CHAPTER NINE

The Great Escape

IN AN ALMOST COMICALLY UNDERSTATED FASHION, a new epoch in American history was ushered into being on April 14, 1789, at Mount Vernon. At about noon a lone rider appeared before the mansion. It was Charles Thomson, secretary of Congress, bearing the announcement of George Washington’s election, by unanimous vote of the Electoral College, to the presidency of the United States. Then fifty-seven years old, Washington had expected this news yet dreaded it as well. Since his return to Mount Vernon after the Revolution, he had yearned to enjoy his retirement as a “private citizen on the banks of the Potomac … under the shadow of my own vine and fig tree.”1

Washington invited Thomson into the mansion’s cavernous new dining room. The two men stood facing each other as the visitor read aloud the official notification of the election, a letter from Senator John Langdon of New Hampshire, president pro-tempore of the Senate:

Sir, I have the honor to transmit to Your Excellency the information of your unanimous election to the Office of President of the United States of America. Suffer me, sir, to indulge the hope, that so auspicious a mark of public confidence will meet your approbation, and be considered as a sure pledge of the affection and support you are to expect from a free and enlightened people.2

Washington did not look forward to facing “the 10,000 embarrassments, perplexities & trouble to which I must again be exposed in the evening of a life, already consumed in public cares.” And he hated the idea of leaving his beloved Mount Vernon. “My movements to the chair of government,” he wrote privately to a friend, “will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit, who is going to the place of his execution.” But being a man of discipline and duty, as well as an ardent nationalist, Washington accepted the will of the nation. He knew he was the logical—in fact, the only choice; without him, the country might splinter into factions. His personal aura, and the elaborate mythology that had grown up around him as a military leader, helped validate this new political experiment. Since 1776 Washington had been called “the Father of the Country.” In a popular toast of the day, Americans raised their glasses to Washington, “the man who unites all hearts.” In short order, his mass-produced image would appear everywhere—on lockets and plates, silverware and coins, prints and bric-a-brac.3

Not wanting to delay the machinery of government, Washington departed immediately for New York, the first capital. En route, he encountered a rapturous public. In Philadelphia some twenty thousand—out of a population of twenty-eight thousand—lined the streets to cheer him on. He arrived at the foot of Manhattan, having been transported across the harbor on a ceremonial barge propelled by thirteen oarsmen. Cheers followed him as he walked to his rented house.4

Martha remained behind for several weeks to make the necessary preparations for transporting the household to the North. She chose seven slaves to accompany them, who were to form the core of the presidential household staff. The president’s valet, William Lee, had already gone north with Washington. Martha chose sixteen-year-old Ona Judge as her attendant. Ona’s brother Austin came along as one of the waiters, along with a slave named Christopher. Giles and Paris rounded out the small staff.

Martha’s nephew Robert Lewis made the journey as well. He left an account of the departure from Mount Vernon:

After an early dinner and making all necessary arrangements in which we were greatly retarded it brought us to 3 o’clock in the afternoon when we left Mt. V. The servants of the house and a number of field Negroes made their appearance to take leave of their mistress; —numbers of these wretches were most affected, and my aunt equally so.5

The slaves were “most affected” because they were bidding adieu to their relatives. And Martha was distressed to leave Mount Vernon once more for the tumult of public life. Her every move would be watched by a public anxious to see what tone the Washingtons would set for the presidency. Would they impose a royalist atmosphere on the republic, with elaborate court rituals? That was the official life the Washingtons had known in Williamsburg.

The Washingtons seemed completely at ease about bringing slaves to the new capital of a free and enlightened people. To them, life without slaves would have seemed impossible. The closeness they felt for their slaves formed a cocoon of fidelity, trust, and familiarity. Having their slaves around was a psychological bulwark; they were accustomed to giving instructions to people who obeyed instinctively, without question. Transporting the slave system intact to New York City was perfectly natural to them. As she traveled north, Martha made no attempt to hide the fact that she was bringing the president’s slaves. An observer on the road wrote:

Preceded by a Servant about ½ mile ahead, and two young Gentlemen on Horseback, Just before them, a mulato girl behind the carriage and a Negro man Servant on Horseback behind, this was her Suite, small attendance for the Lady of the President of the United States.6

The mulatto girl behind the carriage was Ona Judge, Martha’s personal attendant.* She was an accomplished seamstress, though soon her duties as Martha’s attendant gave her little time for needlework. At the Cherry Street house of the President in New York, Ona was responsible for the care of Martha’s clothes and hair. She coiffed Martha’s hair every morning and helped her dress for the arduous social life the presidency imposed. Martha had chosen Judge not only for her skills but for her appearance. She was young, well-groomed, and light-skinned—exactly the traits needed in a young woman who would accompany the first lady on all her social and official visits. Washington himself was also eager that his slaves make a good impression. With his mania for detail, he gave instructions on the proper manner for grooming hair: “get him a strong horn comb and direct him to keep his head well combed, that the hair, or wool may grow long.”7

