Slave Passage Found Under G Washington Home

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Thomas Jefferson had an underground passageway from the scullery of his home to a well on the slope of the hill upon which Monticello sits, so that the view would not be spoiled by seeing slaves walking across the grounds to draw water. No surprises here.

No surprises. The real story here is that some want to dispose of the tunnel, while others want it to be on exhibition.

There were also two cells with pillories along the passageway from Monticellos kitchen. The docents say that these were "rarely used" and that the exiastence of the underground kitchen pathway was merely a way to prevent a major fire. RIIIIIIGHT.

That's a good point--and like the holocaust, maybe this should be one of those "lest we forget" things.

FM--fires were common in houses due to kitchen fires getting out of control. However, such an underground passage was not necessarily a means to prevent that, and might even have been less effective than the common measure, such as one sees at Mount Vernon, wherein the kitchen was in a separate out-building a good distance from the main house. At night, fires were banked, or even extinguished in larger houses where the fires could be re-lit by carrying coals from the fire banked in the kitchen building. If you recall, the kitchen and scullery weren't terribly far from the house at Monticello, much closer than the separate kitchen buildings which were common on other estates. He also had a dumb waiter, automatic opening doors at the main entrance, and storm windows, all of which reduced to a minimum the need for slaves to appear in the house for any reason.

I guess my point is, docents and tour guides arent Nobel prize winners. I know in Philly, the tour guides who drive the haks are being ridiculed in the press for their moronic senses of history. There is no standard for the information presented and tourists can often go away with an understanding that was worse than they arrived.

The Philly Inquirer had run an IR series about the "Tourguide" industry and the hacks in particular. The Union that represented the Hacks came and defended them when the city proposed that all tour guides were to take a basic history skills course and pass a test of basic information before they start speaking to the public.
Its a known fact that the guides will conspire to pass of some really outrageous piece of crap to people and then laugh about it. At least that was the case until the newspaper got on it. Now Im sure that its still going on but is more covert..

Yeah, what passes for history in such situations is as bad as or worse than what passes for science in a "creation science" museum--and the disease is probably more widespread. History is open to a lot of speculation and controversy, but there's a lot of basic fact that is nearly beyond dispute, and which can make exploring our history exciting. I suspect, though, that docents don't know just how much they don't know, and that hack driver's only care about what kind of tip they can expect.

This is a perfect example of why I constantly say " history is incorrect as it is only written by survivors"

here are people who want to rid of a piece of history right in front of our eyes.

So what if he had slaves? Almost everyone who could afford slaves had them.
It was what was acceptable at that time.
He was able to afford a tunnel for them to pass through so that you could not see them on his land.
Just more proof of the racism and hatred of that time.

This does not change WHO he was.
he was the 2nd president of the united states. Often times confused with being the first.

SO. WHAT.

why are people trying to erase this?

They think it will change things?

They don't want people to think of someone who has been put in high regard as a slave owner?

This is such a false statement, that i hardly know where to begin with it.

The most glaring refutation is found in the very substance of this thread. We don't know that there was such tunnel because of the account of any survivor of those times. If this linked article is the only evidence we have (which can be assumed for sake of my argument), then the evidence we have is speculative. There is nothing wrong, in historiography, with speculation. In fact, the accumulation of plausible and reliable historical accounts is often not possible without speculation. The full article states, among other things:



If the bold-faced statement is true (once again, i will assume that for sake of my argument), then our evidence cannot possibly be from survivors, but only from archaeology. The claim that the passageway was used by Washington's slaves so that they would not be seen on the property is, therefore, only speculation--and once again, there is nothing wrong with that speculation, which is undoubtedly a correct assessment of the evidence.

