Once settled in Philadelphia, Washington encountered his first roadblock to slave ownership in the region — Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780.
The act began dismantling slavery, eventually releasing people from bondage after their 28th birthdays. Under the law, any slave who entered Pennsylvania with an owner and lived in the state for longer than six months would be set free automatically. This presented a problem for the new president.
Washington developed a canny strategy that would protect his property and allow him to avoid public scrutiny. Every six months, the president’s slaves would travel back to Mount Vernon or would journey with Mrs. Washington outside the boundaries of the state. In essence, the Washingtons reset the clock.
.. Twelve weeks before his death, Washington was still actively pursuing her, but with the help of close allies, Judge managed to elude his slave-catching grasp.
.. Washington’s will called for the emancipation of his slaves following the death of his wife. He completed in death what he had been unwilling to do while living, an act made easier because he had no biological children expecting an inheritance.
Russia: Forever a Time of Troubles
Fears over his legitimacy mixed with suspicions over his past. Had he plotted the murder of nine-year-old Dmitri so as to seize power upon the older brother’s death? Or had Dmitri miraculously survived, meaning that Godunov’s election had violated the divine order of succession?
The last idea became fertile ground for much of the violence that followed. A rival to Godunov emerged, claiming to be Dmitri. Backed by Polish troops, this ‘false Dmitri’ also attracted Russians wanting to overthrow the unholy usurper and regain God’s favour. As this army of mixed religions, nationalities and motivations marched on Moscow in 1605, Godunov died, a sure sign of the righteousness of Dmitri’s cause.
What then befell Russia defies imagination and conventional categorisation. More false Dmitris, then false Fyodors and still other claimants to the throne emerged. As devastation spread through the population and across the land, central power collapsed. At one point Russia had two tsars, two royal courts and two patriarchs. It could only be described as smuta, a term signifying confusion, disorder and foreboding doom.
.. Others followed suit and a wave of literary broadsides appealed to ‘Christ’s flock’ to fight ‘Satan’s hordes’. The tropes were not original but the impact was real, as Russians could rally around the idea that they, members of the true faith, standing alone against their predatory neighbours, whether Catholic, Protestant or Muslim, were under existential threat.
.. Orthodox Christianity lies on Russia’s side, as do moral propriety, compassion for others, human decency, ‘pure love’ and traditional family values. On the other side we find debauchery amid a world of corruption and lies.
.. Such versions of smuta, echoed in popular histories, religious venues, academic tomes and elsewhere, have armed Putin and the governing elite with exceptionally strong language to speak about their country and their presumed role in it. Favoured refrains concerning ‘chaos’ and ‘disorder’ tap into some of the deepest fears in Russia’s collective consciousness while, at the same time, reflexively justifying the power they have amassed and the suppression of dissident voices…
surrounded by these threats, Russia can never trust its neighbours; Russia can only rely on Russia. This is why, no matter how distant in the past, the Time of Troubles resonates today more than ever.
Battle of Stalingrad
Hitler personally rewrote the operational objectives for the 1942 campaign, greatly expanding them to include the occupation of the city of Stalingrad. Both sides began to attach propaganda value to the city based on it bearing the name of the leader of the Soviet Union. It was assumed that the fall of the city would also firmly secure the northern and western flanks of the German armies as they advanced onBaku with the aim of securing these strategic petroleum resources for Germany.[15]:p.528 The expansion of objectives was a significant factor in Germany’s failure at Stalingrad. It was based on a sort of victory fever and an underestimation of Soviet reserves.[18]
The World We Have Gained: The Future of the French Revolution
The French Revolution has fallen out of favor.1 Even as recognition of its significance has spread, its reputation has suffered; for many, in the public and profession alike, it has become the harbinger of violence, terror, totalitarianism, and even genocide in the modern world. Edmund Burke seems to have won his argument with Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft. His prophetic line of 1790—“In the groves of their academy, at the end of every visto, you see nothing but the gallows”—might be read as the epitaph of all the utopian visions spawned by the French Revolution
.. One of the last lessons he drew, in a letter of 1881, was the lesson of unpredictability. Although the French bourgeoisie had precisely defined demands before 1789, no Frenchman of the eighteenth century, Marx claimed, had the least idea before 1789 of how to get them satisfied.
.. Much has been written about how conspiracy fears and theories prepared the way for the Terror, and I do not contest the connection.