Washington is a village near the Ohio River in Mason County in the U.S. state of Kentucky. It is one of the earliest settlements in Kentucky and also one of the earliest American settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. It played a significant role in the lead-up to the Civil War, producing two civil war generals (one Union and one Confederate) and an escaped slave whose legal case established Canada as a safe haven for escaping slaves. It also provided the site where Harriet Beecher Stowe witnessed a slave auction.