(By the way, the article makes a completely false claim, when it writes:



Washington had about 300 slaves when he married Martha, and she had previously been married to Daniel Parke Custis, by whom she had four children, two stillborn and two surviving. Martha brought with her 300 more slaves, who were held in trust for her children by the terms of her late husband's will. Washington came into possession, legally, of all of Martha's property upon their marriage, but that was a scant legacy. Martha was very wealthy, but almost all of it was held in trust for John Parke and Patsy Parke Custis, her surviving children. Washington took his responsibilities to Martha and her children very seriously, and worked hard and carefully all of his life to preserve and improve the estate of the children. But Patsy died in 1773, and John, who served as an aide to George Washington in the Revolution, died shortly after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, having contracted camp fever during the siege.

Daniel Parke Custis had the middle name Parke because his grandfather, Daniel Parke, had left a will in fee entail which placed conditions on the inheritance of his estate, one being that all his descendants must take the name Parke. Therefore, several generations of the Custis family took Parke as their middle name. John Parke Custis, when he in 1781, left behind a son, George Washington Parke Custis, who inherited the entire Custis estate. However, that did not entitle him to any of the Mount Vernon land or slaves. After the end of the Revolution, Virginia abolished fee entail, as did all the states eventually, and legacies could only be left in fee simple, meaning condition could only placed on the first generation of inheritors. So, Washington was no longer obliged to preserve intact the inheritance for G. W. Parke Custis. Washington was not greedy, and was concerned throughout his life with his own honor and probity, so he settled on G. W. Parke Custis lands on the western part of his estate, and money equivalent to the value of the chattels (which included slaves) which he had held in trust for Martha's children. After Martha's death, Mount Vernon became a public trust, and G. W. Parke Custis built his own estate on the land he had been given, which he named Arlington--his great-grandfather, John Custis, had an estate in Northhampton County, Virginia named Arlington, which he named after the town in England where he and his father had been born.

G. W. Parke Custis' daughter Mary married Robert E. Lee, and therefore, Arlington became his estate--in trust for Mary Custis Lee--when his father-in-law died. The Federal Government seized the estate in the Civil War, and eventually, in the 1880s, the Supreme Court ruled that the Lee family must be reimbursed for the seizure, so the Congress voted $150,000 to be paid to the Lee family survivors, and the estate became Federal property, which was turned into the National Cemetery.

So, before Washington died, he was plagued by the thought of what he would do with the slaves. His own slaves he could free, but they would be left adrift in a hostile world in which they very likely would not survive, or would be kidnapped and sold back into slavery. More important to him, though, was what he would do with Martha's slaves, who were now truly her property, because fee entail had been abolished, and her children were dead. If he provided for the slaves to be freed when Martha died, he would create a motive for murder. So his solution was to pay a pension to all the slaves to support them after his death, and to give them no motive to murder Martha. His estate paid pensions until 1832, 33 years after Washington died. My source for this is George Washington, by Douglas Southall Freeman, seven volumes, New York, 1948--which is considered the definitive biography.)

All of that may seem a pointless diversion, but it is very important in terms of historiography. It demonstrates that the article provides false information--and that means that everything else in the article is suspect. Most of may be true, but we can't know which parts are true, and that especially pertains to whether or not the existence of this underground passage was ever recorded in an historical record.

Therefore, we cannot know if this constitutes history written by survivors. Based on the evidence available here, it certainly is not history written by survivors.

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J. B. Bury wrote: "History is a science, no more and no less." I don't agree--history uses the same investigative methods as science, but more important to history are the evidentiary methods used by lawyers and courts, which explains why so many lawyers in English-speaking countries once majored in history before going on to law school.

Just like the modern sciences, history has benefited enormously form multiple disciplinary studies. Archaology has long been the sister of history, and increasingly, other sciences have added incredible new vistas to history.

So, as an example, we cannot know who first smelted copper, and cannot know who first added tin to copper and smelted bronze. But, science can confirm that neither copper artifacts nor bronze artifacts can be created by naturalistic processes, and therefore cannot be anything other than human artifacts. So we do know that someone first smelted copper to make artifacts, and we do know that someone first alloyed copper and tin to produce bronze, and to make artifacts. This is a part of history, and we don't know it because of the record of any survivor of the creation of the first copper and bronze artifacts.

