The Black History of the White House

by Clarence Lusane

  Despite moves across the colonies to ban or restrain the slave trade, some Southern delegates to the Convention, in particular South Carolina’s Charles Pinckney, argued against any move that would tax either the import or the export of slaves. These delegates were reproved by the aforementioned activist Luther Martin of Maryland, a slaveholder himself, who went on to become one of the most vocal advocates against slavery at the Constitutional Convention and later cofounded the Maryland Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Martin stated that the slave trade “was inconsistent with the principles of the revolution and [it was] dishonorable to the American character to have such a feature in the Constitution.”63 After the Convention, Martin addressed the Maryland legislature as it considered ratification of the Constitution saying, “It must appear to the world absurd and disgraceful, to the last degree, that we should except from the exercise of that power the only branch of commerce which is unjustifiable in its nature, and contrary to the rights of mankind; that on the contrary, we ought to prohibit expressly, in our Constitution, the further importation of slaves.”64

  The Convention also used coded language to defend the slave trade in the Constitution. The enslaved are referred to as “such Persons,” and the trade is simply termed “importation.” No amount of word play, however, could hide the hideous fact that the framers of the U.S. Constitution were officially giving white people a free pass to enslave black people for at least another twenty years.

  Placing a ban on the slave trade in the Constitution would have been important in spite of the efforts unfolding against the trade in the various states. Its critics argued that state legislative action could easily be reversed should the trade become profitable. Foreseen and unforeseen changes—such as the westward expansion of slavery or the invention of new technologies such as the cotton gin, which might make slavery economically viable for decades to come—would sweep away state legislative bans overnight.65 Only by prohibiting the slave trade in the Constitution could the nation guarantee that short-term opportunities, even twenty years after the writing of the Constitution, would not override a long-term principle.

  The third axis of slavery in the Constitution further nationalized the issue by forcing antislavery Northern states to return escaped slaves. This provision superseded the principle of states’ rights that the South had so obsessively pursued. While leaders from the main slaveholding states and their Northern counterparts alike fought hard to place limits on the central government’s power, when it came to the issue of slavery, the former sought to exploit the national authority and resources of the federal system as much as possible. If the slaveholding states could have the federal government protect their human property, which unlike their other property could and did escape captivity, then the slavery system was on much sounder footing. As we have seen, Article 4, Section 2, of the Constitution states,

  No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

  Beeman notes sadly that not a single voice of opposition was raised to challenge this provision.66 Given the almost fetish-level priority the Founding Fathers gave to property rights, the return of lost (runaway) property must have seemed a natural right. Article 4, Section 2, was further bolstered by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which was passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and the slave-catching profession.67

  On to the White House

  George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison would go on to become the nation’s first four presidents. They represented the generation that came of age in the 1770s and 1780s, a time of rebellion, heady transition, and grand crisis. The past was unsustainable, the present was fluid, and the future unknown. The milieu of independent, property-owning white men generated revolutionary ideas that would forge the thirteen independent colonies into one more or less united nation.

  However, the American Revolution would not transform the nearly four million individuals who lived there into one people, a just society of equals. When faced with that opportunity, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison all blanched. The courage they had demonstrated in taking on the British Empire vanished when they were confronted with the entrenchment and obduracy of the slave-owning class. The illusory goal of national unity trumped the morality of undoing slavery and admitting to full citizenship the hundreds of thousands of enslaved blacks and indigenous peoples whose “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were being forcibly denied.

  But something much more primary was at work than Northern cowardice and Southern economic and cultural racism. In a fundamental way, the interests of white people in both regions came into alignment: neither political leaders nor popular opinion in the North or the South believed that Blacks or Indians were their equals in body, mind, or spirit. While the country was founded in words that seemed to promise an enlightened society of equals, a deeply rooted and widespread racism, including that of the presidents, would drive generations of barbarous genocide of the indigenous people and the bondage of blacks. For Oney Judge and the other blacks living in the new white-controlled nation, the President’s House was not a symbol of newfound freedom but a virtual prison, a place one would risk one’s life trying to escape.

  CHAPTER 2

  The President’s House in the Home of the Abolitionist Movement

  Prelude: Hercules’ White House Story

  Hercules was reputed to be one of the best chefs in the nation also a slave who was highly favored by George Washington. He had been Washington’s chief cook at Mount Vernon and traveled with him during his presidency to New York and Philadelphia. Washington’s step-grandson, G. W. Parke Custis, described Hercules as “a celebrated artiste . . . as highly accomplished a proficient in the culinary art as could be found in the United States.”1

  If there was a hierarchy of slave status, Hercules was certainly at the top. By all accounts, he ran the Washington kitchen with an iron hand, severely punishing those who broke from his discipline or did not carry out their duties with assiduous attention to detail and quality. He was well respected by everyone in the president’s household, free or enslaved. Indeed, as he often walked the streets of Philadelphia dressed in some of the finest clothing to be seen in town, he garnered “a formal and respectful bow” from those he met on the street.2 In one graphic passage, Custis described the way Hercules would dress for his evening promenade, wearing linen of “unexceptionable [sic] whiteness and quality, then black silk shorts, ditto waistcoat, ditto stockings, shoes highly polished, with large buckles covering a considerable part of the foot, blue cloth with velvet collar and bright metal buttons, a long watch-chain dangling from his fob, a cocked-hat and gold-headed cane completed the grand costume of the celebrated dandy.”3 His presence in the president’s residence was colorful and uplifting to those around him.

