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Title: Escaping Washington for Freedom
Author: CrimethInc.
Date: February 19, 2018
Language: en
Topics: slavery, history, United States of America
Source: Retrieved on 16th June 2021 from https://crimethinc.com/2018/02/19/escaping-washington-for-freedom-lets-not-celebrate-george-washington-but-the-slaves-who-escaped-him

CrimethInc.

Escaping Washington for Freedom

President’s Day, a federal holiday, observes George Washington’s

birthday on February 22. Yet as a slave owner and profiteer on others’

servitude, George Washington is a poor exemplar of the struggle for

freedom. Rather than looking to him for a model representing resistance

to tyranny, let’s remember the slaves and indentured servants who sought

to escape from him and the Native Americans who defended themselves

against his attacks.

Washington is celebrated as the father of the American Revolution,

itself the blueprint for countless subsequent struggles for independence

and democracy. We can’t grasp the meaning of the American Revolution

without recalling that George Washington was one of the wealthiest

people in North America. Even now, he remains among the wealthiest

presidents in US history, with holdings that would be worth about half a

billion dollars today. Of all subsequent presidents, only Donald Trump

is wealthier.[1]

As Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh describe in The Many-Headed Hydra,

the American Revolution began in the 1760s with a series of protests and

riots involving sailors, slaves, stevedores, working women, and other

marginalized people. Networked in a global ferment involving mutinies,

slave revolts, and strikes, these disturbances threatened to undermine

the entire imperial order. Sensing that the empire was overextended and

upheaval was inevitable, the colonial elite set themselves at the head

of the rebellion, using it to free themselves of the financial burden of

supporting the Crown. George Washington and his colleagues were not the

initiators of the revolt, but the ones who coopted and contained it—a

lesson about what happens when revolutionaries seek to gain legitimacy

and resources through alliances with the upper class. Thus the

Revolutionary War of the 1770s gave way to the American

Counterrevolution of the 1780s and 1790s, climaxing with the

establishment of the Federal Government, the Constitution, the Fugitive

Slave Act, the Northwest Territory, and the Riot Act.[2] Meet the new

boss, same as the old boss.

From this vantage point, the apparently “individual” rebellions of

slaves who set out to secure their own liberty compare favorably with a

formal political revolution that did little to substantively alter the

circumstances of the most oppressed while defusing social tensions for

several generations. From their acts of defiance, whole Maroon and

Quilombo communities arose in permanent resistance to white supremacy in

both its monarchist and democratic variants. Just as the Russian

Revolution might have turned out better if the working class had not

permitted the Bolsheviks to seize the reins, the American Revolution

could eventually have established a Quilombo the size of a continent had

the revolutionaries deposed white supremacists like George Washington as

ruling class interlopers.

It’s much easier to study the Great Men of History than to learn about

those who set out to get free of their authority. Here, we present some

context from Washington’s life and the little we know about the slaves

and indentured servants who sought to escape him. Much of this is drawn

from the materials in the Founding Fathers database and the Geography of

Slavery in Virginia archive. We hope this text will encourage others to

uncover all the buried histories of the underclass—those who have been

not only forgotten but also erased.

“It was the sense of all his neighbors that he treated them with more

severity than any other man… The first time I walked with General

Washington among his [sic] negroes, when he spoke to them, he amazed me

by the utterance of his words. He spoke as differently as if he had been

quite another man, or had been in anger.”

-Richard Parkinson, A Tour in America, in 1798, 1799, and 1800

Some Background

In 1646, at the end of the Third Powhatan War, all the Powhatan males in

their capital village over the age of eleven were deported to Tangier

Island as slaves. The Rappahannock River became the dividing line

between white settlers and Native Americans. Native Americans were not

to go south of it on pain of death; European colonists were not to cross

north of it except to avoid bad weather or gather wood.

Two years later, the restriction on colonial expansion was lifted, and

George Washington’s great-great-grandfather, Nathaniel Pope, asserted

ownership of more than a thousand acres near the land that was to become

known as Pope’s Creek, Washington’s childhood home.

This anecdote illustrates the deep roots of the class and race

privileges that formed the foundation of George Washington’s life.

Washington was descended from a long line of colonial authorities:

planters, lawyers, politicians, sheriffs—and slave owners. All of these

professions were interchangeable and interdependent, forming the

constellation from which the North American ruling class arose.

In 1738, when George Washington was six years old, his father, Augustine

Washington, placed an advertisement seeking the capture of a servant of

his who had run away in company with other servants:

“RAN away from Capt. McCarty’s Plantation, on Pope’s Creek, in

Westmoreland County, a Servant Man belonging to me the Subscriber, in

Prince William County; his Christian Name is John, but Sirname forgot,

is pretty tall, a Bricklayer by Trade, and is a Kentishman; he came into

Patowmack, in the Forward, Capt. Major, last Year; is suppos’d to have

the Figure of our Saviour mark’d with Gunpowder on one of his Arms. He

went away about the 20^(th) of April last, in Company with three other

Servants, viz. Richard Martin, is a middle siz’d Man, fresh colour’d

about 22 Years of Age, and is a Sailor; had on a blew Jacket. Richard

Kibble, is a middle siz’d young Fellow, has several Marks made with

Gunpowder on his Arms, but particularly one on his Breast, being the

Figures of a Woman and a Cherry-Tree, and is a Carpenter by Trade; he

wore a blew grey Coat with a large Cape, a Snuff-colour’d Wastecoat, and

Buckskin Breeches. Edward Ormsby, is a small thin Fellow, of a swarthy

Complexion, and is a Taylor by Trade; has a Hesitation or Stammering in

his Speech, and being an Irishman, has a good deal of the Brogue. They

went away from Capt. Aylett’s Landing, on Patowmack, in a small Boat,

and are suppos’d to be gone towards the Eastern-shore, or

North-Carolina. Whoever will secure the said Bricklayer, so that he may

be had again, shall have Five Pounds Reward, besides what the Law

allows, paid by Augustine Washington.”

-The Virginia Gazette, June 9, 1738

The masters of these runaways, the McCarthys, Balls, and Washingtons,

were all cousins. According to an advertisement placed the previous

year, the Irishman, Edward Ormsby, had already attempted to escape “in

Company with a Mulatto Woman, known by the Name of Anne Relee, alias

Bush; who being whipt last Court held for the County of King George, may

possibly have the Marks on her Back.”

On one side, we see the Washington family, already the representatives

of economic power, political legitimacy, and white supremacy; on the

other side, a multi-ethnic network of rebels and criminals, the class of

people who sparked the revolution.

Though these interracial alliances had been forming since the imposition

of racial hierarchy in the 1600s, friendships like that of Edward

Ormsby, the Irishman, Anne “Bush” Relee, the “Mulatto Woman,” and John,

the Kentishman, were reaching a boiling point by the end of the

1730s.[3] To quote The Many-Headed Hydra again:

“During these years a furious barrage of plots, revolts, and war ripped

through colonial Atlantic societies like a hurricane. No respecter of

national or imperial boundaries, this cycle of rebellion slashed through

British, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Danish territories, which stretched

from the northern reaches of South America through the West Indies to

the southern colonies and then the port cities of North America. Most of

these events took place in plantation regions and were led by African

Americans, but other areas (such as New York) and other actors (such as

the Irish) were also involved. The magnitude of the upheaval was, in

comparative terms, extraordinary, encompassing more than eighty separate

cases of conspiracy, revolt, mutiny, and arson—a figure probably six or

seven times greater than the number of similar events that occurred in

either the dozen years before 1730 or the dozen after 1742.”

This was the context in which George Washington grew up. Roles based in

race, gender, and nationality were being imposed from the top down by

means of laws, religion, and brute force while the rabble were pushing

back from below by working slow, running away, malingering, plotting,

hiding out, stealing, sharing, and carrying out frontal attacks on the

owning class. Over time, through the medium of storytelling, the tactics

and strategies of individual rebels became working class traditions and

customs. Sailors like Richard Martin, the aforementioned John’s fellow

runaway, played an important role as propagandists, as their profession

took them all over the colonies and beyond.

As a young boy, George Washington was indoctrinated to take for granted

the distinctions between classes and the suffering inflicted on those

beneath his station. He would have heard about servants escaping from

his father. He also lived in proximity to indentured servants like Mary

Monroe “Mol” Bowden.

