How To Make An Author’s Heart Go Tha-Thump!

 

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A couple of weeks ago, the mother of one of my young readers contacted me on Facebook and wrote, “I’m going on a short trip to NYC. My son wants to see one of the places from CHAINS. Which one spot should he see?”

Not only did her son read and enjoy the book, but he wanted to take that experience to the next level and walk in the footsteps of the characters. AMAAAAAAZING!

I suggested that they visit the African Burial Ground National Monument, which shows visitors about the lives of enslaved and free black New Yorkers and their connections to African culture, and the Fraunces Tavern Museum, which is filled with artifacts and information about New York City during the American Revolution.

Not only did they go and have a wonderful time, but the Mom kindly posted this photo (reproduced with her permission) of her young history buff.

 

My conflicted relationship with George Washington

 

 

 

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I have a conflicted relationship with George Washington. This bubbles to the surface every time I see someone misattribute a quote to him on Facebook, or misstate facts about his changing attitudes about sundry and various things, or pass along bald-faced lies.

 

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Having read way too many books about him and the context of his era, in addition to spending years studying his letters, I have to say that I really, really like George.

He pulled together an army out of scraps of other men’s dreams and his own ambition. He was an incredible leader, a commanding officer whom his men looked up to and admired. He had a fierce temper which he kept under control… most of the time. He was ruthless when the situation demanded it. He listened to advisors. He battled America’s political leaders in his ongoing efforts to feed, clothe, and pay his troops. He was bold. Patient. A great dancer. Apparently his calves were so well-defined that when ladies got an eye-full of them tastefully decked out in fashionably thin stockings, they’d swoon. He loved his family. He had dental problems. He believed in self-sacrifice.

America would not exist without him. I believe he is the key, irreplaceable Founding Father.

 

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But Washington defies bumper stickers and memes. You can’t boil him down to a slogan or two because HE CHANGED HIS MIND about several critical issues. This might be what I love about him the most. His experiences during the Revolution changed him, particularly the way he looked upon African-Americans and the institution of slavery.

 

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I posted the meme above about Washington owning slaves on Tumblr on July 3rd. Most people acknowledged the painful hypocrisy. But I was stunned by the people who rushed in to snarl at me. They insisted that Washington had freed his slaves after the Revolution, or that they were never his slaves at all, they belonged to Martha, and… and….

It is hard to admit that a man whom so many admire had a lot of ugliness in his life. But it’s time to get over our squeamishness and deal with the facts.

1. George Washington became a slave owner at age 11, when he inherited ten slaves from his father. He inherited eight more a decade later from his brother. He bought and sold slaves on his own account and became responsible for the lives (and profits) of the slaves who belonged to his wife, Martha. (George did not own her slaves directly; he had to manage them, along with the property of Martha’s first husband, as a sort of trust for Martha’s children and grandchildren.)

2. Washington had slaves whipped, chained, and sold off to the brutal slave owners in the Caribbean.  (Note to haters: there is primary source documentation for this in the form of Washington’s letters and account books. Don’t waste your time and mine in the comment section by calling me names. Deal with it, OK?)

There is conflicting evidence about how he treated his slaves outside of punishments. Some letters written by visitors to Washington’s estates describe him as a harsh master, others describe him as more gentle than most.

3. From 1759-1772 George Washington bought at least 42 slaves. The number of people he owned increased beyond this as his slaves had families.

4. The American Revolution dramatically changed the way that Washington viewed African-Americans and the institution of slavery. I cannot emphasize this enough.

Before the War, Washington was a typical white Virginian, upper class slave owner. Reading his letters in which he talks about selling people, punishing them, etc. will churn your stomach.

During the War he experienced first-hand the number of African-Americans who were willing to fight for the Patriot Army, for the nation’s freedom and their own. At first, Washington did not want any men of color joining the Continental Army. He changed his mind.

Ten percent of the soldiers at Valley Forge were African-American men. (The source for this statistic is the Continental Army’s own head count.) Most of those were free black men. A few were slaves who had run away to join the army. Other were slaves who were forced to serve in the place of the man who owned them. There is plenty of documentation of slaves who were promised their freedom by their masters if they served in the army, and then had their owners renege on the deal.

Conversations with white aides who believed in freeing slaves, notably the Marquis de Lafayette and aide-de-camp John Laurens also helped Washington change his mind about the morality of slavery.

(John Laurens was the son of Henry Laurens, who was the fifth president of the Continental Congress and one of the richest men in America. Henry Laurens owned hundreds of slaves. He made a fortune kidnapping Africans, transporting them across the Atlantic and selling them into slavery. From 1749 – 1762 his company, Austin & Laurens, sold more than 10,000 human beings. His son John, in contrast, thought slavery was immoral and pushed hard to be allowed to form a regiment from South Carolina of African-American men who would be given their freedom in exchange for joining the military. His plan was ridiculed and defeated.)

The other factor in Washington’s change of heart was his travels through the Mid-Atlantic and New England states during the war. Washington was a practical farmer who grew up only seeing large-scale farming performed by slaves. North of Virginia he saw well-managed farms that were run using only paid labor. This opened his eyes.

As a result of all of this, Washington decided that he would never buy or sell another slave. At that point he owned 105 people outright, and he managed the additional 111 who were owned by Martha (that was the trust I mentioned earlier).

5. In his will, Washington freed all the slaves that he owned and made sure that they would be cared for and supported as they adjusted to their lives as free people. When he died he owned 123 people and Martha owned 153. He could not free the slaves owned by Martha’s first husband’s estate because of Virginia law.

