by Ron Chernow
The journey to Philadelphia left Washington in high dudgeon because of what he condemned as “the most infamous roads” and the chronic drunkenness of his coachman, Arthur Dunn, who was banished from the coach and consigned to the baggage wagon, which he twice overturned. When he arrived in Philadelphia, expecting to find a tidy residence, Washington was aghast at the incomplete state of the presidential mansion. Even the main dining room and his private study needed further work. The contrite Lear could only plead a dearth of workmen. As a presidential headquarters, the house left much to be desired, with Washington’s public office on the third floor obligating visitors to ascend two steep flights to reach him. The chaos and clutter in the house could only have exasperated Washington, who had to deliver his annual message to Congress in a week. Even though he had emerged as a vocal critic of Hamilton’s policies, Madison retained enough of the president’s ear that he assisted in drafting the speech.
The new Congress convened in the State House on Chestnut Street that had hosted the Continental Congress in 1775 and witnessed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. To provide comfortable seating, the House of Representatives had ordered sixty-five armchairs, upholstered in black leather, while the Senate, not to be outdone, had twenty-seven seats richly done up in “red Morocco,” all beautifully adorned with brass tacks.23 On December 8, dressed in black velvet, Washington delivered his speech to Congress in such a soft, breathy voice that Vice President Adams had to repeat it to legislators after he left. Aside from bitter wrangling over Hamilton’s program, this moment was a peaceful interlude in American politics. Commerce had flourished under Washington’s aegis, and he offered an optimistic assessment of the country. At the beginning of his talk, he pointed to the appreciation of American debt as a direct consequence of Hamilton’s program: “The progress of public credit is witnessed by a considerable rise of American stock abroad as well as at home.”24 Government paper had tripled in value since the new government started. At the same time, Washington reacted to charges that Hamilton favored perpetual government debt and invited opposing legislators to reduce it by selling western lands. The way Washington defended his controversial treasury secretary, while subtly leaving the door ajar to a modification of his programs, was a fine example of his finesse in managing to be both forceful and conciliatory at once.
When the House asked Hamilton that December for further measures to strengthen public credit, he proposed an excise tax on whiskey and other domestically distilled spirits. For many western communities, this was a radical and incendiary measure. Not only did many farmers have an unquenchable thirst for homemade brew, but they often found it economical to convert grain into whiskey and sell it in this portable form. As with his program to assume state debt, Hamilton admitted to Washington that the whiskey tax was a way to strengthen the federal government by laying “hold of so valuable a resource of revenue before it was generally preoccupied by the state governments.”25
The excise tax kindled fierce debate in Congress as well as widespread doubt that it could be enforced in western communities that had flouted previous efforts to tax their moonshine. Anticipating resistance, Hamilton drew up a plan for a small army of inspectors and tax collectors, breeding fears of a vast new bureaucracy applying draconian measures. Among the predictable skeptics was William Maclay. On the day the excise tax passed the Senate, he scoffed that it would be unenforceable in the rambunctious precincts of western Pennsylvania. “War and bloodshed is the most likely consequence of all this,” he predicted accurately. “Congress may go home. Mr. Hamilton is all powerful and fails in nothing which he attempts.”26 While bracing for a probable backlash against the tax, Hamilton maintained that the government needed more revenues and insisted that opponents would deem other possible taxes, such as one on land, still more odious. Washington and Hamilton had the thankless task of implementing the first tax systems in a country with a deeply ingrained suspicion of all taxes.
