should be cared for and that the youth were to be educated. Martha felt threatened by the fact that she was now surrounded with slaves whose freedom depended on her death and emancipated her late husband's slaves a year after his death, one year before her own death.