Instead, Washington failed to free a single slave during his lifetime. He was always waiting for something—a land deal, a law to compel him—but in the end, he always came back to the same problem: The fate of his slaves’ families. Many of the people Washington enslaved had married the Custis slaves, who belonged to Martha’s heirs, and it seems her family had no intention of freeing them. But Washington wouldn’t have to deal with any of those complications after he died. In his will he stipulated that his hundred and twenty-three slaves should be freed—after Martha had her use of them, and the
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