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A timeless hero remembered at Mount Vernon, Virginia

by Jennings David L | July 11, 2010 at 06:38 pm

270 views | 12 Recommendations | 4 comments

A visit to Mount Vernon, just outside Washington, D.C., is full of adventure and discovery as you tour the museum that documents the life of George Washington, and his the estate where he lived and died.

You can spend hours in the galleries and theaters, but it’s not until you walk around the estate, on the same roads and through the same rooms that Washington himself passed, that you begin to get a sense of the real George Washington.

In the museum you can see what Washington looked like when he was a young surveyor and when he was sworn into office as the president. These recreations were done by forensic anthropologists and give the first real look at a Washington of different ages.

Mount Vernon is open seven days a week, every day of the year, including holidays and Christmas.

Getting there:

Mount Vernon is 16 miles south of Washington, D.C. and 8 miles south of Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, on the banks of the Potomac River. This is an excellent day trip for those in the Baltimore Washington area.

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Karen Hatter

at 20:04 on July 11th, 2010

Also at NowPublic:

Slavery & Washington's Legacy: Conflict at White House Memorial

Jennings David L

at 02:52 on July 12th, 2010

Thanks Karen for adding the link about Washington and the controversy over slave ownership. Like Jefferson, it seems incredible that the men who stood for liberty and freedom would keep slaves working their property. I have read what Jefferson wrote about having a wolf by the ear, regarding the economic necessity, according to slave owners, of keeping slaves, but still have a difficult time reconciling their actions.

Karen Hatter

at 08:09 on July 12th, 2010

You're welcome, David.

The intentional enslavement of African people as chattel in the United States, even before the moment those assembled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1776 signed their names to a document that declared " .... all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ....", with a quarter of a million enslaved people of African descent in the original thirteen colonies at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence not included as entitled to that written and articulated belief, with those gathered later including a provision in the U.S. Constitution that the importation of African people could end no sooner than 1808, as well as the harsh treatment and near extermination of the indigenous Native peoples here, in my opinion, cannot be reconciled.