Elizabeth Langdon rarely took notice of common folk as she walked about Portsmouth. As the senator’s daughter, she was accustomed to staring eyes and false-pretense situations that could be avoided by offering little to no direct eye contact. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the woman she had seen in the street. The face of the young black woman looked hauntingly familiar to Elizabeth. And there was something about those eyes. She was certain that she’d seen them before. But where? And then, it dawned on her: the Executive Mansion.
But what on earth was Judge doing in Portsmouth, and where was Mrs. Washington? Surely she would have known if the president and his family were in town on official business or for a quick visit. For a moment, the senator’s daughter second-guessed herself. The only other alternative for the slave woman’s presence in Portsmouth was completely unimaginable. Yet, on the off chance that it was Ona Judge, she must alert her father immediately.
Once Elizabeth Langdon conferred with her parents, the situation became quite clear. The senator’s daughter had spotted the Washingtons’ fugitive. Still in shock, Langdon probably found herself wondering about Judge’s escape from her owners. But perhaps more curious to her was Judge’s reason for wanting to leave the Washingtons in the first place. For the slaveholding elite, it was difficult to accept the agency of black thought or the desire and risk involved in escape. The Langdons had participated in the buying and selling of slaves from the late 1600s up until the eve of the Revolution, and just like the Washingtons, they considered themselves to be benevolent masters, affording their slaves more than the bare necessities of life. They fashioned themselves as different from those hardened slave owners, notorious for the use of the lash and for cruel and demonic torture. In their minds, they had been noble slave owners who provided food and shelter for their slaves, whom they believed to be incapable of caring for themselves.
The Langdons would have known that the president offered pocket money to his slaves, allowed them to attend the theater, and even negotiated with them, allowing slaves to keep their families together. In their estimation, he was a good owner, paternalistic, and adhered to the rules of Southern gentility. Why would any of the Washingtons’ slaves run away, especially Ona Judge? Hadn’t she been treated well, clothed, and fed?
What the New Hampshire family could not envision was the suffocation felt by house slaves who controlled very little of their time. Under the constant and watchful eye of her mistress, Judge withstood her teenage years under Martha Washington’s scrutiny. She spent most of her days and nights in proximity to the Washington family, and without designated slave quarters, there was no place to breathe, no place to reconnect with friends or family, and no place to release the frustration and depression that came tied to the institution of slavery. Judge chose to take her chances on a risky escape rather than live a life trapped in human bondage, and her fierce insistence upon freedom was almost incomprehensible to most white people, the Langdons included.
Even though John Langdon was no longer a slaveholder, he knew what must be done. Not only were the Washingtons family friends, but as a senator of the United States, he was obligated to follow the law. Ona Judge was a fugitive and the Washingtons were entitled to their property.
On August 21, the Washingtons returned to Philadelphia from their extended visit at Mount Vernon and knew exactly where to find their slave woman.
Eleven
* * *
The Negotiator
Market Square, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, 1853. Courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia.
There were many pressing matters for the president to address during the late summer of 1796, but his decision to step down as president took center stage. Ignoring the fervent wishes of his party members who wanted Washington to remain in office, he was steadfast in his resolve to retire. The president was exhausted and wanted to return to life as a civilian farmer, a simpler life that would not wear on his aging body. He made it very clear that nothing short of a national emergency would change his mind about retirement. Washington was ready to go back to Virginia.
With an election fast approaching, the president chose to announce his intentions quickly. His farewell address, created in most part by Alexander Hamilton, was complete, so he sent Tobias Lear to fetch David Claypoole, publisher of the Philadelphia newspaper Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser. Washington wanted his farewell address to appear in David Claypoole’s paper, the same newspaper that four months earlier printed an advertisement with a ten-dollar reward for the return of Ona Judge. On September 19 Washington’s “Farewell Address” was publicly released in Philadelphia, leaving the American people with the task of selecting a new commander in chief.
In the midst of planning for retirement, however, the president took up the work of slave catching. Ona Judge had placed her owners in a very difficult situation. The Washingtons were now faced with the politically tricky task of attempting to reclaim a slave in the state of New Hampshire, which was not as committed to African slavery as was their beloved Virginia. They would need to devise a plan to recover her, one that was swift and discreet.
The Washingtons were perplexed about Judge’s motivations, associates, and her desired destination. For a second time in one year, they were feeling their way through a disturbing situation that had caught them off guard. First, their granddaughter Eliza Custis’s marriage and now in a reversal of roles, Ona Judge was the cause of surprise and uncertainty for the Washingtons. But any confusion that the president possessed had given way to anger—Judge had finally interrupted his slave-rotation plan. The president knew that if he pursued the fugitive, even with the law on his side, he might have a public relations problem, a dilemma he had managed to avoid throughout his residency in Philadelphia.
Runaways reminded Americans who were sorting out their feelings about human bondage that slaves were people, not simply property. Judge’s escape made a new case for a growing number of Northerners who bristled at the thought of African slavery: it mattered not if a slave was well dressed and offered small tokens of kindness, worked in luxurious settings or in the blistering heat. Enslavement was never preferable over freedom for any human being, and if given the opportunity, a slave, even the president’s slave, preferred freedom.
