Dead Presidents

Slavery is a great blemish on the history of the United States, and it is no secret that many of our early Presidents were slave-owners, including most of the Founding Fathers who fought for freedom and declared independence.  Yet, it is still humbling to see the specifics.  Twelve Presidents owned human beings as property, and eight of those Presidents owned slaves DURING their Presidency as they lived in an Executive Mansion built by slaves.

Of the first eighteen Presidents, the only chief executives who were not slaveholders were the Massachusetts’ John Adams and John Quincy Adams, New York’s Millard Fillmore, New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce, and, of course, Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln’s second Vice President and successor, Andrew Johnson, owned at least eight slaves.  There are also many historians who believe that slaves worked in and around the White House during the Civil War itself while Lincoln was President. 

Astonishingly, the last President to own slaves was the Civil War’s victorious commanding General, Ulysses S. Grant, who owned five people prior to the great war.  Ironically, Lincoln’s immediate predecessor, James Buchanan, is largely responsible for not stopping secession by the slave states prior to the war, but throughout his long career in Washington, Buchanan quietly purchased numerous slaves that he took to Pennsylvania and immediately set free.

Here is a list of slave-owning Presidents (Presidents who owned slaves in the White House or during their Presidencies are in bold):

•George Washington (owned 300-350 slaves)
•Thomas Jefferson (owned about 200 slaves)
•James Madison (owned 100-125 slaves)
•James Monroe (owned about 75 slaves)
•Andrew Jackson (owned 150-200 slaves)
•Martin Van Buren (owned 1 slave)
•William Henry Harrison (owned 11 slaves)
•John Tyler (owned about 75 slaves)
•James Polk (owned about 25 slaves)
•Zachary Taylor (owned about 150 slaves)
•Andrew Johnson (owned 8 slaves)
•Ulysses S. Grant (owned 5 slaves)