In this episode, Kate is joined by Dr. John Garrison Marks, whose new book is Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory. This is a fantastic book that takes a careful, and often surprising look, at how generations of Americans have remembered and forgotten George Washington’s relationship to slavery and used that memory to bolster their own arguments.
John Garrison Marks is the vice president of research and engagement at the American Association for State and Local History, so he is steeped in the role of public history across the country. He is the author of a previous book, Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery, and co-editor of an anthology. John has written essays and op-eds for outlets including TIME and Smithsonian Magazine. Recently, his expertise on the memory of Washington’s relationship to slavery became particularly relevant when the National Park Service removed an exhibit about the history of slavery at the President’s House in Philadelphia, and John was ready to jump into the fray and offer vital historical context. I asked John about the relationship between his work with public historians and how he thinks about writing history, as well as how he manages to write while having a busy day job and a young family.
Note: Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. If you purchase books through these links, Drafting the Past gets a small percentage at no additional cost to you. Thanks for supporting our guests and the podcast!
Mentioned in this episode:
- John Garrison Marks, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory
- John Garrison Marks, Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery: Race, Status, and Identity in the Urban Americas
- John’s website
- American Association for State and Local History (AASLH)
- John Garrison Marks, “We’ve Never Agreed About George Washington and Slavery,” TIME
- Write Now with Scrivener Episode 60: John Garrison Marks, Historian
- Mary V. Thompson, The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon
- Bill Hader’s excellent writing advice
- John Vaillant, Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World
- David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
- Megan Greenwell, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream Amanda Mull, “Do You Want a Boring Floor Lamp or an Ugly Floor Lamp?,”The Atlantic
Transcript:
Kate Carpenter 0:01
Hey everyone. Kate here. Before we get to the episode, I have a favor to ask. I'm trying to get a better sense of how you listen to the show, what you love about it, and what you'd like to hear more or less of. Please go to draftingthepast.com/survey to take a quick listener survey. A huge thanks to everyone who has already responded. Your answers are already making a difference in how I think about the show. If you haven't yet, take a minute to let me know what you think at draftingthepast.com/survey. Okay, on to today's episode.
Kate Carpenter 0:31
Welcome back to Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history. I'm Kate Carpenter, and in each episode of this show, I interview a historian about how they research and write. Today, I'm joined by Dr John Garrison Marks, whose new book is Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory. This is a fantastic book that takes a careful and often surprising look at how generations of Americans have remembered and forgotten George Washington's relationship to slavery and how they've used that memory to bolster their own arguments. I'm thrilled to have John on the show to talk more about it.
John Garrison Marks 1:11
Thank you so much for having me.
Kate Carpenter 1:13
John has a PhD in history, and he works as a public historian. He's the Vice President of Research and Engagement at the American Association for State and Local History. So he is steeped in the role of public history across the country. He's the author of a previous book, Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery, and co-editor of an anthology. John has written essays and op eds for outlets including TIME and the Smithsonian Magazine. Recently, his expertise on the memory of Washington's relationship to slavery became particularly relevant when the National Park Service removed an exhibit about the history of slavery at the President's House in Philadelphia, and John was ready to jump into the fray and offer vital historical context. The book came out last week, but we spoke a couple of months ago, and I asked John about the relationship between his work with public historians and how he thinks about writing history, as well as how he manages to write while having a busy day job and a young family. We're all going to get a lot out of this episode, I think. Here's my conversation with Dr John Garrison Marks.
Kate Carpenter 2:14
Can you just start by describing the trajectory of your career as a writer?
John Garrison Marks 2:19
A funny question, because I don't think of myself as having a career as a writer, but I guess in some sense, I do. Writing has sort of always been something that I've been good at. I recognized pretty early on, like in, you know, in middle school and high school, certainly as an undergrad, I realized that I was decently good at writing, and so I gravitated towards things that let me do that a lot. That's, you know, probably a big part of the reason that I became a history major. And, you know, I was decently good at that too. And so I went to graduate school, and that's where I feel like I kind of honed my skill as a writer, because you do so much of it, and, you know, did more reading than I have at any other point in my life, right? And so I figured out how to write like an academic in grad school. And I, you know, I got decently good at it, good enough to get a PhD, and good enough to finish my dissertation and turn it into a book, but I had never really done much writing beyond that, you know, I had done the five paragraph essay. I had figured out how to write like an academic, but that was sort of it. And after I finished grad school, I didn't get an academic job, I started doing other stuff, and I decided for the first time in my life, I have time to read whatever I want. And so for probably a good almost two years after finishing grad school, I didn't pick up a history book. I didn't pick up a non fiction book. I just read fiction for literally the first time in my life, and that, I think, just got me started thinking about different ways of writing a little bit more, and certainly got me exposed to a much wider variety of ways to tell stories and stuff like that. And then I got a job in public history, working for the national professional association that serves history museums, and I started getting kind of exposed to all sorts of new stories and new trends and things that were happening. And I realized that I was in a pretty privileged position at a national association to kind of see those trends in a way that people at individual institutions might not have. And that's when I started thinking, Oh, I could write about this and maybe write for some kind of national outlet, and there would be something interesting to say here. And so that, I started with the 250th and with some other trends that I was seeing, just started sending pitches to places like Washington Post or TIME or Smithsonian Magazine, and some of them got accepted. And I was, you know, then doing more reading of magazine pieces and essays and trying to figure out how I wanted mine to sound. And I think they've gotten better over time, but that became something that I wanted to do. And so now I'm, you know, have some relationships with editors, and I'm able to write some of these, these shorter pieces that I think are really interesting. There's all sorts of interesting stuff happening in public history. And then through my work on the 250 and my connection with people at museums and historic sites, I started thinking about my current book and that it just kind of worked its way into my brain, and I couldn't get rid of it. But I realized, oh, you know, I'm not on the tenure track. I don't need to write a book for tenure. I don't need to write a book for other academics. I can write this book however I want. And had kind of decided that if I was going to write another book, I was going to try to write a book that I thought people might actually read, not just my my academic colleagues and my kind of sub field. So I started thinking about what that would look like, and ultimately wasn't able to shake the idea, somehow convinced the folks at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress that this was an idea worth supporting, and I spent a year there doing the research, and have sort of been been with it ever since, and we'll, we'll see where things go from here.
