Washington [522]
During their Philadelphia years, George and Martha Washington must have wondered how long their slaves imported from Mount Vernon would remain loyal. First there had been the flap over the local law that liberated slaves after six months of continuous residence. Slave masters often assumed that slaves brought north and exposed to free blacks were forever “tainted” by the experience; Washington subscribed to the view that otherwise happy, contented slaves could be “tampered with and seduced” by meddlesome northern abolitionists.43 Even though Washington favored abolition in theory, he thought that as long as slavery existed, his slaves ought to cooperate in exchange for the food and shelter he provided.
Washington permitted his household slaves a modicum of freedom to roam the city, sample its pleasures, and even patronize the theater. Household accounts for June 1792 disclose expense money doled out for “Austin, Hercules & Oney to go to the play.”44 In the spring of 1793 two of Martha’s maids were given money to attend “tumbling feats,” followed by money to view a local circus. The two slaves most favored with such treats and held in highest esteem by the Washingtons were Ona (or Oney) Judge, Martha’s maid, and Hercules, the master chef. One wonders whether their fleeting experiences of freedom in Philadelphia whetted their appetites for permanent freedom. Washington must have known that their contacts with the large community of free blacks in the capital could only strengthen their desire to throw off the yoke of slavery.
A young mulatto woman, light-skinned and freckled, Ona Judge was the daughter of Andrew Judge, an indentured servant at Mount Vernon, and a slave named Betty. She was Martha’s personal maid and widely known as her pet. Each morning Ona brushed Martha’s hair, laid out her clothing, and assisted her with household sewing. In the president’s words, Ona Judge was “handy and useful to [Martha], being perfect mistress of her needle.”45 Naive about the true feelings of her slaves, Martha assumed that, because Ona enjoyed a relatively privileged status as her personal chambermaid, she would never rebel against her bondage. In 1796 Ona, then about twenty-two, realized that the Washingtons might soon return to Mount Vernon for good, eliminating any possibility of a flight to freedom. As if the young slave would be thrilled by the news, Martha mentioned to Ona one day that she planned to bequeath her to her granddaughter Elizabeth, who was notorious for her grim moods. Far from feeling flattered, Ona felt deep terror at the prospect, later saying with disdain that “she was determined not to be her slave.”46 Since “she did not want to be a slave always,” she later recalled, “she supposed if she went back to Virginia, she would never have a chance to escape.”47
As the Washingtons got ready for a return trip to Mount Vernon in May 1796, Ona Judge set in motion her scheme to escape. While servants boxed belongings for the trip, she used the preparations as camouflage to gather her things, and as the Washingtons dined one evening, she slipped out of the executive mansion and blended into the free black community. After lying low for a month, she sailed north aboard a ship called the Nancy, staffed by a large contingent of black sailors, and eventually wound up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
When the Washingtons discovered the escape, they were convinced that Judge would have fled only if she had been cajoled by a wily seducer. They flattered themselves into thinking that, as a supposedly contented slave, Judge would never have pined for freedom if some intriguing fellow had not planted the forbidden idea. They could not conceive of