The language in George Washington’s will is fascinating and incredibly specific. He went to great lengths to make sure that Martha’s four grandchildren – who he knew would be super unhappy at not inheriting his slaves – could not break the will. Washington made sure that the child slaves he owned would be bound out to learn trades, and to learn how to read and write. Those children were to all be given their complete freedom when they reached age twenty-five.

 

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I hate the fact that Washington was a slave owner. I hate that he and most of the other Founding Fathers participated in slavery. I am furious that they didn’t have the balls to write a Constitution that freed all Americans, instead of just freeing the white ones.

But I’m proud of George for being man enough to learn, grow, and change. That’s why he’s my favorite Beatle Founding Father.

In my experience, many white people don’t know how to talk about this stuff. Some don’t even know about it. That’s part of the reason I wrote CHAINS and FORGE and it’s why I am working so hard on ASHES. (No, I don’t have a publication date for ASHES yet. Stay tuned!)

Because I love America and I am a big history nerd, I go fifty extra miles in my research to ensure that my fictional stories are well-grounded in historical evidence. That’s why I have four historians review every book for accuracy before we go to press.

What do you think about George Washington? How do you make peace with his positive contributions to American history versus his slave owning and lack of participation in the post-Revolution abolition movement?

PS – Of our first eighteen Presidents, thirteen of them were slaveowners. (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Buchanan, Johnson, and Grant) Did you know that? If not, how does that change the way you think about how you were taught history?

 

Resources:

Presidents and Slaves: Helping Students Find the Truth, a teaching activity by Bob Peterson posted on the Zinn Education Project website.

Mount Vernon has a page devoted to Washington and his slaves.

Take this quiz to find out more about our early presidents and slavery.

“Are U.S. History Textbooks Still Full of Lies and Half-Truths?” article on George Mason University’s History News Network website, written by Ray Raphael.

Henry Laurens and The British Slave Trade to Charleston S.C.

 

FORGE tour – Week 1, pt 2

WHATTA BIRTHDAY!!!

Thank you to everyone for the kind messages and good thoughts. If the rest of the world knew how much fun it is to turn 49, they wouldn’t angst about it so much.

Special thanks to the teens, parents, librarians, teachers, and booksellers at the Pittsford B&N for making my birthday FORGE tour event such a blast.

yep, that's my dad! My father was super-impressed by the signs!

 

 

 

 

 

 

They made me a birthday cake!! And gave me presents: about 1.5 tons of popcorn, and a popcorn game, and a pen that had my name on it – SPELLED CORRECTLY!!

 

 

 

 

i love my readers!

Some of the teens came early and camped out. They were smart and brought pillows, blankets, and food!

 

 

 

 

 

These guys all volunteers for the Rochester-area Teen Book Fest – the BEST teen book fest in the country. (My visit to the store was part of the fund raising efforts for the fest.) I’ll be speaking at TBF again in 2012.

 

 

 

And a few last pics from Missouri.

Pete the Bookseller from Reading Reptile took me to Charlie Parker’s grave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And made sure I enjoyed a pulled pork sandwich at Arthur Bryant’s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eric is a Twitter friend and a teacher with a massively marked-up copy of CHAINS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

best shirt ever He gave me my new favorite shirt, from the History Geek club he runs. LOVE IT!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christine Taylor-Butler is a friend I met at Kindling Words. She took the time to come to my bookstore event, which was VERY much appreciated. It’s always comforting when I can see friends in the audience.

Writing about race for kids

Back in January, bookseller Elizabeth Bluemle and I had a conversation about white privelege and issues of race in children’s publishing and children’s literature, two topics that had been much on our minds.

Elizabeth kept pondering and talking to people in the industry and has now published a post called "The Elephant in the Room," complete with illustrations by a bunch of artists.

I hope you all read the article and check out the links.

After you do, come back here so we can continue the discussion. What do you think of what she said?

In a similar vein, a children’s literature scholar recently reviewed CHAINS. In the review (which was positive) she said she found some anachronisms, which made my heart stop. I wrote and asked her what they were. She graciously responded; she had not found true anachronisms, but was unsure about the historical validity of some of the choices I made. I wrote back and explained my sources.

The original review and short discussion thread are a great example of how authors, reviewers, and readers can connect to discuss story in a constructive way. I was honored to see that Debbie Reese was following the discussion. (Be sure to check out her blog if you haven’t yet.) If you have any thoughts on that, I’d love them, too!

Batting Monday Clean-up

You know the sound a car engine makes at the RPMs are climbing and you are preparing to shift into the next gear?

Make that sound in your mind right now.

I’m getting ready to shift gears and go full throttle on a number of projects.

Before I can do that, though, I have to clean off a couple of desks and check off the last items on a few to-do lists. And close a bunch of tabs that have been open for weeks while I wait for the right moment to blog about them.

Here’s a short article about a recent Skype visit I did with 6th graders who had read CHAINS.

CHAINS also made the "A More Perfect Union" Bookself, a program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The chosen books will be distributed to 4,000 school (K-12) and public libraries. Why? The NEH says "As the American people begin observing the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, NEH seeks to promote reflection among young people on the idea of the United States as a “union.”" I was excited to see that my friend Pam Muñoz Ryan’s book, When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson, is also on the list. I was honored that W.E.B. Dubois’s, The Souls of Black Folk, is on the list, too. Be sure to check out the whole list!

Over at YA BookSelf, they’ve posted an article comparing rejection letters to SPEAK. What do you think of it?

At last, but certainly not least, Wendy at SimpleThrift (a terrific blog about living a frugal and creative life while raising kids) has been naming her chickens after her favorite authors. She just posted a short and fun Good Egg Interview with me because….

  (photo credit Wendy Thomas)

she named this little girl "Laurie Halse Anderson."