George Washington Gave Up an Army. Not the Slaves. | Presidential Papers Ep. 1

On his last afternoon, George Washington had one of his two wills burned. That night, four enslaved people were in the room as he died. This George Washington documentary follows the will he kept back through his own papers, to find out what it did for them. 0:00 Two wills 0:20 The first will 2:14 By marriage 4:00 What he gave back 6:24 Six months 8:32 In his own hand 10:49 The one she kept Presidential Papers, Ep. 1: every US president, in order, each told through one record. A new president every Thursday at 5 PM Eastern. Watch them in order:    • Presidential Papers: US Presidents   The ink figures are faceless illustrations. Every drawn or built picture says so on screen: ILLUSTRATION or RECONSTRUCTION. Nobody knows which will was burned or what it said, and the film says so. Old spellings: the 1798 plan prints "District" with a long s (ſ). THE RECORDS His will, 9 July 1799 (Fairfax County Circuit Court): https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/circuit... Tobias Lear's account of 14 Dec 1799, in Letters and Recollections of George Washington (1906): https://archive.org/details/lettersre... His June 1799 list, in Writings, vol. 37: https://archive.org/details/writingso... To Tobias Lear, 12 Apr 1791: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/prim... To Joseph Whipple, 28 Nov 1796: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/prim... Ona Judge in The Liberator, 22 Aug 1845: https://archive.org/details/sim_liber... Fugitive Slave Act, signed 12 Feb 1793 (National Archives): https://catalog.archives.gov/id/12406... Resignation speech, 1783 (Maryland State Archives): https://www.msa.maryland.gov/msa/intr... Ledger B, 1772-93 (Library of Congress): https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw500002/ Fairfax Resolves, 1774: https://archive.org/details/americana... The Fort Necessity capitulation, 1754 (National Park Service): https://home.nps.gov/fone/learn/histo... His father's will, in Wills of George Washington and His Immediate Ancestors (1891): https://archive.org/details/willsofge... Ledger A, p. 261 (Papers of George Washington, Financial Papers): http://financial.gwpapers.org/?q=cont... To Captain Josiah Thompson, 2 July 1766, Writings, vol. 2: https://archive.org/details/writingso... To Lafayette, 5 Apr 1783, Writings, vol. 26: https://archive.org/details/writingso... To Robert Morris, 12 Apr 1786, Writings, vol. 28: https://archive.org/details/writingso... To Lawrence Lewis, 4 Aug 1797, Writings, vol. 36: https://archive.org/details/writingso... His last diary entry, in Diaries, vol. 4: https://archive.org/details/diariesof... The physicians' account, 1799: https://archive.org/details/gpl_1761942 Lund Washington's list of the 17, April 1781, Writings, vol. 22: https://archive.org/details/writingso... The dentures, W-1520/A (Mount Vernon collection record): https://emuseum.mountvernon.org/objec... To Clement Biddle, 28 July 1784, Writings, vol. 27: https://archive.org/details/writingso... HMS Savage (Journal of the American Revolution): https://allthingsliberty.com/2022/04/... Every source and every picture and sound credit, with links: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/... CREDITS Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0: deathbed engraving after Chapin. NASA (JSC): Artemis I Recovery Teams Prepare for Splashdown. Snowfall: Marnanel, CC BY 4.0, based on "Snowfall-240fps" © Cody Logan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0; graded and composited. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Photos via Wikimedia Commons, cropped and graded. CC BY 4.0: Artaxerxes. CC BY-SA 4.0: Mrphelps. CC BY-SA 3.0: Unknown (uploader Tom). CC BY-SA 2.5: Unknown. Mount Vernon, 1930s: Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress (US government work). Music: ElevenLabs Music; real cello samples, University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios; fife and drum, The US Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps (US government work). Sound: Mixkit, the National Park Service and Freesound (CC0: BitsyMcNics, SoftDistortionFX, be_a_hero_not_a_patriot, bitlab_coop, craigsmith, ilmari_freesound, ralph.whitehead). Licences: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... #GeorgeWashington #Documentary #PresidentialPapers