John Garrison Marks 3:05
Fantastic. Well, let me ask you about the nuts and bolts of your writing process. So when and where do you like to work?
John Garrison Marks 5:10
Well, when and where I like to work is a very different question from when and where I actually do work. I wrote this book mostly between the hours of 4:30am and 7am. I have a day job. I have a job that does not involve writing books. Sometimes some of my essays are, can kind of split the difference a little bit, and I can work on them a little on during work hours, but, but this book was, you know, was totally outside what I what I do for my day job. So that's a nine to five. And I have two kids who are today seven and four. When I first started writing this book, you know, were five and two, mostly six and three for the duration of it. And so I had to find time in my day that I could spend some time writing it. And that time was first thing in the morning before my kids got up. So every day was kind of a race. I would go down, my office is in a converted garage in the basement, so half the year it's freezing cold, but I would go down most of the time, from you know, around five o'clock, and I would write until my youngest son got up and he would come down and find me in the office, and that would kind of be it for the day. And so it was always just a question of, like, how much can I get done in the, you know, 90 minutes, usually around 90 minutes, maybe two hours, if I got really lucky in, you know, the dead of winter, when the sun comes up later, I could, I could get a little more time but, but that was it. And so I tried every day to set myself up at the end of my writing, at the end of my sort of writing block, to have a place that I could pick up when I'm half awake. The next morning, I would brew a double espresso with my little Nespresso machine that a colleague at the the Library of Congress gave me before she went back to the UK, forever in debt to her, and I would always try to leave myself a kind of place that I could pick up relatively easily, that even before I'm awake, even before my brain's kind of fully working. Okay, I know, you know, I left off here yesterday, or I'm going to write about this little piece of evidence, or what have you. I always, you know, I can't work on my laptop. I have a big, a big screen in front of me that I can, you know, put evidence or documents or PDFs to one side and put my writing to the other side. The one indulgence when I started writing this book is I bought myself a mechanical keyboard, and that makes me feel like a writer. And that counts for something, I think, being able to kind of clickety clack away while I'm writing. Just always sounds very, very pleasant to me, but in terms of kind of the the mechanics of of what I what I do, and how I did it, I wrote most of the book in Scrivener. And I'm sure tons of people you know have talked about Scrivener on this podcast, but it was an essential tool for me. The part about it that I always talk about the most, or that I appreciate the most, is just how easy it is to move sections and stuff around in it. I, that made it really easy for me, for someone who never had these long blocks of writing time, I could come in and say, I know I have to write about this one document today, or I know I need to write this one section, and I didn't have to worry about finding it in a long document, scrolling around, or you know where it was going to fit in the piece. I could just go and knock out those 500 words, or 1000 words, or less, often less and and I could just do that and know that it was going to be easy enough to kind of make that fit in later. And so the ability of Scrivener to do that was just so fantastic. And I loved it. I organized my research in Devonthink and that was another one that I really appreciated. And I've talked about that a little bit elsewhere, but just the ability to tag stuff. And I have my kind of organization for everything, and have everything be in text files and PDFs and not some inaccessible, other proprietary format with some other program. So that was sort of my two big pieces. I was working in research, in devonthink and writing in Scrivener, and I waited as long as possible before moving it out of Scrivener, but I basically wrote the whole thing first thing in the morning, and just tiny, tiny bits at a time, 500 words at a time, more or less, for a year or a year and a half. And then one day, I looked up when I was thinking about, when I finished a chapter, and was thinking about what the next thing I had to do was, and I realized, like, Oh my God. I think I'm almost done with this book. Like I think I only have a little bit. I think I only have to do this one thing left and then, and then I'll be done. And that helped kind of motivate to get to the finish line.
Kate Carpenter 10:51
Sure. How do you know when you're ready to start writing? Where in the research process do you like to start?
John Garrison Marks 10:55
Yeah, I probably should have started even earlier than I did. And I started earlier for this project than I have for previous projects. For me, it was sort of circumstantial this time around, where I had this year long fellowship at the Library of Congress, and I knew I wanted to be able to at least start writing while I was there. And you know, it turned out the research was taking longer than I expected. As always, you know, it kind of the project grew while I was there. I ended up, it ended up being something that is very different than the project I thought I was going to be doing when I got there, but I realized I needed to use that time to do at least some writing, and for me, and I also learned from other projects that how much you forget while you're doing research, no matter how many times you know, you tell yourself, ooh, I'm going to remember this bit of like, what I wanted to do with these sources, or that I had these sources, you always forget. And so little by little, project by project, I'm getting better at acknowledging that reality. And so there were times where I was writing, and maybe it felt like less pressure because I was doing writing, but I never thought that the words were actually going to be part of the book. I was just writing to summarize research that I had done before I moved on to another thing. So for example, like when I was I wanted to see how all of these early biographies of George Washington talked about his relationship to slavery and talked about his last will and testament and his decision to free the people he enslaved in his last will and testament. There are dozens of biographies of Washington in the first couple years after he dies, and they're all called The Life of George Washington, or the life of General Washington, might have dozens of books with the exact same title, and so part of the reason I started writing about them was like, I have this straight in my mind now, and I know that six months from now, or a year from now, this is going to look like a complete mess, because they all all these books have the same title and different editions talk about talked about him in different ways. So immediately after he dies, talks about him and talks about slavery in a different way than two years later, than five years later, then 10 years later. And so that was, I think the first piece of the book that I wrote was like, I just need to summarize what I found here. And it ended up being really useful, because I had forgotten all of that by the time, I felt like I was really writing the book and working in Scrivener, but I was just doing text files that I kept in my research, my research database of here's what's happening here. And I think some, most of that just got, you know, it was tens of thousands of words that just got deleted, never made it into the book, but it made it much easier when I actually was writing those sections to know what I wanted to write, and to know how to slot those different pieces of evidence in, and stuff like that. And then sometimes, just because, I think, had taken the pressure off of writing, because, you know, I didn't feel like I was actually writing the capital B book, there was, you would get to a point just by, you know, kind of moving through it, where you're like, Oh, I actually have, like, some interesting things to say here. And I, actually, you know when you go back and find it and be like, actually, like, I keep, I was thinking about how to say that, and I figured it out six months ago. The worst is when you forget that you've done that. And I actually would write almost the exact same sentence six months apart. That happened to me at least once where I was like, I got it. This is it. Like, this is a great sentence. And so then I went back to my research notebook. I was like, Oh, I almost wrote that exact same sentence. That must be why I think it sounds so good. But yeah, so I started earlier than usual, this, this project, and I think I'll continue to do that in future projects, and start even earlier of just sort of writing notes to self, you know, and having them get longer and longer and, you know, just sort of be description of what is narrative description of what is in some of these sources. Because I sort of never, I surprised myself with what that unlocked sometimes, of, you know, I thought I was just describing a document or a source, and actually it, you know, ended up being, being something that that made it into the final book.
