CHAPTER XII.
BLACK SLAVES It is one of the strange inconsistencies of history that one of the foremost champions of liberty of all time should himself have been the absolute owner and master of men, women and children.
Visitors at Mount Vernon saw many faces there, but only a few were white faces, the rest were those of black slaves.

On each farm stood a village of wooden huts, where turbaned mammies crooned and piccaninnies gamboled in the sunshine.

The cooks, the house servants, the coachmen, the stable boys, almost all the manual workers were slaves.

Even the Mansion House grounds, if the master was away, were apt to be overrun with black children, for though only the progeny of a few house servants were supposed to enter the precincts, the others often disregarded the prohibition, to the destruction of the Farmer's flowers and rare shrubs.
From his father Washington inherited ten or a dozen slaves and, as occasion required or opportunity offered, he added to the number.

By 1760 he paid taxes on forty-nine slaves, in 1770 on eighty-seven and in 1774 on one hundred thirty-five.