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  Hercules knew that he carried some social capital with his owners and that his work as a chef was desirable, for he managed to parlay his new assignment in Philadelphia into an opportunity for his son. Richmond, a young and inexperienced slave at Mount Vernon, traveled north with his father to serve as an assistant in the kitchen. The president was less than enthusiastic about his arrangement with Hercules:

  Austin & Herculas go in this days Stage, & will, unquestionably arrive several days before us. Richmond and Christopher embarked yesterday by Water—the former not from his appearance or merits I fear, but because he was the Son of Herculas & his desire to have him as an assistant, comes as a Scullion for the Kitchen.

  Unimpressed with Richmond, the president nonetheless acquiesced, giving the young Richmond an opportunity to travel out of Virginia, to learn his father’s trade, and to remain connected and attached to Hercules.

  Six of the seven slaves who had traveled to New York also accompanied the Washingtons to Philadelphia. Ona Judge, Moll, Austin, and the horsemen Giles, Paris, and Christopher Sheels were all selected to serve the president and his family in their new home on High Street. Hercules and Richmond would bring the total to eight, with a ninth slave joining them during the president’s second term. William Lee’s worsening physical disabilities prohibited him from serving as the president’s valet. He was removed from service and left behind at Mount Vernon.

  Four moves in less than eighteen months was a tiring grind for the entire family, but for the eight slaves who moved north with their masters, it was more taxing. A new set of rules would have to be learned, new communities would need to be formed, and separation from family and friends would once again be experienced. How would Philadelphia differ from New York? How would their new home be outfitted, and would their duties change? Many questions must have filled the minds of Washington’s slaves who traveled north, but they could show no trepidation. Little did Ona Judge know that this move would begin a sojourn toward freedom. The journey would be treacherously slow and would take six years to complete, but for Judge, Philadelphia would serve as the birthplace of her own freedom.

  The “President’s House” stood at 190 High Street (also known as Market Street) between Fifth and Sixth Streets, less than six hundred feet from Independence Hall. The house was known by many names, including the Masters-Penn House, the Robert Morris House, 190 Street, and the Washington Mansion, but the name most often used by Washington in his correspondence was the President’s House. The building was one of the largest homes in the city and had housed several well-known people. Colonial governor Richard Penn (grandson of William Penn), British general William Howe, American general Benedict Arnold, and financier Robert Morris had all spent time in the house on High Street, but beginning in November of 1790, it became home to the Washingtons, albeit with some modification. Adjustments would need to be made for his family and large staff to live with relative comfort in the home. A wall was demolished, and bow windows were installed—a fashionable statement for the times. Additional rooms were created for servants near the servants’ hall and in the attic. Forty-five feet wide and fifty-two feet deep, the home was the size of two adjacent rowhomes. With three floors and an attic, the President’s House would be bursting at its seams once the Washingtons and their entourage arrived.

  George and Martha Washington, along with their grandchildren Nelly and George (Washy), would find themselves sharing living quarters with the president’s four secretaries and chief of staff, Tobias Lear. Lear’s wife, Mary, and their toddler, Benjamin, also lived at High Street with eight slaves and approximately fifteen white servants. Judge would spend the next six years of her life living in a household that counted between twenty-five and thirty residents. Privacy was an impossibility for the slaves and servants who lived at the President’s House; it was hard to come by even for the Washingtons themselves.

  The wide stoop of three white marbled steps greeted the family. When entering the house, the first family met a long hallway, approximately fifty feet in length, that was carpeted in green and extended up the stairs. Wainscoting was painted along the passageway walls, and mahogany doors accented the two dining rooms, one used for the family and another for more formal state dinners that could seat up to thirty people. In the center of the first floor was the kitchen, a large room that was now in the hands of Hercules and John Vicar from Baltimore, who was later replaced by Samuel Fraunces, also known as “Black Sam.” Attached to the kitchen were a washroom, a servant’s dining hall, the steward’s room, two bedrooms for white servants and their wives, and a closely located bathing room. The rear of the property included a stable, a cow house, a coach house, and a smokehouse that was converted to accommodate sleeping space for slaves. Hanging glass lamps, mahogany-railed stairs, and the “house clock” perched on the second-floor landing provided a stately decor for the new home of the president.

  The second floor was the exact same size and scope as the first floor, but functioned in a different capacity. The second floor served as a salon to entertain guests, but it also housed the bedrooms of the Washington family. Toward the front of the house, a large room called the Yellow Drawing Room became Martha Washington’s social domain. The long yellow drapes and furniture brightened the room where she served afternoon tea to her friends and acquaintances. Once a week the space was filled with several dozen guests who came to socialize during the Friday evening “drawingrooms.” Adjacent to Martha Washington’s social room was the State Drawing Room, a larger space in which the family hosted social receptions for dignitaries and friends from across the country and the Atlantic.

