♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: I'm David Rubenstein.

And we're going to today be in conversation with Erica Armstrong Dunbar, who is the author of Never Caught, Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge.

I want to thank you very much for being here today, professor.

ARMSTRONG: Thank you for having me.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let me ask you, what caught your interest in George Washington's runaway slave?

Is this something that is very well known?

I really didn't know about it, but is this a very commonly known fact that he had a runaway slave and that he really tried to get her back?

ARMSTRONG: Well, no.

I mean, I think that one of the things that attracted me to this story was that I didn't know anything about it.

And I was finishing some work on another book project, and I was looking through old newspapers, wanting to sort of, kind of understand late 18th century Philadelphia.

And so, I'm reading through the Philadelphia Gazette, on microfilm, and I come across a runaway slave advertisement, and I thought, okay, well this is somewhat odd.

It's Philadelphia, it's 1796, who on earth is, is, is advertising for runaway slave at a moment in which slavery is sort of almost on its death bed in Philadelphia?

And so, the, the language of the advertisement literally sort of, it stopped me.

It stopped me in my tracks, and it read something like "absconded from the household of the President of the United States."

And I thought, okay.

You know, I did that moment.

I had that moment where I looked at the date, I said 1796, it has to be George Washington.

Who ran away from George Washington, and why is he advertising for, for this person?

And how is it that I'm an expert in early African-American women's history and I don't know this story?

And so that led me really on a nine-year journey to, um, find and recover as much information as I could about one of the most incredible women I've ever encountered in the archives.

RUBENSTEIN: Where did you find most of the information you wanted for this book?

ARMSTRONG: I was, uh, looking at records wherever I could find the newspapers, um, uh, archives, historical societies, diaries and journals and census records from Virginia to New York to Philadelphia and up to, uh, New England.

And what it did was allow me really, really to do two things, to build a story or a narrative about Ona's life, which was central and, and most important.

But also, to attempt to create a narrative about the founding of the nation, but to do it through the eyes, the lens of an enslaved woman.

And so, it became sort of vitally important for me to, to tell Ona's story, but also to make certain that it was clear that this is a portal into American history and for us to get to know a founding father through the eyes of an enslaved person.

RUBENSTEIN: Let's go back to the beginning of, uh, the history of George Washington and his wife with slaves.

Uh, how many slaves did he have at the time that they got married, if we know?

And how many enslaved people did she bring to Mt.

Vernon?

ARMSTRONG: Yeah, the numbers differ somewhat, but we know that in the 1750s, um, George Washington really only has a couple dozen slaves.

But Martha Washington had inherited from her, um, from her late husband, um, over 100 enslaved people.

Now, not all of them came to Mount Vernon, um, immediately.

She brought some with her and then over the course of several years, she would bring more and more enslaved people.

So that by the time that we have the first census of enslaved people taken in the 1780s at Mount Vernon, there are over 200 enslaved people.

RUBENSTEIN: Now Ona Judge, do we know who her father or mother was?

ARMSTRONG: Yeah, we do.

Um, one of the, the sort of unique things about Ona is that she has a surname, Judge, that the Washington's, uh, write several times in records.

We know that, um, her father was a white indentured servant named Andrew Judge.

And Andrew Judge had come from England and in 1772.

Washington purchased his indenture agreement.

He didn't have many white indentured servants, uh, in the 1770s, but, uh, Andrew Judge was one of them.

He was a tailor.

Uh, we know that he made some of the sort of more important uniforms that Washington wore during the Revolutionary War.

Um, so he was a tailor.

We know that, uh, Ona Judge's mother was an enslaved woman named Betty.

And Betty was technically owned by Martha Washington.

She is what we would call a dower slave.

Someone who, um, sort of was inherited, uh, through, her, um, uh, wealth that came to the marriage.

And so, Betty was enslaved.

We know that she was a weaver, that she was a sewer, an expert seamstress.

Uh, we don't know the nature of the relationship between, or if there was a relationship between Andrew and Betty.

And that at some point in 1773, 74, shortly after he arrived at Mount Vernon, um, Ona Judge was born.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Ona Judge gets a position in the mansion.

How did she get that position?

Because her mother had worked there and she kind of helped her get a position there, is that how she got that position in the mansion?

ARMSTRONG: Well, it's, yes.

Her mother worked, um, at the mansion house and at, around the age of 10, Ona Judge was called up to work at the mansion house.

And this is, you know, sort of important moment for enslaved children, really between the ages of 8 and 10 is typically when a sort of assigned task was given.

And so, the age of 10, Ona goes up to the mansion house.

And the expectation is that she is going to be a seamstress, a weaver.

She's going to follow in the footsteps of, of her mother, but something sort of happens.

Um, she becomes Martha Washington's sort of preferred slave.

I don't have a better phrase for it.

But she becomes her sort of first attendant and she's, um, and she sort of holds on to that role, um, for years.

RUBENSTEIN: So, George Washington is elected President of the United States, the first President of the United States, the capital then is in New York City.

So, he is going to move to New York City with his wife, Martha, and presumably they were going to bring some slaves with them.

Was Ona Judge picked to go to New York?

ARMSTRONG: Yes, this is, uh, one of the things that makes Ona's stories somewhat unique is that the Washington's make the decision to travel to New York and to bring with them seven enslaved people.

And so, they chose, you know, which ones they wanted to come.

There were two women, five men and Ona was one of them.

She would have been around 16 years, uh, 16 years old.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, where she had been living before in Virginia, essentially all African Americans were slaves, there were virtually no freed slaves or very few.

But in New York there were a number of freed slaves.

Um, so she finally actually saw people who were, um, African American but not slaves.

