An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America [Paperback]

Henry Wiencek (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2004

A major new biography of Washington, and the first to explore his engagement with American slavery

When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his "only unavoidable subject of regret." In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father's engagement with slavery at every stage of his life--as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman.

Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system's evil.

Wiencek's revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington's determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility--as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted--that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus; Wiencek has new evidence that this could indeed have been true.

George Washington's heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Was George Washington a dedicated slaveholder and, like Thomas Jefferson, a father of slave children? Or was he a closeted abolitionist and moralist who abhorred the abuse of African-Americans? In An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America Henry Wiencek delves into Washington's papers and new oral history information to assemble a portrait of the first President of the United States that (while uneven in the telling) concludes that Washington supported emancipation by the time of his death.

To begin, Wiencek briefly addresses and dismisses the claim that Washington fathered a child with Venus, (a slave owned by Washingtong's brother, John Augustine). According to Wiencek, the President was likely sterile and such an affair would have been out of character for a man who prided himself on "self-control."

Wiencek's real focus in An Imperfect God is Washington's personal and political position regarding emancipation. The primary ground for Wiencek's argument is Washington's will and a selection of private letters that elaborate a plan for providing land and means for his freed laborers. The will in particular offers powerful evidence of Washington's true intentions, including explicit declarations manumitting Washington's slaves after his death. As Wiencek shows, the document punctuated a long period of equivocation.

An Imperfect God is an imperfect book. Wiencek's occasional first-person accounts of his field research, including discussions with descendants of Washington, feel strangely out of place in what is elsewhere a straightforward biography punctuated with digressions into Washington's larger historical context. Further, Wiencek sometimes dabbles in hagiography and is willing to excuse much in a man who was a slaveholder his entire life. Yet, Wiencek is right to point out the distinctions of Washington among the slaveholding Founding Fathers. Readers can only imagine along with Wiencek the national tragedy that could have been averted had Washington provided the great example of emancipation while in office. --Patrick O'Kelley --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

This important work, sure to be of compelling interest to anyone concerned with the nation's origins, its founders and its history of race slavery, is the first extended history of its subject. Wiencek (who won a National Book Critics Circle award for The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White) relates not only the embrangled "blood" history of Washington's family and that of the Custis clan into which he married, but also the first-person tale, often belabored, of his own search for facts and truth. What will surely gain the book widest notice is Wiencek's careful evaluation of the evidence that Washington himself may have fathered the child of a slave. His verdict? Possible, but highly improbable. Yet his detective work places the search on a higher plane than ever before. Also, while being a social history (unnecessarily padded in some places) of 18th-century Virginia and filled with affecting stories of individual slaves, the book stands out for depicting Washington's deep moral struggle with slavery and his gradual "moral transfiguration" after watching some young slaves raffled off. While by no means above dissimulation, even lying, about his and Martha's bond servants, by the time of his death in 1799 Washington had become a firm, if quiet, opponent of the slave system. By freeing his slaves upon Martha's death, he stood head and shoulders above almost all his American contemporaries. This work of stylish scholarship and genealogical investigation makes Washington an even greater and more human figure than he has seemed before. History Book Club main selection.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (August 12, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374529515
• ISBN-13: 978-0374529512
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #421,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, not cynical, appraisal of American Patriarch, January 4, 2004

By 

"farmer4522" (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (Hardcover)

