Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1891 — George Washington on Slavery. [ARTICLE]

George Washington on Slavery.

An unpublished letter of George Washington, written to his nephew, Robert Lewis, Aug. 17, 1799, or only four months before his death, has just seen the light in London. It contains the following: “It is demonstratively clear, that on this estate (Mount Vernon) I have more working negroes, by a full moiety, than can be employed to any advantage in the farming system, and I shall never turn planter thereon. To sell the overplus I cannot, because I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species. To hire them out is almost as bad, because they could not be disposed of in families to any advantage, and to disperse the families I have an aversion. What, then, is to be done? Something must, or I shall be ruined; for all the money (id addition to what I raise by crops and rents) that have been received for lands, sold within the last four years, to the amount of $50,000, has scarcely been able to keep me afloat. Under these circumstances, and a thorough conviction that half the workers I keep on this estate would render me a greater mt profit than I now derive from the whole, has made me resolve, if it can be accomplished, to settle plantations on some of my other lands.”

South Boston has a kindling-wood trust. We pine knot for anything of that sort.— New Orleans Picayune.