BEFORE THE CAPITAL MOVED to Philadelphia,Washington had no trouble incorporating his suite of seven slaves into the presidential household. Martha also traveled about in a coach with a personal escort of slaves, as Colonel Thomas Rodney observed when he went riding in Manhattan with her and Polly Lear: “Just before them [were] a mulatto girl behind the carriage and a Negro manservant on horseback behind.”27 Washington must have sensed that the government’s switch to Philadelphia would complicate matters with his slaves, for Pennsylvania had been the first state to undertake the gradual abolition of slavery, in 1780. Philadelphia, in particular, had a large community of free blacks and a robust abolitionist movement. In bringing his slaves north, Washington violated his long-standing policy of not breaking up slave families. In late October, when Tobias Lear described how the slaves would be housed in sleeping quarters in Philadelphia, he admitted as much: “None of the men will have their wives in the family.”28 It was decided to lodge some slaves, including Billy Lee, in the four garret rooms; some in the former smokehouse; and some in an outlying building called the Servants Hall. The composition of Washington’s team of slaves also underwent significant changes. In New York he had chafed at the tasteless cooking and unsanitary habits of his cook, Rachel Lewis. As he contemplated the move to Philadelphia, Washington decided to fire her, informing Lear that “the dirty figures of Mrs. Lewis and her daughter will not be a pleasant sight in view . . . of the principal entertaining rooms in our new habitation.”29
Instead, Washington brought his favorite chef from Mount Vernon, the able Hercules, also known as Uncle Harkless, who teamed up with Samuel Fraunces to keep an immaculately clean, bustling kitchen. Handsome and muscular, Hercules was a dandyish figure who moved about Philadelphia with considerable freedom, attending theater and other entertainments. By dint of talent and hard work, he forced Washington to treat him as more than just a slave and got permission to sell scraps from the presidential kitchen, pocketing the proceeds. He also got the president to bring his adolescent son Richmond to Philadelphia to serve as his scullion. Washington seemed miffed by the request, confiding sarcastically to Lear that the idle boy hadn’t gotten the appointment “from his appearance or merits,” but he obviously felt that he could not turn Hercules down.30 In much the same way, Washington sometimes obliged Billy Lee against his better judgment. Left behind at Mount Vernon was Richmond’s mother, a seamstress known as Lame Alice.
Also setting out for Philadelphia in the fall of 1790 was the adolescent slave Christopher Sheels, who would eventually replace Billy Lee as Washington’s body servant. A third-generation Mount Vernon slave, the fifteen-year-old Sheels was separated from his mother, Alice, a spinner, and his grandmother Doll, a cook. The mulatto slave Austin, separated from his wife at Mount Vernon, arrived in Philadelphia by stagecoach along with Hercules. Martha also brought along her two dower slaves, Moll and the teenage Ona Judge, for her personal entourage. As the person who dressed Martha’s hair and laid out her clothes, Ona Judge held a special place in the presidential household.
In early April 1791 Attorney General Edmund Randolph delivered a startling piece of news to the Washingtons. Under the 1780 Pennsylvania statute, any adult slaves resident in the state for six consecutive months were automatically free. Three of Randolph’s own slaves had served notice that they planned to claim their freedom. Bizarrely, the attorney general of the United States urged the president and first lady to evade this local law. Coaching them how to do so, he noted that once slaves were taken out of Pennsylvania and then brought back, the clock was reset, and another six months needed to elapse before they could demand their freedom. At first Washington imagined, wrongly, that federal officials in the capital were exempt from the law. Still, he fretted to Tobias Lear that people in “the practice of enticing slaves” might not make such fine distinctions.31 With paternalistic certitude, he doubted that, even if any of his slaves opted for freedom, they would be “benefitted by the change, yet the idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist.”32 Washington
was especially alarmed about this prospect, since all of his slaves in Philadelphia, except Hercules and Paris, were dower slaves, meaning that Washington would have to reimburse the Custis estate if they fled his household.
