Life at Mount Vernon

Life at Mount Vernon. Resigning his commission late in 1758, he retired to Mount Vernon.

On Jan. 6, 1759, he married Martha Dandridge, widow of Daniel Parke Custis, whose estate included 15,000 acres 6,000 hectares and 150 slaves. Washington became devoted to Marthas two children by her first marriage, John Parke Custis and Martha Custis. As a planter, Washington concentrated at first on tobacco raising, keeping exact accounts of costs and profits.

He soon learned that it did not pay. British laws required that his exports should be sent to Britain, sold for him by British merchants, and carried in British ships. Also, he had to buy in Britain such foreign finished goods as he needed. On various occasions he complained that his tobacco was damaged on shipboard or sold in England at unduly low prices. He thought that he was often overcharged for freight and insurance, and he objected that British goods sent to him were overpriced, poor in quality, injured in transit, or not the right type or size. Unable to control buying and selling in England, he decided to free himself from bondage to British traders.

Hence he reduced his production of tobacco and had his slaves make goods of the type he had imported, especially cloth. He developed a fishery on the Potomac, increased his production of wheat, and operated a mill. He sent fish, wheat, and flour to the West Indies where he obtained foreign products or money with which to buy them. From the start he was a progressive farmer who promoted reforms to eliminate soil-exhausting practices that prevailed in his day. He strove to improve the quality of his livestock, and to increase the yield of his fields, experimenting with crop rotation, new implements, and fertilizers.

His frequent absences on public business hindered his experiments, for they often required his personal direction. He also dealt in Western lands.

Virginias greatest estates, he wrote, were made by taking up at very low prices the rich back lands which are now the most valuable lands we possess. His Western urge had largely inspired his labors during the French and Indian War. At that time, Britain encouraged settlement in the Ohio Valley as a means of gaining it from the French. In July 1754, Governor Dinwiddie offered 200,000 acres 80,000 hectares in the West to colonial volunteers. Washington became entitled to one of these grants.

After the war he bought claims of other veterans, served as agent of the claimants in locating and surveying tracts, and obtained for himself by July 1773 10,000 acres 4,000 hectares along the Ohio between the Little Kanawha and Great Kanawha rivers, and 10,000 acres on the Great Kanawha. In 1775 he sought to settle his Kanawha land with servants. Washington lived among neighbors who acquiesced in slavery and, if opposed to it, saw no feasible means of doing away with it. In 1775 he endorsed a strong indictment of the slave trade, but in 1776 he opposed the royal governor of Virginia who had urged slaves of patriot masters to gain freedom by running away and joining the British army to fight for the king. When Washington was famous as a world figure he dissociated himself, publicly, from slavery, although he continued to own many slaves.

He favored emancipation if decreed by law. In his will he ordered that his slaves be freed after the death of Mrs. Washington.