Philadelphia Stories: The Robert Morris Mansion/President's House

Overview of the Liberty Bell Center excavations.

The Robert Morris Mansion

Archaeologists working on the site for the new Liberty Bell Center uncovered the remains of an ice house from the mansion used by Presidents George Washington and John Adams while Philadelphia was the nation's capital from 1790-1800.

The mansion, which belonged to Robert Morris, was demolished in 1832. It was located on what is now the 500 block of Market Street, near the site of the current Liberty Bell Pavilion. The Liberty Bell will be moved to Sixth and Chestnut Streets, as part of the project to revitalize Independence Mall. The interpretive area for the Liberty Bell will run along Sixth Street and will end at what was the rear of the Morris Mansion property.

Prior to the start of construction, federal law requires the NPS to conduct a thorough archeological investigation of the construction area. If we find archeological features that will be damaged or destroyed during the construction process, we are required to fully excavate them. If the features will not be harmed by the construction, standard archeological practice and NPS regulations require the features and their contents be preserved in place. This allows for preservation of the feature plus the opportunity for excavation by future archeologists with potentially better techniques and technology.

Morris Ice House Pits

During these archeological investigations we identified a total of nine shaft features within the footprint of the new Liberty Bell Center (LBC). Five of these were completely excavated as they are located within the planned basement mechanical room space (which extends only partially under the building) for the LBC. These five features yielded some 30,000 items that are presently being processed and catalogued. Based on preliminary analysis, no items related to distinctive African American cultural practices were found within these five features. The other four features, including the well-publicized remains of the icehouse, are slated for in-place preservation in accordance with the NPS policy and archeological practice cited above. Contrary to the impression one might get from what has previously appeared in print, other than the above cited ice house, there were no other features directly tied to the Morris Mansion encountered during our archeological excavations. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has studied this site given the significant level of development that took place in Block One during the 19th Century. Implications that "the old slave quarters" have been uncovered, or deliberately not excavated, as part of this process, are incorrect.

While the LBC archeology did not yield any information directly tied to distinctive African American cultural practices, over one million items were excavated from the third block of Independence Mall. Analysis of these artifacts will add to our knowledge of a very diverse population, including African Americans, who lived in this section of Philadelphia.

The Morris Mansion was used as the Executive Mansion by Presidents Washington and Adams when Philadelphia was the nation’s capital. At the site, the NPS will interpret several aspects of the house, including its use by two presidents and the people in the household, including slaves owned by George Washington. We also plan to denote along the sidewalk of Market Street the approximate location of the Morris Mansion. There are no plans to rebuild the Morris Mansion. While the National Park Service did reconstruct several buildings, such as the Declaration House and the City Tavern, during the early 1970s, current policies no longer permit us to do so. Moreover, we have no intention to outline at full-scale the floor plan of the Morris Mansion as some have suggested, not only because it remains conjecture, but because we genuinely believe it would be confusing rather than revelatory.

Independence National Historical Park (INHP) has long recognized both the existence of the Morris Mansion and the slaves in Washington’s household while he served as president. The story of slavery in our nation is a story told throughout INHP. We tell the story at the Liberty Bell, named by abolitionists, and at Independence Hall, the site of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the 3/5ths Compromise. During our walking tours, rangers speak of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration and slave owner, and of Benjamin Franklin, a former slave owner turned ardent abolitionist.

Other sites at INHP where slavery is noted include Congress Hall, site of debates over slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act; Franklin Court, with samples of ads in the Pennsylvania Gazette regarding runaway slaves and selling slaves; the Treasurer’s Office in Old City Hall where people would submit paperwork to sue for freedom; the Second Bank of the United States, with its interpretation of Moses Williams, the physiognotrace artist, as well as portraits of the nation’s founders whose views on race and slavery ranged the entire spectrum, and the New Hall Military Museum, which discusses the colored troops in the military. In the future, the Independence Park Institute, the park’s educational facility to be built on Independence Mall, will tell the stories of the struggle for freedom and the fight against slavery to school children and life long learners.