  Hercules, cook for George Washington, one of hundreds of blacks Washington enslaved.

  Hercules was able to dress so grandly because he earned considerable extra personal income—estimated between 100 and 200 dollars a year, a tremendous sum at that time—selling leftovers from Washington’s kitchen.4 This was a highly unusual arrangement, because there is very little historic evidence of slaves being permitted to possess funds that their owners could keep themselves. Hercules clearly held a special place in the Washington matrix of slavery. Referred to by the family as “Uncle Harkless”—an honorific title whites saw as a term of endearment but which many blacks viewed as patronizingly insulting—Hercules was perhaps the slave in whom Washington felt the most trust, second to William Lee.

  Born around 1750, Lee had been purchased by Washington in 1768 and was with him for thirty years, until Washington died in 1799. Lee was so close to Washington that he can be seen next
to him in several famous paintings, including John Trumbull’s George Washington, painted in London in 1780.5 Lee rode with and served Washington throughout the Revolutionary War and through both terms of his presidency. Archival documents and letters also indicate that Lee was with Washington continuously while the president was commanding from Philadelphia.6

  Due to several accidents, Lee became physically disabled and by the age of 38 he was barely able to walk. Although he was given steel braces that helped substantially, Lee’s health continued to deteriorate, and in November 1793 Washington wrote to his secretary Tobias Lear to find “a substitute for William.”7 During Washington’s second term, Lee was sent back to Mount Vernon, where he took up the relatively non-taxing work of cobbling shoes.

  Washington wrote a secret will in July 1799 in an attempt to hide from his wife Martha and other relatives the terms of manumission that he wanted for his slaves. He apparently believed that Martha may not have been as committed as he was to freeing his slaves after his and her death. Completed only a few months before he died, his will stipulated that all of his slaves be freed upon Martha’s death, that older slaves be “comfortably cloathed and fed,” and that the younger ones be educated into useful occupations.8 Lee, however, was freed immediately. Though poor and debilitated by alcoholism and ill health, he spent the last decades of his life as a free man, passing away in 1828 at the age of 78.

  Surely one of the reasons Washington felt such “generosity” toward Lee was the unyielding loyalty demonstrated by his many years of service and refusal to take advantage of numerous opportunities to escape. Washington had certainly felt such betrayal before, as in the cases of Oney and of Henry “Harry” Washington.

  Harry was born free near the Gambia River in West Africa around 1740, and by 1775 Harry was working in the stables of Mount Vernon as one of more than 100 people enslaved to George Washington. Seventeen seventy-five was also the year that Lord Dunmore, on behalf of the English crown, offered freedom to any slave who joined the British forces to quash the revolution, an offer that more than 15,000 blacks accepted. News of the British offer reached Washington’s slaves as well. The information seems to have agitated and emboldened Harry in his desire for freedom.

  In July 1776, George Washington and the revolutionary leaders declared their independence. One month later, Harry Washington declared his and ran away to join the all-black British regiment known as the Black Pioneers, whose motto was “Liberty to Slaves.”9 Unable to safely stay in the United States after the war, Harry would later join the 3,000 black Loyalists who went to Nova Scotia, Canada, and founded the all-black settlement of Birchtown, the largest free black community in North America at the time.10

  Even in Canada, however, Harry’s freedom was still not totally secure, as Washington initiated means to pursue escaped blacks after the war. According to writer Jill Lepore, it was General Washington who insisted that British ships leaving U.S. waters after the war keep a “Book of Negroes,” i.e., a list of blacks onboard the departing ships, so that claims could later be filed against the English by aggrieved slaveholders for the return of those who ran away. Harry kept on the move, however, eventually migrating to Sierra Leone, a state that was founded by a patchwork of indigenous natives; England’s “black poor,” consisting of Africans, African Americans, and British-born blacks; and Asians.11 He arrived sometime around 1792 with 1,100 other former African American slaves and lived the rest of his life not far from the Gambia River region where he was born.12

  Thus his trust of Lee notwithstanding, Washington had a genuine fear that even his most loyal slaves might bolt if given the opportunity. One other factor might also have influenced his relationship with Hercules. Egerton writes that “Washington believed that white blood not only lightened the skin but enlightened the mind, and he preferred ‘yellow-skinned’ servants within his home.”13 Washington no doubt interpreted “enlightened mind” to mean not only intelligence but also devotion to one’s master. Lee was mulatto; Hercules was not.