We can be reasonably certain, inferentially (i.e., through plausible speculation), that bronze was independently "discovered" in Europe and China. (However, new evidence, which the Chinese are trying very hard to hide, exists that European and "Chinese" peoples traded overland thousands of years ago, throwing issue like the "discovery" of bronze into doubt.) For literally centuries, historians and archaologists assume that bronze was first produced in the middle east. This was largely because, as we now recognize, early European historians and archaeologists were motivated by their prejudice for a biblical world view. In the late 20th century, evidence of bronze smelting was found in what is now Bulgaria. Using several scientific disciplines, principally geology and metallurgy, we can confirm that this bronze was not imported from the middle east and "re-smelted," but that it was native to the region--and that it was smelted long before the oldest bronzes found in the middle east. Therefore, the entire assumption that European tribes were primitives who only got a hold of anything good by trading with the middle east may not only be false, but may have the whole thing backwards.

None of this is known because a survivor wrote history, and all of it is just as reliable as any written historical records--which can easily be shown to be, as is notoriously assumed by historians, quite misleading or even outright lies.

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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a written record kept by generations of monks for more than two hundred fifty years, being actually separately written accounts kept in monasteries, and comprising a body of manuscripts from which a single comprehensive record can be produced. The Chronicle also contains copies (which may or may not have been accurate) of records dating back to as early as 60 BCE. By comparison with other records of the same period, or from periods which The Chronicle records, but which was not contemporary to its writing, we know that the Anglo-Saxons left a lot of things out (usually embarrassing information) or gave very one-sided accounts. Even when the events are uncertain, we know someone was either stretching the truth, or lying outright.

Which leads to a very simple example of how evidentiary investigation works in historiography. Somerset is a beautiful and agriculturally rich area of southwest England--the name means "summer lands," which implies that it was once used for grazing and crops in the summer, but not occupied in the winter (much of it was once boggy, and usually, only hill-fort settlements were occupied, and probably not year round).

In the 6th Century, the Saxons took what is now the city of Bath. But The Chronicle claims that the Britons suffered a horrible defeat, and were conquered. However, in the 7th century, as The Chronicle and other records confirm, the Saxons were again invading Somerset, a century after the earlier record, and it took them a hell of a long time to drive out the Britons. So, we know that the Saxons did take Bath in the sixth century, but we also know inferentially that it is a lie that they conquered Somerset in the 6th century, or else that The Chronicle fails to mention that the Britons took it back sometime before the late 7th century invasion. Since there are no confirmatory records for a Briton re-conquest, the most plausible speculation is that the Saxons lied about conquering Somerset in the 6th century.

These things we know not because any survivor wrote The Chronicle (which only began around in the late 9th century), but by careful investigation of the available records conducted with a good deal of skepticism, and a dedication to careful and plausible speculation.

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Rome was founded (so the Romans claimed) in April, 754 BCE. The date is not in dispute, it's close enough. For 150 years, they had "Kings," whom they expelled in about 500 BCE, after which they established their republic. This really pissed off the neighbors to the north, the Tuscans (who called their land Etruria, and so were long known by early historians as the Etruscans). The Roman kings were called the Tarquins, and the inferential evidence is very good that they were in fact governors imposed on Rome by the city state of Tarquinia, the "capital" of the Etruscan League. Whether or not that is true, the Romans and the Tuscans fought bitter wars for more than a century. Then, about 390 BCE, the Tuscans, who were alarmed because the kept losing their wars with the Romans and their Latin and Hernican allies, hired the Gauls (aka, the Kelts, or Celts) to help them conquer Rome. This worked, for a time. The Gauls broke into the city, drove off the city legions, and put the city to the sack. After a few months, however, they grew disenchanted, and by then were probably suffering the common camp diseases which attack armies who sit around and do nothing. All of the city had been taken, except for the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on the Capitoline Hill. They held out, having a spring of fresh water, and apparently, being able to smuggle food into the city (unsurprisingly, the Gauls were unlikely to have behaved in a very military manner--they liked to fight and kill you and steal your goods, but they weren't much on organized armies and military practice). Part of the reason any of the Romans survived is because they were, ploddingly, the most consistently competent organizers in history. You could completely destroy their army (it happened more than once), and they would raise and equip a new army, and come after you again.