Judge’s work obviously pleased the first lady, because when the capital was transferred from New York to Philadelphia in November 1790 Ona continued as Martha’s maid in waiting. In contrast, the New York household’s cooks, a white woman and her daughter, did not make the trip. Washington didn’t like them: “the dirty figures of Mrs. Lewis and her daughter will not be a pleasant sight … in our new habitation.” The Mount Vernon staff supplied a replacement: from the plantation the Washingtons summoned their slave cook Hercules, who erased the memory of the filthy Lewises with his dashing good looks, high-style clothing, and superb culinary skills. Washington was delighted, remarking that he gloried in the cleanliness and “nicety” of the kitchen Hercules ran. Young “Wash” Custis, who also lived in the president’s house, wrote that when Hercules gave an order “his underlings flew in all directions.” So skilled was the cook that the Washingtons made him a deal: he could sell the leftovers from the presidential kitchen and keep the proceeds. Hercules spent this income on fine clothes, which certainly suited the wishes of his owners, who were always concerned with the appearance of their staff. They also allowed Hercules to bring his son up from Mount Vernon as an assistant cook.8

The demands of presidential life on the Washingtons and their staff were enormous. To augment the small staff of slaves, the Washingtons hired white servants and purchased additional white indentured servants. Their household records show that during the Philadelphia years they employed more than ninety different people at one time or another. At the end of his second term, Washington apparently let some white indentured servants go before their contracts were up, not wishing to bring them to Mount Vernon or to sell their contracts. The biographer James Thomas Flexner came across a document relating to this release of the servants and thought, incorrectly, that it referred to slaves. He writes that Washington “quietly” emancipated some slaves when he was leaving Philadelphia, but the Washingtons did not free any slaves at that time. The opposite is the case: Washington was deeply concerned with hanging on to his slaves in a city with a thriving free black community in which runaways could disappear. The city boasted a relatively prosperous community of free blacks because the presence of the federal government increased demand for domestic help and services.9

The president’s anxiety about his and Martha’s slaves became acute in the spring of 1791. Transferring the capital from New York to Philadelphia had created a delicate legal problem for him because Pennsylvania had passed a law by which slaves brought into the state became free after six months of residence. Most of the household’s slaves belonged to the Custis estate, but Washington was responsible for them. If they had become free, he would have had to compensate the Custis heirs. He thought he might be technically exempt from the law because he did not regard himself and his household as residents of Pennsylvania; but to be on the safe side he instructed his secretary to shuttle slaves back and forth from Philadelphia to Virginia so that they would not achieve the six months’ residency. This action, one is sorry to say, involves perhaps the only documented incident of George Washington’s telling a lie. Not only did Washington concoct a scheme to evade the law, he also instructed his secretary to lie about it. He wrote to Tobias Lear, “I wish to have it accomplished under pretext that may deceive both them [the slaves] and the Public.” The full text of his letter reveals the depth of his anxiety and the extent of his deception:

in case it shall be found that any of my Slaves may, or any for them shall attempt their freedom at the expiration of six months, it is my wish and desire that you would send the whole, or such part of them as Mrs. Washington may not chuse to keep, home, for although I do not think they would be benefitted by the change, yet the idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist. At any rate it might, if they conceived they had a right to it, make them insolent in a State of Slavery. As all except Hercules and Paris are dower negroes, it behoves me to prevent the emancipation of them, otherwise I shall not only lose the use of them, but may have them to pay for. If upon taking good advise it is found expedient to send them back to Virginia, I wish to have it accomplished under pretext that may deceive both them and the Public; and none I think would so effectually do this, as Mrs. Washington coming to Virginia next month … if she can accomplish it by any convenient and agreeable means, with the assistance of the Stage Horses &c. This would naturally bring her maid and Austin, and Hercules under the idea of coming home to Cook … I request that these Sentiments and this advise may be known to none but yourself and Mrs. Washington.10

Washington vastly underestimated the intelligence of the slaves. They saw right through the deception. Given that the slaves were in daily contact with free blacks and whites, information about the emancipation law came readily to hand. Some weeks after the president wrote his letter to Lear telling him to keep the plan in deep secrecy, Lear wrote to him that Hercules knew all about it:

I mentioned that Hercules was to go on to Mount Vernon.… When he was about to go, somebody, I presume, insinuated to him that the motive for sending him home … was to prevent his taking the advantage of a six months residence in this place. When he was possessed of this idea he appeared to be extremely unhappy and although he made not the least objection to going, yet, he said he was mortified to the last degree to think that a suspicion could be entertained of his fidelity or attachment to you, and so much did the poor fellows feelings appear to be touched that it left no doubt of his sincerity, and to shew him that there were no apprehensions of that kind entertained of him, Mrs. Washington told him he should not go at that time, but might remain till the expiration of six months and then go home to prepare for your arrival there.11

One deception begat another: Hercules may have been setting his masters up with his protestations of fealty. A few years later he disappeared without a trace during a return trip to Mount Vernon. Before absconding, Hercules may have sat for a portrait by Gilbert Stuart. A portrait attributed to Stuart and entitled Cook of George Washington hangs in a Spanish museum. It shows a handsome, very self-possessed dark-skinned man in a cook’s white outfit and toque. He looks every inch the culinary tyrant who could send underlings flying. The portrait offers a clue to why the Washingtons did not bring this superlative chef along with them in the first place—he was too dark. A man who looked too African would not have set the proper tone for the president’s household; but several months of having the “dirty” white Lewises in the kitchen led Washington to rethink his priorities.

