She fled North on a ship to Portsmouth. An angry President Washington began a relentless search and attempts to get her back. Two days after her escape, his steward, Frederick Kitt, placed an advertisement in the Philadelphia Gazette, which stated: “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 black hair, she is of middle stature, slender, and delicately, about 20 years of age. She has many changes of good clothes, of all sorts…”
Stories like that of David and Goliath teach moral lessons, especially about victory not necessarily going to the mighty and powerful. The freedom battles between a sitting United States president and a slave girl he owned, are no less intriguing.
Such a true life story is usually tucked away as it tells of the humiliation and humbling of a privilege class. The story of the young lady, Ona Judge, who at 22 fled the US presidential mansion, abandoning the good life and comfort it offered, and the strenuous efforts of the then 64-year old George Washington, the founding president of the US, also exposed the hypocrisy of the establishment.
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The US establishment, making pretensions to being champions of fundamental human rights, had in its 1776 Declaration of Independence proclaimed that: “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
This Declaration was without qualifications, but in practice, they did not apply to Blacks and Non-Whites, who were not considered full human beings.
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When the Declaration was made, Washington was the commander-in-chief of the US military that was fighting British colonialism. On 9 July, 1776, he ordered that the Declaration be read aloud to all soldiers in New York. But like nine of his successors, he was a slave owner who refused to release the captives.
He referred to slaves as “a Species of Property.” Even when he publicly announced: “Not only do I pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can clearly foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle”, he held down scores of slave as his private property.
Washington, at a point, boasted publicly: “I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.” But they were mere words that had no ring of sincerity.
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In 1780, Pennsylvania had passed a law under which slaves of long-term visitors who stay for more than six months automatically became free. To beat this law, President Washington moved his slaves out each time any of them was about to stay up to six months. He also preferred short term stay for his slaves in the vibrant city because, as he wrote in 1791: “The idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist.”
On the other hand, Judge was the daughter of a slave seamstress of First Lady Martha Washington, who had inherited three hundred slaves from her late husband, Daniel Parke Custis. Judge was twelve years old when she began fully working for Martha. When Washington became president, she was one of seven slaves picked to work for the First Family in their new home in New York. She also moved with them when the president relocated to Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania.
In 1780, Pennsylvania had passed a law under which slaves of long-term visitors who stay for more than six months automatically became free. To beat this law, President Washington moved his slaves out each time any of them was about to stay up to six months. He also preferred short term stay for his slaves in the vibrant city because, as he wrote in 1791: “The idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist.”
As the preferred maid of the First Lady, Judge had privileges including new wardrobe periodically, which reflected her special status. But such ephemeral things did not appeal to her; freedom was on her mind.
Also, Judge had learnt that the Washingtons had decided to package her as a wedding gift to the First Lady’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Parke Custis, who was not know for courtesies.
So, on 21 May, 1796, as the First Family was having dinner at the President’s House in Philadelphia, Judge slipped out of the Presidential Mansion into freedom. She 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 never should get my liberty.”
She fled North on a ship to Portsmouth. An angry President Washington began a relentless search and attempts to get her back. Two days after her escape, his steward, Frederick Kitt, placed an advertisement in the Philadelphia Gazette, which stated: “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 black hair, she is of middle stature, slender, and delicately, about 20 years of age. She has many changes of good clothes, of all sorts…”
Washington’s anger was visible in the runaway advertisement. He did not see any reason she would flee: “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.”
Four months later, President Washington passed away, on 14 December, 1799, without realising his ambition of re-enslaving Judge. His wife Martha, followed on 22 May, 1802. On the other hand, Judge passed away on 25 February, 1848, that was 49 years after President Washington’s death. She was an example of the poor and powerless overcoming the rich and the powerful.
In Portsmouth, she found work as a domestic labourer, undoubtedly a punishing and physically draining job, but at least she was free.
A senator’s daughter who knew Judge, spotted her in Portsmouth. Washington then got a negotiator, the Portsmouth Custom Collector, Joseph Whipple, who tried to negotiate her return. In her 2017 book, Never Caught: The Washingtons Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar wrote that the negotiator, in an October 1796 letter to Washington, told him that Judge said she would: “rather suffer death than return to slavery and [be] liable to be sold or given to any other persons.” He added that Judge gave a condition if she were to return; that Washington would agree to her eventual freedom.
To this, Washington responded: “To enter into such a compromise, 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.”
President Washington urged the negotiator to find ways of re-enslaving Judge. Apparently this failed as Judge remained free for the rest of her life, raising an independent family of her own.
In August 1799, Washington got Burwell Bassett Jr., Martha’s nephew, to persuade Judge to return to slavery. When he failed, Bassett Jr. decided to use force. But the governor of New Hampshire got wind of the plot and assisted her to escape to a safe home outside the city.
Four months later, President Washington passed away, on 14 December, 1799, without realising his ambition of re-enslaving Judge. His wife Martha, followed on 22 May, 1802. On the other hand, Judge passed away on 25 February, 1848, that was 49 years after President Washington’s death. She was an example of the poor and powerless overcoming the rich and the powerful.
Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.
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