Born in 1730, at age seven Mary Bowden was indentured for thirty years

to George Washington’s father. Her only crime was being the daughter of

a mixed-race indentured servant, Mary Hilliard, and William Monroe Jr.,

an ancestor of President James Monroe. At the age of two, Mary Hilliard

had been awarded as an indentured servant to William Monroe senior and

subsequently bore his son’s child. She mothered several more children,

all of whom were indentured at birth to men of George Washington’s

social class.[4]

George Washington was five years old when Mary “Mol” Bowden entered the

Washington household. With the servant’s quarter immediately adjacent to

the main house, Mol and George must have known each other and may have

played together. When Washington’s father died in 1743, Washington’s

half-brother Augustine Jr. inherited the right to control Mary “Mol”

Bowden’s life. She did not passively accept this state of affairs, as we

shall see below.

George Washington’s Youth

In 1749, at the age of seventeen, Washington began a career as a land

surveyor. His family connections immediately secured him high-paying

work as the official surveyor for the newly established Culpeper County.

One of his chief employers was the Ohio Company, the leading

Anglo-American entity pushing for the colonization and exploitation of

the Ohio River Valley. His half-brothers Lawrence and Augustine Jr. were

founding members.

Etymologically, “survey” derives from Latin roots meaning “to look

over,” just as “surveillance” derives from Latin meaning “to watch

over.” The role of surveyors like Washington was to divide the land of

so-called North America into privatized properties within a matrix of

control—an essential step in the genocide inflicted on Native Americans

and the enclosure of the commons in North America.

In winter 1751, Mary Monroe “Mol” Bowden escaped from Augustine

Washington Jr. While Washington was mapping the region, she joined

countless others in taking advantage of the friction between map and

territory to make a break for freedom. She remained at liberty for five

months, but was eventually caught and returned to Washington’s brother

for a reward of 180 pounds of tobacco. In punishment, an additional year

was added to Mary’s 30-year indenture.

In the winter of 1753–1754, Washington went from surveying lands for the

Ohio Company to leading a military expedition for them to secure the

Ohio River Valley from the French and their Native allies. In the course

of this mission, the Seneca leader Tanacharison dubbed Washington “Town

Destroyer.” The title itself had originally been given to Washington’s

great-grandfather, John Washington, who had killed six Native American

leaders gathered for peace talks in the 1670s. Living up to his lineage,

George Washington and his colleagues ambushed and killed a group of

French soldiers. The French subsequently claimed the officers had been

operating in a diplomatic capacity. In response, the French captured

Washington and sent him home in defeat, where he was stripped of his

rank and resigned. Washington’s rash behavior helped to trigger the

French-Indian War, which produced the global Seven Years War.

In the subsequent hostilities, Washington complained about the

insubordination of the militiamen under his command:

“In all things I meet with the greatest opposition no orders are obey’d

but what a Party of Soldier’s or my own drawn Sword Enforces; without

this a single horse for the most urgent occasion cannot be had, to such

a pitch has the insolence of these People arrivd by having every point

hitherto submitted to them; however, I have given up none where his

Majestys Service requires the Contrary, and where my proceedings are

justified by my Instruction’s, nor will I, unless they execute what they

threaten, i.e., ‘to blow out my brains.’”

Even in the midst of war, ordinary British colonists did not welcome the

leadership of representatives of the ruling class like George

Washington. The threat they faced from conflict with Native Americans

was not mitigated by the governance of such colonial authorities, but

exacerbated by it.

Washington Becomes a Planter and Politician

In January 1756, Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis, a wealthy

widow from the ruling class. Martha’s father, John Dandridge, was a

British immigrant who owned Virginia land and about twenty slaves.

During Martha’s youth, her father had apparently fathered a child, Ann,

with one of his slaves, a woman of African and Ani-Yun-Wiya/Cherokee

descent. Ann was forced to follow Martha from the Dandridges’ home to

Custis’s home and then to Washington’s.

Martha joined George Washington at Mt. Vernon, a few dozen miles from

Pope’s Creek. Washington became a planter and politician. Thanks to

Martha’s wealth, he added tens of thousands of acres to his land

holdings and expanded the number of slaves in his captivity from 50 to

over 300. Without this boost in property—both land and human—Washington

never would have been able to achieve the financial, social, and

political status he did. He probably never would have been president.

Around the same time, Mary “Mol” Bowden attempted to flee once again.

This time, she succeeded in getting away from Popes’ Creek for two years

before being recaptured. When she was taken to court in August 1758, six

years and six months were added to her indenture in punishment. She was

45 when her indenture expired, having spent her entire life up to that

point in servitude—the only exception being the years of freedom she won

by taking flight.

On July 10, 1759, John Winter, an indentured convict hired out to paint

Washington’s house in Mt. Vernon, ran off after getting £5 but only

doing part of the work. Washington recorded that “before he had near

finishd Painting my House [Winter] Stole a good deal of my Paint & Oyl

and apprehensive of Justice ran off.” John Winter’s master, John

Fendell, ran the following advertisement in the Maryland Gazette:

“Ran away from the Subscriber, a Convict Servant Man named John Winter,

a very compleat House Painter; he can imitate Marble or mahogany very

exactly, and can paint Floor Cloths as neat as any imported from

Britain, The Time of his going off is uncertain, as he was hired to a

Gentleman in Virginia who can give no Account of the Time. The last Work

he did was a House for Col. Washington near Alexandria.”

As a convict servant, John was punished, like Mol, simply for being born

into the wrong class. When the commons of Ireland and Britain were

enclosed in the 1600s, vast numbers of peasants were forced off of the

land they had shared for generations. Centuries-long traditions of

subsistence farming, wood gathering, medicine growing, animal herding,

and kinship were destroyed as Britain’s poor were driven into Britain’s

nascent cities—which became open-air prisons. Life before the enclosures

was hardly perfect, but afterwards it became impossible. Those who

refused to leave their land were charged with trespassing and loitering,

punishable by servitude or death. Those who refused to work in the

cities’ sweatshops, foundries, or mines were charged with

vagrancy—punishable by servitude or death. And those who continued to

gather food or firewood like their ancestors or who stole out of

desperation were charged with theft—all punishable by servitude and

death.

The first generations of servants to be spared the gallows in London

found a slower death in Virginia, where mortality rates were

astronomic.[5] By the 1750s, the conditions were not as catastrophic,

but they remained miserable. We can see why people like John Winter

chose the dignity of the fugitive over the life of the servant.

On April 14, 1760, a slave Washington described in his journal as

“Boson” ran away from Washington’s home at Mt. Vernon. He was caught and

returned on April 18. Boson was likely whipped, deprived rations, or

“smoked” in retaliation. “Smoking” involved suspending a slave in an

active smokehouse or forcing him to dig a shallow hole big enough for

himself to fit. Dried grass, leaves, and stalks were placed over the

slave and lit on fire. As the plant matter burned, the slave was

deprived of oxygen and showered with tiny embers. This practice was so

well established by the 1820s, that Missouri overseers called it

“Virginia play.” Knowing the punishments he risked and the separation

from his loved ones should he succeed, it speaks to the severity of Mt.

Vernon slave life and the courage of Boson that he chose to make another

run for it that summer. Sadly, Boson was captured and returned again on

August 24, 1760.

In August 1761, four slaves whose names are recorded as Peros, Jack,

Neptune, and Cupid fled one of Washington’s plantations together.

Washington bought an advertisement offering a ransom for their return,

describing the fugitives and asserting that

“The two last of these Negroes were bought from an African Ship in

August 1759, and talk very broken and unintelligible English; the second

one, Jack, is Countryman to those, and speaks pretty good English,

having been several Years in the Country. The other, Peros, speaks much

better than either, indeed has little of his Country Dialect left, and

is esteemed a sensible judicious Negro. As they went off without the

least Suspicion, Provocation, or Difference with any Body, or the least

angry Word or Abuse from their Overseers, tis supposed they will hardly

lurk about in the Neighbourhood, but steer some direct Course (which

cannot even be guessed at) in Hopes of an Escape.”