The president intuitively grasped the importance of setting the right tone. He understood the strong element of theater that pervaded leadership: to be a powerful leader, one had to appear powerful. His striking physique and daunting manner lent him a personal gravity he used to great effect. Always mindful of the civilities he had been schooled in as a youth and at Williamsburg, he tempered and framed his authority in formality and ceremony, while always avoiding the royalist ostentation of old Williamsburg. Any hint of monarchy would have undermined the new republican government. Washington realized that he was creating a whole new etiquette that presidents would follow thenceforth—it was one of his burdens. “Many things which appear of little importance of themselves at the beginning may have great & durable consequences from their having been established at the commencement of a new general government,” he wrote in May 1789, a month into the presidency. One of the first questions Congress tackled was how Washington should be referred to. John Adams’s preference for “His Exalted High Mightiness” was shelved in favor of “President of the United States.” Senator Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut complained that even fire companies and cricket clubs had presidents, but it was just that kind of democratic tone that helped set this government apart from Old World monarchies.12

Washington conducted himself with a quiet dignity, and even his household furnishings reflected a modest good taste. Table ornaments for the presidential household were purchased in Paris by Gouverneur Morris, who wrote to Washington extolling the “noble Simplicity” of the items. “I think it of great importance to fix the taste of our Country properly,” he continued. “It is therefore my Wish that every Thing about you should be substantially good and majestically plain.…”13

For the task of forging a strong and effective central government, the president called upon an extraordinary number of qualified men as administrators. He was an astute judge of character and fortunate in being able to make use of the best minds of the Revolutionary generation. Having been commander of the Continental Army, Washington’s range of acquaintances was unrivaled. Since he was held in such awe he did not fear surrounding himself with strong-willed egotists. Beneath his efforts to create an effective governmental apparatus lay a deeper ambition. In a letter to Patrick Henry he wrote that he wanted to establish “an American character” that was distinct from European models, marked by independence and personal freedom.14

Washington’s ownership of slaves made him vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy from political enemies. A pamphleteer, not daring to sign his own name to an attack on the president, printed up a diatribe by a fictitious Vermonter in 1796: “Would to God! You had retired to a private station four years ago.” He derided “the great champion of American Freedom” for holding “the HUMAN SPECIES IN SLAVERY.”15

A vaguely phrased clause in the Constitution provided for the return of escaped slaves. Though the word “slavery” never appears in the Constitution (the euphemism employed was “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit”), the existing institution was recognized legally. In addition, one of the Constitutional Convention delegates from South Carolina—the strident Major Pierce Butler, a former British officer who had married into a prestigious slaveholding family—had been adamant that owners should have some legal recourse if their slaves escaped to free states. Butler’s resolution (which, again, avoided the unseemly words “slave” or “slavery”) was unanimously adopted as Section 2 of Article IV: “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party of whom such Service or Labour may be due.”16

In February 1793 President Washington signed the Fugitive Slave Act, which addressed the weakness of the Constitutional clause by setting out a precise mechanism for reclaiming escaped slaves. A slave owner, or his agent, was legally able to seize a runaway and bring him before a judge (either a federal, state, or local magistrate) in the place where he was captured. Upon proof of ownership, which was based on oral testimony or a certified affidavit, the judge would issue a document permitting the slave’s return. Anyone interfering with this process would be fined $500; in addition, he or she could be sued by the owner. By this law slaves who had escaped were fair game for slave catchers who tracked down fugitives for a price. The law was, coincidentally, a serious breach of the concept of states’ rights—states without slavery were compelled to yield to the conflicting property laws of slave states and to accept federal intrusion in the enforcement of those laws.17

The regime in the presidential mansion represented slavery at its most benign. Washington occasionally barked in rage at his slaves, but he barked at his white servants as well, and even the highest government officials shrank from him when they sensed his temper rising. There is no record of it, but it is inconceivable that anyone was ever whipped at the Philadelphia Executive Mansion, a practice that was still going on at Mount Vernon at that time. The slaves were well treated, well fed, well clothed—and Ona, Austin, and Hercules went by themselves to the theater!