John Garrison Marks 11:44
At some point do you stop and outline so that at 430 in the morning, you know where you're going?
John Garrison Marks 14:34
Yeah, I mean, for this project, I had a pretty good sense of how I wanted the structure to work. As I was going through the research, I realized that this was a story that was going to stretch across basically 250 years of American history, and so I sort of needed pieces that were going to slot into sort of big eras of American history. And I had all sorts of evidence and trying to, so I sort of started to figure out, like, Okay, what is the, what is the most interesting story I have to tell for this era? And, you know, they all kind of go backwards a little bit and go forwards a little bit, but the biggest part of the narrative, the biggest part of the story, is sort of grounded in one particular era. And so I sort of knew that that was going to be how I was going to do it fairly early on, just from looking at my evidence. But then I would start, would start trying to outline a chapter and say, like, I think this is how it's going to work. And I would do that in Scrivener and, you know, put headers and put sections and say, This is how it's going to work. And would write some notes of like this, this, this, and this goes here, and, you know, just, you know, describe this, this thing in this section. But it never, I don't think any of my chapters actually worked out that way. You know, you would, you would write a long section and be like, now this doesn't make any sense here. Like, I want to reference this at the beginning of the chapter. I don't want to have to wait till the end. And so I have to flop, flip-flop those things. And I have to do this differently and and so I always had an idea of like, okay, I, this is the little piece I need to work on today. And thought I knew where it was going to go, and then I would get to the end of a chapter, or I would, you know, while writing, realize that like, Oh, this isn't working because it's preventing me from talking about this other thing where I want to talk about it. And then I would sort of move things around, move things around as I was going. But I also, with this project, and this is not something I did with my dissertation or my first, you know, my revisions on my first book. But I would finish a chapter, and I would not go back and read it. I would just say that chapter's done. You know, I'd have a good enough sense from, you know, revising along the way and moving things back in, you know, around the chapter while writing it, that once I got to the point where I thought it was done, I just moved to the next chapter, because I knew that I'd be able to just endlessly edit and revise that one chapter. And I wanted this book to come out in 2026 right? I was doing all this work for the 250 at my day job at AASLH. I knew that this was going to be a good topic for 2026 and then by the, mainly, by the time I started writing, I had a contract that said this book was going to come out in 2026 and I had to hand in, you know, hand in the manuscript by the end of, by the beginning of 2025 and so I knew if I started going back and looking at the chapter I had just read or just written, I was never going to get out of it, and so I just kind of forged along, and it ended up being, you know, so I did it because of it was practical, not because it was some stroke of writerly brilliance in technique, but I think it actually really ended up working well, because I was able to get the whole thing and then figure out, okay, you know, here's, here's what I'm talking about. After I had written 110,000 words or something, and then realizing, like, Okay, this is what I want this chapter to be, and this is, you know, how they're going to.. how they're going to fit together. And this is, this can get added here, and I can take out this thing there. And so there was definitely a sense of, like, I knew what I was, the little part I was going to do that day, but I tried not to get lost in thinking about the whole big thing all at once, and just looking through a keyhole at the book ended up being being really useful as a strategy.
Kate Carpenter 18:54
Once you have the whole big thing, what does revision look like then from a practical standpoint? How do you approach that?
John Garrison Marks 19:01
Thankfully, I had a great editor. I worked with Debbie Gershenowitz, who's since left UNC but she did a great job with the book. I had some great colleagues who helped give me feedback. And I, you know, had some really great peer reviewers who were very kind with their time, you know. And so that was at different stages of revision, but I was really trying to read it and make sure that, I kept thinking about like my dad and my brother in law while I was revising and thinking like, Okay, how do I write this in a way that is going to be interesting to them, not just interesting to my historian colleagues and and really focusing on who I wanted to read this book and and that, you know, led to some, some changes in structure of, you know, realizing, oh, I need to introduce what this is, you know, this idea of, you know, the second Middle Passage, the, you know, the sale of enslaved people from the upper South to the lower South. I need to explain what is going on there, or I needed to introduce gradual emancipation laws or these other concepts more than I had, and trying to read and just get the prose where I wanted it. You know, when I was writing my first draft, there was a lot of just, like, no, I'm just, I'm just describing, I'm just describing my evidence. I'm like, building an argument. It was written as probably a serviceable academic book, and it wasn't until that second pass through, and sometimes you'd be writing and something would come to you, and you'd be like, Oh yeah, that's good. And then when you go back through it, you'd be like, I don't know who I think I am, but that, you know, that's, that ain't it. Then, you know, take that part out. But that's when I started thinking about, like, Okay, how do I want this book to feel to people? How do I want it, you know, want it to sound and and what is, is my voice, and how do I kind of work that into these chapters? And, you know, I guess there's a, there's kind of a fake it till you make it element to all of this. I think that every, every writer probably recognizes to some degree of like, No, I want this to be, you know, I want this to be like a trade work of history. I want it to be of interest to a general readership. And I've read a bunch of these books, and this is what those books sound like. And, you know, how do I, you know, write that in a way that feels true to me, and feels like it's me writing it, but also is, you know, is kind of being written for that audience and in that way. And that was, you know, a big part of going back through, back through my drafts and getting it to that point. And but every time you finish a draft and you feel like, yes, I've, I've gotten it. This is, this is the book, you know, you send it off to someone, and then you get it back. And even if it just that process took two weeks or a month for someone else to read it, having that bit of time, I wish I had had more of it while writing, but having that bit of time to come back and say, Okay, actually, like, you know, this is pretty good. I really like this part. And then other things that, you know, you're like, Oh, God, this was awful. I could do this. You know, it's so obvious why this is bad. I'm going to fix that and do this differently. And I was very surprised but very pleased that by the end of the project, when I was rereading the proof for the last time, I was actually thinking, like, you know what? Like, I think I like this book. I think I like how it turned out, which, when you've been with your own words and your own voice for that long, is, it felt like a huge victory. So I hope other people enjoy it. But I'm just glad I got to the end and didn't feel like I hate this thing. I can't read it anymore. Just wanted to get it away, and thought that all the revision had had left it somewhere pretty good.
