For Washington, and for the great majority of the founders, a provision allowing for the eventual prohibition of the slave trade was crucial to any acceptable compromise. Outlawing the slave trade had been a point of contention for decades and was perceived by abolitionists as the most likely first objective in achieving their ultimate goal. The slave trade was considered a great evil, even by many slaveholding Southerners who opposed abolition itself. Thomas Jefferson renounced the slave trade in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence. Virginia law prohibited further importation of slaves into the commonwealth beginning in 1778. It was almost inevitable that the slave trade became a particular focus of debate in the convention. Opposition to the slave trade was a hallmark of moderate opponents to slavery, such as Washington, who believed that slavery should be eradicated — but who also were convinced that it could not be ended immediately. By shutting off further importation of slaves, it was widely believed, the demise of slavery would come about in time.

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Even though the slave trade proviso that was finally incorporated into the Constitution only stipulated that slavery could not be outlawed before 20 years had passed, it nevertheless represented a victory for moderates. Considered a crucial pro-slavery concession in the South, it was a bitter pill for radical abolitionists to swallow. Practically speaking, the compromise only postponed the ultimate resolution of the issue while giving both sides time to bolster their forces. The slave trade was prohibited in due course, but that act had much less impact than the moderate abolitionists had hoped would be the case. For as it should have been clear to anyone who bothered to examine the evidence closely, even by 1790 the influx of additional slaves was hardly needed to guarantee that slavery would continue to expand by natural means. With the benefit of another 20 years of imports, when the slave trade finally was prohibited it did little to inhibit the continued precipitous growth of the enslaved population in America. By 1860 the number of slaves had multiplied to more than five times what it had been 70 years earlier.

During the last years of his second presidential administration, Washington began to formulate plans for putting his personal affairs in order against the day when he would again, and finally, retire to private life. A major element of his plan called for easing the strain of overseeing his vast estate by seeking to sell or rent the great bulk of his property. He hoped to find a group of progressive English farmers who could be induced to migrate to America to farm the well-tended, but still lamentably infertile, Mount Vernon fields. For Washington this plan would seem to have been the answer to so many of his most heartfelt desires. Not only would he be free of the toil and aggravation caused by the day-to-day oversight of the plantation, he would also escape the frustrations of trying to adapt a system of slave labor to his innovative vision of Mount Vernon’s future. And perhaps best of all, Washington would presumably experience the satisfaction of finally witnessing firsthand the benefits of the many innovative farming practices that for years he had been trying to adapt from their English agricultural innovators.

The land scheme took on even greater significance for Washington because it was an integral part of his final, concerted attempt to solve in one clean sweep the vexing problem of the disposition of the Mount Vernon slaves. Given the substantial cost of reimbursing the Custis estate for the value of the dower slaves, finding a method whereby he could afford to free them under the provisions of Virginia’s 1782 manumission act was a challenge. The first indication of Washington’s ambitious plan is contained in a series of letters exchanged in 1794 between him and his secretary and close friend, Tobias Lear, and between Washington and the English agronomist Arthur Young. As Washington portrayed it to Lear, the plan consisted of two interrelated parts: selling his thousands of acres of western lands and selling or renting the four outlying Mount Vernon farms. By divesting himself of most of his acreage, he would no longer require large numbers of slaves to support himself. This, in turn, would allow him to set free the slaves that he owned. In addition, with the profits from the land sales, Washington hoped to be able to buy the dower slaves from the Custis estate in order to set them free. Thus would he overcome the problem of breaking up the intermarried families, since all the slaves could be freed at the same time.

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