The Slaveowners in Your Wallet

I recently heard someone claim that everyone whose face  appears on U.S. paper currency now in use was a slaveowner.  Not quite; Lincoln is the exception.  Franklin and Hamilton both became leaders of the early abolitionist movement and Franklin freed all of his slaves.  Hamilton freed some of his.  Grant mostly had use of slaves his wife inherited.  Below is a chart.   The information about presidents is the same as on the main page. 

Rob Lopresti
  

Face

Currency

Did he own slaves?

Quotations

George Washington

  $1

 

Yes.  When GW took over Mount Vernon at age 22 there were 18 slaves. When he married he gained control of 200 more which  technically belonged to the estate of his wife’s first husband.  By  1786 he owned 216 slaves.  (Flexner,    p114)

While GW was serving as president in Philadelphia a Pennsylvania law was passed freeing slaves whose owners had been citizens of the
state for six months.  GW sent his  two most valuable slaves home, telling them it was for his wife’s convenience.  (Wilkins,  p76) 

In 1796 Oney (or Ona) Judge ran away to New Hampshire.  She was one of GW’s slaves – Martha’s  personal servant.  President GW asked the Treasury Secretary and a
customs agent  for help in getting  her back – by force, if necessary - but she never  returned.  (Wilkins, p82. also: Gerson)

When GW left the presidency he
apparently left some house slaves behind in Philadelphia, knowing that   under state law they would be quietly freed by having spent a certain amount of time in Pennsylvania. (Flexner)

When he died in 1799 his will
called for his manservant William
Lee to be freed immediately, and
given a pension.  The other slaves were to be freed when his widow died.  Martha chose to free them  two years later. 
According to Abigail Adams this was because MW feared her life might be in danger,  since her death meant
freedom for the slaves. (Hirschfield, p 214) 

Neither GW nor MW could legally free the dower slaves which still  belonged to the Custis estate.
 

 

1786:  ”I can only say that no man living wishes more sincerely than I do to see the abolition of (slavery)…  But when slaves who are happy & content to remain with their present masters, are tampered with & seduced to leave them… it introduces more evils than it can cure."(Hirschfield,p187)

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Thomas Jefferson

  $2

 

Yes. TJ inherited many slaves. His wife brought a dowry of more than 100 slaves, and he purchased many more throughout his life. At some points he was one of the largest slaveowners in Virginia. 

 

In 1790 TJ gave his newly married daughter and her husband 1000 acres of land and 25 slaves.(Miller)

In 1798 TJ owned 141 slaves, many of them elderly.  Two years later he owned 93. (Bigelow,p537.)

One of TJ’s slaves was Sally Hemings, allegedly the half-sister of his deceased wife.  During TJ’s presidency a rumor appeared in print that she was his mistress.  TJ denied this story, which was also passed on as Hemings family tradition.  The youngest of Heming’s six children (and the only one whose paternity can be traced through  DNA) definitely descended from the Jefferson line, either through TJ, his brother Randolph, or one of Randolph’s sons.  TJ was in the vicinity of SH during each period of conception.(See Miller, p148-176:.)  For a discussion of the DNA issue see: http://tinyurl.com/ckfkk2 and: http://jeffersondna.com

TJ freed one of Heming’s children and allowed another to run away unpursued.  Both of them were light enough to successfully pass for White.(See Miller, p165.) 

TJ freed five slaves in his will, all members of the Hemings family.  Sally was not among them; TJ’s daughter Martha freed her years later.(See Miller, p168.)

 

 

1776:  (King George III) has waged cruel waragainst human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he  also obtruded them thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”  -from TJ's draft of the Declaration of Independence.This paragraph was voted down by the Congressional Congress.(Jefferson, 1984. p 22.)


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Abraham Lincoln

  $5

No.

 

1865:  “I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others.  Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”  ( Lincoln, 1953, v8, p360-1)

 

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Alexander Hamilton

  $10

 

Yes.  AH eventually freed some of his slaves;  he says that some of them declined the offer.  He became one of the founders of an early abolitionist society.

 

1785:  "Some of my Negroes to whom I have offered freedom have declined the Bounty, they will live with me...  I believe no man gets more work from his Negroes than I do, at the same time they are my Watchmen and my friends; never was an absolute Monarch more happy in his Subjects than at the present time I am." (Hamilton, v3, p606-7) 

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Andrew Jackson

  $20

 

Yes.  AJ bought his first slave, a young woman, in 1788.By 1794 his business included slave trading and he had purchased at least 16 slaves.(Remini,p.37, 55)

 

In the 1820s Jackson owned about 160 slaves.(James,p31)

He did not free his slaves in his will. 

 

 

1822:  "As far as lenity can be extended to these unfortunate creatures I wish you to do so; subordination must be obtained first, and then good  treatment."(James,p31)

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Ulysses S. Grant

  $50

 

Yes.  The only evidence that USG owned slaves is a document he signed in 1859 freeing one, William Jones. However, Grant certainly had some control over and use of slaves his father-in-law gave his wife.(Simon, p347)

 

1885: "The (South) was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance and enervated the governing class...  Soon the slaves would have outnumbered the masters, and, not being in sympathy with them, would have risen in their might and exterminated them.  The war was expensive to the South, as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all it cost." (Grant, 1885, v1, p507-8)

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Benjamin Franklin

  $100

 

Yes.  He owned a few slaves.  Late in life he freed them and became the first president of the first abolitionist society.

 

1789: (Writing as president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery)  “Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.  The unhappy man who has been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of the human species.  The galling chains, that bind his body, do also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social affections of his heart…  To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty… and to procure for their children an education calculated for their future situation in life; these are the great outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted.” (Franklin, p1154-5)

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