Washington [524]
When Washington heard about the bargaining, he dismissed such negotiations as “totally inadmissible.”56 He found himself tangled in the coils of a terrible contradiction: just as he meditated the emancipation of all his slaves, he was trying to return one of them to bondage. Abashed, he told Whipple that “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 political or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow servants, who by their steady attachments are far more deserving than herself of favor.”57 In other words, Washington insisted that, as long as slavery existed, he must obey its cruel logic. He and Martha clung to the self-serving tale that Judge had “been seduced and enticed off by a Frenchman” who had roguishly sated his lust and then discarded her.58 Unwilling to compromise, Washington demanded that Judge either return voluntarily and “be forgiven by her mistress” or be put “on board a vessel bound either to Alexandria or the Federal City,” conveniently bypassing Philadelphia.59 In a telling concession, Washington instructed Whipple to forget about capturing Judge if forcibly abducting her served to “excite a mob or riot.”60 Shortly to leave office, Washington wanted no incident that might tarnish his departure, especially since he feared that Judge might be pregnant, which would only augment public sympathy for her escape. The evocation of a possible mob or riot suggests how abolitionist sentiment had spread in the New England states, so that Washington defied it at his peril.
Ona Judge never returned to slavery or the South. In late December Joseph Whipple informed Washington that she would shortly get married, making a mockery of Washington’s scenario of a cunning Frenchman who had duped and impregnated her. That January she married a “colored sailor” named John Staines, and about a year later they had a daughter, the first of three children, proving that Judge had not been pregnant at the time of her flight. Despite this news, Martha refused to let the matter drop. During the summer of 1799, when she learned that her nephew, Burwell Bassett, Jr., was traveling to Portsmouth, the news led to one last attempt to recapture Judge. While instructing Bassett to shy away from doing anything “unpleasant or troublesome,” Washington told him that if Judge could be brought back by “easy . . . and proper means . . . it would be a pleasing circumstance to your aunt.”61 Bassett located Judge, who was now a mother, and assured her that no punishment would occur if she returned. Apparently she had heard rumors that Bassett would seize her and her child by force, if necessary, and she would not be coaxed back into bondage. “I am free now and choose to remain so,” she declared, settling the matter for good.62
The other slave who shocked the Washingtons by his disappearance was Hercules, who was owned directly by the president. We recall that he had noisily protested his loyalty to Washington over the issue of the six-month slave law in Pennsylvania. Hercules oversaw a mixed staff of slaves and indentured servants who worked in a separate kitchen building, attached to the executive residence by an underground passage. Being top chef for the president carried high status, and the dandyish Hercules, who was partial to black silk waistcoats, coats with velvet collars, cocked hats, and gold-headed canes, relished his eminence around town. He also appreciated