Washington's only surrender.
Before I start in on a new topic, I want to add a small bit of information to the last post. I mentioned that none of the documents I had seen relating to the Prather family mentioned how many slaves the family owned, but after looking around a bit more, I found a listing of the "goods and chattel" of Thomas McKay Prather, Jonathan Smith's father. This list shows five "Negro" people -- one adult man, two adult women, and two children, a four-year-old girl and a two-year old. The man was valued at 28 pounds, the two women at 48 pounds, and the children at 6 pounds and 4 pounds respectively. Depending on what online resource you use, the value of a pound in the year Thomas McKay's will is dated would equate to about $2,100 to $2,200. At the lower end of this scale, I calculate the total "value" of those five people at about $172,000, a not inconsiderable sum. Of course we're talking about human beings here, so it seems a bit ridiculous to putting...