Moods rule the world. When the mood was tolerant upon making fortunes from overseas slavery, fortunes were made in Europe and the USA.
George Washington inherited ten slaves at the age of ten, when his dad passed away. When he died he and his wife had hundreds of slaves. Washington spent a last few weeks of his life making great efforts to catch a slave of his wife, the 22 year old Ms. Judge, who had escaped to the north. Washington never freed one slave, in spite of the huge pressure from his friend Lafayette.
Lafayette to whom, after all, Washington owed his presidency: Lafayette persuaded Louis XVI to go to all-out war to create the USA; on the way, he disobeyed the King’s orders, and the monarch sent him to prison.
