Thy Will Be Done

John Garrison Marks is a historian, writer, and author of?Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery.

Contents



List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction, 1

1 Understanding George Washington and Slavery, 13

2 Washingtons Will and an Emerging Legacy, 41

3 Traces of Freedom, 61

4 Washingtons Legacy and the Fight over Slavery, 91

5 The "Real" George Washington and the 1932 Washington Bicentennial, 125

6 Washington and Slavery in the American Classroom, 159

7 Telling the Story of Slavery at Mount Vernon, 193

Conclusion: Talking About Washington, 229

Notes, 237

Bibliography, 263

Index, 275



Illustrations



Illustration of Thornton Gray from a local history of Fairfax County, 85

President Coolidge addressing Congress to announce Washington Bicentennial, 126

Comic strip biography of George Washington, 134

Newspaper headline announcing Washington as "First Emancipator", 151

1929 slave memorial at Mount Vernon, 199

Painted stones dedicated to enslaved people at Mount Vernon, 206

“Marks . . . has delivered a book of compassion, courage, and meticulous detail.”—Progressive Magazine

“Marks paints a nuanced, three-dimensional picture of George Washington. He helps us understand him as both revolutionary and enslaver, as president and as captor, as a man who was troubled by the institution even as he continued to participate in it. Thy Will Be Done is an exceptional book. This is how George Washington should be taught. This is how history should be done.”—Clint Smith, New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

“John Garrison Marks has written an unsparing audit of our inherited memory—proving that the real revolution is in who gets to tell the story. He reveals how the nation’s first act of self-deception became its longest-running tradition.”—Alexis Coe, American history columnist at the New York Times and New York Times bestselling author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington

“Impressive in chronological scope, range of sources, and methodology. Few historians work as skillfully as John Garrison Marks does in his sensitive, primarily archival reconstruction of the early history of the people freed through Washington’s will and the primarily oral history of contemporary interpretation of enslavement at Mount Vernon.”—Andrew M. Schocket, author of Fighting over the Founders: How We Remember the American Revolution

“An engaging and nuanced chronicle of the legacy of George Washington and slavery over the past 250 years. Given increasingly polarized debates about how to interpret our country’s history, Thy Will Be Done is a vital contribution to understanding our national history and memory.”—Cassandra A. Good, author of First Family: George Washington’s Heirs and the Making of America