Therefore, more than 400 years of the earliest history of Rome is known as the legendary period. This is because almost no records survived, except the linen rolls, which were records of who was elected to office and what legislation was passed, which the Censors kept in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Our chief source and the only complete source for the first seven hundred fifty+ years of Roman history is Titus Livius (Livy) in his book Ad urbe condite (From the Foundation of the City). Livy recounts all the legendary history in the first five of his 145 books which comprise that work. Most of Livy's book is pretty dull and boring, but the scant five books at the beginning are exciting and romantic, which is what you can expect from legend.

Livy was in many respects a less honest historian than Herodotus--even though he long got more respect from historians than did Herodotus. But Herodotus will say that this or that is what someone told him, and had the good breeding not to call anyone a liar--he left it up to the reader to decide if he or she believed the stories. And he was careful to say which parts of his History was taken from other, written records.

Livy, on the other hand, will baldly and blandly tell the most outrageous stories just as though everyone should believe them. He often quotes the linen rolls (which were lost after Livy wrote his most famous book), and is often the only source for those records. But he repeats some damned silly stories, like the story of Mucius Scaevola (which is almost certainly a lie, and which is contradicted in essential details by Tacitus), or the story of Horatio at the bridge (which might be true, but certainly was shamelessly embellished), or the legend of Castor and Pollux at the battle of Lake Regillus (no doubt about this, it's a lie--the story of the Gemini saving the day begins with the sixth paragraph), and finally, the story of the Fabians (i couldn't find a good link), which basically claims the family of the Fabians (familia Fabii) willfully took up a position on a hill near the Etruscan city of Veii, and defied the Etruscans, who eventually attacked them killing 300, and leaving only one man living (which was a good thing, since their descendant, Quintus Fabius Maximus, Cunctator, "the Delayer," was to successfully defend Rome against Hannibal's invasion, which we know--as well as we can know anything historical--was true).

All of these stories have a common thread. In about 500 BCE, the Romans expelled Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), the last legendary king of the city, the Tuscans weren't going to take that lying down. So all of these legends attempt to show the Romans as valiant, and militarily successful in dealing with their former oppressors, when the truth is very likely that Lars Porsena, the Tuscan "King" in the first two legends, actually defeated the Romans and took the city. Even the name is suspect, since in the Tuscan language, Porsena probably comes from a word meaning "chief magistrate"--the Tuscans were not known to actually have kings, and Lars was probably a general sent to put down the upstart Romans. It is very likely that Lars didn't give a rat's ass about Tarquin the Proud, and had no intention of giving the city back to him, espeically since the city which Lars came from, Clusium, was then challenging Taquinia for the leadership of the Etruscan league. All of these stories were probably cobbled together because, at first, the Romans were getting their collective ass handed to them by the Tuscans, and they couldn't stand to face up to the facts (tense and nervous, can't relax), so they made up some fairy tales to console themselves.

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My point? The ways that history is investigated (which is called historiography--literally, the study of the writing of history) are manifold and diverse, and very few of them rely upon, or rely soley upon the accounts of survivors. Herodotus spoke to survivors of the war with the Persians, but most of his History is taken up with accounts which are probably mostly legendary. Livy is writing, in the legendary portion of his history, about events which occurred more than five hundred years before he wrote, for which there was no written evidence, and which very likely did not take place. The things about which he wrote in that portion which were likely to have been true were not the product of any account by a survivor.

Only in the most abstract sense could it reasonably be said that history is written by survivors. Nothing personal, Wolf Woman, it just ain't so.