  The president knew that space was at a premium, but he made certain that he would have his own small private office. Washington had the original bathtub removed and created a private study for himself on the second floor. A separate servant quarters for the lodging of laundresses and kitchen maids also claimed space toward the rear of the second floor. Off the hallway were two smaller rooms that had been customized for the grandchildren. Each had his or her own room; however, each child slept with one of the slaves. Ona Judge and Moll were assigned to sleep with the Washington grandchildren and while Moll was specifically responsible for the care and well-being of the children, it would have been next to impossible for Judge to escape this responsibility as well. One of the grandchildren’s bedrooms shared a door to the president and Mrs. Washington’s bedroom, most likely the room in which Judge slept. She would be available to soothe the Washingtons’ grandchildren when they were sick and when they had nightmares, but would be unavailable for any child of her own. Moreover, she would be on call to tend to the grandchildren at night but also expected to respond to the needs of her mistress both night and day. Her service was endless.

  Most bondwomen dreaded the sleeping accommodations for house slaves, as living in the same quarters as their owners put them at risk for sexual attack. They preferred the slave cabins offered to field slaves on larger plantations. While the dirt-floored slave cabins were rough, with very little to no insulation during the cold Virginia winters or the terribly hot summers, they provided what house slaves longed for: privacy. Slaves who lived in cabins with friends and family slept in a place of refuge from the constant demands of white owners. Enslaved men and women could talk, laugh, and pray together in the crude wooden structures that served as their homes. But for house slaves like Judge, there was no refuge.

  The Executive Mansion on 190 High Street was teeming with secretaries, servants, and slaves, most of whom were male. Ona had to be vigilant. How would Judge avoid the advances of male staff, servants, or slaves who might try to force themselves upon her? She was in constant jeopardy of rape, and very little could prevent a knife-wielding assailant from forcing himself upon her. Many slave women feared their male owners (and their owners’ sons) more than any other man, and a room adjacent to an owner could mean many sleepless nights for the female slave. Judge never accused Washington of such licentious behavior, although whisp
ers about an encounter between the president and his brother’s slave named Venus lived on at Mount Vernon. For now, as long as Washy, with whom she probably shared a room, was a small boy, Judge didn’t have to worry about attack.

  The third floor, similar to the second, contained more spaces for living and for presidential business. Tobias Lear and his wife, Mary, claimed a sleeping compartment that they shared with young Benjamin, and the two other bedrooms were shared by Washington’s secretaries: Maj. William Jackson, Howell Lewis, Bartholomew Dandridge, and eventually Robert Lewis (all but William Jackson were the nephews of George and Martha Washington). The secretaries’ living spaces on the third floor were conveniently located near the President’s Business Office, where Washington and all who arrived on official business conducted meetings. The third floor was also home to the “Summer Room,” a spacious addition that provided the necessary living quarters for family and friends to visit with the Washingtons. In the garret or the attic, rooms were cordoned off for the remaining slaves and servants who needed a place to rest their head. Next to the kitchen, the attic was the warmest place in the house and almost unbearable during the summer months. Hercules, Richmond, and Christopher most likely slept there with Paris and Giles sleeping in either the stables or the smokehouse.

  So, men and women, free and enslaved, lived in very close proximity to one another at 190 High Street. The president failed to realize how such tight quarters would jeopardize his fortune. The Washingtons’ slaves in Philadelphia would learn a great deal from the free white servants who toiled alongside them. They watched their comrades receive pay for their labor, move about the city with relative ease, and make decisions about their lives, including, even, the right to leave their employer. These were important lessons for all the slaves who lived on High Street, lessons that Ona Judge would study and commit to memory.

  Five

  * * *

  The Blacks in the Family

  Logo of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, founded in 1775.

  With the family settled in Philadelphia, Washington began a grueling Southern tour, a tiresome three-month trip that took him from Maryland down to Savannah, Georgia. Whenever possible, the president would return to Mount Vernon, checking in on his estate, which stubbornly avoided financial success. He also used his home visits as moments to rest and reenergize from the constant and almost maddening pace of presidential business. Mount Vernon was Washington’s safe harbor, but the tranquility he so desperately needed was shaken when the president read through his mail. A troubling letter, written by Tobias Lear on April 5, 1791, aroused deep concerns for the president. His finances were once again in jeopardy, not because of a poor tobacco harvest, but because of his investment in human bondage.

  Attorney General Edmond Randolph appeared at the Executive Mansion, wanting to speak with the president regarding a pressing concern. The former governor of Virginia would have preferred talking to the president about such delicate matters, but Washington was in Virginia, and just as she had done so many times in the past, Martha Washington stood in as her husband’s social substitute. Perhaps the two sat in the Yellow Drawing Room, exchanging brief pleasantries while they waited for the Washingtons’ slaves to serve tea or lemonade. She would quickly discern that her visitor was upset, and that Randolph’s visit would require delicacy. Mrs. Washington typically had Ona Judge by her side, but she would have dismissed her slave before such a sensitive conversation took place.