Ona Judge’s escape set a bad precedent for the slaves who worked in the Executive Mansion. As such, Washington was selective about who he brought back to Philadelphia after his trip home to Virginia had come to an end. Only Moll and Joe Richardson had been allowed to return to the capital for the president’s final year in office. Shaken up by Judge’s escape, the Washingtons made do with Northern white servants, fearful that the fugitive had started a trend. Immediately after he settled his new staff, both enslaved and wage-earning, Martha Washington gave the president his marching orders: Retrieve Ona. The fugitive belonged to the first lady, after all, and Judge had already been promised to her granddaughter. The president would need to work quickly to capture the fugitive, or he would have to deal with the displeasure of his wife, not to mention reimburse the Custis estate for the loss of its property.
Weighing all of his options carefully, and placing discretion above all else, the president decided to enlist the services of the federal government to quietly recapture the fugitive. He approached Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott Jr. The secretary must have listened to Washington’s request for assistance with his normal deference, and of course, he offered to help the president with his problem. Following their conversation, the next day the president sat down to write the first of six letters that would change hands between the president and his slave-catching agents.
On September first, the president began his letter writing to Wolcott. Several months had passed since Judge’s escape, but Washington was still angry, and the more he wrote, the angrier he felt. To his mind, the slave woman had been treated well, more like a family member than a slave, and this was how she repaid her kind master
s. And of course, she couldn’t have chosen a more inopportune time. The last thing Washington wanted to deal with during his final months in office was the recapture of a fugitive. He had many more pressing matters to attend, a thought that stirred his anger and commanded his thoughts.
Martha Washington’s slave, a woman who did her best not to be seen or heard, was now at the forefront of the president’s mind. As he sat at his desk, he thought long and hard about Judge, remembering how in 1784, a freckle-faced ten-year-old joined the team of house slaves at the Mansion House. She began her new assignment just as the president returned from the war, perhaps a memory that prompted Washington to realize that both he and Judge had acclimated to a new way of life at the very same time. He thought about the seven years that Judge had spent with his family in New York and Philadelphia and how she knew the most intimate details of the Washingtons’ lives. His reminiscing added fuel to the fire.
As he wrote his lengthy three-page letter about the fugitive, Judge’s face reappeared over and over again in his mind. But oddly enough, Washington never offered a physical description of her. Perhaps he had shared this information during his conversation with Wolcott, but it was more likely that the secretary was familiar with Ona Judge from his frequent visits with the president. And of course, the runaway slave advertisements that appeared in the Philadelphia Gazette could serve as a helpful guide.
One strand of hearsay that Washington addressed in his letter was that a male suitor had put Ona Judge up to the business of escape. In Washington’s mind, there was no possible way that Judge could or would have engineered her own escape under the watchful eyes of her owners. Someone else must have lured her away and planned her escape, for as Washington wrote to Wolcott, “not the least suspicion was entertained of her going, or having formed a connexion with any one who could induce her to such an Act.”
Over time, Washington grew adamant that a boyfriend was at the center of Judge’s getaway. The president believed that a known acquaintance of the first family, a “Frenchman” to be exact, was involved in Judge’s escape. This man (who Washington never named but suggested was mentally unstable) had not been seen since the fugitive left the president’s house. Subsequent conversations with Washington’s sources reported that this French boyfriend abandoned Ona Judge, leaving her destitute and dependent upon earning wages as a seamstress and begging for domestic work.
Believing that Judge had been beguiled into running away, Washington asked Wolcott to contact Portsmouth’s customs officer Thomas Whipple, which, to his mind, was a completely appropriate request. It was the president’s residency in Philadelphia—a matter of state business—that allowed for Judge to take flight in the first place, therefore the use of governmental resources in his slave catching was justifiable. Washington believed the customs collector could play a crucial role in recovering his slave woman, serving as the president’s eyes and ears on the ground in Portsmouth.
The president offered suggestions about recapturing the fugitive, and all of them were clear violations of the law. Washington understood the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, after all, he had signed the bill. His advice for the customs collector conveniently sidestepped all of the regulations that were in place to appropriately return a runaway to his or her owner. The law stated that anyone who captured a fugitive must bring him or her in front of a judge or magistrate and provide proof of ownership before leaving the state with their human property. The president had no intention of involving judges or magistrates in the handling of this dilemma, but he did suggest that Elizabeth Langdon or her mother could offer a formal identification of the runaway if “positive proof [was] required.” Washington hoped that such an identification would be unnecessary, but the appropriate people were in place, if needed. Once captured, Whipple should “put her on board a Vessel bound immediately to this place,—or to Alexandria which I should like better.”
Always cash-strapped, the president believed his suggestions for Judge’s recovery would prove “the safest & least expensive.” For his troubles, Whipple would be compensated for any and all costs associated with the capture and return of his fugitive slave, and of course, the president would be thankful for his assistance. For many who served the young nation in any kind of authoritative role, the appreciation of the president was most welcome, for who wouldn’t want to be in the good graces of the president of the United States? Given Washington’s stature, one would assume Whipple would have completed the task with enthusiasm.