Not taking any chances, Washington decided to shuttle his slaves back to Mount Vernon for brief stays before their six-month time limits expired. As minors, Christopher Sheels, Richmond, and Ona Judge were all debarred from seeking their freedom. To keep the adult slaves in bondage, Washington resorted to various ruses so they would not know why they were being sent home temporarily. As he said bluntly, “I wish to have it accomplished under pretext that may deceive both them [i.e., the slaves] and the public.”33 This was a rare instance of George Washington scheming, and Martha Washington and Tobias Lear connived right along with him. In April Martha sent Austin back to Mount Vernon under the pretext of honoring a promise that he could return periodically to see his wife. In writing to Fanny about the visit, Martha showed how coolly she could lie, saying that Austin’s stay at Mount Vernon “will be short, indeed. I could but illy spare him at this time, but to fulfill my promise to his wife.”34 That spring, when Martha took a short excursion to Trenton, she deliberately took two slaves across state lines. In a similarly duplicitous vein, Washington advised her to return to Mount Vernon in May, then summon Hercules home to cook for her. So top secret were these machinations that Washington advised Tobias Lear, “I request that these sentiments and this advice may be known to none but yourself & Mrs. Washington.”35
Such devious tactics ran counter to Washington’s professed abhorrence of slavery, not to mention his storied honesty. Even more startling was the acquiescence of Tobias Lear, the young idealist who had balked at working for Washington because the latter owned slaves. In the midst of corresponding with Washington over foiling the Pennsylvania law, Lear suddenly remembered that he and Washington were supposed to be long-term opponents of slavery, and he wrote guiltily to the president: “You will permit me now, Sir . . . to declare that no consideration should induce me to take these steps to prolong the slavery of a human being had I not the fullest confidence that they will, at some future period, be liberated and the strongest conviction that their situation with you is far preferable to what they would probably obtain in a state of freedom.”36 This strange declaration shows that Washington had already told a few confidants of his intention to free his slaves someday, while saying that, in the interim, the slaves were somehow better off than if they were emancipated.
Washington and Lear wondered whether the slaves knew of the Pennsylvania law that lay behind these subterfuges. They were especially curious about Hercules, who had been told he would be sent by stagecoach to Mount Vernon in June. Since he would arrive a little ahead of the president, Tobias Lear informed him that “being at home before [Washington’s] arrival, he will have it in his power to see his friends.”37 When somebody in the presidential household evidently tipped off Hercules to the true reason for his return, he was outraged, but not for the obvious reason. As Lear wrote privately to Washington, Hercules “was mortified to the last degree to think that a suspicion could be entertained of his fidelity or attachment to you. And so much did the poor fellow’s feelings appear to be touched that it left no doubt of his sincerity.”38 As we shall see, Hercules was an extremely shrewd man who knew how to feign loyalty and play his master to perfection. To reaffirm her faith in Hercules, Martha Washington told him that he could stay in Philadelphia past the six-month expiration point before returning to Virginia. Hercules took her up on the offer, stayed past the deadline, then dutifully returned to Mount Vernon. Perhaps to make the return more tolerable, Tobias Lear bought Hercules two new shirts for the trip.
All this collusion occurred against a backdrop of unusual turmoil on the slavery issue. Even as Washington and Lear conspired to keep slaves in bondage, Lafayette rose in the National Assembly and demanded the extension of full civil rights to free blacks in the French colonies. In August 1791, inspired by the French Revolution, slaves in the French colony of St. Domingue (later Haiti) began a bloody rebellion that raged for a dozen years. Many slave owners fled to American seaboard cities, where they stoked dread among American masters that their slaves, too, would stage a bloody insurrection. In 1792 the House of Commons in London enacted its first ban on the slave trade, further fueling fears among slave owners that abolitionism might spread.
Faced with such ferment, Washington struggled to find a stand on slavery that reconciled his economic interests with his private principles. As president, he insisted that the British compensate Americans for slaves spirited away during the Revolution. Politically, his weakest backing lay in the southern states, which were alarmed by Hamilton’s financial system, and this disaffection made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to take a courageous public stand against slavery. All the while he remained the symbol of American liberty, so that abolitionists yearned to claim his aegis for their cause. One antislavery society was named “The Washington Society for the Relief of Free Negroes, and Others, Unlawfully Held in Bondage.”39 The same George and Martha Washington who circumvented the Pennsylvania law also donated money in May 1792 to a slave who approached them with a list of “respectable” people assisting him to obtain his freedom.40 The same George Washington reacted with dismay when the South Carolina legislature refused to renew a two-year ban, enacted in 1791, on importing slaves. The president, of course, had been pleased two years earlier when Congress buried the Quaker proposal for banning the slave trade.