The mere existence of slavery in the Executive Mansion under the first president remains a matter of great sensitivity. In Philadelphia today, the building that houses the Liberty Bell stands adjacent to the site of Washington’s residence, the last parts of which were torn down in 1951. A new visitors’ center for the Liberty Bell was planned in 2002 with its entrance on the spot where Washington housed his slaves. A historian, Edward Lawler, Jr., discovered that visitors would step on the very spot where slaves lived in order to view the Liberty Bell—a nineteenth-century symbol of abolition. An official National Park Service text describing the president’s house omitted mention of the slave quarters, since the notion of slavery did not mix well with a modern celebration of early American virtues. To protests from historians and African-American leaders, the Park Service replied that since slaves may have shared quarters with indentured servants, they thought it best to refer only to a “servants’ quarter.” But in 2003 the Park Service relented: a new design includes an outline in stones of Washington’s house and the slave quarters, and an exhibit about the first president and slavery.18

Despite their benevolent treatment in the Executive Mansion, the slaves were still slaves, and they grew restive even under a relatively light hand. The slave Paris, just a teenager, exasperated Washington by his disobedience and was sent back to Mount Vernon. Hercules’ son, Richmond, was also sent back when he was caught stealing money; Washington speculated that Richmond may have been trying to get money for a joint escape with his father. Another slave, Christopher, who knew how to read and write, was caught in an escape attempt at Mount Vernon when a note to his wife about an escape plan was discovered. All these people were among the most highly favored slaves in the Washington household.

Slave masters always worried that allowing slaves to mix with free blacks would give them the notion to escape. In the South the problem was not acute because escape was difficult in a slave society. Slaves might become insubordinate or insolent from contact with free blacks, but the incidence of actual escapes was low. Runaways had to feed themselves by stealing, which was risky; they also had trouble procuring a change of clothes. Runaway ads in newspapers often noted the clothes that slaves were last seen wearing. They had so few items of clothing that masters knew every shirt and pair of breeches a slave possessed. In the North the situation was the opposite; though slavery existed, runaways would find sympathy in the predominantly free society and support not only from free blacks but also from whites. Though escape was still difficult because slave catchers always kept an eye on stagecoaches and the docks, slaves could find temporary shelter in dozens of places until the hue and cry died down. Philadelphia’s large number of Quakers and relatively well-off free blacks gave birth to a well-developed underground, committed to abolition.

Like many masters and mistresses, the Washingtons mistook obedience for loyalty. Though Martha had a natural mistrust of most slaves, she had perfect confidence in the personal devotion of the slaves who made up her intimate circle. Perhaps assuming that Ona Judge would be delighted at the news, Martha told her that she would be bequeathed to one of her granddaughters, whom Martha loved but Ona Judge despised. Martha’s remark made clear to Judge that an emancipation would not be forthcoming at her mistress’s death. It is unlikely that the slaves had any inkling of George Washington’s earlier plans for their emancipation, but there is evidence they assumed that there was a chance they would be freed at the deaths of their master and mistress. Once Martha let slip that a division of slaves had already been laid out, however, Ona Judge knew that her fate was sealed: “I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I never should get my liberty.” New generations of Custis mistresses and masters awaited her. Judge decided to escape.

When the Washingtons told their staff that they would be returning to Mount Vernon in the spring of 1796, Ona began to put a scheme in place. Her getaway was well planned. She did not run impulsively with just the clothes on her back and no money. She packed her things, which did not arouse suspicion because the entire household was packing up. On her errands in Philadelphia, Judge had formed friendships among other African-Americans, probably including a number of free blacks.19 She planned to take refuge among these friends. Judge had help in carrying out the riskiest part of her escape, either from another Washington slave or from an outsider. It was hard enough to leave the house without notice, but doubly difficult to do so while carrying baggage. She said that someone carried “my things” out of the Executive Mansion for her. She then waited for dinner, and while the Washingtons were intent upon their meal she walked out the door. This all had to be carefully coordinated because if someone had noticed that her bags were missing it would have raised suspicion.

Sometime in May 1796, Judge vanished into the Philadelphia underground. Where she went is not known, as she never identified her helpers in the city, nor is it known precisely how long she remained in hiding there. In May or June she emerged from her hideout and made her way to the docks for the second great crisis of her escape. She could not risk tarrying about lest she be recognized. Perhaps at night, perhaps just moments before the sloop weighed anchor, she boarded the Nancy, bound for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Captain John Bowles plied the route between New Hampshire and Philadelphia every month.20 The historian Evelyn Gerson, who spent ten years researching the life of Ona Judge, speculated that she may have chosen the Nancy because Bowles may have been known to be sympathetic to runaway slaves: “most likely this intelligence flowed through the free-black community from some of Bowles’ own sailors.” At that time many of the hands aboard American ships were “Black Jacks,” African-American seamen.

