Founding Father

Jeffrey St. Clair

After the Revolutionary War, Washington, one of the most avaricious land speculators in American history, became the head of the Potomac Company–a development scheme to build canals and locks in the Potomac watershed–where he had vast holdings, to facilitate the movement of crops from plantations in Virginia and Maryland. Originally, the canals were to be constructed by “free labor,” mainly low-paid Irish workers. But this soon proved unprofitable and Washington’s company began using slave labor. Because the backbreaking work was so close to Pennsylvania, Washington ordered the slaves heads’ shaved to make the runaways easier to track down.

+ The labor of each slave earned a payment of $8 per week…for their owners.

+ Our Founding Sackler: The slaves at Mt. Vernon grew poppies, harvested the opium and distilled it with alcohol to make laudanum tinctures. Some was used by Washington himself to numb the pain of his rotted teeth and decaying jawbone. The rest was sold, proving much more profitable than the tobacco that had destroyed the productivity of the soil on the plantation, and giving rise to a century of laudanum addicts, many of them women.