Kate Carpenter 22:42
Fantastic. Well, I'm glad that you ended up there. I did note that that in the acknowledgements, you talk about struggling with anxiety and self doubt while you were working on the book, which I think is something a lot of people struggle with when they write. So I was wondering if you have advice for how you kind of muddle through that, how you you keep getting up at 4:30 in the morning when you were fighting that feeling.
John Garrison Marks 23:00
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't know that I would trust a writer who says, like, Yes, I'm a great writer, and I love it, and it's, it's great all the time. I think dealing with those doubts is just part of, part of writing a book, and part of the sort of ebb and flow of the writing journey. And this is where the sort of circumstances of my daily writing that I was forced into, I think, really helped in some regard, because, like, I wasn't, I didn't have the luxury of spending, you know, hours and hours thinking about, like, is this the right way to do it? Is this what I want? You know, I have, you know, I had an hour or an hour and a half to get some little section done. And just, you know, I had a little whiteboard that said, do the work written, you know, written on it, i.e. like, not post on bluesky about writing and to actually sit down and write. But like, only being able to do that little bit at a time kind of helped reduce how much I was thinking about, like, Oh, God, are people going to like this thing? Is this thing any good? But certainly that comes into it. You know, there's just points there where I'm like, and I guess where I'm wondering, you know, is this book any good? Does this make any sense at all? And part of it is that, like, I'm not in an academic department. I had this great cohort of people I was with when I was researching the book, but I had virtually nobody, I was alone in my basement sometimes, a lot of the time, in the dark, writing the book. And you just start to wonder, like, is, you know, you don't have people to talk to about it on a day to day basis and bounce ideas off of and whatever. And you start to wonder like, am I actually working on something worthwhile here. But there's a quote I always come back to that I learned or I heard, for the first time in graduate school, the historian Caleb McDaniel is was on my dissertation committee. He's since won a Pulitzer Prize, but I took a research methods class, cultural history methods class with him. And I remember seeing this quote on one of his early like presentations to us that has sort of rattled around, and, you know, I've paraphrased it in my mind ever since, and I had to go back and find the actual quote so that I could mention it here. So I found it for the first time in over a decade. So I'm glad to have the full thing and to know who wrote it. But it is from the author, Annie Dillard, and the quote is, "There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer's estimation of work in progress and its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent and the feeling that it is abominable are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored or killed, but not indulged." And I always just loved that. It was just such a, it's such a good reminder. And I try to think about it all the time that, like, the moments where you're like, I am a genius, this work is great, like I am, you know, writing some incredible stuff down here, like it's probably not as good as you feel like it is in that moment, and the moments where you're like, this is trash. None of this makes sense. No one is going to want to read this. Are also not true. And I, just something I like, every time all of that self doubt crept in, is something that I just told myself over and over again, of like, maybe this isn't going to be, you know, hit the New York Times bestseller list, but it's probably good. And it's, you know, it's, at least has that going for it, and trying to, trying to work from there.
Kate Carpenter 26:27
To give us a closer introduction to John's work before we talk more about it, I asked him to read an excerpt from the first chapter of his new book. Here's Dr John Garrison Marks reading from Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory.
John Garrison Marks 26:44
“It can be tempting, given Washington’s antislavery statements and notwithstanding his effort to recapture Judge, to view him as enlightened beyond his era when it comes to slavery—or at least more aligned with his Northern contemporaries than with his fellow Southerners. The most generous interpretation, favored by some scholars, historic sites, and Washington supporters, suggests Washington was an unfortunate product of the colonial slave society into which he was born. According to this view, Washington was thrust into a world where the enslavement of Black people was seen as natural, but as he grew older, encountered more egalitarian political philosophies, and witnessed firsthand the courage and humanity of Black people during the American Revolution, he overcame his prejudices and began to see the immorality of the slave system. Slowly, Washington grew to support an end to slavery. Such a story is, unfortunately, all too simple. The more complex reality is that even as Washington’s views on slavery evolved, he often expressed a rather dim view of the abilities and character of the Black people he personally enslaved. Washington’s direct involvement in slavery never ceased. Time and again, Washington acted as a typical enslaver, right until the very end. Even after the American Revolution, Washington continued to act in ways that contradicted his professional desire to see slavery end. Well into the 1790s, while he privately questioned the morality of slavery, Washington disparaged the work ethic of the people he enslaved. In a 1793 letter, for example, Washington wrote that ‘when an Overlooker’s back is turned,’ most enslaved people ‘will slight their work, or worse, not work at all. Washington’s views of the capabilities of the people he enslaved often surfaced in his letters back to Mount Vernon during his time as president. While in Philadelphia, Washington remained deeply involved in managing his estate, receiving regular updates from Mount Vernon. In 1793, William Pearce took over the day-to-day management of Mount Vernon, and the letters he received from Washington—though they mostly refer to the minutiae of planation management, such as crop rotation, seed quantities, and weather—reveal Washington’s ongoing, direct involvement in enslaving people, as well as how his view of individual enslaved people had not evolved alongside his broader ideas of the institution of slavery.”