Our interpretation of life in 18th Century Philadelphia also deals with slaves, as part of the diversity that existed in Philadelphia at the time. Beyond 1800, a number of sites within INHP have a direct relationship with the Underground Railroad, from Independence Square, where Frederick Douglass preached his abolitionist oratory, to Carpenters’ Hall, where the First Continental Congress banned the further import of slaves to the colonies. In 2000, INHP submitted an amendment to the National Register of Historic Places to obtain recognition for these and other sites in the struggle against slavery. Former NPS Director Robert Stanton launched the National Underground Railroad network at a press conference on Independence Square.

The Deshler-Morris House in Germantown, Philadelphia, PA

The Deshler-Morris House in Germantown is the oldest surviving presidential residence in the nation. While not adjacent to the Liberty Bell, the Deshler-Morris House is an intact, complete residence where Washington held state dinners and cabinet meetings, and where the slaves of his household also lived. With the current emphasis on heritage tourism in the region, the Deshler-Morris House could well be one of the "crown jewels" of an area rich in historic sites.

While the stories of the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall are part of our heritage of freedom, we know it is also our task to tell the stories of those who were not free. We will continue to tell that story throughout the park and at the Robert Morris Mansion site. (source: The National Park Service)

Philadelphia Story: The Slaves At The President's House

Statue of President George Washington Outside of Independence Hall

From the New York Times, "Reopening a House That’s Still Divided," by Edward Rothsetin --  PHILADELPHIA — The convulsive currents that roil the telling of American history have become so familiar that they now seem an inseparable part of the story itself. Here is a nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to a proposition of human equality, that, for much of its first century of life, countenanced slavery, institutionally supported it and economically profited from it. The years that followed have been marked by repair, reform and reversals; recompense, recrimination and reinterpretation. Extraordinary ideals and achievements have been countered by extraordinary failings and flaws, only to be countered yet again, each turn yielding another round of debates.

Constance the Constitution Cow, Philadelphia, PA

And here, in this city where the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were signed; where a $300 million Independence National Historical Park has been created, leading from the National Constitution Center to Independence Hall; and where the Liberty Bell, as a symbol of the nation’s ideals, draws well over a million visitors a year, a great opportunity existed to explore these primal tensions more closely on a site adjacent to the Liberty Bell Center in Independence park. Unfortunately, those opportunities have been squandered in “The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” which opens on Wednesday.

It is almost painful, given the importance of this site, to point out that the result is more a monument to these unresolved tensions than a commemoration of anything else. After $10.5 million and more than eight years; after tugs of war between the city and the National Park Service and black community organizations; after the establishment of a contentious oversight committee and street demonstrations, overturned conceptions and racial debates, it bears all the scars of its creation, lacking both intellectual coherence and emotional power. On Wednesday the Park Service takes over the site with its work cut out for it, since rangers will have to weave the competing strands together.

Public Restrooms on the site of the President's House in Philadelphia, PA

But consider what opportunities there were. The construction of a new $9 million exhibition space for the Liberty Bell drew attention to this adjacent site, where the nation’s first two presidents — George Washington and John Adams — had lived between 1790 and 1800, when Philadelphia was the nation’s capital.

The house had long ago been demolished — much of it in the 1830s — and in the 1950s the site, near Sixth and Market Streets, was the location of a public restroom. But the house was once one of the grandest mansions in Philadelphia. Its inhabitants included Richard Penn (grandson of the Pennsylvania colony’s founder); the British general William Howe (who occupied Philadelphia while Washington’s army licked its wounds in Valley Forge); Benedict Arnold (who may have begun his espionage here); and Robert Morris (a financier of the Revolution). All vanished history.

Then, in an illuminating 2002 article in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, the historian Edward Lawler Jr. mapped out the house and its probable dimensions, and pointed out the irony that just steps from the new Liberty Bell Center was a site that had once sheltered Washington’s slaves.

George Washington's Statue, Outside of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Park Service contested some of his conclusions and refused to outline the footprint of the lost President’s House in its designs for the center. But the issue was soon taken up by scholars, including Gary B. Nash, author of the new book “The Liberty Bell,” as well as by political activists like the lawyer Michael Coard and his Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, who argued that the existence of slave quarters adjacent to the city’s paean to liberty demanded major commemoration.

There was a cascade of events, chronicled by The Philadelphia Inquirer, including Congressional legislation and financing, city oversight and funds, an expansion of the Liberty Bell exhibition, the establishment of an oversight committee and the solicitation of redesigns. In 2007 an archaeological dig began, revealing the foundation and the remains of a tunnel once used by servants and slaves. The dig, viewed by the public, ignited debate.

