George Washington was born into a slaveholding society and a slaveowning family, but freed his slaves in his will. Jefferson was broke so he couldn’t free all of his slaves, but did free a few (who were related to his wife). TR had slaveowning ancestors. Martin Van Buren, after his Presidency, ran as the candidate of the Free Soil Party in 1848, but his own father had been a slaveowner. (He didn’t make Borglum’s cut.)
GW was such a tragic figure
I’ve always admired and felt sorry for him
He was bled to death for cry eyed
He had no children of his own
The Revolution drove him nearly blind, too
Then there’s those wooden teeth. That would have hurt
“Jefferson was broke so he couldn’t free all of his slaves, but did free a few (who were related to his wife).”
Another problem Jefferson faced was that in Virginia, if a slave was freed, they had to leave the state with nothing but the clothes they could carry and would have been homeless without assistance. Bad law, but it was there.
“Free blacks included men and women of African descent who were born free or who gained their freedom before the war through manumission. Virginia officially required freed slaves to leave the state after 1806, but many remained in violation of the law.”
rwood