By: Marc H. Morial
President and CEO
National Urban League
Just steps away from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia,
archaeologists recently unearthed remains of a secret passageway that President
George Washington's slaves used to enter and exit from his presidential home in the
late 1790s, when the city served as the nation's capital.
Not far from where the Declaration of Independence was signed nearly 230 years ago,
there stands evidence of the hypocrisy that shrouded the burgeoning nation at its birth.
"As you enter the heaven of liberty, you literally have to cross the hell of slavery,"
observed Michael Coard, leader of a group of Philadelphians working to have the slave
tunnel recognized at the site, to the Associated Press. "That's the contrast. That's the
contradiction. That's the hypocrisy. But that's also the truth."
The father of our country represented a contradiction in terms. On one hand,
Washington played an important role in securing our America's independence from
England. On the other hand, he served as king of his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia.
Like King George III whose rule he fought to rid America of, Washington had his own
set of subjects — over 300 slaves he had acquired through inheritance, marriage and
transaction over the course of his life. When he became president, he had a rotating
cast of eight slaves living in his Philadelphia house, where there was a law on the
books making slaves free after six months of residence. Hence, the rotating cast,
which he reportedly aimed to keep secret from his staff and the public.
Washington started out life as a typical slave holder. But in the 1770s, he began to
soften his stance and express reservations privately. The sign-up of hundreds of free
blacks to join his revolutionary army made him view slavery in a harsher light at least
on a personal level. He stopped selling slaves against their will to prevent breaking up
families, and he was the only slave-owning founding father to emancipate them. This,
however, didn't occur until after his wife died — not during his own lifetime. His personal
servant, however, was freed following his death in 1799.
But as his president, it was different story. Washington concealed his personal
misgivings over slavery from the public, which some historians consider a tragic
missed opportunity while others contend it averted the upset of a very delicate balance
in the fledgling republic over the contentious issue. He signed into law the Fugitive
Slave Act, which mandated the capture and release of fugitive slaves, even in states
where slavery was outlawed.
The recent discovery of the slave tunnel under his home has attracted thousands of
visitors as well as prompted calls to incorporate the ruins into a new exhibit as opposed
to just filling the passageway in. It has caught National Park Service and city officials
by complete surprise, causing an indefinite postponement of the exhibit, originally
scheduled to open in 2009. In addition to the secret passageway, archeologists also
found in their search an architectural precursor to the White House's Oval Office and a
large basement that had never been recorded.
"We never thought we'd be faced with this kind of decision
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