re Re: Vineland and MDDM Washington

[Doug Millison]

jbor:
>I think you'll find that Pynchon's characterisation deliberately goes
>against the grain of the revisionist histories you're referring to -

It's revisionist history -- which Pynchon here plays with -- and not the
"official" national myth that lets us know that Washington raised hemp,
that emphasizes his slave ownership, etc.

The historical Washington was involved in a classic swamp land real estate
boondoggle.  The Great Dismal Swamp Land Company, in which Washington was a
co-founder and investor,  prefigures every such scam down to the one that
the Marx Brothers launch in their first film, The Cocoanuts
 ( http://www.whyaduck.com/info/movies/cocoanuts.htm  -  "Groucho plays Mr.
Hammer, a Florida hotel owner desperately trying to unload real estate on
unsuspecting buyers")  and beyond.

http://www.albemarle-nc.com/gates/greatdismal/
"  The Adventurers soon realized, however, that the task of draining the
Swamp was enormous and gave up that part of their plan to concentrate on
lumbering. They cut much of the cypress trees for use in shipbuilding and
the cedars for shingles and other products. By 1796, Washington had become
disappointed in the management of the Dismal Swamp lumber business and
contracted to sell his 1/12th share to "Lighthorse" Harry Lee, father of
Robert E. Lee, who never was able to come up with the purchase price. "

(The cutting of the trees recalls the clear-cut photograph that Pynchon is
said to have selected for the cover illustration of the first Vineland
edition.)

The Swamp's history carries an interesting echo of M&D's plot, too:

http://www.vmnh.org/swmpsusn.htm
"It was not until a controversy over boundaries arose between Virginia and
North Carolina that William Byrd II was appointed in 1728 to head a survey
team charged with demarcating the state line. "

A canal that was part of the scheme to turn the swampland into profits was
built, interestingly, by slave labor:

http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/slavery/july1764.html
"At its first meeting on 3 Nov. 1763, the Dismal Swamp Land Company agreed
that each member should contribute five slaves by 1 July 1764 for "the work
of draining Improving and Saving the Land"

http://www.albemarle-nc.com/camden/history/canal.htm
" Digging began in 1793 and progressed slowly since the canal had to be dug
completely by hand. Most of the labor was done by slaves hired from nearby
land owners. It took approximately 12 years of back-breaking construction
under highly unfavorable conditions to complete the 22-mile long waterway."

Pynchon would seem to be having fun with with the primary sources, indeed
--  his slaves were helping to dig the canal for the Company, not buying
shares in the company. In the fictional M&D, W would corrupt Gershom by
giving him the opportunity to profit from the labor of fellow slaves.

jbor:
>As a slave-owner he's benevolent, not "evil".

Pynchon shows Washington enmeshed in the same slave-owning institiution
we've seen elsewhere in M&D, part of the economic engine that enabled
people like Washington and his peers to enrich themselves by using other
human beings as expendable factors of production  (not unlike those slave
laborers used to build the V-2 rockets in GR, in fact).  By emphasizing
Washington as slave owner, Pynchon underscores his tainted role in the
founding of a nation that will be rent (divided by the Line that M&D
survey) in a bloody civil war, a century later, fought in part to end the
institution of slavery in the U.S.  The irony is thus layered on thickly in
this encounter between Mason and Dixon and Washington -- we laugh at the
stoned, W.C. Fields mannerisms, the song-and-dance, the cornpone
hospitality, but the record to which Pynchon draws our attention is another
story.

http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/articles/slavery/index.html
" There is no reason to think that either man [ Jefferson or Washington]
thought that Africans, if free and given opportunities to advance, could
have become the intellectual equals of whites. At least a handful of
Americans saw that as a possibility, including Alexander Hamilton and
Benjamin Franklin.  [...] In 1796 George Washington received a letter from
Edward Rushton, a prominent English antislavery advocate.  [...] My
business is with George Washington of Mount Vernon in Virginia, a man who
not withstanding his hatred of oppression and his ardent love of liberty
holds at this moment hundreds of his fellow being in a state of abject
bondage--Yes: you who conquered under the banners of freedom--you who are
now the first magistrate of a free people are (strange to relate) a slave
holder. . . . [...]  Ages to come will read with Astonishment that the man
who was foremost to wrench the rights of America from the tyrannical grasp
of Britain was among the last to relinquish his own oppressive hold of poor
unoffending negroes. In the name of justice what can induce you thus to
tarnish your own well earned celebrity and to impair the fair features of
American liberty with so foul and indelibile a blot." [...]  To historians
of succeeding generations not only Washington's ownership of slaves but his
failure to speak out publicly against slavery in the face of his own
growing opposition to the institution or to bring the weight of his
enormous prestige to bear against it has sometimes eclipsed his reputation
as the first man of his age. Why did he not from the platform of his
enormous prestige and public veneration speak out publicly against a system
that his private correspondence reveals he had gradually come to regard
with distaste and apprehension?  [..] Critics of Washington have insisted
that if there was a time before the Civil War when slavery as an
institution might have been successfully attacked, Washington could have
seized this moment if he had given leadership to the antislavery forces.
There is no indication that he ever considered any such course. [...]
Washington shared the determination of most of his own generation of
statesmen not to allow slavery to disturb their agenda for the new
Republic. Antislavery sentiment came in a poor second when it conflicted
with the powerful economic interests of proslavery forces.  [...] On a
personal level, Washington, with his passion for order, feared the element
of anarchism in the antislavery movement."

http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/slavery/index.html
"During the pre-Revolutionary years Washington's views toward slavery were
conventional, reflecting those of a typical Virginia planter of his time.
If he was perhaps more concerned than some planters with his slaves'
welfare, his principal interest was still their contribution to the
economic life of the plantation."

We've heard a lot about  the choice of the name "tithable" instead of slave
in Pynchon's text: here's one way it  shows up in W's papers:

http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/slavery/tithables.html
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/slavery/aug1761.html
"Advertisement for Runaway Slaves
Printed in Maryland Gazette (Annapolis), 20 Aug. 1761
by George Washington"

Yeah, W seems to have cared quite a bit about his "tithables" but I don't
think the word "benevolent" captures the totality of his relations with
them.

At any rate, I haven't said Pynchon creates an "evil" Washington -- that
gets us into a moral dichotomy that's difficult to distinguish when applied
to the real world, or Pynchon's fiction;  I said his characterization of
Washington is unflattering, which I still think an accurate description.

>As a pot-smoker (and grower) he's progressive

It's not altogether clear that smoking marijuana is always a good thing in
Pynchon's fictional universe.  Sometimes drugs are the means They use to
befuddle and co-opt.

> Gershom has absolute freedom of religious worship

If Pynchon really wanted to make Washington progressive he might have shown
W  letting Gershom worship in a traditional African religion, instead of
having him adopt theJudeo-Christian heritage that slavery imposed on
African-Americans.

>Gershom is free to go off and perform (not for George,
>mind you, but "'round a Circuit of Coaching-inns")

Gershom is very much the court jester there at Mr. Vernon during the visit
of Mason and Dixon, clearly part of the entertainment that Washington
provides for himself and his guests. It is nice of him to let Gershom go
off and entertain other rich white folks.  The reverberations here are of
black-face minstrel shows, an economic history that forces people of color
for survival to do whatever they must to entertain their masters (think
rich white rock stars and record producers profiting from songs whose poor
black authors never see a dime of royalty money), Amos and Andy, Sammy
Davis Jr., etc.