For only having 28 days, February is packed with a variety of special days and observances. February is Black History Month and National Heart Month.
Special days during the second month of the year include National Freedom Day (Feb. 1), Groundhog Day (Feb. 2), National Ice Cream for Breakfast Day (first Saturday), National Boy Scout Day, (Feb. 8), National Pizza Day (Feb. 9) and Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14).
That is just the first half of the month.
Monday was Presidents Day. A national holiday that has become synonymous with furniture and mattress sales, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the official holiday is Washington’s Birthday.
One of the 11 federal holidays this year, Washington’s Birthday, was designated a holiday by Congress in 1879 to celebrate the birthday of our first president.
The Uniform Holidays Act, in 1968, changed the date from Washington’s birthday, Feb. 22, to the third Monday of February. With Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on Feb. 12, the holiday has evolved to recognize every person who has held the highest office in the United States.
Because of the Uniform Holidays Act, the holiday honoring Washington will never fall on his birthday.
Every four years, there is one additional Federal Holiday — Inauguration Day.
Recognized as our greatest president, George Washington was not without flaws. Beginning at the young age of 11, he owned slaves. His father, Augustine, willed Washington a 280-acre family farm and ten enslaved people.
When Washington died, his estate consisted of 317 enslaved people. Most of those were owned by the Custis estate.
Washington’s wife, Martha, was previously married to Daniel Parke Custis. He died in 1757, without a will, giving her interest in one-third of his estate, including enslaved people. Although George and Martha had control of those slaves, they did not have legal authority to emancipate them.
The law required that upon Martha’s death, the property would revert to the Custis estates and be divided among her grandchildren.
At the end of the war, when Washington marched to Yorktown, according to a mercenary German officer’s journal, 25 percent of the army was black. This may have been one of the reasons that Washington’s view on slavery began to change.
During the war, Washington received a letter from Phillis Wheatley with a poem that said, “Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side, / Thy ev’ry action let the goddess guide. / A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine, / With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! Be thine.”
Wheatley was a well-known emancipated slave who had been taught Greek, Latin, and poetry.
Washington responded, addressing her as “Miss Phillis,” praising her “poetical talents.”
In the Washington Papers, Nancy Hurrelbrinck writes, “He (Washington) wrote that he wished he could free all the slaves at Mt. Vernon, but couldn’t because some belonged to his wife’s heirs, and he didn’t want to divide families. Unless Martha or her heirs freed the Custis slaves as well, families would be broken up.”
“I have more working Negros…than can be employed to any advantage in the farming system,” Washington wrote. “To sell the overplus I cannot, because I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species…they could not be disposed of in families to any advantage, and to disperse the families I have an aversion. What then is to be done? Something must, or I shall be ruined.”
Before his death, Washington stipulated in his will that his slaves were to be emancipated at the death of his wife, Martha. In accordance with state law, his estate was to support in perpetuity elderly enslaved people and those too sick to work. His will also asked that the young be taught how to read.
“His will was a rebuke to his family, to his class, and to the country. He was well ahead of people of his time and place,” Henry Wiencek, author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, said. “This is George Washington’s true legacy. He’d said the slaves weren’t ready for freedom, but at last he said they must have it because of their humanity.”
Washington was the only major founder who freed his slaves. They were emancipated on Jan. 1, 1801.
