Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer & the Question of Slavery

×

Expand

Mount Vernon Ladies' Association

The farm at George Washington's Mount Vernon

George Washington spent more of his working life farming than he did at war or in political office.

On March 24, learn about Washington's role as a farmer during a lecture by Bruce Ragsdale, author of Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and Question of Slavery by Bruce Ragsdale.

For many years, Washington saw enslaved field workers and artisans as means of agricultural development, but eventually found that forced labor could not achieve the productivity he desired.

His inability to reconcile ideals of scientific farming and rural order with race-based slavery led him to reconsider the traditional foundations of the Virginia plantation. It was the inefficacy of chattel slavery, as much as moral revulsion at the practice, that informed Washington’s famous decision to free his slaves after his death.