Kate Carpenter 29:06
Okay, so I was really torn while I was trying to decide what to have you talk about, in part, because chapter one is really not the point of the book, right? That this, this is the one chapter where you are kind of establishing the background for the reader, making sure we're all on the same page, and then in each subsequent chapter, you're exploring the argument that different people in different times used Washington's memory, often in very contradictory ways, to to sort of bolster their position. But I picked this passage in part because the more I thought about it, the more it felt like this chapter was the hardest to write, at least in my imagination, because, you know, in all the other ones you get, you get to show how people did different things and kind of make these strong points. But here you're, you're trying, I don't want to say you're trying to be objective, because that's a challenging thing to say as a historian. But like you really are kind of trying to just get down to like what we can all know about Washington and slavery, like, here's what we know from the primary sources, and you're trying to do that kind of even handedly, but of course, like I said, no objectivity, right? There's always interpretation. So how did you approach this chapter with all of that in mind?
John Garrison Marks 30:13
I didn't really want to write this chapter, and it wasn't the first one that I wrote. And then I realized that if I started with just how people have kind of cherry picked from Washington's record and used his involvement with slavery in various ways, and how they've cited it across generations, centuries of American history, none of it would make sense if the reader didn't have some grounding in what these people were talking about. They're so often, you know, in the 19th century, 20th century, today, people are referring to specific Washington quotes that have become kind of tried and true. Ways to reference certain parts of his record, his 1786 quote that "No one wishes more sincerely than I do to see an end to see an end to slavery," paraphrasing a little bit there, but that I needed to cover this ground for the reader, if all of these references were going to make sense. The fact that he emancipated these people in his will, what that meant. How many people he enslaved? All of that. And so this chapter, much more than the other chapters, was a work of synthesis. You know, there is a lot that's been written on the subject of George Washington's involvement in slavery. You know, especially Mount Vernon historian Mary Thompson, she had a book that came out a few years ago that was, is really comprehensive of, you know, sort of the experience of enslaved people at Mount Vernon, where they lived, worked, how many people in each place, all of those things, and so in some ways, it was the easiest chapter to write, because I wasn't building an argument from scratch. In the same way, I still don't really think of myself as a historian of Washington. This is very much a cultural history where George Washington is sort of a player in it, but it's about other people. It's not about him, but also in the times that I've started talking about this book already, this is the stuff that people want to talk about, and that is fascinating in its own right. But I really tried to take the view of like, if I was coming to this for the first time, which, in a lot of ways, I was, right? I had the sort of surface level knowledge that most people have about George Washington and his involvement with slavery, and then realized I needed to sort of build this context setting chapter. And so, you know, there's all this work that's been happening on this subject for decades, right? It was a work of synthesis, of realizing, you know, different people are coming at this in different ways. You know, which ways do I find most convincing? Some of the most recent research that's drawing on his farm reports, you know, some of these letters back and forth to Mount Vernon that really make clear, no matter all of the great things he's saying about his desire to see slavery end, he's still so, so involved in enslaving people and denigrating enslaved people and all of that. And, you know, I was able to sort of find a path through to talk about, there is some change and there's some evolution. But it's not this easy story of, you know, he started one way and he ended another way, and it ends with this final big moment of him freeing the people he enslaved. It would be great if that's what the record supported, because it would be a much easier story to tell. But that's just not what it was. And so I think the real challenge of this chapter, and it's something that still keeps me up at night, is I set up, I hope, in the introduction, this kind of interesting story of, you know, here's what's, here's what happens across American history. And then the first chapter is this, like, somewhat, to me at this point, feels somewhat boring, right? Like it's not the cool, interesting stuff that I feel like I get to talk about in the rest of the book. It's this other stuff about, like, here's George Washington's history with slavery. It's of a different type. My worry in writing it was like, I can't start people off with 20,000 words, 25,000 words about George Washington and slavery. Like they're never going to make it to chapter two if I write it this way. And so part of the revision process for this chapter was like, can, like, I know I want to include all of this context and all of this detail and all of these little examples and quotes. And, you know, I have all of my like, precious little gems that I've mined and polished and, you know, made ready for for people to look at. But like, how much of that is really necessary? Like, how much, you know, where do I have four quotes, where one quote would be fine, and I can just kind of describe the trend with the other ones. And, you know, where can I collapse things, and where am I able to get rid of some, you know, really fine grained distinction that I'm drawing in a way that is still truthful to the record, and, you know, helps people understand it better and more accurately and more clearly, but I can get through a little bit quicker. And so it felt very necessary, and it is necessary for understanding the ways people are talking about Washington in the rest of the book, and all these examples that I'm that I'm citing. But I also didn't want the book to feel like I was, you know, making the reader take their medicine before they got to the fun, the fun stuff. And so I tried to tell it in a way that kind of flowed narratively, and just in the revision was always asking myself, like, is there an easier way, easier way to tell this story? Is there, you know, a smoother way to tell this story? Do I need all of these details, and hopefully readers feel like they come away with more than they had going in, but also feel like they are looking forward to reading chapter two, not like they just escape their worst nightmare of a history lesson after getting done with it.
Kate Carpenter 35:55
I didn't feel that way. I don't think other readers will. I feel like if you took 10 different historians and said, I want you to write a book that covers all American history and talks about how people have used Washington's memory, you would have 10 very different books at the end of that. So if you can take me back a little to how kind of how you approached the book as you were imagining it, researching it, how did you settle on your structure for this book?
