To less envious eyes, Washington’s resignation represented another milestone in republican government. Just as he had proved at the end of the war that he did not lust for power, so his departure from the presidency elevated his moral standing in the world. One encomium came from an unexpected quarter. By giving up first military and now political power, he stood out as “the greatest character of the age,” according to George III, who had belatedly learned to appreciate his erstwhile enemy. 36 Though it was not his main intention, Washington inaugurated a custom of presidents serving only two terms, a precedent honored until the time of Franklin Roosevelt. For opponents who had spent eight years harping on Washington’s supposed monarchical obsessions, his decision to step down could only have left them in a dazed state of speechless confusion.

THE MOST FLAGRANT OMISSION in Washington’s farewell statement was the subject most likely to subvert its unifying spirit: slavery. Whatever his private reservations about slavery, President Washington had acted in accordance with the wishes of southern slaveholders. In February 1793 he signed the Fugitive Slave Act, enabling masters to cross state lines to recapture runaway slaves. He remained zealous in tracking down his own fugitive slaves, although like Jefferson, he didn’t care to call attention to such activities. When a slave named Paul ran away in March 1795, Washington, while approving measures to apprehend him, advised William Pearce that “I would not have my name appear in any advertisement, or other measure, leading to it.”37 He was especially worried about his name surfacing in northern papers. Even in Philadelphia, Washington monitored the status of runaway slaves at Mount Vernon. “I see by the last week’s report that Caesar has been absent six days,” he asked Pearce in early 1796. “Is he a runaway? If so, it is probable he will escape altogether, as he can read, if not write.”38

Beyond moral scruples, Washington found slave ownership a political embarrassment. During his second term, the Aurora taunted him by declaring that, twenty years after independence, Washington still possessed “FIVE HUNDRED of the HUMAN SPECIES IN SLAVERY.”39 On another occasion it mocked him as a hypocritical emblem of liberty, arguing that it “must appear a little incongruous then that Liberty’s Apostle should be seen with chains in his hands, holding men in bondage.”40 This was a dangerous game for Bache to play, since it could easily backfire on Jefferson and Madison, two sizable slaveholders who figured as his populist champions. In later correspondence with John Adams, Benjamin Rush served up this tidbit about Washington: “Mr. Jefferson told me he once saw [Washington] throw the Aurora hastily upon the floor with a ‘damn’ of the author, who had charged him with the crime of being a slaveholder.”41 Federalist polemicists also exploited the slavery issue to excoriate Republicans and their southern base. “Oh, happy Carolina! Happy, thrice Virginia!” wrote William Cobbett. “After having spent the day in singing hymns to the Goddess of Liberty, the virtuous Democrat [i.e., Republican] gets him home to his peaceful dwelling and sleeps with his property secure beneath his roof, yea, sometimes in his very arms.”42

During their Philadelphia years, George and Martha Washington must have wondered how long their slaves imported from Mount Vernon would remain loyal. First there had been the flap over the local law that liberated slaves after six months of continuous residence. Slave masters often assumed that slaves brought north and exposed to free blacks were forever “tainted” by the experience; Washington subscribed to the view that otherwise happy, contented slaves could be “tampered with and seduced” by meddlesome northern abolitionists.43 Even though Washington favored abolition in theory, he thought that as long as slavery existed, his slaves ought to cooperate in exchange for the food and shelter he provided.

Washington permitted his household slaves a modicum of freedom to roam the city, sample its pleasures, and even patronize the theater. Household accounts for June 1792 disclose expense money doled out for “Austin, Hercules & Oney to go to the play.”44 In the spring of 1793 two of Martha’s maids were given money to attend “tumbling feats,” followed by money to view a local circus. The two slaves most favored with such treats and held in highest esteem by the Washingtons were Ona (or Oney) Judge, Martha’s maid, and Hercules, the master chef. One wonders whether their fleeting experiences of freedom in Philadelphia whetted their appetites for permanent freedom. Washington must have known that their contacts with the large community of free blacks in the capital could only strengthen their desire to throw off the yoke of slavery.

A young mulatto woman, light-skinned and freckled, Ona Judge was the daughter of Andrew Judge, an indentured servant at Mount Vernon, and a slave named Betty. She was Martha’s personal maid and widely known as her pet. Each morning Ona brushed Martha’s hair, laid out her clothing, and assisted her with household sewing. In the president’s words, Ona Judge was “handy and useful to [Martha], being perfect mistress of her needle.”45 Naive about the true feelings of her slaves, Martha assumed that, because Ona enjoyed a relatively privileged status as her personal chambermaid, she would never rebel against her bondage. In 1796 Ona, then about twenty-two, realized that the Washingtons might soon return to Mount Vernon for good, eliminating any possibility of a flight to freedom. As if the young slave would be thrilled by the news, Martha mentioned to Ona one day that she planned to bequeath her to her granddaughter Elizabeth, who was notorious for her grim moods. Far from feeling flattered, Ona felt deep terror at the prospect, later saying with disdain that “she was determined not to be her slave.”46 Since “she did not want to be a slave always,” she later recalled, “she supposed if she went back to Virginia, she would never have a chance to escape.”47

As the Washingtons got ready for a return trip to Mount Vernon in May 1796, Ona Judge set in motion her scheme to escape. While servants boxed belongings for the trip, she used the preparations as camouflage to gather her things, and as the Washingtons dined one evening, she slipped out of the executive mansion and blended into the free black community. After lying low for a month, she sailed north aboard a ship called the Nancy, staffed by a large contingent of black sailors, and eventually wound up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

When the Washingtons discovered the escape, they were convinced that Judge would have fled only if she had been cajoled by a wily seducer. They flattered themselves into thinking that, as a supposedly contented slave, Judge would never have pined for freedom if some intriguing fellow had not planted the forbidden idea. They could not conceive of a slave being the agent of her own fate or running out of a simple hunger for liberty. They felt obliged to denigrate any man who helped her as an unscrupulous cad rather than someone who might have loved her and honestly wanted to assist her.

The protracted hunt for Ona Judge began when a young woman, Elizabeth Langdon, who had befriended Nelly Custis, spotted her in Portsmouth. When Langdon realized that Martha Washington was nowhere to be seen and that Judge had escaped, she asked Judge, “But why did you come away? How can Mrs. Washington do without you?” “Run away, misses,” Judge replied. “Run away!” said Langdon. “And from such an excellent place! Why, what could induce you? You had a room to yourself and only light nice work to do and every indulgence.”“Yes, I know, but I want to be free, misses; wanted to learn to read and write.”48 Ona Judge, who had stored up grievances that Martha Washington could little comprehend, afterward complained that she had “never received the least mental or moral instruction of any kind, while she remained in Washington’s family.”49