Though Washington closed his letter with an apology to Oliver Wolcott, writing, “I am sorry to give you, or any one else trouble on such a trifling occasion,” his annoyance with Ona Judge was evident. “The ingratitude of the girl, who was brought up & treated more like a child than a Servant (& Mrs. Washington’s desire to recover her) ought not to escape with impunity if it can be avoided.” His pride, in addition to his wife’s anger and strong desire to have her bondwoman back in her possession, moved the president to pursue Judge, no matter the law.
On behalf of the president, Secretary Wolcott contacted Portsmouth’s collector of customs, Joseph Whipple. He responded to Wolcott by letter on September tenth, acknowledging that he would “with great pleasure execute the Presidents [sic] wishes in the matter to which it relates.”
Joseph Whipple, born sometime around 1737, was the son of Captain William Whipple Sr. and Mary Cutt Whipple from Kittery, Maine. The Whipples raised five children, but it was Joseph’s brother, General William Whipple, who elevated the family name. William Whipple Jr., a soldier in the American Revolution, and an associate justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court, signed the Declaration of Independence. In addition to all of his political contributions, he was an entrepreneur who ran a mercantile business with his brother Joseph in Portsmouth until the beginning of the Revolution. While the customs collector was an important man in Portsmouth, he would never be as well-known or respected as William. He lived in his brother’s shadow.
The Whipples were not unfamiliar with bound labor, for the family had held Africans in bondage. However, by the 1780s the Whipples began to emancipate their slaves, in particular, those who had fought in the Revolution. Their slave, the famed Prince Whipple, who gave his service to the American troops, was rewarded for his service with freedom. Previously owned by William Whipple Jr., Prince Whipple’s name became well known after he was erroneously labeled as the black soldier in the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware.
Joseph Whipple was an educated businessman who happened to be friends with Senator Langdon. In August of 1789 (following a recommendation from his friend), Washington formally appointed Whipple as Portsmouth’s customs collector. Whipple held this position throughout Washington’s two terms in office, eventually leaving his post during the Adams administration, as his political sentiments became heavily anti-federalist. (Whipple found his way back to his post when the Republican Thomas Jefferson became president in 1800.) The Customs office was small and adjoined the home he made with his wife, Hannah Billings of Boston. While it would be more than presumptuous to label Whipple an abolitionist, it was clear that his views on slavery were in line with many of the residents of Portsmouth. With the Whipples having emancipated their own slaves and with Joseph Whipple rethinking his own Federalist feelings during the last year of Washington’s term in office, the request from the president placed Whipple in a difficult position. Although he accepted the assignment from Washington with a professed eagerness and due respect, he planned to investigate the claims about Ona Judge and come to his own conclusions about her escape.
Whipple spent the next several weeks searching for the president’s fugitive. He would have started his investigation down by the Portsmouth docks, asking ship captains and dockworkers, merchant friends and small shopkeepers if they had seen a young woman with freckles and bushy hair. He would have been discreet, mentioning nothing about her status as a runaway nor her connection to the president.
Like Washington, Whipple ca
me up with subterfuge to lure Judge into his sights. He told his acquaintances that he was looking for a good servant, a woman, who would be able to help his wife, Hannah, with traditional domestic work, knowing that the grapevine would spread the word. If he were smart, just to be sure, he would have asked free blacks—those who served as maids and waiters to his friends—if they knew of anyone who needed work.
Ona Judge learned that the customs collector was in need of a domestic, and was immediately intrigued. Friends would have told her about Whipple and his relatively famous family, prompting Judge to remember that this kind of work was something to which she was accustomed. She certainly knew how to serve the rich and famous. The job would most likely be permanent, not a temporary position that always left black domestics vulnerable once their pay was discontinued with little to no notice. Most important, Judge’s friends would have told her that Whipple did not own slaves, another promising attribute about her potential employer. She knew enough after her three-month stay in Portsmouth that this might be the opportunity she so desperately needed: stable and solid employment.
With a mixture of optimism and caution, Judge agreed to meet with Whipple to discuss the position. Never forgetting her fugitive status, Judge was inevitably both reserved and alert, sizing up her potential employer as he asked questions about her cooking and sewing skills. She desperately needed this kind of work, but something seemed off about the customs collector—in fact, he was too nice to her. Whipple began to ask about her personal life, fair game for any white employer in eighteenth-century Portsmouth, but Whipple appeared to know more about Judge’s life than was appropriate. This, after all, was their first meeting. Whipple asked if she had a husband and then began to ask curious questions about her love life, odd questions that would make any young woman uncomfortable. The customs collector tried desperately to verify Judge’s identity without tipping her off, but he failed. Whipple’s charade quickly unraveled once he asked the fugitive about a French suitor. She denied a relationship with anyone, and it dawned on her that she’d been tricked. Readying her feet for a quick departure, Ona Judge grew quiet, and waited.
Never Caught Page 13