A record of Washington’s personal servants and slaves published in 1762

lists 71 people in thrall to the man we celebrate today as a hero of

liberty. These were some of the people whose labor built Washington’s

fortune:

“A List of Tythables in Fairfax County—given into Captn Daniel

McCarty—June 9^(th) 1762—viz.1 George Washington Ho. Servants: Thomas

Bishop, Breechy, Schomberg, Jack, Doll, Jenny, Betty, Phillis, Moll,

Sall, Kate. Carpenters: Turnr Crump, Anthony, Will, Morris, George,

Michael, Tom, Sam, Ned. Smiths: Peter, London. Miller: George. Ditcher:

Robt Haims. Ho. House: Burgs Mitchell, Jack, Jack, Jack, Ned, James,

Charles, Davy. Dogue Run: John Alton, Peros, Will, Cæsar, Troy,

Stafford, Betty, Sarah, Sue, Lucy. Creek Plann: Josias Cook, Matt,

Cupid, Will, Jenny, Kitty. Muddy hole: Edwd Violette, Grig, Will,

Jupiter, Essex, Sam, Betty, Ruth, Hannah, Kate, Phœbe. River Plann: Saml

Johnson [Jr.], Tom, Ben, George, Robin, Nat, Peg, Murria, Clœ, Flora,

Doll—GW. In all—71”

Meanwhile, following France’s loss of lands between the Appalachian

Mountains and Mississippi River, Anglo-American settlers begin to stream

into the Ohio River Valley. An inter-tribal Native alliance arose

involving members of the Odawas, Anishinaabeg (Ojibwas), Neshnabé

(Potawatomis), Wendat (Hurons), Myaamiaki (Miamis), Waayaahtanwa (Weas),

Kiikaapoa (Kickapoos), Mascoutens, Peeyankihšiaki (Piankashaws), Lenni

Lenape (Delawares) Shawnees, Wyandots, Mingos, and Onöndowá’ga (Seneca).

Hostilities broke out in 1763 with an uprising known as Pontiac’s

Rebellion, named for Pontiac, an Odawa leader. This stalled colonial

expansion and forced the British to modify their policies, albeit at a

high cost of lives.

Shortly after the uprising began, King George III issued his Royal

Proclamation of 1763, forbidding British subjects from settling the

newly-acquired lands. Though the proclamation was not related to the

uprising, American colonists imagined it to be a result of it—adding to

tensions between colonists, Native Americans, and the British Crown.

At that time, Washington was serving as a representative in the House of

Burgesses for Frederick County. As the British imposed taxes on the

American colonies to pay the costs of the military operations that

expanded the territory that Washington and others were colonizing,

Washington became increasingly upset with British rule. In 1764, the

House sent the British Parliament a letter written by Thomas Jefferson

complaining that “the inhabitants of the colonies are the slaves of the

Britons from whom they are descended.”

Jefferson made no mention of the irony that he himself had fathered

slaves whom he kept in bondage. This contradiction emerged again and

again throughout the American Revolution. When the ruling class thought

themselves to be treated unfairly, they complained that they were being

treated like slaves; yet those who owned slaves always insisted that

they treated their slaves so well that the latter had no objection to

slavery. During the war of 1812, newspapers once again complained that

American POWs were being treated worse than slaves.

In fact, many of the costs of establishing the empire were not imposed

on those who benefitted from it, like George Washington and Thomas

Jefferson, but on ordinary people. Sailors, who were forced to perform

manual labor similar to that imposed on chattel slaves, subjected to

harsh punishments, and received little pay, were strongly affected by

the new Stamp Act. The few goods they were permitted to take from port

to port to sell on their own time were subject to new taxes.

Consequently, they led some of the fiercest resistance to these taxes.

At the same time, Washington was gathering slaves from the estates of

the investors in the Dismal Swamp Company for the purpose of draining

the Great Dismal Swamp. This was another stage in the surveying and

pacification of the unruly terrain of North America.

Starting in the 1600s, Native Americans, black people, and unruly whites

used the murky swamp as a refuge from British settlements. By the 1800s,

thousands of mostly African-American maroons inhabited the high and dry

parts of the swamp, known as mesic islands. Self-sufficiency, barter

with the outside world, and raids on nearby plantations kept the maroons

housed, fed, and moderately comfortable. Numerous attacks against the

planter class were conceived in the swamp and carried out from it. Here,

the collective acts of individual runaways became a communal force.

Today, Donald Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” continues George

Washington’s legacy. Masking his actions as a rebellion against the

powerful, he aims to carry out ecological devastation and crack down on

targeted communities in pursuit of his own financial gain.

Knowing that the work would be grueling, possibly fatal, and the

conditions horrible, investors contributed the slaves they considered

“least valuable”—54 slaves all together. For his part, Washington

selected two people from Mt. Vernon, Jack and Caesar, then bought four

more from an estate sale: Harry, Topsom, Nan, and a child named Toney.

Harry was likely born around 1740 near the Gambia River in West Africa.

Kidnapped and forced across the Atlantic, Harry survived the grueling

conditions of the Middle Passage that took the lives of millions,

arriving in Virginia around 1761. Thompson, Nan, and Toney may also have

been African-born.

Despite the investors’ low opinion of the people they forced to dig and

ditch the swamp, these slaves not only survived but repeatedly escaped

over the following years. The other acts of rebellion they committed are

lost to history. Those must have been considerable, however, in view of

the courage it took to risk their lives to escape.

In September 1764, a slave whose name is recorded as Breechy fled from

Mt. Vernon. Born around 1740, Breechy had experienced excruciating chest

pains and fever during February 1760, requiring bed rest and doctor’s

visits. He was given a leather knee brace too during the summer of 1764,

presumably from the grueling farm labor. Breechy was captured and

returned December 19 by “Christmas (Criemus) Meekins (Meakens) of New

Kent County.” Breechy was listed in one of Washington’s last lists of

slaves in 1799.

On April 10, 1766, Washington paid a bill to a Maryland prison where one

of his slaves was housed, a person whose name is recorded as Cloe. At

this time, jails often served as an extension of household authority: if

a wife, minor, slave, servant, or apprentice was misbehaving and the

head of the household could afford to pay his or her keep, the offender

could be confined in the jail or physically punished by the jailor.

Likewise, women, people of color, or apprentices traveling without their

master or his written approval could be locked up until their master

located them and paid for their keep. Given how far away from Mt. Vernon

she was, Cloe was likely on the lam when she was confined.

Later in 1766, two slaves whose names are recorded as Tom and Bett ran

away from Mt. Vernon. Tom, the slave foreman at River Farm, was sold the

following year in the West Indies as a punishment for being “both a

Rogue & Runaway.” Washington wrote to the ship’s captain to “keep him

handcuffd till you get to Sea.” Bett, too, was eventually caught.

In late 1767, several slaves in Fairfax area conspired to kill their

masters. Slaves belonging to Washington’s business partner, friend, and

fellow founding father George Mason were involved in the plot. Feeling

he was not properly reimbursed for the Crown executing his slaves, Mason

had Washington collect money from Mason’s debtors to help his business

stay afloat. This incident was reported in the Pennsylvania Gazette of

December 31, 1767:

“From Alexandria, in Virginia, we learn, that a Number of Negroes there

had lately conspired to poison their Overseers, and that several Persons

have lost their Lives in Consequence thereof; that some of the Negroes

have been taken up, four of whom were executed about three Weeks ago,

after which their Heads were cut off, and fixed on the Chimnies of the

Court-House; and it was expected that four more would soon meet with the

same Fate.”

George Mason later voiced opposition to slavery. Yet he never gave full

credit to the courage of those who rebelled against him, convincing him

that enslaving people was more trouble than it was worth. Historians

have repeated the omission, describing Mason as a humanitarian, not as a

man educated by others’ courageous defiance to him.

In April 1767, an African slave whose name is recorded as Tom escaped

from forced labor at the Dismal Swamp. He seems to have remained at

liberty for quite some time. An advertisement for his capture that

Washington’s brother placed in the Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg on

June 23, 1768 reads:

“Nansemond, June 20, 1768. RUN away from the subscriber some time in

April 1767, a new Negro man named TOM, belonging to the proprietors of

the Dismal Swamp. He is about 5 feet 6 inches high, has his country

marks (that is, four on each of his cheeks.) Any person that apprehends

the said fellow, so that I may get him, shall have three pounds reward.”