I received this book as a Christmas gift, and was afraid it might be a cynical and politically-correct portrait of George Washington. Far from it.
Washington was probably the only man who could have steered us between the rock of tyranny and the whirlpool of anarchy. And when his second term was up, "the man who refused to be king" got on his horse and returned to his beloved farm. Mount Vernon, however, was a house divided when it came to dealing with the corrupting institution of slavery. Martha Washington and the extended family had radically different views from the patriarch, who wanted to begin educating the slaves.
It is soul-wrenching to read of the missed opportunities to stymie slavery. The Founding Fathers had the power to bring our way of life into greater consonance with our sublime rhetoric of liberty. If George Washington had freed his slaves while in office, rather than after his death, it would have created an implacable precedent for his successors.
Thomas Jefferson was a genius (George Will called him the "Man of the Millenium"), but it's appropriate that his stock should go down a bit in recent years -- and Founding Fathers such as John Adams and George Washington should be re-discovered and re-treasured. Henry Wiencek has a fascinating section about Phillis Wheatley, poet and slave. The reader can only be stunned by Jefferson's hostility toward her, contrasted with Washington's openness.
The chapter on Williamsburg is superb. Jefferson called the colonial capital "the finest school of manners and morals that ever existed in America." Williamsburg had the first theater in the British colonies. The same royal governor who designed Williamsburg, earlier had laid out Annapolis. The author makes you feel like you're walking the broad expanse of Duke of Gloucester Street and "looking down the vistas of the past."
One learns many things from Henry Wiencek. For instance, President Washington told Secretary of State Randolph that if the Union ever split, "he had made up his mind to remove and be of the Northern [side]." (As the fiery clouds of secession rolled in, and Lincoln tried to convince Robert E. Lee -- married to the Washingtons' great-granddaughter -- to take command of the Northern armies, was either man aware of the Founder's remark?)
The book's frontispiece map of "Washington's Virginia" is the only off-key note. The editors overlooked the fact that Mount Vernon and Alexandria have been magically transplanted from the west bank of the Potomac to the east bank.
I loved this book! I tip my hat to Mr. Wiencek, who penned these words in the acknowledgments: "I close with an old Virginia toast, heartfelt: `God bless General Washington.'"

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engaging, Informative, Imperfect, February 23, 2004

By 

The Cooking and Reading Fiend "wild-cooking-w... (Greensboro, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (Hardcover)

I enjoyed An Imperfect God because the writing itself was excellent. Although the author veered back and forth between first person observations to a more biographical stance, he managed to engage my attention with his well woven historical references and his ancedotal stories which had a very personal feel.

There were places where the author seemed to rehash stories told by others without adding anything new, and other places where his scholarship was fresh and his conclusions provoke conversation. Wiencek shows us repeatedly the paradox of a man who benefited by owning slaves and their labor, who came to a point of understand the the corrupting influence of absolute power slavery geve owners over the lives of others. Washington allowed arrangements between slaves and their owner/relatives within his own household which we would find untenable at best, and the subject of offensive jokes at worst. The story of Martha Washington's slave sister and Martha's son from her first marriage, which produced a child, is one which would be considered unpalatable in these days but was commonplace in the 17th century until the end of legal slavery. Yet, at the end of his life, he provided for the manumission of his slaves.

Clearly, Wiencek is not a revisionist historian, in the way that most traditional historians use the term. He is a revisionist in the best sense of the word, adding to our knowledge as well as encouraging us to look at viewpoints we might not have considered.

In the end, however, Wiencek's book provides a fresh look at a difficult time and convoluted relationships which have had scant acknowledgement outside the African American community. As our nation finally comes to grips with recent revelations that 20th century segregationist Strom Thurmon fathered a daughter with a black house maid in the early 20th century, we see that Thurmon's behavior is merely an extention of the behavior exhibited in the 1700s by other leaders. Timely, indeed.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Neither a hit-piece nor a whitewash, March 9, 2004

By 

Keith W. Oschman (Deland, Fla USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (Hardcover)

I expected a politically correct hit-piece on Washington, but was pleasantly surprised by what was a really helpful and honest look at the human being on the dollar. I'm just a high school history teacher in Eastern Kentucky, so I guess I'm not really qualified to judge historical accuracy, but it seemed like a pretty good book to me.

I especially appreciated how Wiencek made Washington's background understandable. One can better understand Washington when you see how far he had to move from his contemporaries--priveleged Virginia slaveowners--to even consider freeing his slaves. His growth and his blindness are both clearly and fairly presented. Washington seems more like a real human being, with good and bad like the rest of us.

As for hagiography, I saw none. I suppose if you are a Washington hater you will be disappointed--likewise if you really think that he never told a lie. But if you want to meet a real human being who, almost alone among his contemporaries, struggled greatly to rise above much (but not all) of their racism, this is a great book. The author's first person accounts were a nice touch for all but those who prefer strict dry-as-dust history writing.

There was much here that will help me to better teach American history.