by Brett Manero
This summer, I spent a couple of days in northern Virginia and Washington, DC, visiting the area I used to call home. There are two places in DC which I never been to before – Mt. Vernon, the home and burial place of George Washington, and the Bible Museum. During my years in DC, for some reason I thought that Mt. Vernon was much further into Virginia than it actually is (apparently I was thinking of Monticello), and so I never made it there during my six years of living in Washington. It is conveniently centered in Alexandra, right outside of the nation’s capital.
It was fitting to visit it only weeks after the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, of which George Washington played such a vital role. Without Washington, there likely would never have been an independent United States. Visiting his home felt providential. I encountered a sense of sacredness there, and also haunting irony.
Firstly, it is always inspiring to step into history. Walking through the mansion, one sees the very bed where America’s first President passed into eternity. One sees the mighty Potomac River, which Mt. Vernon resides next to. Visiting the burial place of George and Martha Washington is a sacred experience. In the summer of 2025, I visited the tomb of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln (and three of their four sons) in Springfield, Illinois, which felt like a religious experience. Visiting the tomb of the man who freed the slaves naturally felt sacred. Going to Washington’s grave was also beautiful in its own way. Behind the tombs of both George and Martha is a passage from the Gospel of John:
“I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)
As a Catholic, it is always comforting to know that we can pray for the souls of the dead, both Catholic and non-Catholic. God is eternal, outside of space and time, and He can and does hear and respond to prayers all throughout history. I prayed for the souls of both George and Martha at that spot, as I’m sure many others have done and will continue to do.
When historians debate who the greatest American Presidents are, the top three contenders are almost always George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. Lincoln freed the slaves and preserved the Union amidst its worst crisis, the Civil War, while Roosevelt inspired the nation during the Great Depression and led it through another crisis, the Second World War. Why is Washington such a great President? Not only because he was the first President, but because in many ways he developed the presidency itself. He created the traditions and practices which remain today. Most inspiring to me, he visited with diverse groups of early Americans: Catholics (he even attended Catholic Mass), Jews, and others, desiring to assure everyone and anyone that the new American Republic was for everyone. “Father of the nation” is a title rightly given to George Washington.
But there is something about Mt. Vernon that cannot be ignored, a part of the darker side of American history: the scourge of slavery. Visitors see rooms where up to twenty slave men would sleep, working six days a week to keep the property going. The natural question arises: How could anyone live in such a comfortable home while knowing fully well that slaves were living on the same property? Sure, slavery was socially acceptable in Virginia during that time, and Washington was a man of his time. But still, one cannot ignore the horrible irony: the Father of this new nation of liberty owned some 300 or so slaves throughout his lifetime. This is why Founding Fathers like John Adams and Benjamin Franklin are my favorite of the Founding Fathers: both of them detested and opposed slavery. Franklin, from Pennsylvania, and Adams, from Massachusetts, saw the awful irony in that grotesque institution, America’s “original sin.”
Not far from the Washington’s tomb are the graves of at least eighty slaves who died on the property. The graves were unmarked for centuries, until archaeologists recently used incredible modern technology to discover them. The graves are now marked with white rope. It is utterly moving to see one which is quite small – suggesting that a child is buried there. The lives of George and Martha Washington are precious, as are those of their slaves.
Visiting Mt. Vernon is a special experience. Americans should visit it and be thankful to this truly great, if flawed, man who gave the world such a gift. I take comfort in the fact that, with his death near, Washington ordered all of his slaves to be free with the death of his wife, Martha. There was clearly a right intention there, and as a Catholic, we can hold onto anything good which can give us hope for the salvation of another.
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