It is storming. Snow and wind.
Fascinating information emerges when browsing through the House's Leo Lemay Library donation's Collected Letters and Papers of George Washington, such as how deeply and tightly established already by 1769 the buying and selling of personal property slaves was the basis of each slaveholder's personal economy, particularly for their constant need of personal debt relief.
By the end of the 17th century it was all there, or rather here, in the Upper South, the Chesapeake region. So fortunate for the elite slaveholders there was the constant expansion of new land settlements to the south and the west demanding healthy slaves to work to death clearing the wilderness for the enrichment of their owners.
There's this as well: George Washington’s descriptions of his runaway slaves, sent to gazettes and slave catchers. The descriptions are lengthy, filled with multiple and specific detail of each individual, including their speech patterns – at least three of the four run-aways are clearly Africans, rather than born in the Chesapeake.
Tell me again that African Americans didn't build this country.
O, yeah, Christmas! It was wonderful. I have now the newest edition of Photoshop. The downside is I have to learn to use it. It's not like the older editions I've had before. I really do need to learn it all over again. Time sink, time I could use profitably elsewhere, methinks.
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