Washington ultimately took nine slaves to Philadelphia from Mount Vernon, where more than 200 slaves were held. And they were part of a household staff that may have numbered two dozen, including white indentured laborers and servants. Though the slaves were part of a population of nearly 4,000 others in Philadelphia, there were also more than 6,500 free blacks in the city in 1790, and Washington’s slaves were exposed to the experience of liberty.

George Washington's Statue, Outside of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

We know some astonishing details about the effects. Ona Judge (here called Oney), a servant to Martha Washington, and Hercules, the household cook, both escaped to freedom.

Some of Washington’s most unattractive characteristics also emerge. He and Martha Washington pursue Judge for years, though she later establishes herself with her own family in New Hampshire. And though Washington expressed his opposition to slavery, and freed his own slaves in his will, he went through bizarre machinations to ensure that the slaves he took to the nation’s capital would not be subject to local laws granting them freedom after six months. He exchanged them with others at Mount Vernon, issuing instructions: “I wish to have it accomplished under pretext that may deceive both them and the public.”

So here we not only have the father of our country showing his darkest side, we also see the foundations of the nation at their darkest. Yet here is where Washington invented the executive branch, conducting affairs of state. Here is where it became clear that a democratic ruler was no king, had no claim on his dwelling place and was himself meant to serve the people.

How, then, should such a site be developed? A 2005 call for designs stressed that it would have to pay attention to many themes: the house, its workers, the executive branch, African-American Philadelphia, escapes to freedom. In addition, it noted that community discussions led to five “cultural values” that should be clear: identity, memory, agency, dignity, truth. There was also a requirement that the site be open 24/7 to visitors.

As ultimately designed by Kelly/Maiello, the site is a space bounded by a low wall roughly outlining the footprint of the house (but often departing from it), marked by protruding rectangular slabs into which are inserted mock fireplaces and video screens. In the house’s heart, a transparent wall allows visitors to view the archaeological work in progress. And attached to the walls are either long panels surveying historical themes — the executive branch, slavery in the President’s House — or rudimentary illustrations. A few show the escape of Judge, a few give some glimpse of foreign policy in the house (protests over the Jay Treaty with England), and more give some sense of slavery (including Washington’s signing of the Fugitive Slave Act, which put all escaped slaves in danger).

“History is not neat,” we read. “It is complicated and messy. It is about people, places and events that are both admirable and deplorable.” And the President’s House, we are told, “exposes the core contradiction at the founding of this nation: enshrinement of liberty and the institution of slavery.”

But what precisely is being exposed? A few yards away, the Liberty Bell Center discusses abolition and slavery; the park’s visitor center has an exhibition about the Underground Railroad; the nearby African American History Museum has a powerful audio and video history of blacks in Philadelphia. Accounts of slavery are even found at Mount Vernon.

Here, though, we get neither a sense of the place, nor a sense of the issues (and much of the year, the open air will be inhospitable). We don’t learn about the differences between Washington and Adams. We don’t learn much about the pictured events. There is no real narrative. Illustrations can also be melodramatically contentious: we see a seemingly disdainful Washington dangling a “peace medal” before a suspicious Seneca Indian leader

As for slave life, it is also difficult to piece together. The video screens that come to life above the fake mantels give the impression of a half-finished 21st-century home. The videos themselves (with scripts by Lorene Cary), in which slaves and servants provide first-person accounts of experiences, at least provide some sense of life. But how do we put these experiences in context? What was Philadelphia’s free black community like? How did white workers and black slaves live together here?

We are told that the President’s House “offers an opportunity to draw lessons from the past.” But what lessons? That Washington was flawed? That slavery was an abomination? Are these revelations? A memorial to the practice of slavery is mounted here, inscribed with the names of African tribes from which slaves derived, but it has no particular relationship to Philadelphia or this site. The need for some such memorial is keen, but here it seems thumped down as an intrusion.

So what is learned? Not what makes this site special, but what makes it ordinary; not the foundations of what led to the overcoming of slavery, but a sense of its enduring presence. Would this display be any different if presidents had not lived here? And would our understanding be any different without it?