On July 21, 1770, Michael Tracey, an indentured servant owned by

Washington, ran away. Tracey was born in Ireland and indentured in

Virginia. A bricklayer by trade, he was bought by Washington on July 25,

1768, when, according to Washington’s diary, he

“Went to Alexandria & bought a Bricklayer from Mr. Piper & returnd to

Dinner.”

Michael was at Mt. Vernon til at least 1770 when he was sold to an

Alexandria brewer named Andrew Wales, who later reported him missing.

In June 1771, Will Shag escaped from the Great House Plantation where he

was enslaved. The estate belonged to Martha Washington’s son, John Parke

Custis, but it was under Washington’s care, as John had not yet fully

reached adulthood. Will’s absence was immediately reported to

Washington.

Will had repeatedly escaped before. His captors had moved him to the

Great Plantation in the hopes it would settle him. Following his escape,

he lived for a few months along the York River and passed as a free man

by the name of Will Jones. An overseer from Great House went to capture

him and bring him back, but on the way, Will beat him and escaped again.

Joseph Valentine, manager of Great House, ran this advertisement in the

July 18, 1771 edition of the Virginia Gazette:

“Ran away, about the middle of June last, from Mr. John Parke Custis’s

plantation, near the Capitol landing, a likely young Virginia born Negro

fellow named Will, about 6 feet high, very full faced, and full eyed.

The said Negro broke York gaol some time ago, and was taken again, but

in bringing him home to the said plantation he made his escape from the

overseer. As he passed at York some time for a free man, I have reason

to believe that he will try to get on board some vessel. Whoever will

bring the said Negro to me, near Williamsburg, shall receive Twenty

shillings reward, besides what the law allows. He is out-lawed.... All

masters of vessels are cautioned against taking him on board at their

peril.”

The process of “outlawing” a slave was set forth in “An Act directing

the trial of Slaves committing capital crimes… and for the better

government of negroes, mulattoes, and Indians, bond or free.” This act

stipulated that in the case of “outlawed” fugitive slaves,

“it shall be lawful for any person, or persons whatsoever, to kill and

destroy such slaves, by any ways or means, without accusation, or

impeachment of any crime for the same.”

After several weeks of freedom, Will Shag was arrested. In August,

Valentine wrote to Washington informing him of the situation, saying of

Will “he will not worke and a greater Roge is not to be foun.” A month

later, the overseers at Bakers Quarter are reported to have captured

Will sleeping in the woods. Valentine insisted that Washington should

sell him, as they would never be able to keep him in captivity.

On July 29, 1771, a valuable ostler named Harry made his first escape

from Mount Vernon. Harry had spent years enslaved in the

mosquito-invested Dismal Swamp digging ditches and cutting wood, then

slowly worked his way up to become a house servant caring for

Washington’s horses. In June, Harry had been demoted to building a mill

at Mt. Vernon’s furthest property, Ferry Plantation. This shift may have

been too reminiscent of the swamp; it was almost certainly the catalyst

for his July cavale.

Washington paid one pound and sixteen shillings to advertise for the

recovery of his property, as Cassandra Pybus relates in The Human

Tradition in the Black Atlantic, 1500–2000. Washington noted in his

diary on August 2, 1771, “At home all day a writing Letters &

Advertisements of Harry who run away the 29^(th).” Harry was captured

and returned a few weeks later, but remained determined to escape.

On December 5, 1771, the Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, ran the

following advertisement:

“RUN away from the Subscriber, in Isle of Wight, a Negro named JACK,

about five and thirty Years of Age, five Feet ten Inches high, a slim,

clean made, talkative, artful, and very saucy Fellow. Also a Negro Woman

named VENUS, thirty two Years old, five Feet four Inches high, stout

made, very smooth tongued, and has been five Years accustomed to the

House. They worked in the Dismal Swamp about two Years, under Mr. John

Washington, and carried with them several different Kinds of Apparel.

Whoever delivers the said Negroes to me, or secures them so that I may

get them, shall have a Reward of FORTY SHILLINGS for each.”

Venus and Jack, formerly owned by the Washingtons and the Dismal Swamp

Company, escaped repeatedly over an eight-year period.

A list of slaves held captive under Washington’s authority in December

1771 includes over 200 people.

In spring of 1772, Will Shag succeeded in escaping again. He was

captured once more and returned in July. The following winter,

Washington had him sold in the Caribbean. Uncompromising rebels like

Will spread revolt wherever they were sent.

In 1773, a slave in his early fifties whose name is recorded as Coachman

Jemmy, escaped from Washington’s Great House plantation after being put

to work making ditches. James Hill, the manager of the plantation,

called Jemmy “one of the Greatest Raschals I ever lookd after in all my

life” and advised Washington to get rid of him as soon as possible:

“there is no getg. of him to do any thing more then he Pleases & he only

corrupts the Rest & if you dont conclude to Sell him am determined to

send him to the Easten Shore that he never Shall Strike a Stroke this

side while I stay in the Estate.”

If Jemmy was caught, Hill advised Washington to sell him to the

Caribbean like Will Shag, and in no case keep him on the estate—because

even if he were kept in shackles, “the negro Blacksmiths in town will

soon file them off.” This comment hints at the clandestine networks of

solidarity that rendered all these escapes possible.

The same year, the slave who had escaped with “Venus” in 1771, whose

name is recorded as “Jack Dismal” on account of the years of hard labor

he had performed in the course of Washington’s attempt to “drain the

swamp,” escaped again from the man who had bought him from the

Washingtons. The February 18, 1773 issue of the Virginia Gazette reads:

“RUN away from Mr. James Hunter’s, opposite Fredericksburg, on his way

to Frederick, a Negro man named JACK DISMAL, a black slim made fellow,

about 5 feet 10 inches high, has thick lips, and is a cunning, artful

fellow. It is supposed he went down Rappahannock in some vessel, in

order to get to James river. Whoever secures the said Negro, so that I

get him again, shall have FORTY SHILLINGS, or FIVE POUNDS if delivered

to William Herndon, my overseer in Frederick county.”

Reading such ads, one is struck by the central role that newspapers

played in maintaining white supremacy, and by the fact that would-be

slave owners were constantly forced to shell out reward money to

maintain their position. Before the American Revolution, as today,

wealthy property owners, corporate media outlets, and armed enforcers of

order formed a three-way alliance.

The Tide of Revolution

All the tensions in the colonies were coming to a head at once. William

Webster, an indentured servant at Mt. Vernon purchased in March 1774,

ran away immediately. He was captured and returned on April 26, 1774,

but he escaped again a year later.

Meanwhile, Washington was railing against the “Intolerable Acts” passed

by the British Parliament to punish colonists in Massachusetts for the

Boston Tea Party. He wrote to Bryan Fairfax that

“The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights or submit to every

imposition till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves,

as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.”

When colonial Governor Lord Dunmore disbanded the House of Burgesses,

Washington chaired a meeting in Fairfax County condemning the taxes

imposed by the Crown and calling for the first inter-colonial convention

of the colonies. The meeting and ensuing proclamation are known as the

Fairfax Resolves: “We will use every means which Heaven hath given us to

prevent our becoming its [Britain’s] slaves.”

In April 1775, William Webster escaped again, this time in the company

of another indentured servant, Thomas Spears. While preparing to rise in

rebellion against the Crown, Washington offered a reward of forty

dollars for the return of these two men he sought to keep in

subjugation.

On June 14, 1775, Congress created the Continental Army and appointed

Washington Commander-in-Chief. His refusal to accept a salary won him

acclaim; the truth is that the unpaid labor of his many slaves rendered

any salary the rebel colonies could raise for him superfluous.

Ten days later, a slave whose name is recorded as Charles escaped from

Washington’s brother. Charles had sustained a serious knee injury,

likely while laboring to enrich the Washington family.

On August 7, 1775, Joseph Smith, an indentured painter from Scotland,

escaped from Washington’s brother-in-law while on loan from Washington.