John Garrison Marks 36:20
Yeah, it's, it came to me in a dream, I guess, you know, it's something that that feels like it sort of just started to make sense as I was, as I was writing and but, you know, I originally set out to write a very different kind of book. I wanted to write a book that was all what I wrote my third chapter about, which is what happened to the people George Washington freed from slavery? That was the sort of driving question that got me into this project. And you know, there is so much that has been written on what happens leading up to that point, but it is always the end of the story. And I wanted to know what happens if you make that the beginning of the story where, you know, where does that take you? My first book was about the experiences of free black people in Charleston, South Carolina and Cartagena de Indias Colombia. And so I had done this kind of research on my book, and on, first book, and on other projects of you know, this kind of deep social history for, you know, finding out about the experiences of free black people. And so that's what I wanted to do at first. And then as I was researching that chapter and looking for those sources, I kept finding all of these other things, and I wasn't finding enough. You know that one big murder case you always hope you're going to find that where, you know, there's testimony explaining all these relationships and details. I never found that, but I did find all of these other references to Washington's emancipation of the people he enslaved. And you know, especially, I was looking through newspapers to try to find references to it. And it kept bringing me to the Liberator and the, you know, so I kept seeing these incredible examples of abolitionists using Washington's decision to free the people he enslaved in their rhetoric. And so that flipped things for me. It was like, what is happening? Like, what is going on here? When did people learn that he had freed the people he enslaved? Did they care in 18--1799, 1800? I started to ask that question, and then I started to see it more and more in contemporary discourse, right, and certainly in the summer of 2020, as I was thinking about the book, there's lots and lots of emphasis, I would say more than we've ever seen, but as I show in the book, that's not really the case, but a re emphasis on Washington's history with enslavement, and utterly no mention of the fact that he did free the people he enslaved in his last will and testament, something that Jefferson didn't do. Madison didn't do, Monroe. No one else, none of the other Virginia founders free the people they enslaved, or none of the other Virginia presidents, anyway, free the people they enslaved. And so was started wondering early on, like, why isn't that part of the story we tell about Washington now? It seems like that matters, like that is significant. And I felt encouraged that other people have found that incredibly significant, you know, throughout American history, at different points and times. And so I sort of knew where I wanted to start, and I knew where I wanted to end, right, that I had to talk about, you know, what was happening today, and I had to bring it all the way up to the present to to make this work the way that I wanted to. And so it was sort of figuring out, you know, how do I get from A to Z? And some of it was just, you know, reading and, you know, reading secondary sources about, you know, like I knew that education and classroom debates was going to be part of this, because it had was coming up in the present, the way people were talking about Washington in the classroom in places like Florida. And so I started reading the, you know, some of this literature on, you know, the secondary literature on education. Education controversies and curriculum controversies. And these pieces would just be a little, maybe a page or a paragraph or a sentence, reference to the founders, or reference to Washington, and I'd say, Oh, that's interesting. And kind of go down a rabbit hole, you know, figuring out what was there. And I didn't, wasn't really thinking about structure that much at this point. But eventually I got to a point where I had to, I had to write a proposal to try to sell this book and get it published. And, you know, I started thinking about, Okay, well, what are the best stories that I have here? And, you know, I have all this stuff from the 1930s about education, but that stuff, you know, more complicated, actually, the stuff from the 30s about the George Washington Bicentennial is like the best story. And so that kind of fits there. And that can be my early 20th century piece. And then, you know, the education controversies can be my kind of mid to late 20th century piece. And and sort of knew where I had, if I wanted to cover everything, I couldn't have huge, huge gaps in time, because there would be no bridge from what just happened to what I was, what I was transitioning into. But I also knew that it was going to be thematic that I didn't, you know, no one wants to read a textbook that is, you know, trying to cover all of history. With the exception of maybe saying George Washington's ghost, there's no character that is spanning 250 years of American history in a way that I could kind of make the core of the narrative. I thought, as I was writing and as I was researching, I thought about it was easier to talk about it as Washington's ghost than about like Washington's legacy, just a way of, kind of making it a subject, but Washington's ghost and his will as being sort of subjects that are anchoring this book along the way. And what are the experiences that they, so to speak, are having, you know, with with different groups and in different times and places. And, you know, eventually it just sort of, you know, I tried to let the research guide me. And you know, of where I had good stories to tell, you know, making those the centerpiece of a chapter. And thankfully, I didn't have any, you know, any glaring gaps. I don't think in sort of, at least in the timeline of of what I wanted to cover, there's more attention to some parts and than to others. But in the end, it felt like by kind of anchoring it thematically, where each thematic chapter is focusing on sort of the next era of American history, that it would at least give people an appropriate sort of overview of how the story has changed over time.
Kate Carpenter 42:35
It has struck me as you've been talking that you clearly are sort of attuned to what, to who's reading, to what, who your audience is, and what they will need, whether it's making sure they have all the information about Washington slavery they need to understand or thinking about your dad and brother in law as readers. You know, even saying, like no one wants to read a textbook about all of US history, right? And that makes me think about your nine to five job with AASLH, and I'm wondering how, how do you think that your work in public history has shaped the way that you write?
John Garrison Marks 43:07
Yeah, you have nailed it. I think the biggest, the biggest change in how I write as a result of my public history work has been focus on audience. I think audience is not something that I thought about very much when I was certainly, when I was writing my dissertation. I was writing it for one person, basically, you know, I was writing it for the chair of my dissertation committee, and then the book wasn't very much different than that, you know, I still it still was writing it basically for me or someone like me, and that was, you know, if it made sense to me, it would made sense to the people who needed it needed to make sense to, right? And then when I started working with people at museums and historic sites, and I lead our research efforts at AASLH, and so I'm doing research on the state of the field, but I'm also in conversation with people who are in research roles at their individual museums, and so much of that is about audience evaluation of, what do people want from museums? What do people want from their specific visit? What do different groups of people want? You know, looking at, there's some research from from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, analyze the National Survey of public participation in the arts some combination thereof, about like, you know, oh, do people who like history books also go to history historic sites and watch historic TV shows? And what they found was that, no, people who like TV shows watch all sorts of TV shows, and people who like doing things in person do things in person and arriving at all of these different ways to understand audience and to really prioritize thinking about audience is something that I had just never thought about before, and started thinking about and taking very seriously in the public history context, and then thinking about my book as a work of public history, and not thinking about it so much as a work of scholarship, is, is kind of where I ended up of like, okay, how do I want this book to be received, and who do I want to read it, and the when was a big part of it. You know, like I have joked recently, I feel like I landed a plane on an aircraft carrier, because I first had this idea in, like, 2019, 2020, and I mean, even earlier than that, early versions of this idea, but like this version of the book, I, you know, started thinking about in 2020 and I knew it would be a good 250 book, because I was already, I started working on the 250 in 2017 and I could see sort of that coming, and could anticipate, like, Okay, I think there's going to be this moment. And what a book could do in that moment might be this. And here's how I think I need to approach that book. I need to write that book and what readers might want out of it at that moment. I think the same way that you would, that public historians would think about an exhibit or a public program or or a podcast, thinking about who's out there, and, you know, who is the audience for this, and how are they going to be arriving to it? And what will they come in knowing, what sort, you know, how will they come in? What sort of preconceived notions might they have, things like that? And so maybe I would have arrived in this same place just by reading a lot, but certainly the the topic itself, and then also how I how I approached it, kind of as a work of public history was all very much informed and inspired by my work with with public historians around the country and and my my day job, you know, serving the public history community.
