Later, after the war, Washington will return to his position as a slaveholder in Virginia. But his thinking on the subject is never the same. Within a few years, he comes to believe that slavery is morally incompatible with the American ideals he and so many others fought for. He writes of slavery that “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.” In his will, he grants freedom to his own slaves.
