People Enslaved By The Muhlenberg's
Rev. Judith Meier of the Historical Society of Trappe, Pennsylvania states, “[Henry Muhlenberg] had trouble with the fact that one of his sons, the restless Peter, was able to lay aside his preaching gown in favor of the uniform and sword of a rebel officer. How must he felt when he first learned that Peter, long-time resident of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, had Negro slaves?”, prodding at a question Henry himself seems to have questioned greatly in her personal diary entries.
On February 1, 1775, Henry wrote a considerable amount in his diary considering the place of enslaved people in society. He writes of black people, "The righteous man has pity on his cattle, but how much more on his fellow-creatures, even though they are of a lower class and only a little higher than cattle" (The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg). Simultaneously, Henry expresses the bigoted notion of a natural human hierarchy at which slaves fall at the bottom while arguing that the conditions of slavery are too harsh, and that the righteous members of society have an obligation to hold pity for slaves. He even continues, "Even as the almighty and supremely wise creator has made and ordered all things in beautiful, graduated orer in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms . . . so, too, is there diversity in the political body of the human race" (Journals).
The Muhlenberg family was recorded to have owned and housed slaves throughout the 18th century. It is primarily shown through Henry Muhlenberg's journal, wherein he describes the "servants" that he owns at the house. Although other sources give us accurate and quanitative amounts of slaves the Muhlenbergs owned, we still may not know how many slaves they owned in total, and even more, we may not know the name of each slave and when they were born.
This is because there are instances of Henry Muhlenberg describing his slaves in very nonspecific ways in his journal, some of which may be innuendo. For example, on page 38 of Henry's journal, "P[eter] M[ühlenberg's] servant; came to our house from Philadelphia. He is still sick with smallpox, has an open and swollen leg, etc." The word "servant" is not specific enough to deduce whether or not the person in question was a slave, leaving a hanging question of number in the air. Although it may be hard to pinpoint how many slaves Henry Muhlenberg owned at any given time, what we do know is that the Muhlenberg family owned slaves throughout the 18th century and into the early 19th century.