“The President’s House” opens on Wednesday in Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia; phila.gov/presidentshouse. [source: New York Times]

RON'S RANT:  Here is a presentation that exposes the disjointedly amateurishness of the Slaves at the President's House in Philadelphia.  Everything about this presentation is painful to watch, the lighting is bad, the audio is bad, the powerpoint is bad and preparation is a big WTF didn't ANYBODY prepare their remarks!

I visited this site a couple of weeks ago with my family (Middle of May in 2012).    The above New York Times article, expresses my disappointment in the execution and presentation of the narration.  George and Martha Washington's slaves follow the trajectory of American History.  They are like the "Forrest Gump" of slaves.  They served George Washington's family before the Revolution, his body servant was like his sidekick in all of the battles that George Washington fought.  They show-up in Martha Washington's correspondence with Abigail Adams and Dolly Madison.  George Washington kept impeccable records regarding his slave property.  Martha Washington's dowry slaves became the slaves of General Robert E. Lee in Arlington, Virginia.

The group that did the President's House Project needed to do more research at Mount Vernon and Arlington National Cemetery -- I'll bet that the remains of the dead slaves are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.    The slaves of George and Martha Washington are some of the most documented enslaved people in the USA.  How and Why the committee didn't do their research baffles me for sure.

The slaves of George and Martha Washington tell a great story of American History from the French and Indian Wars through the Civil War (remember Gettysburg is in Pennsylvania, too).  Why was this group chosen to tell their story so poorly?  Nobody can say it was about money.  I'm a nobody from nowhere, flat broke and I don't earn a freaken dime from this site, but it's a labor of love.  I do my homework and research to try to add heat as well as light to the story of slavery.  I do this for NOTHING, yet these clowns waste millions upon millions of dollars to produce a disappointing mishmash of history.  -- Ron Edwards, US Slave Blog

 History as Cultural Work: The President's House Project in Philadelphia

History as Cultural Work: The President's House Project in Philadelphia

Louis Massiah, founder and director of Scribe Video Center, will talk about the five-channel video installation that will be part of the President's House site at Sixth and Market Streets in Philadelphia, slated to open in December 2010.

These dramatic vignettes look at the lives of the nine enslaved Africans brought to Philadelphia by George and Martha Washington during the first presidency (1790-1797) and the resistance of the free African American community, and explore the contradictions of freedom and slavery in establishing a new nation.

Special Guests: Karen Warrington, Member of the Project Oversight Committee and Director of Communications for U.S. Congressman Bob Brady; Lorene Cary, Scriptwriter; Novella Nelson, Actor; Beth Warshafsky, Digital Media Painter and Computer Graphics Art Director; and W. Tre Davis, Actor.


History as Cultural Work: The President's House Project in Philadelphia

President's House in Philadelphia

The Philadelphia Inquirer culture writer, Stephan Salisbury, reports "Glitches bedevil President's House," on 25 September 2011:

The President's House is broken.

That should not come as a surprise to most of the tens of thousands of visitors who have passed through the exhibition and slavery memorial on Independence Mall.

More often than not, they've been greeted by blank video screens.

In fact, since "The President's House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation" opened to the public in December 2010, key elements of the exhibition have not functioned properly.

The video screens, which tell much of the story of enslaved Africans associated with the site, repeatedly have shuddered and died. The large glass box that encloses archaeological remains of the house where George Washington and John Adams served most of their presidencies and where Washington held nine enslaved Africans has fogged up and leaked.

Officials at Independence National Historical Park, steward of the exhibition, say the city, as construction manager, is responsible for shepherding repairs.

City officials say they are chagrined.

"It's an embarrassment," said Gary Knappick, deputy commissioner of public property, who hastened to add that when repairs are made, the city is determined "to get it right, and get it right the first time."

Repairs may be on the way, but visitors have been complaining for months.

"People, visitors to the site, have been concerned because the videos were not operating," said Karen Warrington, director of communications for U.S. Rep. Bob Brady (D., Pa.) and a member of the committee that oversaw development and construction of the site.

The finicky screens have been swapped out, in some cases repeatedly, but replacements haven't worked any better.

The problem is highly technical, Knappick noted, but can be summarized succinctly: The President's House environment is too hot and wet for the current video configuration.

Emanuel Kelly, principal of Kelly/Maeillo Architects & Planners, designer and builder of the President's House exhibition, said the pace of repairs had been slowed by complicated warranty coverage on various parts and by less-than-enlightening responses from far-flung subcontractors. Late summer's relentless rain did not help.

