Primary Sources:
Alexandria gazette. [volume], Alexandria, D.C., November 16, 1835. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85025007/1835-11-16/ed-1/seq-3/.
“George Washington to John Francis Mercer, 9 September 1786,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-04-02-0232.
“George Washington’s Last Will and Testament, 9 July 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-04-02-0404-0001.
“Notes on the State of Virginia: Queries 18 & 19 by Thomas Jefferson,” Teaching American History, The Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/notes-on-the-state-of-virginia-2.
“North American Slave Narratives.” Documenting the American South, University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/index.html.
Papers of George Washington. Founders Online. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. https://founders.archives.gov.
Washington’s Slave List, June 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-04-02-0405.
Teaching Resources:
Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon Online. George Washington’s Mount Vernon, https://www.mountvernon.org/lbtonline
Cannon, Alexandria. “Gradual Abolition Act of 1780.” In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by James P. Ambuske. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/gradual-abolition-act-of-1780/.
Dunbar, Erica Armstrong and Kathleen Van Cleve. Never Caught, The Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington’s Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away; Young Readers Edition. New York: Aladdin Books, 2020.
Ferraguto, Maria. “Census of the Enslaved Population at Mount Vernon, 1786 and 1799.” In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by James P. Ambuske. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/census-of-the-enslaved-population-at-mount-vernon-1786-and-1799/.
Lesson Plan: Life After Slavery: A Receipt for Wages to George Smith (Middle and High School), https://www.mountvernon.org/education/lesson-plans/lesson/life-after-slavery-a-receipt-for-wages-to-george-smith/.
MacLeod, Jessie. “Did the Enslaved People Know They'd Be Freed in Washington's Will?” George Washington’s Mount Vernon, https://youtu.be/4eKN447kJco.
MacLeod, Jessie. “Nancy Carter Quander.” In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by James P. Ambuske. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/nancy-carter-quander/.
Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPCPMP), https://www.middlepassageproject.org/.
Nicholls, Michael. “Gabriel’s Conspiracy (1800).” In Encyclopedia Virginia, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/gabriels-conspiracy-1800/.
Smith, Craig Bruce. “Status of Slaves in Washington’s Will.” In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by James P. Ambuske. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/status-of-slaves-in-washington-s-will/.
Thompson, Mary. “Slavery and Family.” In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by James P. Ambuske. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/slavery-and-family/.
Thompson, Mary. “Slavery and Marriage.” In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by James P. Ambuske. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/slavery-and-marriage/.
Washington and Lee University. “Special Collections: George Washington's Will, First Printed Edition.” https://youtu.be/rsP7FTpRPfs.
Further Readings:
Berry, Daina Ramey. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation. Boston: Beacon Press, 2017.
Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Casper, Scott. Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine. New York: Hill and Wang, 2008.
Gehred, Kathryn. “Why Did Martha Washington Free Her Husband’s Slaves Early?” The Washington Papers, https://washingtonpapers.org/why-did-martha-washington-free-her-husbands-slaves-early/.
Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.
McClafferty, Carla Killough. Buried Lives: The Enslaved People of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. New York: Holliday House, 2018.
Morgan, Philip D. “‘To Get Quit of Negroes’: George Washington and Slavery.” Journal of American Studies 39, no. 3 (2005): 403–29.
Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Nevius, Marcus. City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2020.
Quander, Rohulamin. The Quanders: Since 1684, an Enduring African American Legacy. Meadville, PA: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc., 2021.
Ragsdale, Bruce. Washington at the Plow: the Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2021.
Rosenthal, Caitlin. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2019.
Sandy, Laura R. The Overseers of Early American Slavery. Oxford: Routledge Books, 2020.
Schoelwer, Susan, ed. Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, 2016.
Schwarz, Philip, ed. Slavery: At the Home of George Washington. Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, 2001.
Thompson, Mary. “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019.