He went to fight for the British forces under Lord Dunmore, preferring

the tyranny of the Crown to the tyranny of his master. As a cousin of

Washington’s wrote to Washington, upon Smith’s wounding and capture,

“The Paint(er) was one among the Prisoners taken at Hampton, after

recieveg a wound in the thigh—& is now in jail at Wmsburg the wound

almost well—I have wrote to Colo. Lewis desireg he woud order him up to

Fredrixburg, if he cannot sell him in Wmsburg, & sell him to some of the

back people, after Whipg him at a Publick whiping Post—my information is

from Thos Davis by last Post—he calls himself Joseph Wilson but

acknowledges himse[l]f to be your Servt, & that he Run away from Colo.

Lewis, but is unwiling to be sent back.

Our Dunmore has at length Publishd his much dreaded

proclamation—declareg Freedom to All Indented Servts & Slaves (the

Property of Rebels) that will repair to his majestys Standard—being able

to bear Arms—What effect it will have upon those sort of people I cannot

tell—I think if there was no white Servts in this family I shoud be

under no apprehensition about the Slaves, however I am determined, that

if any of them Create any confusition to make & [an] example of him,

Sears who is at worck here says there is not a man of them, but woud

leave us, if they believe’d they coud make there Escape—Tom Spears

Excepted—& yet they have no fault to find[.] Liberty is sweet.”

This letter reveals a great deal about the loyalties of indentured

servants. The conditions of unrest that had arisen in the colonies had

forced the British to offer them the possibility of freedom—and this was

more attractive to them than the mere national liberation that George

Washington sought while aiming to keep slaves and indentured servants in

chains.

Already, by November 1775, hundreds of runaways had made their way to

Dunmore’s camp. By the end of the war, between 80,000 and 100,000 slaves

had escaped—roughly 1 in 4[6]—making the American Revolution the first

mass slave exodus in American history. However, only 20,000–30,000 made

it across British lines. (By contrast, a mere 5000 slaves fought

alongside their masters for American Independence.) Where did the rest

of the escapees go? Some were captured and returned; others succumbed to

disease; but the rest must have melted away into maroon communities or

set out for the frontier.

Washington privately feared the defection of servants and slaves to

British lines, admitting to Richard Henry Lee, “If that man [Dunmore] is

not crushed before spring he will become the most formidable enemy of

America… His strength will increase as a snowball by rolling, and

faster, if some expedient cannot be hit upon to convince the slaves and

servants of the impotency of his designs.”

On July 19, 1776, fifteen days after the signing of the Declaration of

Independence, Harry, the slave who had made an escape in 1771, sought

again to escape along with a couple of white servants. The group made

their way down the Potomac until they reached Lord Dunmore’s

overcrowded, disease-ridden fleet. An outbreak of smallpox followed by

typhoid fever forced Dunmore to later admit, “There was not a ship in

the fleet that did not throw one, two, three or more dead overboard

every night.”

Despite the miserable conditions, Harry enlisted in Dunmore’s “Black

Pioneers” and rose to the rank of Corporal. During the invasion of

Charleston in 1781, Harry commanded a company of black troops. It would

seem that the black soldiers saw little to no combat, serving a support

role of establishing infrastructure, building earthworks, and assembling

grapeshot. People of color played similar roles in the US military

during World War II and other campaigns.

In 1778, Washington ordered that a slave named Priscilla be separated

from her husband and sent from Mt. Vernon to serve his mother Mary Ball

Washington in Fredericksburg. Priscilla and her husband protested the

move vigorously until Washington was forced to reunite them a year

later. Incidents like this one show that in these unpredictable

conditions of social ferment, even enslaved people who did not choose to

escape could bring leverage to bear on their captors, forcing them to

make concessions.

The same year, Jack Dismal and Venus escaped again with another slave

named Zeny and her daughter Nelly. Meanwhile, a slave belonging to

George Washington whose name is recorded as Ben, died while being forced

to work in the rice field of the Great Dismal Swamp. This tragic episode

illustrates the fortitude that Jack, Venus, Harry, and others displayed

in surviving their ordeal in the swamp and repeatedly setting out for

freedom.

In 1779, Washington earned his title, “Town Destroyer,” by ordering the

Sullivan Expedition, which demolished at least 40 Haudenosaunee

(Iroquois) villages in New York. Though relatively few of the

Haudenosaunee were killed outright, the destruction of their homes,

crops, cattle, and winter stores created a situation in which one in

five of the 5000 Haudenosaunee refugees died of hunger or exposure that

winter. The area we now think of as rural New York was cleared for white

settlement by this act of mass killing.

In 1781, at the high point of the Revolutionary War, Washington’s

cousin, Lund Washington, recorded that 17 slaves had escaped from Mt.

Vernon. The fourteen men and three women took refuge on the HMS Savage

docked in the nearby Potomac. According to Lund Washington, these

included[7]

“Peter. an old man. Lewis. an old man. Frank. an old man. Frederick. a

man about 45 years old; an overseer and valuable. Gunner. a man about 45

years old; valuable, a Brick maker. Harry. a man about 40 years old,

valuable, a Horseler. Tom, a man about 20 years old, stout and Healthy.

Sambo. a man about 20 years old, stout and Healthy. Thomas. a lad about

17 years old, House servant. Peter. a lad about 15 years old, very

likely. Stephen. a man about 20 years old, a cooper by trade. James. a

man about 25 years old, stout and Healthy. Watty. a man about 20 years

old, by trade a weaver. Daniel. a man about 19 years old, very likely.

Lucy. a woman about 20 years old. Esther. a woman about 18 years old.

Deborah. a woman about 16 years old.”

Washington wrote back, furious with the British for stealing his

property.

The War of Independence Concludes, The War on Slaves Continues

When the war ended in 1782, it took the British forces and their allies

by surprise. Boston King, a slave who had liberated himself, recalled

that in New York City, the peace

“issued universal joy among all parties, except us, who had escaped from

slavery, and taken refuge in the English army; for a report prevailed at

New York, that all slaves, in number 2000, were to be delivered up to

their masters, although some of them had been three or four years among

the English. This dreadful rumor filled us all with inexpressible

anguish and terror, especially when we saw our masters coming from

Virginia, North Carolina, and other parts, and seizing upon their slaves

in the streets of New York, or even dragging them out of their beds.

Many of the slaves had very cruel masters, so that the thoughts of

returning home with them embittered life to us. For some days, we lost

our appetite for food, and sleep departed from our eyes.”

Rather than going to New York themselves, masters often hired slave

catchers or complained to officials. Virginia Governor Benjamin Harrison

was so swamped by complaints that he wrote Washington for help, who

answered,

“I have but little expectation that many will be recovered; several of

my own are with the Enemy but I scarce ever bestowed a thought on them;

they have so many doors through which they can escape from New York,

that scarce any thing but an inclination to return, or voluntarily

surrender for themselves will restore many to their former Masters.”

Washington still hoped to recover his “property,” however. As the

Americans began to take control of New York City, he asked local

merchant Daniel Parker to look for his runaways: “If by chance you

should come at the knowledge of any of them, I will be much obliged by

your securing them so I may obtain them again.” Appointed as a

commissioner to ensure no American property was taken away by the

British, Daniel Parker succeeded in capturing seven of the over twenty

escapees from Mt. Vernon. One of the 1781 runaways, the 18-year-old

Deborah, managed to leave New York aboard the Polly on April 27, 1783.

Harry, his future wife, Jenny, and over 400 self-liberated former slaves

followed in July 1783 on L’Abondance. Finally, on the very last ship to

leave New York City with refugee runaways on board, Daniel, the

21-year-old who escaped with Deborah in 1781, left the country for good.

All told, thousands of runaways were successfully evacuated to Nova

Scotia, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and England.

Yet Jenny and Harry soon found themselves in a freezing, unfarmable

section of Nova Scotia, suffering a fate only slightly better than that

of Virginia slaves. Here, too, they were considered inferior, prohibited

from voting or serving on juries. After eight years of toil, the

community sent a delegate to Britain to protest their condition. Hoping

to draw new settlers to their colony on the west coast of Africa, the

Sierra Leone Company offered free grants of land “subject to certain

charges and obligations” to new settlers: twenty acres for every man,

ten for every woman, five for every child.

And so in 1791, Jenny, Harry, and over 1100 other refugees who had

stayed in Nova Scotia found themselves on their way to Freetown, Sierra

Leone.

