Upon the Ruins of Liberty: Slavery, the President’s House at Independence National Historical Park, and Public Memory

Abstract

Beginning in the spring of 2002 and extending over nearly a decade, the corner of Sixth and Market streets in the city of Philadelphia was the focal point of a sometimes rancorous debate about one of the nation’s iconic founders, the elaborate mythology surrounding his service, and the purpose of public representations of “history.” As a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, I wrote tens of thousands of words about this skein of events, debates, controversies, and supposedly new narratives, all swirling around the rediscovery of the “President’s House,” the house where George Washington and John Adams conducted their presidencies during the first decade of the United States, and where Washington, as it happened, housed nine enslaved Africans at various times during his administration.