Tom of Mount Vernon

Unidentified Artist · 1864

Of the hundreds of people enslaved at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate, a portrait survives for only one. A man now known simply as Tom spent most of his life as the property of Martha Washington and her descendants. At an advanced age, he escaped bondage with the aid of abolitionists. Their photograph of Tom (Mount Vernon collection) provided the model for this engraved frontispiece. It was published in Baltimore during the Civil War in a book that presented an idealized fantasy of Tom’s life in bondage at Mount Vernon.