He said he persisted in trying to get the original units to function, and they just as persistently refused to do so.

Different parts of the video system are covered by different warranties, and no single manufacturer could be held responsible when a screen went dark, Kelly said.

So who would be on the hook for non-warranty costs?

"Probably we are," Kelly said, adding that he didn't yet know what those costs would be.

After months of tinkering, architect, park, and city officials met in August and agreed that complete replacement of the screens seemed appropriate.

"They were giving it such a college try to make what was there work," Knappick said. The city, to nudge things along, suggested an outside evaluation, and Kelly agreed.

In the evaluation, Kelly said, "we found the design and manufacturing were flawed"; tests on how the original units would perform in the face of "water and heat were not all done before bringing these units to site."

A new test screen, made by a different manufacturer, will be installed, possibly by late November, Knappick said. If it works, all the screens will then be replaced. The new units, manufactured in California, will not sit flush with the exhibition's masonry elements, which will help prevent the electrical components from overheating.

If the demo screen works correctly, replacing all the screens will take perhaps three months, Knappick said.

The problems with leakage at the glass archaeological box, Kelly said, "are minor."

The glass began fogging as soon as the site opened, largely because of moisture within the excavated area. Dehumidification equipment seemed to be improving that situation.

Then, on July 3, the top of the box fractured, and now leaks have appeared within what is supposed to be a dry area.

Knappick said the city brought in a consultant who determined the glass fractured because of a "rare" manufacturing flaw.

The California manufacturer will ship replacement panels within the week, and Knappick said installation should be complete by mid-October.

There also have been leaks through the seals between the glass panels, which Knappick said have been repaired. Other leaks have been traced to an area near the foot of the glass box. Water has been seeping through a weatherproof barrier beneath and making its way into the excavated area below.

"We're waiting for dry weather" to repair that leak, Knappick said, adding that the repairs might be completed in the next week. Kelly added that "you need at least two days of dry weather" in order to effect the repairs, which should not be costly.

There are reports of other possible water issues inside the archaeological area, but examination of them also awaits drier weather, according to park officials.

Once the site is functioning as intended, it will be transferred completely to the care of Independence National Historical Park.

"We're doing the best we can under the conditions," Kelly said.

(source: Philadelphia Inquirer)

George Washington's Philadelphia Slave Quarters

From the History News Network, published on December 2, 2002, in an article entitled, "George Washington's Philadelphia Slave Quarters" by Edward Lawler, Jr.:

In the movie The Sixth Sense, the boy who sees dead people is sitting in his classroom and his teacher asks, "What was the capital of the United States from 1790 to 1800?" No one in the class knows the answer, and probably not one in a hundred Americans watching the movie knew that it was Philadelphia. Until earlier this year, had the question been, "Where was the Philadelphia 'White House' and what did it look like?" perhaps one in a million could have gotten it right.

Why is this? Why should the building which served as the Executive Mansion of the United States for ten years while the national capital was under construction, the house in which Washington and Adams lived for the lion's shares of their presidencies, the seat of the executive branch of the Federal government from 1790 to 1800 be so obscure?

"Residence of Geo. Washington and R. Morris, south-east corner of Sixth and Market Streets, Philadelphia." The notation at the bottom left reads, "Drawn from memory by C.A. Poulson." Wood engraving by Charles A. Poulson and an unknown engraver. From William Brotherhead, ed., Sanderson's Biography of the Signers (Philadelphia: 1865),

The President's House stood on the south side of Market Street, about 500 feet north of Independence Hall. The site is now part of Independence Mall, and the Liberty Bell Pavilion sits just to the east of it in what had been the president's garden. A public bathroom has occupied the house site for the past 48 years.

Public Restroom on site of George Washington's Philadelphia Residence

A new building to house the bell is under construction less than 100 feet from the old one, and this Liberty Bell Center will partially cover the site of the backbuildings of the President's House property. Under the new cener's porch will be the smokehouse and its addition.

