An Imperfect God : George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America - Softcover

Wiencek Henry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330488694 ISBN 13: 9780330488693

Publisher: Pan Books/Pan Macmillan Ltd, 2005

Synopsis

`Wiencek is a fine writer, a careful historian and an accomplished genealogist who engagingly invites readers into his researches' Raymond Seitz, Daily Telegraph George Washington's will decreed that all his slaves were to be freed; an action that has fuelled controversy, speculation and intrigue ever since. In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life - as a soldier, politician, president and statesman. Based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records and the voluminous Washington archives, Wiencek recounts the moral transformation that culminated in the emancipation of his slaves. Was this perhaps because - as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted - he'd had a son by a slave called Venus? Using newly discovered evidence, Wiencek argues that this could indeed have been true. . . An Imperfect God is a fascinating and thought-provoking piece of historical detection and a masterpiece of biography.

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Review:

Was George Washington a dedicated slaveholder and, like Thomas Jefferson, a father of slave children? Or was he a closeted abolitionist and moralist who abhorred the abuse of African-Americans? In An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America Henry Wiencek delves into Washington's papers and new oral history information to assemble a portrait of the first President of the United States that (while uneven in the telling) concludes that Washington supported emancipation by the time of his death.

To begin, Wiencek briefly addresses and dismisses the claim that Washington fathered a child with Venus, (a slave owned by Washingtong's brother, John Augustine). According to Wiencek, the President was likely sterile and such an affair would have been out of character for a man who prided himself on "self-control."

Wiencek's real focus in An Imperfect God is Washington's personal and political position regarding emancipation. The primary ground for Wiencek's argument is Washington's will and a selection of private letters that elaborate a plan for providing land and means for his freed laborers. The will in particular offers powerful evidence of Washington's true intentions, including explicit declarations manumitting Washington's slaves after his death. As Wiencek shows, the document punctuated a long period of equivocation.

An Imperfect God is an imperfect book. Wiencek's occasional first-person accounts of his field research, including discussions with descendants of Washington, feel strangely out of place in what is elsewhere a straightforward biography punctuated with digressions into Washington's larger historical context. Further, Wiencek sometimes dabbles in hagiography and is willing to excuse much in a man who was a slaveholder his entire life. Yet, Wiencek is right to point out the distinctions of Washington among the slaveholding Founding Fathers. Readers can only imagine along with Wiencek the national tragedy that could have been averted had Washington provided the great example of emancipation while in office. --Patrick O'Kelley

About the Author:

Henry Wiencek was born in Boston, educated at Yale, and is now a Fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. He is the author of several books, including The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, which won the 1999 National Book Critics' Circle Award. He lives in Virginia with his wife and son.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan Books/Pan Macmillan Ltd
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0330488694
• ISBN 13: 9780330488693
• Binding: Paperback