| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine. By Scott E. Casper. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008. xii, 286 pp. $25.00, ISBN 978-0-8090-8414-2.)
Scott E. Casper's Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon chronicles the transformation of George Washington's Mount Vernon from an aristocratic family dwelling to a historical place of pilgrimage. Integral to the story is the remarkable history of Sarah Johnson, a former slave, and her family who worked on the property for over fifty years. Through an intricate menagerie of family genealogies and fictive kin networks, the worlds of black and white merged and influenced the life, death, and figurative resurrection of Washington and the chief symbol of his ever-growing mythical past: Mount Vernon.	1
In Casper's treatment we learn just as much about the supernumeraries as we do the lead characters. We learn about their lives, the significant ways they shaped, and were shaped by, the various owners of Mount Vernon, and their struggles to keep the holy grail of America's beginnings in the forefront of America's search for itself—particularly during the years following the Civil War. From the time of Washington's death and the transition of the site from a residence to an iconic rite of passage, African Americans—first as slaves, then sharecroppers, and finally as domestics, museum workers, interpreters, historians, and entrepreneurs—shaped Mount Vernon in profound ways.	. . .

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