out of their way
to pick up unpleasant things. For instance, during his absence from
home a mason plastered some of the rooms, and when Washington returned
he found the work had been badly done, and remonstrated. The mason
died. His widow married another mason, who advertised that he would
pay all claims against his forerunner. Thereupon Washington put in a
claim for fifteen shillings, which was paid. Washington's detractors
used this as a strong proof of his harshness. But they do not inform
us whether the man was unable to pay, or whether the claim was
dishonest. Since the man paid voluntarily and did not question the
lightness of the amount, may we not at least infer that he had no
quarrel? And if he had not, who else had?

Insinuations concerning Washington's lack of sympathy for his slaves
was a form which in later days most of the references to his care of
them took. But here also there are evident facts to be taken into
account. The Abolitionists very naturally were prejudiced against
every slave-owner; they were also prejudiced in favor of every slave.
Washington, on the contrary, harbored no prepossessions for or against
the black man. He found the slaves idle, incompetent, lazy, although
he would not have denied that the very fact of slavery caused and
increased these evils. He treated the negroes justly, but without any
sentimentality. He found them in the order in which he lived. They
were the workmen of his plantation; he provided them with food,
clothing, and a lodging; in return they were expected to give him
their labor. It does not appear that the slaves on Washington's
plantation endured any special hardship. A physician attended them at
their master's expense when they were sick. That he obliged them to
do their specified work, that he punished them in case of dishonesty,
just as he would have done to white workmen, were facts which he never
would have thought a rational person would have regarded as heinous.
In his will he freed his slaves, not for the Abolitionist's reason,
but because he regarded slavery as the most pernicious form of labor,
debasing alike the slave and his master, uneconomic and most wasteful.

But in so general a matter as Washington's treatment of his slaves, we
must be careful not to take a solitary case and argue from it as if it
were habitual. By common report his slaves were so well treated that
they regretted it if there was talk of transferring them to other
planters. W