The sight of Philadelphia slipping into the distance must have thrilled Ona. After a voyage of four or five days the Nancy docked at Portsmouth, and she disembarked a not-quite-free woman. She had escaped the Washingtons, but she had not escaped slavery. The institution was still legal in New Hampshire; worse, the Fugitive Slave Law allowed the Washingtons, if they wished, to dispatch a slave catcher in pursuit of her and to enlist local and state authorities to arrest her. Her best hope was to slip into anonymity. Despite the dangers, she was breathing free air; her escape had been a success; and the Washingtons had no idea where she was—no idea, that is, until one day, walking down a street in Portsmouth, she heard a voice call out, “Oney! Where in the world have you come from?”21

Through ignorance or carelessness, or perhaps overconfidence, Judge had come to the hometown of the Langdons, close friends of the president and Mrs. Washington. The voice calling out on the street was that of the Langdons’ daughter Elizabeth, a frequent visitor to the Executive Mansion, an intimate of Martha’s granddaughter Nelly Custis Lewis, who had seen Judge many times in the company of the Washingtons. Elizabeth looked up and down the street to catch sight of Mrs. Washington.

Judge kept her wits. There was no point now in lying about her escape, but she lied about her route to shield the people who had helped her, including Captain Bowles. (“I never told his name till after he died … lest they should punish him for bringing me away.”)22 To the question of where she had come from, Ona replied, “Come from New York, missis.”

Langdon could not comprehend how servant and mistress had become separated, but the truth quickly emerged in the course of this strange conversation.

“But why did you come away—how can Mrs. Washington do without you?”

“Run away, misses.”

“Run away! And from such an excellent place! Why, what could induce you? You had a room to yourself, and only light nice work to do, and every indulgence—”

“Yes—I know—but I wanted to be free, misses; wanted to learn to read and write—”

Thanks to this chance encounter, the Washingtons found out where Ona was. The president brought the matter up at the highest level of the government. After a cabinet meeting called to address a diplomatic crisis with France, Washington pulled aside his Secretary of the Treasury, Oliver Wolcott, and informed him that he had a very delicate personal problem that required the secretary’s attention, but one he could not speak of in detail in an official capacity. The following day he sent a letter to Wolcott asking him, as a favor, to write to his subordinate, the customs collector at the port of Portsmouth, to recover the slave.

The next morning he wrote to Wolcott, in a letter marked Private:

Enclosed is the name, and description of the Girl I mentioned to you last night. She has been the particular attendant on Mrs. Washington since she was ten years old; and was handy and useful to her being perfect Mistress of her needle.…

I would thank you for writing to the Collector of [Portsmouth], and him for his endeavours to recover, and send her back: What will be the best method to effect it, is difficult for me to say.… To seize, and put her on board a Vessel bound immediately to this place, or to Alexandria which I should like better, seems at first view, to be the safest and leas[t] expensive. But if she is discovered, the Collector, I am persuaded, will pursue such measures as to him shall appear best, to effect those ends; and the cost shall be re-embursed and with thanks besides.

I am sorry to give you, or any one else trouble on such a trifling occasion, but the ingratitude of the girl, who was brought up and treated more like a child than a Servant (and Mrs. Washington’s desire to recover her) ought not to escape with impunity if it can be avoided.23

Everything about this was illegal. The president had set the machinery of the federal government in motion to recover private property. The Fugitive Slave Act, which Washington had signed, required the slave owner or the owner’s representative to appear before a federal or state magistrate and provide evidence of ownership before attempting to transport a fugitive slave to another state. The property was not even his: Ona Judge was a dower slave, the property of the Custis estate. It was Martha who had set all this in motion. The president made noises that this affair was “trifling,” but it sounds as if Martha was enraged at the disloyalty of the young woman. In another context Martha had complained of the habitual ingratitude of slaves: “the Blacks are so bad in thair nature that they have not the least gratatude for the kindness that may be shewed to them.” She expected her slaves to love her, an illusion her husband did not share. Ona’s flight punctured that illusion, dealt a financial blow to the Custis estate, and threw into disarray Martha’s plans for dividing it. Ona had been pledged to a Custis heir; now that Ona was gone, the heir would have to be offered a replacement.24

At the end of the Revolution Washington had been philosophical about the loss of slaves who had reached British lines in New York. He negotiated with Carleton only under pressure. Now he was being pressured again, this time by his own wife. Politically and legally, Washington’s position was extremely delicate. He wished to do nothing to stir up the abolitionists, but in her zeal to recover the lost property, Martha was either blinded to the political realities her husband had to grapple with or indifferent to them. He had to talk her out of advertising for Ona’s recapture. She apparently did not see the damage it would do to his reputation if the president of the United States took out an ad offering a reward for the capture of a slave. To placate her, he set in motion this secret effort by federal agents to shanghai Ona Judge.

Secretary Wolcott immediately forwarded the president’s request to his collector in Portsmouth, who leaped into action. The collector was Joseph Whipple, brother of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His brother’s slave, Prince Whipple, had crossed the Delaware with Washington during the fateful attack on Trenton.