  Angry and frustrated, the attorney general confided in the first lady, telling her about a problem that plagued slaveholders who resided in Philadelphia. Three of his slaves had run off, and the attorney general knew that he would not be able to get them back. As the top-ranking lawyer in the nation, Randolph never believed that his slaves would quote the law of Pennsylvania back to him, but they did just that, and to make matters worse, they were correct. Randolph told the first lady that his slaves had boldly “given him notice that they should tomorrow take advantage of a law of this State, and claim their freedom.” Pennsylvania was a place, he warned, where visiting slaveholders, like the Washingtons, could lose their property, thereby suffering great financial loss. Slaveholders in Philadelphia were vulnerable.

  Randolph reminded the first lady that Pennsylvania law required the emancipation of all adult slaves who were brought into the commonwealth for more than a period of six months. The attorney general either took for granted that his slaves would never learn of the law or believed that they were unfathomably faithful and would decide to remain enslaved to their master, even when the law did not require it. Randolph offered his own experience as a cautionary tale, suggesting that the president’s family be careful about their own slaves, fearing that “those who were of age in this family might follow the example, after a residence of six months should put it in their power.” This warning gave Martha Washington reason to pause.

  The first lady understood the seriousness of the house call as well as the need for discreet and swift action. She listened to Randolph intently, thanked him for his visit, and quickly began discussions with Lear about the best plan of action. Her husband had to be notified immediately, and the slaves who lived on High Street needed to be kept from such inflammatory news. But the President’s House was not spacious, and voices carried through the hallways. Very little remained private in a space that was typically filled by twenty or more people. Just as Randolph’s slaves came to understand and utilize the gradual abolition law, so, too, might the Washingtons’ slaves. It would be painfully embarrassing and financially damaging if the president’s own slaves turned the laws of the state against him.

  Tobias Lear knew that the Washingtons were sitting on a powder keg, and it was his responsibility to make certain that it didn’t blow. As the sixth-month mark since the first family had taken residence in Philadelphia was fast approaching, Lear’s letter to the president asked for advice and guidance and for Washington to “give directions in the matter respecting the blacks in this family.”

  The president was aware that Philadelphia’s popular sentiment surrounding the issue of slavery was unlike what he had encountered in New York. There was little public chatter about the Washingtons and their caravan of enslaved Africans arriving in New York in the spring of 1789, but things were different in Pennsylvania. While he was familiar with the gradual abolition law, the president was caught off guard about the precarious status of his own slaves, and within a week’s time, Washington responded to Tobias Lear’s request for advice. The president had given the issue quite a bit of thought, rationalizing his circumstances as different from those of the attorney general. Writing from Richmond, Virginia, Washington told his trusted secretary that Randolph was in some ways responsible for his own misfortune. So that he could practice law in the commonwealth, the attorney general made the decision to become a citizen of Pennsylvania. Randolph chose to “take the Oaths of Citizenship,” therefore agreeing to observe all the laws of the state, one of which was to emancipate his slaves within six months of his arrival. Washington rationalized his situation was different. He lived in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a necessity of his employment, stating that “my residence is incidental as an Officer of Government.”

  But even with a justification in place, the president was cautious. Washington wrote to his secretary that there were some citizens, abolitionists—who were in the “practice of enticing slaves even when there is no colour of law for it.” The president worried that his own slaves were in danger of exposure to the epidemic of black freedom, and although Washington believed that his slaves were better served and cared for in his possession, he understood the power and the allure of freedom. Washington wrote, “For although I do not think they would be benefitted by the change, yet the idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist.”

  He asked Lear to continue with an investigation of the laws of Pennsylvania, and in the meantime, the president, Mrs. Washington, and Lear crafted a plan of circumvention; th
e Washingtons would not break the law—they would simply work around it.

  Ona Judge learned quickly that life in Philadelphia was quite different from what she had come to know in New York. Her slave status was somewhat of a rarity in her new city, and unlike New York, there was a much more strident abolition movement. In terms of thinking and legislating freedom for all people, Pennsylvania was advanced compared to New York or New Jersey, becoming the first state to gradually dismantle slavery. Philadelphia took the lead in the state’s movement to unhinge lifelong bondage, and by the time Ona Judge moved to High Street, slavery was on its deathbed.

  Pennsylvanians wrestled with the moral dilemma of African slavery as early as the seventeenth century. The colony was only seven years old when the first group of Quakers began to question human bondage. Founded by William Penn in 1681, Pennsylvania became a colony known for its significant number of Quakers who did, indeed, own slaves. Many Quaker slaveholders agreed with founder George Fox, who advocated for the humane treatment of those held in bondage. Good treatment was relative, and compared to the life-shortening tobacco farms in Virginia or the rice plantations in the Carolinas, Pennsylvania slavery did enjoy a kinder reputation than did its southern neighbors. Nonetheless, slavery continued, and within the Society of Friends a great debate over human bondage brewed for nearly a century. Beginning in 1688, a number of Germantown Quakers declared slavery oppositional to their religious beliefs, but their cries fell upon deaf ears as Friends began to shun their own members, labeling them troublemakers, going as far as to cause financial calamity to the small business owners who dared to question the morality of slavery. Although they were a consensus-driven religious organization that believed in equality and the “light of God” within all men, the financial gains connected to slavery and the racial stereotypes that bred fear of a free black community halted a meaningful seventeenth-century abolitionist movement.