Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast · Alycia Asai

Complicated Legacies: Thy Will Be Done with John Garrison Marks

·49 min·1 clip

Washington opposed slavery while enslaving people and freed 123 in his will - all true simultaneously.

Civics and Coffee opens with Alicia framing the conversation as a March interview with historian John Garrison Marks. Marks is introduced as a historian and writer on race, slavery, and public memory whose work has appeared in outlets such as the Washington Post, Time, and Smithsonian Magazine. The focus is his forthcoming book, Thy Will Be Done, which looks at Americans' long struggle with George Washington's legacy. Alicia asks what led him to study Washington's involvement with slavery. Marks explains that Washington becomes a useful figure because so many different people want to claim him. He describes how abolitionists used Washington to argue that freeing enslaved people was a choice and, by extension, an American one. Those same abolitionists also treated Washington as evidence that slavery and racial injustice were built into the nation itself. Pro-slavery southerners reached for Washington too. For them, he became a model slaveholder and a sign that slavery should continue in the United States. Marks then turns to the Confederacy's use of Washington during the Civil War. He points to 1862, when Jefferson Davis inaugurated the permanent Confederate government in Richmond on Washington's birthday beneath a large statue of Washington. In his remarks, Davis linked the Confederate cause to the same figure the nation had long treated as foundational. Washington also appeared on Confederate money, seals, and newspapers. The point is simple enough: one historical figure can be pressed into service for clashing political projects. Alicia keeps the exchange grounded in the book's larger question of public memory. The timing matters as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary. The episode leaves room for complexity instead of forcing Washington into a clean hero-or-villain frame. It gives Marks space to connect the personal, political, and institutional parts of the story. For listeners, the draw is a careful account of how Washington's name has been used to argue about slavery, abolition, secession, and national identity.

As heard by us

George Washington becomes a lens for slavery, memory, and the arguments America keeps making about itself.

John Garrison Marks and Alicia keep the discussion focused on George Washington as a figure pulled in different directions: enslaver, symbol of emancipation, Confederate mascot, and object of national memory.

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Why you'd press play

A calm interview about how George Washington's legacy got pulled into arguments over slavery and public memory.

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