Well aware of the sensitivity of the matter, Whipple replied to his superior without alluding to specifics, “I shall with great pleasure execute the Presidents wishes in the matter.… I have just ascertained the fact that the person mentioned is in this town.” Whipple mentioned finding only one person, but Washington had hinted darkly that Judge was in the thrall of an unnamed “Seducer” who had enticed her away from Philadelphia. He had warned Wolcott to act cautiously: “If enquiries are made openly, her Seducer (for she is simple and inoffensive herself) would take the alarm, and adopt instant measures (if he is not tired of her) to secrete or remove her.”25

Whipple took up the scheme with alacrity, concocting a cover story under which he would make contact with the fugitive. Pretending that he wished to hire her for his own family, he planned to hustle her onto a ship. But something in her demeanor caused him to lay aside his plan for a moment. He was struck by her appearance and character. Instead of diligently carrying out his orders, which emanated directly from the commander in chief, he made the mistake of engaging Ona Judge in a personal conversation. Whipple found himself in the awkward position of believing her version of events, a version that directly contradicted the president’s. Even more awkward, he had to explain himself to his superior:

Having discovered her place of residence, I engaged a passage for her in a Vessel preparing to sail for Philadelphia avoiding to give alarm by calling on her until the Vessel was ready, —I then caused her to be sent for as if to be employed in my family—After a cautious examination it appeared to me that she had not been decoyed away as had been apprehended, but that a thirst for compleat freedom … had been her only motive for absconding.26

From the safety of her asylum, Ona Judge became emboldened enough to attempt something she had never dreamed of while in slavery. She tried to strike a bargain with George Washington. Perhaps Whipple persuaded her to make the offer, but it seems that she missed her home and family and was willing to return to slavery, temporarily, if she could be assured of becoming free later on, which would allow her to spend her life in Virginia as a free person. She and Whipple phrased the bargain gently, with a preamble calculated to smooth the ruffled feathers of her owners:

she expressed great affection & reverence for her Master & Mistress, and without hesitation declared her willingness to return & to serve with fidelity during the lives of the President & his Lady if she could be freed on their decease, should she outlive them; but that she should rather suffer death than return to Slavery & [be] liable to be sold or given to any other persons. —Finding this to be her disposition & conceiving it would be a pleasing circumstance to both the President & his lady should she go back without compulsion, I prevailed to her to confide in my obtaining for her the freedom she so earnestly wished for27

Whipple told Wolcott that Ona Judge had actually agreed to return to Mount Vernon on the assumption that Washington would accept the deal but that her friends in Portsmouth had quickly talked her out of it. They may have thought she was out of her mind to trade away the freedom she had already obtained. Whipple wrote, “many Slaves from the Southern States have come to Massachusetts & some to New Hampshire, either of which States they consider as an asylum; the popular opinion here in favor of universal freedom has rendered it difficult to get them back to their masters.”28

He expressed his “great regret” that he had not recovered Judge. Perhaps not expecting that his letter to Wolcott would be handed directly to the president, he also undertook to suggest that perhaps the president might consider actually obeying the law in this matter:

In the present case if the President’s servant continues inflexible & will not return voluntarily, which at present there is no prospect of, I conceive it would be the legal & most effectual mode of proceeding that a direction should come from an Officer of the President’s Household to the Attorney of the United States in New Hampshire & that he adopt such measures for returning her to her master as are authorized by the Constitution of the United States.29

Washington did not receive Whipple’s letter for several weeks, but when he did read it he wrote a blistering reply. He berated Whipple for even suggesting that a master might negotiate with a slave:

I regret that the attempt you made to restore the Girl (Oney Judge as she called herself while with us, and who, without the least provocation absconded from her Mistress) should have been attended with so little Success. To enter into such a compromise with her, as she suggested to you, is totally inadmissable, for reasons that must strike at first view: for however well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of People (if the latter was in itself practicable at this moment) it would neither be politic or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference; and thereby discontent before hand the minds of all her fellow-servants who by their steady attachments are far more deserving than herself of favor.30

In no uncertain terms he blasted Whipple for bungling the deception that would have gotten Judge on a ship; he had warned them that Judge was a slippery character: “I was apprehensive (and so informed Mr. Wolcott) that if she had any previous notice more than could be avoided of an attempt to send her back, that she would contrive to elude it.” And he was incensed that Whipple refused to believe the story about the “Seducer” and gave more credence to what a slave said than to what the president told him to believe: “Whatever she may have asserted to the contrary, there is no doubt in this family of her being seduced, and enticed off by a Frenchman, who was either really, or pretendedly deranged, and under that guise, used to frequent the family; and has never been seen here since [the] girl decamped.”31

The seducer was a phantom. Ona later said she had the help of “colored people” in Philadelphia and mentioned no other accomplice, though one could argue she was merely protecting her own reputation. However, none of the whites she encountered in New Hampshire made any mention of a Frenchman traveling with her or of any companion at all; she hid the identity of Captain Bowles to protect him, and if she had been traveling with a Frenchman, Bowles would have had nothing to fear, because he could plausibly say that he had given legal passage to a male traveler who had a servant with him. Whipple stated plainly that “she had not been decoyed away.” In a matter of hours after receiving his first instructions, Whipple had been able to track her down and identify her place of residence. If his network of sources enabled him almost instantly to uncover the hiding place of an obscure servant girl who was intent on not being discovered, his sources certainly could have rooted out a traveling Frenchman. But Whipple found no trace of the mysterious seducer.32