After the Revolution: The Reaction

After the war, the collective ferment of the mid-1700s gave way to the

re-entrenchment of bureaucracy.

With the Treaty of Paris in 1783, hostilities between the British and

Americans officially ended, and the British turned over lands from the

Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. Over 45,000 Native Americans

still lived in the region west of the Appalachian Mountains. Before the

Americans took control of the land, Native representatives began meeting

together to coordinate defense—in some cases setting aside generations

of inter-tribal conflict. Many still remembered the burning of

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) villages in rural New York, the massacre at

Gnadenhutten of pacifist Lenni Lenape (Delaware People), and other war

crimes committed by the Americans during the Revolutionary War. Native

Americans had won most of their engagements during the war, yet had not

been consulted during the peace process. They did not wish to cede their

homes northwest of the Ohio River.

On one side, in 1785, Congress began selling land in the Ohio River

Valley to help pay the costs of the Revolutionary War. On the other

side, by 1786, a formal self-defense coalition was established involving

members of the Wendat (Hurons), Shawnee, Odawas, Anishinaabeg (Ojibwas),

Neshnabé (Potawatomis), Lenni Lenape (Delaware), Myaamiaki (Miami),

Waayaahtanwa (Wea), Kiikaapoa (Kickapoo), Peeyankihšiaki (Piankashaw),

Kaahkaahkiaki (Kaskaskia), and Chickamauga Cherokee. Raids and ambushes

against settlers encroaching on Native land soon followed.

Mihšihkinaahkwa (Little Turtle) of the Atchatchakangouen (Crane Band of

the Myaamiaki), Weyapiersenwah (Blue Jacket) of the Shawnee,

Buckongahelas of the Lenni Lenape, and Egushawa (The Gatherer) of the

Odawa were among the leaders during the ensuing conflict; the Northwest

Indian War is sometimes called Little Turtle’s War or Blue Jacket’s War

in their honor.

In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance. Not only did this act

bullheadedly assert US ownership of the Ohio River Valley, it also

proclaimed:

“There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said

territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party

shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person

escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed

in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully

reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or

service as aforesaid.”

Slave owners found a way around this easily enough: family members in a

slave state would seasonally send slaves to family members in Ohio,

Indiana, or Illinois. Before the slaves could establish residency, they

were sent back to slave states, only to be rotated back to “free”

territory again a few months later. George and Martha Washington

utilized this tactic themselves, bringing eight slaves—Giles, Paris,

Moll, Hercules, Richmond, Christopher Sheels, Oney Judge, and her

half-brother Austin—to the President’s House in Philadelphia, then

rotating them back to Mt. Vernon or taking them on short trips to New

Jersey. When Austin died in 1794, he was replaced in the rotation by

Postilion Joe Richardson.

In 1789, the Federal government further solidified its power in the

Constitution, protecting the rights of slave owners in the process. The

Constitution infamously declared each slave to count as three fifths of

a human being. George Washington became the first president of the

United States.

In 1790, Washington ordered that an army be raised for Secretary of War

Henry Knox to launch a campaign against the tribes to the northwest. The

first engagement proved a decisive loss for the Americans, who lost over

a hundred soldiers. Washington ordered another campaign the following

year, but Mihšihkinaahkwa, Weyapiersenwah, and hundreds of Native

warriors ambushed the American troops, killing the majority of them.

Over the following two years, Native warriors won several more

engagements, but the cost of war ultimately took its toll. After the

Native coalition surrendered, forts and other European infrastructure

began to appear in the Ohio River Valley. So did slave owners.

In 1793, Washington signed the Fugitive Slave Act, giving power to slave

owners or their representatives to enter states that had outlawed

slavery to regain their slaves. As a Federal law, the Act trumped local

or state laws forbidding the kidnapping of self-liberated slaves. The

Act also forbid anyone from harboring or aiding a fugitive slave. Those

who continued to aid runaways risked corporal punishment, fines, jail

time, and, in extreme cases, banishment.

Writing to his manager William Pearce that same year, Washington

emphasized the importance of maintaining class society, counseling

against managers and overseers fraternizing with slaves and servants:

“To treat them civilly is no more than what all men are entitled to, but

my advice to you is, to keep them at a proper distance; for they will

grow upon familiarity, in proportion as you will sink in authority, if

you do not.”

When a slave whose name is recorded as Abram escaped, Washington

counseled William Pearce in a letter written March 1794 that when Abram

was captured he should make sure he was punished in front of other

slaves, and punished by the crueler of the two overseers at Union Farm.

The following May, towards the start of her second trimester of

pregnancy, Priscilla ran away for a week. She may have been away

visiting friends, or seeking a respite from working while pregnant—or

perhaps she didn’t want another child born into the hell of Mt. Vernon.

In 1796, 21-year-old Oney Judge, a dower slave belonging to Martha

Washington, walked out the back door of the President’s House and

escaped. Martha had been planning to give Oney to her granddaughter as a

wedding gift. With over 2000 free people of color in Philadelphia, it

was a far more promising place to escape than Mt. Vernon. As Oney later

recalled,

“Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I

didn’t know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should

never get my liberty. I had friends among the colored people of

Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left

Washington’s house while they were eating dinner.”

An ad appeared in The Philadelphia Gazette of May 24, 1796 on behalf of

the First Lady:

“Absconded from the household of the President of the United States,

ONEY JUDGE, a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes

and bushy hair. She is of middle stature, slender, and delicately

formed, about 20 years of age. She has many changes of good clothes, of

all sorts, but they are not sufficiently recollected to be described—As

there was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation to do so, it

is not easy to conjecture whither she has gone, or fully, what her

design is; but as she may attempt to escape by water, all masters of

vessels are cautioned against admitting her into them, although it is

probable she will attempt to pass for a free woman, and has, it is said,

wherewithal to pay her passage. Ten dollars will be paid to any person

who will bring her home, if taken in the city, or on board any vessel in

the harbour;—and a reasonable additional sum if apprehended at, and

brought from a greater distance, and in proportion to the distance.

FREDERICK KITT, Steward. May 23”

Reclaiming Oney became an obsession for Washington, but she always

managed to stay a step of head of him. First, she went to Portsmouth,

New Hampshire. But after Senator John Langdon spotted her and snitched

on her to the Washingtons, Oney panicked and offered to return to Mt.

Vernon if her freedom could be guaranteed at the time of Washington’s

death. The President responded furiously to Landgon:

“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, as she has suggested to you,

is totally inadmissible, 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, beforehand, the minds of all her fellow Servants; who by

their steady adherence, are far more deserving than herself, of favor…

Put her on board a Vessel bound either to Alexandria or the Federal

City… I do not mean however, by this request, that such violent measures

should be used as would excite a mob or riot, which might be the case if

she has adherents, or even uneasy sensations in the minds of well

disposed Citizens. rather than either of these shd happen, I would

forego her services altogether; and the example also, which is of

infinite more importance.”

Langdon mostly attempted verbal persuasion after this, agreeing that

physical force would likely draw an abolitionist mob to Oney’s defense.

He added “It has been remarked that there are many Servants who have

escaped from the Southern States into Massachusetts and some to New

Hampshire,” forcing Langdon to conclude to Washington that the practice

of slavery was more trouble than it was worth.

Oney fell in love with a free sailor named Jack Staines. Despite

Langdon’s attempts to block their marriage license, the two wedded,

moved to Greenland, New Hampshire, and had a daughter, whom they namd

Eliza. In 1798, Washington renewed his efforts to capture Oney, going so

far as threatening to take Eliza, whom the law deemed his legal

property, but to no avail.

Back at Mt. Vernon, Priscilla also fled again in 1796, after giving

birth in January. This time, she was captured and returned by a William

Minter Green around October 24. Over the next couple years, Priscilla

was frequently ill, being forced to live in unhealthy conditions while

raising children without her husband, who was owned by Washington but

kept on a different farm in the Mt. Vernon complex.

The following three years saw a series of further escapes. On February

22, 1797, Hercules, who had served as the Presidential chef, escaped.

Another slave named Caesar was repeatedly absent from work. In April

1798, slaves named Lucy and Dundee disappeared for several days, as did

Joe, a gardener, and another slave named Sophia later that year.

