George Washington, 1795

Oil on canvas; 75.6 x 64.5 x 3.2cm (29 3/4 x 25 3/8 x 1 1/4"). National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

As Rembrandt Peale recalled later, the hour [Washington] appointed was 7 o'clock in the morning. I was up before daylight, putting everything in the best condition for the sitting with which I was to be honored, but could scarcely mix my colors, and was conscious that my anxiety would overpower me and that I should fail in my purpose unless my father would agree to take a canvas alongside me and thus give me an assurance that the sittings would not be unprofitable, by affording the double chance for a likeness. This had the effect to calm my nerves, and I enjoyed the rare advantage of studying the desired countenance whilst in familiar conversation with my father.

Racial prejudice worked to perpetuate American slavery, even if it was not essential to sustain the institution. Slavery, serfdom, and peonage had existed elsewhere without racial connotations. Indeed, bondage had been so historically ubiquitous one might well ask why, by the 1760’s, it had come to trouble so many white Americans so much. The answer lies in part — and this part help explain why people like Mason did not act more aggressively on their concerns — in the reservations many whites felt about living alongside members of a supposedly inferior race, whether slave or free. The problem was inherent in American slavery, and emancipation, by undermining white control, would only make it worse.

— Jeff Broadwater

George Mason: Forgotten Founder (2006)