US founders sought to build a republic of citizens who improved themselves and their nation, free of unearned aristocratic entitlements, but that fostered an unfamiliar mobility. Reactions against aristocratic idleness elevated the importance of self-improvement and work for winning cultural esteem as well as for material well-being. Benjamin Franklin led in promoting these values to nurture useful citizens; only after his death did a revised version of his autobiography portray him as having “raised myself.” Although mobility came to be expected of White men, legal and cultural presumptions marginalized most others, who were subject to harsh physical and social penalties if they attempted to claim self-agency or to seek self-improvement and work that brought respect. Georgia’s early history illustrates how self-serving stories about work and initiative both defended enslavement and closed off opportunities for poor White people. The elderly George Washington was among the rare citizens who took seriously Revolutionary-era rhetoric about equality, and he came to appreciate how the work of enslaved people made his self-improvement and prosperity possible.