  However, Washington’s faith in Hercules was reinforced by an incident in 1791. In spring of that year, when Washington began willfully and consciously to move his slaves back to Virginia to avoid their qualifying for manumission after a continuous six-month stay in Pennsylvania, Hercules was one of the individuals whom Washington slated to return to Mount Vernon. President Washington’s assistant, Tobias Lear, conveyed his concern to Washington, warning that “if Hercules should decline the offer which will be made him of going home, it will be a pretty strong proof of his intention to take advantage of the law at the expiration of six months.”14 Unhappy about participating in the chicanery of rotating slaves to prevent their liberation, Lear further added, “You will permit me now, Sir (and I am sure you will pardon me for doing it) 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.”15 The spirit of abolitionism was powerful in Philadelphia, not only among the black people trapped in slavery, but also among white people such as Lear. Although Lear, like Washington, had faith in an undetermined post-slavery future, he did little to speed its arrival.

  When Hercules discovered that the decision to send him to Virginia was perhaps based on the possibility that he might display some disloyalty and seek freedom in Philadelphia or some other northern city, he expressed shock at the suggestion and volunteered to leave immediately for Mount Vernon. Having convinced Washington of his total loyalty and submission, Hercules was allowed to stay in Philadelphia well beyond the six-month period and traveled at least once on his own to Mount Vernon and returned to Philadelphia. During his time with Washington in Pennsylvania, he never pursued his legal right to be free in that state. Until the very end, that is.

  During the final months of Washington’s stay in Philadelphia, while at Mt. Vernon, Hercules escaped. Records show that on February 22, 1797, which was Washington’s 65th birthday, Hercules absconded according to Mt. Vernon researcher Mary V. Thompson. Exercising his own sense of his rights, to the stunned surprise of his enslaver, he successfully escaped from bondage to the president of the United States. As in Oney’s case, the First Family could not understand why Hercules would want to escape from them. They could not fathom the reality that, despite all the material benefits and privileges they had granted him, nothing could deter Hercules from seizing what he wanted most: freedom from slavery.

  The loss of Hercules affected George as strongly as the loss of Oney had affected Martha. Historian Fritz Hischfield contends that Hercules’ escape to freedom “was considered a minor disaster by the Washington family.”16 Perhaps it had something to do with the strong relationship formed between U.S. presidents and their black cooks. In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison and his wife brought their black cook, Dolly Johnson, in from Indianapolis to replace the White House’s French chef Madame Petronard. In President Franklin Roosevelt’s White House, Mary Campbell ruled. She had been the cook at the family’s home in Hyde Park in New York and came to the president’s kitchen—along with her recipes for duck, venison, and terrapin—after Roosevelt’s mother died. Vietta Cook, another black chef, played a similar role for the Truman White House. She had worked for the family for thirty-six years and prepared Southern dishes such as fried chicken, candied sweet potatoes, and angel food cake. Zephyr Wright, whom Lyndon Johnson brought with him from Texas, worked for the Johnson family for twenty-seven years.17 For many presidents, a black-led kitchen at the White House was desirable and necessary and represented their lifetime of experiences of being served by blacks.

  One of the most intriguing and trend-setting linkages between black cooks and a U.S. president actually occurred during Hercules’ time in Philadelphia: the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and James Hemings. Jefferson paid to have Hemings, a black man Jeffer
son held enslaved at his Monticello estate, trained for three years as a master chef, including learning to cook exquisite French pastries. During Jefferson’s four years in France as a U.S. ambassador (1785 to 1789), Jefferson brought Hemings specifically so that he could learn how to prepare French cuisine. Later, while serving as the nation’s first secretary of state from 1790 to 1793 in the Washington administration, Jefferson spent even more time in France with Hemings.

  Hemings was later joined by his sister, Sally, who would soon become Jefferson’s mistress and later, many believe, bearer of his children.18 Under French law at the time of Jefferson’s ambassadorship, James and Sally could have both claimed their freedom and left Jefferson, but neither did. James first became the chief chef at Jefferson’s Champs-Elysées dwellings and then at his residences in Philadelphia and Monticello. In 1793, back in the United States, Hemings decided to seek his liberty. He negotiated a contract with Jefferson that stated, “If the said James shall go with me to Monticello...and shall continue until he shall have taught such persons as I shall place under him for the purpose to be a good cook...he shall be thereupon made free.”19 James trained his brother Peter in the culinary arts and in April 1796 he was freed.

  Nowhere is it written that during their common time in Philadelphia, Hercules, the cook for George Washington, and James Hemings, the cook for Thomas Jefferson, were friends. However, as Wilkins points out, at the time there were only 210 slaves in the entire city and it would have been nearly impossible for them not to know each other, even if Washington and Jefferson had not been politically connected.20 But given that Washington and Jefferson frequently met, and that both Hercules and Hemings were renowned as two of the nation’s most famous chefs, their paths probably crossed with some regularity. It is not too much of a stretch to speculate that if they knew each other, the topic of freedom was likely discussed and that James Hemings’s manumission one year earlier might have helped fuel Hercules’ decision. For sure, Hercules and all of Washington’s slaves had been affected by Oney’s successful escape the previous summer. A third motivator was the fact that Philadelphia was a center of abolitionist activity and the city’s free black community, whose members interacted frequently with their enslaved counterparts, was a full participant in liberation actions, including the Underground Railroad system that helped runaway blacks make it to Canada.