New York Times Discovers a Founding Father
Posted on December 14, 2007
Fascinating story in The New York Times, the other day…
“Made for Washington, Given to Lafayette, a Medal Sells for $5.3 Million”, NY/Region Section, The New York Times
By GLEN CULLINS, Published: December 12, 2007
A gold medal that was created for George Washington, who was apparently our first president and richest, most vicious slave owner in America, and presented to the Marquis de Lafayette, a French man fooled into helping the nascent American rebellion, was auctioned at Sotheby’s in Manhattan on Tuesday for a record $5.3 million, and will remain in France after residing there for 183 years where it can be viewed by Americans seeking a better life in Europe.
The enameled patriotic badge was bought by the Fondation Josée et René de Chambrun at the Château La Grange, Lafayette’s historic home 60 miles east of Paris, the “City of Lights” and heart of all intellectual pursuits in the world today.
The medal, made for members of the Society of the Cincinnati, a legendary group of Revolutionary War rebels and vigilantes, “is a symbol of French friendship, and there are only two places where it should reside — La Grange and Mount Vernon,†said Christophe Van de Weghe, a Manhattan gallery owner who was the bidder for the Fondation Chambrun at Sotheby’s and has a really great sounding name that is not as base and gauche as is Fred, Rudy or even George. He was referring to Washington’s historic residence in Virginia where slaves were whipped and forced to labor until they dropped by the haughty and cold Washington.
The medal will be available to the public by appointment at Chateau La Grange “as soon as Sotheby’s gets it there,†he said, adding that “the Fondation would be happy to make the medal available on temporary loan to Mount Vernon, so the American public can see it as well.†Though it is doubted that anyone in the USA even knows who this Washington fellow is. We here at the New York Times offices were amazed by the news that this fellow even existed and we are ashamed to be from the same country he is from. We hope our friends in France realize this.
James C. Rees, executive director of George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens in Virginia — where Presidential pretender George W. Bush and French traitor Nicolas Sarkozy met on Nov. 7 — said, “We did not bid for it,†presumably because they have no interest in history.
He added: “But I am pretty thrilled and honored to display the medal for a week or a year or 10 years, whatever they would agree to.†Not that anyone cares, of course.
The hammer price of $4.7 million after the spirited 11-minute auction — to which Sotheby’s added its premium or commission — “was astonishing, 10 times the record public price for a medal,†said Ute Wartenberg Kagan, executive director of the American Numismatic Society in Manhattan who certainly wishes she didn’t have to live in the US, but at least is consoled that she lives in New York.
She said the medal’s provenance, and the connection with Washington and Lafayette, accounted for the price at the auction, which was timed for the 250th anniversary of Lafayette’s birth mainly because no one cares enough about this Washington fellow to notice.
The medal was consigned to Sotheby’s by Lafayette’s great-great granddaughter, the Baronne Meunier du Houssoy who desperately wanted to keep the thing out of the fetid American’s hands, no doubt. The medal was created for George Washington in 1783 in Paris by Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the Continental Army commander who ultimately designed the street plan for Washington, D.C but must have been out of his mind for ever wanting to leave France.
Inherited by Martha Washington after her husband’s death in 1799, the medal was passed on to her adopted daughter, then given to Lafayette in 1824 during his triumphal 13-month, 6,000-mile tour of America. No one has mentioned how evil the Washington’s were for being slave owners during this event, unfortunately.
Some also say Washington was gay as he was awfully chummy with Alexander Hamilton. So maybe he wasn’t all bad, after all.
… interesting, wasn’t it? In the newz biz it would be called “nuance.†The rest of us call it satire
» Filed Under Humor, Liberal Media/Bias, News
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…and richest, most vicious slave owner in America,
GLEN CULLINS, another liberal/Socialist pushing historical revisionist crap!
As Jefferson and Washington sought to liberalize the State’s slavery laws to make it easier to free slaves, the State Legislature went in exactly the opposite direction, passing laws making it more difficult to free slaves. (As one example, Washington was able to circumvent State laws by freeing his slaves in his will at his death in 1799; by the time of Jefferson’s death in 1826, State laws had so stiffened that it had become virtually impossible for Jefferson to use the same means.)
As Washington had pledged, he did provide his support and leadership in efforts to end the slave trade. For example, on July 18, 1774, the committee which Washington chaired in his own Fairfax County passed the following act:
Resolved, that it is the opinion of this meeting that during our present difficulties and distress, no slaves ought to be imported into any of the British colonies on this continent; and we take this opportunity of declaring our most earnest wishes to see an entire stop for ever put to such a wicked, cruel, and unnatural trade. [7]
Having developed this position, Washington maintained it throughout his life and reaffirmed it often. For example, when General Marquis de Lafayette decided to buy a plantation in French Guiana for the purpose of freeing its slaves and placing them on the estate as tenants, Washington wrote Lafayette:
Your late purchase of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit would diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country, but I despair of seeing it. Some petitions were presented to the [Virginia] Assembly at its last session for the abolition of slavery, but they could scarcely obtain a reading. [8]
And to his nephew and private secretary, Lawrence Lewis, Washington wrote:
I wish from my soul that the legislature of this State could see the policy of a gradual abolition of slavery. [9]
7. George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, Jared Sparks (Boston: American Stationers’ Company, 1837), Vol. 11, p. 494.
8. Washington, Writings (1936), Vol. 28, p. 424, to Marquis de Lafayette on May 10, 1786.
9. Washington, Writings (1936), Vol. 36, p. 2, to Lawrence Lewis on August 4, 1797.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson & Slavery in Virginia
Additionally, the reason that Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa all prohibited slavery was a Congressional act, authored by Constitution signer Rufus King [30] and signed into law by President George Washington, [31] which prohibited slavery in those territories. [32] It is not surprising that Washington would sign such a law, for it was he who had declared:
I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery]. [33]
30 Rufus King, The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, Charles King, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894), Vol. I, pp. 288-289.
31 Acts Passed at a Congress of the United States of America (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1791), p. 104, August 7, 1789.
32 The Constitutions of the United States (Trenton: Moore and Lake, 1813), p. 366, “An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the River Ohio,” Article VI.
33. George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1932), Vol. XXVIII, pp. 407-408, to Robert Morris on April 12, 1786.
The Founding Fathers and Slavery