Hercules had always appeared to be loyal to the Washingtons. Bought by

the Washingtons in 1767 as a ferryman, he worked his way up to serve as

head cook at Mt. Vernon. As cook, Hercules followed Washington to the

President’s House in New York and Philadelphia. Known for ruling the

kitchen with an iron fist, Hercules served the food eaten by the first

First Family and all the dignitaries they hosted. One guest later

recalled, a feast of “roast beef, veal, turkey, ducks, fowls, hams, &c.;

puddings, jellies, oranges, apples, nuts, almonds, figs, raisins, and a

variety of wines and punches.”

Due to his worth, Hercules was given considerable freedom: he walked to

the local markets each morning, perusing the latest arrivals in the

cosmopolitan Philadelphia, and was even allowed to sells scraps from the

kitchen, earning him an income similar to top-paid chiefs—$200 a year.

Living in Philadelphia gave Hercules the chance to showcase his latest

wears. After serving dinner at the stroke of 4, Hercules would dress and

stroll the streets of the city. His dandyism was widely known.

Yet as a slave, Hercules was rotated between Philadelphia and Mt.

Vernon, and on one visit south he was demoted to the humiliating task of

digging ditches. Hercules had served fine meats and wines to foreign

dignitaries! He could not abide this change in status.

February 22, 1797 was George Washington’s 65^(th) birthday. He

celebrated the day in Philadelphia, where sixteen rounds of cannon fire

announced the general’s birthday. February 22 was also a holiday for the

slaves and servants of Mt. Vernon, and Hercules intended to make good

use of it. Perhaps using the river-faring knowledge of his youth, and

counting on the free people of color in Philadelphia, Hercules made his

way north. The last the Washingtons ever heard of Hercules, he was

living well in New York City in 1801.

During the summer of 1799, 25-year-old Christopher Sheels plotted to

escape with his fiancée, a woman enslaved to Washingon’s neighbor, Roger

West. The plan was discovered in September when written correspondence

including a map of their route was found in the yard of Mt. Vernon.

Born around 1774 to Alyce, an enslaved spinner, and Christopher Sheels,

a white wagon driver, Christopher spent his first fourteen years at Mt.

Vernon. His grandmother, whose name is recorded as Old Doll, was one of

the original dower slaves brought to Mt. Vernon by Martha in the 1750s.

As an adolescent, Christopher had accompanied Washington to New York

City and then Philadelphia, acting as the President’s loyal body servant

the whole time. Even the winter after his attempt was foiled, as

Washington lay dying, Christopher Sheel stayed by his bed—witnessing the

inflammation and bloodletting that ended the first president’s life.

After Washington

“Shame! Shame! That man should be deemed the property of man or that the

name of Washington should be found among the list of such proprietors.”

–Edward Rushton, letter to Washington, February 20, 1797

America began the 19^(th) century in mourning. Congress wore black and

set aside $200,000 to build a pyramid mausoleum for Washington beneath

the Capitol’s rotunda, a proposal Martha vetoed. America’s major cities

held funeral processions attended by the thousands. In France, Napoleon

ordered ten days of mourning; the ships of the British Navy lowered

their flags to half mast. When February 22 arrived, patriotic Americans

were as determined as ever to celebrate the first president’s birthday.

But the slaves of Mt. Vernon must have received the news of Washington’s

death with mixed emotions. Washington owned well over 100 of them;

they’d long been told that they would be set free when he passed away.

Yet many had befriended, intermarried with, and parented children with

Martha’s dower slaves and those of the neighbors. What would

emancipation mean for those whose loved ones were still in chains?

The problem was soon rendered moot, as it was revealed that Washington’s

will did not free his slaves at the time of his death, but rather at the

time of Martha’s. George had lied through his teeth.[8]

On August 2, a 16-year-old slave whose name is recorded as Marcus ran

off. Though Washington’s slaves hadn’t been freed yet, newspapers around

the country were carrying news that they had been. Perhaps Marcus hoped

to take advantage of this.

“MARCUS, One of the House Servants at Mount Vernon, Absconded on the

second instant, and since has not been heard of. He is a young lad,

about 16 years of age, a bright mulatto, dark blue eyes, long black

hair, about 5 feet 4 or 5 inches high, and of a slender make. He had on

when he left this place a coat and jacket of dark mixture, black and

white, and black breeches – but having various suits, one of black, and

another of very light drab, it is uncertain which of these he now wears.

Originally, his name was Billy and possibly he may resume the same. It

is very probable he may attempt to pass for one of those negroes that

did belong to the late Gen. Washington, and whom Mrs. Washington intends

in the fall of this year to liberate – the public are therefore warned

against any such imposition, as he is one of those negroes which belongs

to the estate of Washington P. Custis Esq. and held by right of dower by

Mrs. Washington during her life. I will give Ten Dollars Reward to any

person who shall apprehend the said negro and lodge him in some safe

gaol, upon producing me a certificate to that effect; and will also pay

all reasonable charges over and above this reward, for the delivery of

him to me at this place. Ship Masters are hereby forewarned not to take

on board Marcus; and those who are found to secret or harbor him, will

be punished as the law directs. JAMES ANDERSON, Mount Vernon, August

28.”

-The Philadelphia Gazette & Daily Advertiser, September 22, 1800

Around this time, Martha began fearing for her life. There were rumors

at Mt. Vernon to the effect that Washington’s slaves intended to kill

her in order to hasten their freedom. Martha started to suspect that her

food would be poisoned. A series of suspicious fires that year pushed

Martha to her breaking point: all of Washington’s 123 slaves were to be

freed the first of the year.

To put this in context, the Creole Slave Mutiny is considered the

largest US slave revolt in terms of the number of people freed: 128.

Here at Mt. Vernon, we see a similar number freed as the consequence of

at least a handful of people conducting a campaign of harassment and

intimidation against Martha Washington. When First Lady Abigail Adams

visited Mt. Vernon in mid-December 1800, she noted that Martha “did not

feel as tho her Life was safe in their Hands, many of whom would be told

that it was there interest to get rid of her.”

Though life outside Mt. Vernon would be hard—some of the liberated

slaves had never left the property or learned trades—most thought the

risk was better than life there.

When Jack Staines died in 1803, Oney Judge Staines was left destitute,

her children suffering a fate similar to other free poor people, both

black and white: Eliza and Nancy became indentured servants, while her

son Will was apprenticed as a sailor. Yet despite the hardships, Oney

maintained until her death in 1848 that she had no regrets about leaving

the Washingtons. “No, I am free, and have, I trust been made a child of

God by the means.”

After leaving Nova Scotia in 1791, Harry and his wife Jenny found

themselves mistreated yet again in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Though Jenny

and Harry were able to start their own farm, sustaining it proved

impossible under the tax system imposed by the Sierra Leone Company.

This diabolical form of debt-slavery later became the sharecropping

industry that dominated the lives of former slaves in the American South

after the Civil War.

But Harry did not quit. He and hundreds of other self-freed former

American slaves refused to pay the tax and eventually, to the horror of

the Sierra Leona Company, formed their own government. If not for the

arrival of 500 Jamaican maroons from Nova Scotia in the summer of 1800,

Harry and the rest might have succeeded in push for self-determination.

Instead, the British were able to use the tried-and-true method of

offering privileges to one section of the underclass in return for their

assistance suppressing another part of the underclass. The Company

promised better land to the maroons on the condition that they pacify

the rebels. Rounded up and charged with “open and unprovoked rebellion,”

Harry, Jenny, and other insurgents were eventually exiled across the

Sierra Leone River to the Bullom Shore.

From the Gambia River in West Africa to the Dismal Swamp of America to

South Carolina, New York, and Nova Scotia and then Sierra Leone, Harry

never stopped seeking freedom. He passed the last years of his life as

an influential member of the new settlement in the Bullom Shore. Freedom

is not comprised of guarantees, but of the willingness to continue

setting out for the horizon.

In the 1800s, slaves no longer ran away from George Washington, but for

the next sixty years they fled from cities and counties that bore his

name. Throughout the 19^(th) and 20^(th) centuries and into the 21^(st),

people of color have been confined to schools, workplaces, and prisons

named after the first president, in which they are afforded no more

respect than he accorded them while he was alive. The fact that people

celebrate his name, his birthday, and his legacy while forgetting or

erasing those of Harry and Oney Judge is an insult to those who suffered

at his hands; that he is remembered as a revolutionary hero shows that

the American Revolution has yet to take place.

