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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 spi
In early April 1791 Attorney General Edmund Randolph delivered a startling piece of news to the Washingtons. Under the 1780 Pe
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 co
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 Pe
Washington and Lear wondered whether the slaves knew of the Pe
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 Pe