Washington moved into the President's House in late November 1790, with a household staff of about 24 -- 16 or so white servants, and 8 black slaves. He had spent most of the autumn at Mount Vernon, leaving his secretary to prepare the Philadelphia house. The semi-weekly correspondence between the two contains a treasure trove of detail about the mansion, including Washington's instructions about where the servants should be housed. He initially discussed converting part of the hayloft into lodging rooms, then considered walling off a section of the servants' hall, but finally decided to use the smokehouse. The secretary acknowledged the president's order in an October 31, 1790 letter: "The Smoke-House will be extended to the end of the Stable, and two good rooms made in it for the accommodation of the Stable people." Subsequent letters between them confirm the order.

The "Stable people" consisted of the white coachman, A. Dunn, two black slaves, Giles and Paris, and a likely third, Austin. The smokehouse was small, about 8 1/2 feet square on the interior, and the addition slightly larger, about 8 1/2 by 11 1/2 feet. (The dimensions are recorded on a 1785 map of the property.) According to French exile Moreau de Saint-Mery, segregation in 1790s Philadelphia was so great that white servants would not eat at the same table with free blacks, let alone slaves. Washington instructed that the household's other black men be housed in a room to themselves in the attic of the main house. Rather than mix the races in the smokehouse, it seems likely that the president would have given Dunn the small room to himself, and Giles, Paris and Austin, the larger one.

Independence National Historical Park (INHP) vehemently objects to the addition to the smokehouse being called a slave quarters. In April, an INHP historian questioned whether the addition was even built, although, a month later, the park’s preliminary report on the history and interpretation of the house acknowledged that it was. Another INHP official stated that where the slaves lived cannot be established with any certainty, and that all types of servants –- wage-earners, indentured servants, slaves – lived by the stables. This statement is true only over time. Dunn was a wage-earner; Washington later replaced the stable slaves with white German indentured servants, although the earliest record of this was not until 1792. The INHP final report deftly avoids the controversy by calling the smokehouse and its addition "housing quarters."

. "Robert Morris House (known as Washington Mansion) 190 High Street." Photostat of drawing by Harry W. Neff and Charles Abell Murphy (based on the designs of David H. Morgan). Dated "[19]38." Free Library of Philadelphia.

The use of this euphemism may have contributed to the recent comments in the Philadelphia Inquirer by an INHP spokesman: “primary documents call [the rear of the President’s House] the servants’ hall”; “[there are no historical records] that said it was a slave quarters”; “and we are standing with the fact that no one knows if slaves slept there or if slaves didn’t sleep there.” The story was picked up by the Associated Press, and published in the New York Times and elsewhere.

Actually, the servants’ hall (to the east of the kitchen ell) and the addition to the smokehouse (to the south of the ell) were different spaces. The servants’ hall was also called the “refectory,” or dining hall. In his letters, Washington accounted for housing all the servants elsewhere, so it seems likely that none of them, black or white, slept in the servants’ hall.

Why is INHP bending over backwards to avoid dealing with slavery in the President’s House? The park took over operation of the Mall in 1974, the same year that an INHP report confirmed that the blacks in Washington’s presidential household were slaves rather than free. The presence of the slaves is not mentioned on the interpretive panel outside the public bathroom, although the park has had sole responsibility for interpreting the site for the past 28 years. INHP statements (including one on its Web site) imply that everyone has known all along that Washington had slaves in Philadelphia, assertions which just make people angry. Five hundred protesters who had only recently learned of the presence of the slaves demonstrated at the site on July 3rd. INHP’s confused claim that there was no slave quarters will only increase public hostility and mistrust.

Fortunately, things seem to be changing. The Philadelphia City Council and the Pennsylvania Legislature passed unanimous resolutions urging INHP to commemorate the President’s House and its slaves, and the U.S. House of Representatives attached an amendment to the 2003 budget of the Department of the Interior requiring it to do so. Progress on the commemoration was made at an October 31 meeting of National Park Service and INHP officials, community leaders, historians, and designers. Additional meetings are scheduled, and a public meeting is promised.

As in The Sixth Sense, the President’s House site has its ghosts. Future visitors to the Liberty Bell will walk across its entire footprint, including the quarters of the stable slaves, as they approach the new Liberty Bell Center building. After 200 years of obscurity, it now appears that the house and the lives of its less-illustrious inhabitants will be remembered.

***

Mr. Lawler is leading a petition drive to persuade the Park Service to draw attention to George Washington's President's House and slave quarters in Philadelphia. His work has been published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. [Obviously he won. Yeah! For historical accuracy and truth. America is finally growing up and leaving fuzzy propaganda history in the dustbin of life.]