Gerson found that the story of the French seducer resembled the plot of a best-selling melodramatic novel of the time, Charlotte Temple, by Susanna Rowson, a well-known actress of the Philadelphia stage. As described by Gerson, Charlotte Temple “chronicles the life of a 15-year-old English girl named Charlotte, who encouraged by her scheming French governess,… decides to leave the protection of her devoted parents to elope with a British soldier named Montraville. Shortly after their arrival in America, Montraville impregnates the protagonist and then discards her for another woman.” It is doubtful that the president had the time or the interest to read steamy novels, but someone in his family may have been familiar with the plot of Charlotte Temple and fed Washington the details he put into his letters. Washington never said that he saw the deranged Frenchman with his own eyes; he relied upon what “the family” told him. It was not he but “the family” that had no doubt about the Frenchman’s existence. He did not by nature assert as fact something he could not personally vouch for.33

The source of this fictional Frenchman was probably Martha, just as she was the prime instigator of the campaign to get Ona Judge back. Washington repeatedly stated this; he, however, may have been inclined to let Ona Judge go. Recapturing her also might entail a nightmare of political turmoil, but Martha insisted.

The Frenchman was a very convenient fiction because the president worried that recovering Judge would be complicated by a certain highly uncomfortable possibility: he heard that Ona might be pregnant. At the end of his first letter to Whipple, Washington confided this fear: “it is not unlikely that she may … be in a state of pregnancy.” Dragging an expectant mother, against her will, onto a ship bound for the slave states would arouse a hurricane of protest in the North, so the president was taking an enormous political risk to placate his wife. The scandal might be lessened if the Washingtons could put out the story that Judge was the victim of a half-mad French seducer, but they actually suspected something worse. If Ona was indeed pregnant, the father, the actual “Seducer,” might have been a member of Martha’s family. Around the same time that Judge disappeared abruptly from Philadelphia, the president’s secretary also vanished. He was Bartholomew “Bat” Dandridge, Jr., Martha’s nephew. The dual disappearances sparked rumors about an affair between Dandridge and Judge, rumors that reached the ear of John Adams in Massachusetts. He wrote in his diary in July: “Anecdotes of Dandridge, and Mrs. W’s Negro Woman. Both disappeared—never heard of—know not where they are.”34

The Washingtons were not sure what to think but apparently had reason to believe the rumors might actually be true. They tried to find not only Ona but the missing nephew. The president’s inquiries finally reached Bat, who had gone to ground in Virginia. He wrote an explanatory letter to Washington in May, saying that he had headed to the country to rest his nerves. The president’s reply to this letter is lost, but Washington must have raised the question of a possible illicit romance because on June 1, Dandridge wrote to him from the Greenbrier resort: “My quitting [your service] was not from any unworthy motives.” The Washingtons may not have believed Bat, who was demonstrably erratic; months after receiving his denial of any “unworthy motive” they remained convinced that Ona had been seduced in Philadelphia and would by then be noticeably pregnant. They needed a cover story.35

Pregnant or not, Ona Judge had to be recovered. The president instructed his subordinate to use “compulsory means” but to act in secret—“I do not mean … that such violent measures should be used as would excite a mob or a riot … or even uneasy Sensations in the Minds of well disposed Citizens.” If there was no chance of handling the matter quietly, he told Whipple, “I would forego her Services altogether.” He emphasized the need for speed and deception, and implied once more that the person behind this operation was not he but his wife: “The less is said beforehand, and the more celerity is used in the act of shipping her when an opportunity presents, the better chance Mrs. Washington (who is desirous of receiving her again) will have to be gratified.”36

It is one thing to have the president angry with you, but it is worse to make an enemy of the president’s wife. Apparently, word of Martha’s personal involvement in the case reached Whipple, perhaps through the Langdons, since the hapless civil servant apologized profusely to Mrs. Washington in his response to the president, emphasizing that her suffering had become his: “I sincerely lament the ill success of my endeavours to restore your Lady her servant on the request of Mr Wolcott—It had indeed become a subject of Anxiety to me on an Idea that her services were very valuable to her mistress and not readily to be replaced.”37

Having made his apologies, Whipple went on to say, in the gentlest terms, that he would do what he could but that the president should not expect a quick resolution. Stating that “a Servant (in her employment especially) returning voluntarily [is] of infinitely more value in the estimation of her employer than one taken forceably like a felon to punishment,” Whipple promised that he would dispatch Judge to Virginia “if it be practicable without the consequences which you except—that of exciting a riot or a mob—or creating uneasy sensations in the minds of well disposed Citizens.” Unfortunately, he continued, “At present there is no Vessel bound for Alexandria or Philadelphia.”38

Whipple also conveyed a startling bit of news. Judge was getting married. “I have deferred answering your letter some days to find out the present retreat of the Girl and yesterday discovered that she was lodged at a Free-Negro’s—that she is published for marriage agreeable to our laws in such cases to a Mulatto.”39 Had Judge been pregnant from an encounter six months earlier in Philadelphia it would have been obvious by then, but Whipple made no mention of it. He did not even bring up the story of the deranged French seducer.