Kate Carpenter 46:32
You really kind of set up my next question, which is sort of a broader question in many ways. I guess this question is an invitation to get on your soapbox, if you have one, but as someone so intimately connected to public history, what do you think about the relationship between public history and writing history books? You know, I think about the fact that a lot of those museum goers, if they read history books, might not read history books that academic historians love them to be reading. Or I think about people who tell me they're writing for a broad audience, but then I read the book and think, I don't know what you think a broad audience is, but I don't think they'll read this, you know. Is writing history books a form of public history? What does that relationship look like today?
Speaker 1 47:12
I mean, I certainly think it is, and it can be, you know, writing, writing books can be a form of public history. But it's not necessarily a form of public history that you need a PhD to do. You know, we've seen from you know, some of the most popular history books over the last several decades are written by journalists and others who, you know, who came to history on a different path. And I think there are a lot of people who really are interested in history, and meeting them where they are, and recognizing that like what they are interested in is perfectly valid and they are can be totally justified in whatever niche topic they find exciting, even if it's not the most important debate in the field or the most cutting edge piece of scholarship or what have you. And I think there is a public service in writing for that audience, right? And not necessarily just writing something that you know, because you think there's this audience out there, but of being conscious and cognizant of the fact that, like, oh, there are, you know, certain types of people who are, you know, going to be interested in this topic, and what do they want that focus on audience, you know, how can I write it for them? Instead of just writing it and saying, like, No, this is how to do it, you know, this is how historians work. And if you know, you can't understand this way, or you're not interested in reading it this way, then that's, that's a you problem, not a, not a me problem as the as the writer. And I think people do really enjoy history and find it fascinating and want to engage with it in all sorts of different ways. I think there are probably fewer people who want to read books than want to go to museums and historic sites. But you know, even within that population, I think there are certain kinds of things that, certain ways of writing books, certain approaches to the subject, that are going to be be more interesting for people than than they might otherwise. And I think being really precious about how to do history and what counts as kind of capital H history is, you know, leaving a lot on the table, and people are going to find other stuff. Like, it is always a horror show when you go and look at, like, what the top history books on Amazon are. And, you know, I think a lot about like, well, people are reading history books, and I hope that they have more options for good ones. And, you know, and so I think it is important that people are writing for that audience, and kind of putting audience first in how they're approaching their book. I also think there's a lot of historians that are writing that think public historians, museum professionals, are sitting around waiting for their next piece of scholarship so that they can work it into their exhibits. And among many, this is a soapbox that I have, but it's become much clearer that public history practitioners, museum practitioners, don't appreciate that kind of thinking from scholars, right? That you know, they can't do anything until the historian finishes their scholarship, all capital letters, and then they can work it into exhibits. And it's kind of, you know, I've seen much more than I ever would have thought now that I am on the other side of just kind of condescension among academics toward public historians. And it turns out public historians are doing incredible work. Museum professionals are doing incredible work. They're great researchers, they're great writers, they're great storytellers. I think there is, you know, just as much for writers of history to learn from the process and and approach of museum practitioners and public history practitioners as there is for them to learn kind of content from historians.
Kate Carpenter 50:59
That's a very good soapbox. I want to shift gears a little just to talk a bit more broadly about your writing. But I first want to ask, I'm always in the lookout in acknowledgements for when people are effusive about their writing group and you were in your acknowledgement. So I'm curious, could you just tell us about your writing group? How does it work? How do you incorporate their feedback into your work?
John Garrison Marks 51:17
Yeah, I'm, you know, I mentioned earlier that mostly I was just alone writing this thing, and it got to a point where I had some chapter drafts, and I was like, I need someone that I trust to read this thing. And I reached out to a colleague from grad school. Shout out to Whitney Stewart, who is now back in the public history world full time. I've brought her over, but I reached out to her because she she had just published a book, and, you know, worked on material culture topics and public history topics, and kind of walked that line between public history and and academia. And I asked her, like, you know, if she might be willing to read something and, you know, and she mentioned to me that, oh, she had just been talking to someone else who, you know, was kind of an American Studies material culture person, and they were talking about a writing group, and so everyone kind of knew one, one or two other people. And it ended up there ended up being kind of five or six of us that were working on various topics related to memory or public history or material culture, or or kind of cultural studies, something along those lines. And we ended up being being a good group, and it was accountability of, you know, we all just kind of, one person would volunteer and say, I have something I'm working on. Can we focus on my thing next month? Then there was a pretty easy going process. If someone had a deadline, or someone had, you know, had a revision due, or whatever. You know, they would kind of get to jump the line. But eventually I said, Hey, like, I've been writing this stuff all by myself, and I really could use someone, someone reading it. And so sent them a chapter, I think we talked pretty in depth about chapter five of the book about the George Washington Bicentennial, and they had some really great insights. You know, among them, you know, was this idea that, and this is a big part of the final chapter, that both white Americans and black Americans during the 1932 George Washington Bicentennial, were expressing this desire to get back to the real, quote, unquote, the real George Washington. And that, like there was actually some really good stuff that came out of it, even from this all white federal planning commission, there were these, like primary source collections and maps and published editions of Washington speeches. And there was, like some genuine interest in the historical Washington, not just a mythical Washington that could teach people lessons. And they helped me kind of recognize that insight and that totally reformulated how I, how I approached the chapter. And then, you know, they just had great, great insights to, you know, other things I could do. This section is kind of long. This section is, you lost me here. What if it just focused on this, you know, all those kinds of things that, for me, it was the first time anyone, it was first time I shared any of it with anyone. You know, no one had read anything from this book, except for what I put into my book proposal and, you know, short sample that I sent to publishers. And so, so that was just like, super worthwhile and encouraging that they were like, Yeah, this is good. It's like, it all makes sense. This like, you know, and they just talked about it like it was. It felt like a real book and a real project and a real chapter after those people had read it, and they were people that I really trusted, and, you know, had similar interests and interests in writing for a broader public and and all of those things. And so the fact that they had genuine feedback, but also were supportive. I remember one of them, one of the members of my group, was like, shocked that this was a first draft of the chapter, because I genuinely didn't read it before I sent it to them. I finished writing it, and was just like, here it is. Like, let me have it. And they were like, no. Like, this is good. There's this is a real thing. This is a real chapter, and that was, like, the kind of motivation that you need, like, that'll float you for a long time when you're working alone, of like, oh, no. They said it was good. They said it was good. And so that helped. But I also, you know, in thinking about, like, how to incorporate their suggestions and revisions, I always think about, I can't remember where I saw it, but the comedian Bill Hader was talking about revisions I saw in an interview once, and mentioned like, you know, when you share writing with other people, they can always show you the things that, they can tell you the things that aren't working, but the solutions are usually things that you need to come up with on your own. You know, sometimes it's the things that they suggest. Other times it's, you know, it's something that you've come up with totally originally, or some combination thereof. But to me, that's the most valuable part of getting feedback on those, on a chapter like that, or on, you know, they eventually read the whole manuscript. But, you know, if they point out, Hey, there's, this isn't working, there's a problem here. There's almost certainly actually a problem there. It's never like, well, they just don't know what they're talking about. There is, like, if they point out a problem, there's a problem in that chapter, and they may or may not have the right idea about how to fix it, because they don't know what the rest of your evidence is. They don't know what things you know hit the editing room floor or are in your big scraps document somewhere, but if they have pointed out a problem, it's probably a problem that needs to get solved, and you need to go back and figure out how to do it. And just having that sort of feedback was was super valuable, especially early on in the process.
