{"id":1854,"date":"2009-09-08T23:16:36","date_gmt":"2009-09-09T07:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=1854"},"modified":"2009-09-09T17:10:05","modified_gmt":"2009-09-10T01:10:05","slug":"george-washingtons-folly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/george-washingtons-folly\/","title":{"rendered":"What George Washington missed"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 224px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/e\/eb\/Martha_Washington.jpg\" alt=\"First first lady was nobody's fool\" width=\"214\" height=\"300\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Our first First Lady was nobody&#39;s fool<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The Father of our country, for all his wisdom and brilliance, may have unintentionally put his wife&#8217;s life at risk.<\/p>\n<p>President Washington was mindful of his place in the history of the young nation he did so much to bring about.\u00a0 But he was also deeply bothered by slavery, and aware that his slave ownership would be a stain on his reputation.\u00a0 He decided to limit that black mark as best as he legally could, promising to free his slaves in his will.\u00a0 But not wishing to leave his wife in the lurch economically, President Washington willed that his slaves would be freed after <em>her<\/em> death.<\/p>\n<p>Well, Martha Washington was no fool.\u00a0 Abigail Adams, on a visit to Mount Vernon, <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=aM9jR3aJZKUC&amp;pg=PA377&amp;lpg=PA377&amp;dq=martha+washington+free+slaves&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=yC9LpKvqgL&amp;sig=9w5ou3gewzu_GXX1-0vGKS0qF_Q&amp;hl=en#v=onepage&amp;q=martha%20washington%20free%20slaves&amp;f=false\">wrote in 1800<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>In the state in which they were left by the General, to be free at her death, she did not feel as tho her Life was safe in their Hands, many of whom would be told that it was [in] their interest to get rid of her&#8211;She therefore was advised to set them all free at the close of the year.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Smart lady.\u00a0 Martha died of natural causes two years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Father of our country, for all his wisdom and brilliance, may have unintentionally put his wife&#8217;s life at risk. President Washington was mindful of his place in the history of the young nation he did so much to bring about.\u00a0 But he was also deeply bothered by slavery, and aware that his slave ownership [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,9],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-1854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-unintended-consequences","tag-thanks-george"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1854"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1859,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions\/1859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}