Washington’s moral confusion over slavery was also apparent in his directives to stewards at Mount Vernon. Despite the enormous demands of the presidency, he continued to exercise close scrutiny of his overseers through elaborate weekly letters. Even as his mind was consumed with affairs of state, he forgot nothing about Mount Vernon. After an unusually large number of slaves died during the winter of 1790-91, possibly from influenza, Washington wrote fervently to his estate manager, Anthony Whitting, about the timely care of sick slaves. Saying the subject was “foremost in my thoughts,” he instructed Whitting to “be particularly attentive to my Negroes in their sickness and to order every overseer positively to be so likewise.”41 Washington saw himself as a benevolent master who deplored cruelties practiced elsewhere. To Arthur Young, he made the revealing (if questionable) point that farmers who had only two or three slaves lived not much differently from their slaves. He went on to say that “far otherwise is the case with those who are owned in great numbers by the wealthy, who are not always as kind . . . as they ought to be.”42
Still, Washington remained a tough master. Slavery depended on exerting a sizable degree of terror to cow slaves into submission. Before the war Washington had shipped two difficult slaves to the West Indies, where life expectancy was short in the tropical climate. In March 1793, when Whitting told Washington about a refractory slave named Ben, Washington replied that, if he persisted in his misbehavior, Whitting should warn Ben that “I will ship him off as I did Waggoner Jack for the West Indies, where he will have no opportunity to play such pranks.”43 While Washington ordinarily did not allow slaves to be whipped, he sometimes condoned it if all else failed. Such was the case in January 1793 with a slave named Charlotte, whom Martha had found “indolent” and “idle.”44 “Your treatment of Charlotte was very proper,” Washington advised Whitting, “and if she, or any other of the servants, will not do their duty by fair means or are impertinent, correction (as the only alternative) must be administered.”45 It is unnerving to find the president of the United States writing such cold-blooded sentences.
In the army, in his cabinet, and on his plantation, Washington demanded high performance and had little patience with sluggards and loafers. But in the army and the presidency, Washington fought in a noble cause, whereas that same diligence was repugnant when applied to the loathsome system of slavery. The president never lightened up on his tough demands. “Keep everyone in their places and to their duty,” he lectured Whitting,
warning that slaves tended to slack off and test overseers “to see how far they durst go.”46 If slaves were crippled, he still demanded their participation. Of his slave Doll, who was apparently lame, he told Whitting that she “must be taught to knit and made to do a sufficient day’s work of it. Otherwise, (if suffered to be idle) many more will walk in her steps. Lame Peter, if nobody else will, must teach her and she must be brought to the house for that purpose.”47 When Billy Lee returned to Mount Vernon, Washington assigned him to be the overseer of the house slaves. At the same time he made clear to Whitting that those slaves must “be kept steadily to work at that place under Will, or some other, if he cannot keep them to their business.”48 When two slaves died, Washington tossed off this heartless remark: “The death of Paris is a loss, that of Jupiter the reverse.”49 And when grooming a young slave named Cyrus as a house servant, Washington directed his estate manager to take “a strong horn comb and direct [Cyrus] to keep his head well combed that the hair or wool may grow long.”50
Washington felt beleaguered by his slaves, who never delivered the crisp efficiency he expected. During his presidency he ordered a time-and-motion study of the productivity of Mount Vernon’s female slaves while they sewed. Not surprisingly, he found that the slaves produced nine shirts weekly when Martha was there but only six when she was gone. Only a measure of coercion could force slaves to produce anything efficiently, since they had no economic incentive to do so. “There are few Negroes who will work unless there be a constant eye on them,” Washington warned one overseer, and he believed that he could never slacken pressure if the slaves were to produce a decent return on his investment.51 Unable to curb rampant thievery at Mount Vernon, Washington was convinced that slaves were stealing him blind. He continued to chastise overseers for “frolicking at the expense of my business,” when they should have spent more time “watching the barns, visiting the negro quarters at unexpected hours, waylaying the roads, or contriving some device by which the receivers of stolen goods might be entrapped.”52 At the same time, Washington ordered his overseers to feed the slaves well, since he didn’t wish to “lie under the imputation of starving my negroes and thereby driving them to the necessity of thieving to supply the deficiency.”53 George Washington desperately wanted to think well of himself and believed he was merciful toward the slaves even as the inherent cruelty of the system repeatedly forced him into behavior that questioned that belief.