Kate Carpenter 51:17
Are there other people that you read as inspiration for writing?
John Garrison Marks 54:21
I do. I wish I could read more. It's always, reading is such a big part of writing, and yet, with my schedule being what it was, I wish I was able to do more reading while I was doing writing, but I ended up reading a bunch while I was researching. Mostly audio books, actually commuting back and forth to the Library of Congress and read some great stuff that year that, you know, I still am mostly doing nonfiction, but trying to look listen to as many different forms of nonfiction, just to think about sort of what, what are the different ways you can tell these stories? What are the different structural approaches, what are the different things you could do? So, like some of the books, and I think I mentioned most of these people in my acknowledgements, but like some of the books that I read while I was researching and beginning to write, were like Fire Weather by John Vaillant. Was this incredible book. I read The Wager by David Grann. Likewise. I mean, I saw a lot of copies of that while Christmas shopping this year. I more recently read Bad Company by Megan Greenwell about private equity, but she tells a story from a really personal lens, and so just trying to explore all these different ways of doing it. I also love the essay. I love magazine essays. A good essay, I think, can teach you so much about structure and stuff like that, and they're just so enjoyable to read. I still think all the time about one essay by Amanda Mull in The Atlantic. I don't think she writes for The Atlantic anymore, but she wrote this essay about floor lamps, which sounds very silly, but the basic question was like, why are there no good floor lamps, and why do they all look basically the same? And she goes on this deep dive into, like, design history. And, you know, just like the how big houses are and how far away things are from outlets in high end homes, that there's not this, you know, like this whole thing, but it was, it's just like, such a good and it's short, but it's such a good piece of, like, here's this really basic question, and here's like, what a good and interesting story you can tell out of it. And I think about it all the time, when I'm writing a chapter, or when I'm doing something of like, okay, what's the basic question here? And what's, is there actually a cool way, an interesting way, that I can answer it? So yeah, just trying to think about people, or read people who are doing cool things with with structure and subject matter, without getting too, too close to the thing I'm actually writing about.
Kate Carpenter 58:59
So we are having this conversation a little over two months before Thy Will Be Done comes out. So I know that you will be deep in talking about this book, promoting this book for some time to come. In the back of your mind, are you looking ahead to another book? Or have you decided that 4:30am is not, is not worth it? How do you how do you see what comes next?
John Garrison Marks 59:21
Yeah, unfortunately, I have two ideas that I think have legs, that I might be interested in writing. The way, the way this book worked, it was just an idea that I started thinking about, of, like, I think there might be a book there, and I've had this with other ideas, but sometimes they just go away, or you, or you find the book, you know, and you're like, Oh, someone has written it. I was right. There is a book here, and here it is. But both of these ideas I've, I've had, I've had around for a while, and and so far they, I haven't been able to shake them, and I'll have to prioritize one over the other. But you know, to the extent that there is ever a calling, or a something beckoning you to write another book. For me, it's always that of like, God, like I can't stop thinking about this, and it would be so easy, is usually what follows that. And then, you know, you end up two and a half years into the project, and you're like, Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm doing this again, and I hate this all so much, and I never want to see George Washington's face again. He's everywhere. He's on the wallpaper of the house that we bought while I was working on this book. It's in there judging me at breakfast every morning. But yeah, it's just it. For me, it's always just some some kernel of an idea that you get while reading or taking the dog for a walk or whatever. And then it just, if it sticks with you long enough, and you, you know, you can't help but like, Yeah, I'll read this thing that, like, might bring me a little closer. And it's like, Nope, they don't. They're not doing it, the thing that I want to do. And, you know, and then eventually you realize, no, I think I want to actually do this. This is something that people might want to read and that I might want to write.
Kate Carpenter 1:01:02
I have to know, did you keep the wallpaper?
John Garrison Marks 1:01:04
Oh it's still up there. Yes. It's George Washington blowing a bubble with chewing gum. So it's and it's only on a small piece of accent wall, so it's enough to keep up there. But it's a good conversation starter when people find out that I'm I've written a book about Washington.
Kate Carpenter 1:01:23
One more representation of his memory.
John Garrison Marks 1:01:25
That's right.
Kate Carpenter 1:01:26
Dr John Garrison Marks, thank you so much for joining me on Drafting the Past, and thanks for talking about your writing process.
John Garrison Marks 1:01:32
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This has been a blast.
Kate Carpenter 1:01:34
Thank again to Dr John Garrison Marks, and thanks to you for listening. John's new book is Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory, and you can find a link to it and all the other books mentioned in this episode in the show notes at draftingthepast.com. While you're there, you can also sign up for the newsletter for occasional updates and reminders of new episodes. In the meantime, I'll be here to remind you that friends don't let friends write boring history.