So eager was Whipple to prove his loyalty and efficiency that he ordered a court officer to delay the paperwork for Ona’s marriage. Whipple wanted Judge to remain unencumbered, for if she had a legal husband, a free man, her extraction would be greatly complicated. Undeterred, and adept at evading the machinations of the authorities, Ona simply took out a license in a neighboring jurisdiction. She and John Staines, a sailor, were married in January 1797 by the same clergyman who had married Washington’s private secretary Tobias Lear. Later that year, or in 1798, Ona gave birth to a daughter.

The marriage of Ona Judge would seem to bring her story to a happy ending. Washington’s biographers have written that the president and his wife resigned themselves to Ona’s loss, but that was not the case. A Washington letter that was not published until 1999 reveals that Martha’s anger over Ona Judge did not subside and that she talked her husband into launching another effort to retrieve her.

In July 1799, Martha’s nephew, Burwell Bassett, Jr., came to Mount Vernon for dinner and mentioned that he would soon be making a trip to Portsmouth. About two weeks later, Washington wrote to Bassett and outlined the story. He said that Ona Judge had once expressed a willingness to return and asked Bassett to try to bring her back. Washington stressed in his letter that he was not promising Judge freedom. He also indicated he was no longer willing to use coercion or force: “I do not however wish you to undertake anything … unpleasant or troublesome,” but if Bassett could bring about Judge’s return “by easy … & proper means … it would be a pleasing circumstance to your Aunt.”40

Burwell Bassett suddenly turned up at Ona Judge’s house in the fall of 1799 like an apparition out of a nightmare. Her husband was away at sea; she was alone with her baby, and completely vulnerable if the Southerner chose to invoke the Fugitive Slave Law and summon the authorities. But the Virginian was all unctuousness: if Ona would come back she would be forgiven for her flight and she would be free. Ona replied to him: “I am free now and choose to remain so.” Her response seemed to satisfy Bassett, who left as swiftly as he had come.

Bassett was staying at the home of Senator John Langdon, whose daughter Elizabeth had first stumbled across Ona and alerted the Washingtons. The president had stayed with the Langdons during his northern tour of the states in November 1789, and Langdon had dined with Washington in New York in January 1790. (At that dinner or on another social occasion, Langdon may have seen Ona in the company of the first lady.) That evening in Portsmouth, Bassett revealed to the senator that his plan had a second part: in the event Ona refused to return willingly, he had “orders to bring her and her infant child by force.”

Here the story takes a dramatic turn. By the inflexible law of slavery, Ona’s child, though born in New Hampshire, was a slave because her mother was still legally a slave. Despite his long friendship with the Washingtons, Senator Langdon was appalled. While Bassett was dining, Langdon slipped away and sent a message to Ona that she was in grave danger and must flee immediately with her child. For the second time, Ona Judge escaped slavery. She hastily packed up a few necessities, scurried from her house, and hired a wagon and driver to take her eight miles inland to the town of Greenland, where she hid in the home of a free black family named Warner. Bassett departed for Virginia without his quarry.41

Bassett had disobeyed Washington’s specific instructions on several counts. He lied to Ona Judge when he said that Washington had promised emancipation if she returned, and also in telling Langdon that he had “orders to bring her and her infant child by force.” It is difficult to conceive that Bassett would defy the explicit instructions of George Washington—unless he had received different instructions from his aunt.

Just a few weeks before Washington dispatched Bassett on this mission to recover Ona Judge, he had written the will providing for the emancipation of his own slaves. This is not one of those curious, charmingly ironic “contradictions” that we can write off to the paradox of slavery. In the Ona Judge affair George Washington was acting against his own solemnly stated will. The fact that he would try to recover, on his wife’s behalf, a woman who had been in freedom for more than three years and who had married a free man, shows how sharply divided George and Martha had become on the subject of slavery.

*   *   *

Ona Judge made a significant remark to Whipple. She told him that she would rather suffer death than return to slavery and be liable to be sold. It would seem that Judge was mistaken, because she had to know that Washington was firmly set against selling slaves. But Judge had a network of connections that could rapidly bring news from the South, and in the spring before she fled she obviously had received word of events that were not set down in Washington’s records. At the time of Ona’s escape, the recent marriage of a Custis heir had set in motion the legal transfer of the assets of the Custis estate from one generation to the next. On the Custis plantations and at Mount Vernon, slaves were being counted up and some of them moved off, never to be seen again.