The Dismal Swamp Company that Washington helped found was a colossal

failure. Only after decades of little success were the investors able to

recoup any money by logging a small portion of the swamp. By the end of

his life, Washington dreaded the occasional company updates; he sold his

shares in the 1790s. Perhaps this is an indication of how successful

Trump’s efforts to “drain the swamp” will ultimately be.

“George Washington was a slave owner… are we going to take down statues

to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of

Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Good. Are we going to take down the

statue? ‘Cause he was a major slave owner. Are we going to take down his

statue? So you know what? It’s fine. You are changing history; you’re

changing culture.”

-Donald Trump, responding to fascist violence and murder in

Charlottesville. Virginia

Here’s to changing history and changing culture.

Faster comrade, the New World is behind you.

---

The Dollar Bill: A Postscript

One of the authors of this cursory summary, a Leopold Trebitch,[9] toyed

with the idea of telling readers to burn a portrait of George

Washington—the one-dollar bill. How ubiquitous its presence! How

invented its worth—yet how real its power! Burning a dollar bill is an

act of freedom, mixed with discomfort: “What am I doing! I’m going to

regret this!” Yet, what do we consume that costs less than a dollar?

It’s hardly an expensive lesson.

In the end, we concluded that in order to honor those who escaped George

Washington, it is more sensible to give that dollar to one of the

following causes. Burn a dollar if you like, but then give a hundred

more to…

The Kris Thompson Legal Fund

On August 22, 2017, Kiwi Herring, a trans woman, was killed by the St.

Louis Metropolitan Police Department while defending herself against a

homophobic neighbor. As the only witness to the murder, Kiwi Herring’s

widow, Kris Thompson, has been punitively charged with Assault in the

First Degree and Armed Criminal Action in order to silence Kris from

speaking out against the police. If convicted, Kris faces a minimum of

three years in prison with no probation or parole, and up to the maximum

of two consecutive life sentences. Please give generously.

Ferguson Prisoners

The revolt in Ferguson breathed new life into many of the current

struggles against police and white supremacy for a truly egalitarian

world. Yet when the tear gas clears, we often forget those who remain

locked up—who risked their freedom in order to put a limit on the abuse

of the police, celebrate the life of Mike Brown, or send a heartfelt

fuck you to those in power.

Further Reading

• The London Hanged: Crime And Civil Society In The Eighteenth Century,

Peter Linebaugh

• The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden

History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Marcus Rediker and Peter

Linebaugh

• The Slave Ship: A Human History, Marcus Rediker

• Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation,

Sylvia Federici

• The Human Tradition in the Black Atlantic, 1500–2000, edited by Karen

Racine & Beatriz Gallotti Mamigonian

• Waging Life

• Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South, Neal

Shirley & Saralee Stafford

Marie Joseph Angélique

• The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the

Burning of Old Montréal](

aboulder.com

), Afua Cooper

Oney Judge

• The Escape of Oney Judge: Martha Washington’s Slave Finds Freedom,

Emily Arnold McCully

Mary Monroe “Mol” Bowden

• Notes And Documents of Free Persons of Color: Four Hundred Years of An

American Family’s History, Anita Wills

Harry

• Washington’s Revolution (Harry that is, not George)

• George Washington’s Runaway Slave, Harry

Hercules

• Hercules: Master of cuisine, slave of Washington

• A Birthday Shock From Washington’s Chef

Databases

• Founding Fathers

• Geography of Slavery in Virginia

[1] John F. Kennedy would have inherited a legacy worth a billion

dollars, but was killed before he could come into his inheritance.

[2] “The motley crew had helped to make the revolution, but the vanguard

struck back in the 1770s and 1780s, against mobs, slaves, and sailors,

in what must be considered an American Thermidor. The effort to reform

the mob by removing its more militant elements began in 1766 and

continued, not always successfully, through the revolution and beyond.

Patriot landowners, merchants, and artisans increasingly condemned

revolutionary crowds, seeking to move politics from ‘out of doors’ into

legislative chambers, in which the propertyless would have no vote and

no voice. Paine, for his part, would turn against the crowd after

Philadelphia’s Fort Wilson Riot of 1779. When Samuel Adams helped to

draw up Massachusetts’s Riot Act of 1786, designed to be used to

disperse and control the insurgents of Shays’ Rebellion, he ceased to

believe that the mob ‘embodied the fundamental rights of man against

which government itself could be judged,’ and detached himself from the

creative democratic force that years before had given him the best idea

of his life.”

— The Many-Headed Hydra, Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh

[3] We can cite a few examples here to evoke the spirit of the era.

On a cold night in April 1734, Marie Joseph Angélique, a 34-year old

Madeira woman enslaved in Montréal, and Claude Thibault, her white lover

indentured to the same household, lit their master’s home ablaze as

cover for their escape. The fire consumed 46 buildings, a considerable

part of Montréal, and led to looting by the underclass. While Thibault

was never seen again, Angélique was captured, viciously tortured, and

executed across from the church her flames had gutted. Her ashes were

thrown to the winds.

In 1739, twenty miles southwest of Charleston, South Carolina, twenty

slaves unfurled a banner proclaiming “LIBERTY!” and chanted the word as

they stormed a local warehouse, killing two guards and seizing weapons.

The armed rebels proceeded south along the Stono River towards Spanish

Florida, only fifty miles away. In hopes of destabilizing the British,

the Spanish had promised freedom and land near St. Augustine to any

slaves who escaped the British colonies. Since 1732, at least 250

runaways had seized this opportunity.

On their way to Florida, sixty slaves joined the insurrection—burning

seven plantations and killing two dozen members of slave-owning families

along the way. Unfortunately, the next day, a better-armed militia

intercept the Stono rebels, killing 44 and scattering the remainder.

Rounded up in the following days, the insurgents were exported to the

Caribbean or executed. Their decapitated heads dotted the local highways

of colonial South Carolina. To counter this rebellion and two others in

Georgia and South Carolina around the same time, the South Carolina

legislature passed the Negro Act of 1740, restricting slave assembly,

movement, and independence. Slaves were prohibited from growing their

own food, earning money, or learning to write. The Assembly also enacted

a 10-year moratorium against importing African slaves on the premise

that a homegrown slave population would be less prone to uprisings.

Just two years later, African and Irish conspirators in New York City

managed to burn thirteen buildings over the course of March and April

1841, including Fort George, the chief military installation of the

colony and one of the greatest fortifications in all British America.

Retaliation was quick and severe: over thirty conspirators were hanged,

burned at the stake, gibbeted, or banished to places as far away as

Newfoundland, Madeira, St. Domingue, and Curaçao.

Though New York was over two hundred miles away from Pope’s Creek,

Charleston over four hundred miles away, and Montréal nearly a thousand,

the specter of slave revolts and interracial alliances ceaselessly

haunted the ruling class.

[4] Notes And Documents of Free Persons of Color: Four Hundred Years of

An American Family’s History, by Anita Willis.

[5] Of the first 600 or more colonists sent to Jamestown between

1607–1611, all but 60 died of starvation, disease, exposure, Native

attacks, or being worked to death. By 1624, only 1200 of the 6000

colonists sent to Jamestown had survived.

[6] There were approximately 450,000 black slaves in the colonies at

this time. Twice that many black people are in prison in the United

States today, still performing slave labor.

[7] Note that the aforementioned Harry is listed here, though he had

escaped years earlier.

[8] Washington suffered from tooth pain for much of his life; in later

years, he wore dentures. His teeth were not made of wood; they may have

been made from the extracted teeth of his slaves. In May 1784, Lund

Washington noted in Mt. Vernon’s ledger books, “By Cash pd Negroes for 9

Teeth on Acct of Dr. Lemoire.” Dr. Lemoire was George Washington’s

dentist, Dr. Jean Le Mayeur, who corresponded with George Washington

about his visit to Mount Vernon that summer.

[9] Leopold Trebitch is a rogue and rabble-rouser, living in the caves

of St. Louis. Rants, musings, and diggings of his can be found at The

Trebitch Times.