Is that right?

ARMSTRONG: There was a very, as you said, very sort of small number of free, um, people of African descent in Virginia.

Um, she may or may not have, have known one or two.

Um, she would have definitely heard the stories about them, but it wasn't until she arrived in New York where she witnessed really for the first time, not just one or two, but a number of free, um, people of African descent, some who had never been born enslaved, that were not born as slaves, had never been enslaved and were free people and others who had managed to find a way out of enslavement.

RUBENSTEIN: So eventually the capital of the United States is moved from New York to Philadelphia as an interim capital, and then of course, it's going to move down to Washington DC, but the Washington's then moved to Philadelphia.

Now one point the attorney general, I believe it was, of the United States who was a advisor to the president, uh, came to see him at his home in Philadelphia and said, "By the way, there's a little problem you need to know about with respect to slavery in Pennsylvania."

What was that problem?

ARMSTRONG: Slavery was still relatively entrenched in New York.

But in Pennsylvania, the, the sort of, um, the colony that had, you know, was founded by William Penn and a large Quaker community, slavery was really on its, its deathbed, and the laws, um, created this sort of gradual ending of slavery.

So, in 1780, it was decided in Pennsylvania a, a law was passed, the Gradual Emancipation Act.

And so, over the course of the next 20, 20 plus years, uh, people were emancipated one by one.

You couldn't, if you had an enslaved person, you couldn't hold them as an enslaved person for more than, um, than 27, 28 years.

For those who visited, like the Washington's, the laws were more strict.

And the laws stated that if you were a non-resident, meaning if you had residency somewhere else and you came to visit Pennsylvania, you could bring enslaved people with you.

You could bring them to serve you, but you could not stay for longer than six months.

And if you overstayed your welcome, overstayed that six-month period, your enslaved men, women, and children have the right to freedom.

And this was something that the Washington's imagined that, um, these laws weren't applicable to them.

They were, in many ways Washington believed he was there on business and therefore exempt, um, from the laws.

And so, his, uh, attorney general came to, to pay a visit and he said, "Listen, we're not exempt.

And, um, you have a problem.

And the reason that I know this is because my slaves came and told me."

And this is, you know, the, the, um, person who's supposed to know the laws, the, his slaves came and said, "Listen, we've been here longer than six months, so we're free."

There was a problem.

And so, he went and told the Washington's that they needed to safeguard their human property.

RUBENSTEIN: And George Washington when alerted to this didn't say, you know, I'm President of the United States, the law doesn't really apply to me and I'm not going to pay attention to it.

He didn't say that, I guess, did he?

ARMSTRONG: No, he didn't.

And we have the letter that he wrote.

He was on his Southern tour, and he wrote back to his Secretary, Tobias Lear, uh, accepting the law that this was applicable to him.

But what he did instead was to suggest one, he was unwilling to live without slave labor at, in Philadelphia.

He was not willing to simply hire servants.

He wanted his enslaved people serving him.

So, he basically designed a slave rotation plan and he told Tobias Lear to, to tell Martha Washington that every six months they would basically rotate their enslaved men and women out of Philadelphia.

So, we see this moment where George Washington makes the decision to circumvent the law and actually sort of breaking the law because there's amendment, there's an amendment to that, um, 1780 law that says you're not, you're not supposed to do exactly what he was doing.

Um, but I think to me, what was most sort of interesting about his letter was that he said to Tobias Lear, "I only want you and Martha Washington, my wife, to know that we're going to deceive them, meaning the enslaved, and the public."

He writes this.

So, there's no sort of lack of clarity on Washington's decision to, um, subvert the law to go around it in order to live with, with slave labor.

RUBENSTEIN: So eventually he does begin this rotation, I guess, Ona Judge goes back to Mount Vernon at some point, and then she's brought back to Philadelphia.

But at some point, she decides that she doesn't want to be a slave anymore, and she's going to leave and run away.

ARMSTRONG: Yeah, I think for, for someone like Ona, the, the decision to escape, to become a fugitive was one that, um, was triggered by, uh, an event that really would have changed her life.

She'd learned that she was going to be given away as a wedding gift to Martha Washington's granddaughter, Eliza Parke Custis Law.

This was a woman that Ona knew, they were close in age.

She knew, um, Eliza's temper.

She knew that, um, she was a person who was unliked by some, most definitely by Ona.

And when Ona realizes that her years of sort of dedicated service, her, her loyalty, her supposed closeness to Martha Washington, that none of that really mattered in the long run.

Uh, it was sort of that moment where she makes the decision that she's not going to return to Virginia to be this wedding gift to Eliza Parke Custis Law.

And that she is going to make the riskiest decision she had ever made in her life.

And that was to flee from the most powerful couple in the nation.

And it was only because she knew, uh, her life was going to change drastically.

And I also think that the, the seven years that she spent, near seven years she spent in the North, especially in Philadelphia, surrounded by free black men and women, she was in the minority as an enslaved person.

She was the oddity.

So she, in many ways, grew up or came age, um, around black freedom.

And this influenced her as well.

So finally in, in the spring of 1796, uh, it was a Saturday in May, she made the decision, uh, to, to leave the Washington's.

And she, she later on, she tells us this, um, uh, this story of about how she left the Washington's while they were eating their supper, she'd left, um, and would never return.

RUBENSTEIN: Why does she go to Portsmouth, New Hampshire?

They have a different view on, on escaped slaves than other parts of the United States?

ARMSTRONG: We know that Ona arrives in, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in the, the sort of early summer of 1796.

We don't actually know why she went to Portsmouth.

But the, um, people who helped her escape.

That they must have believed that she would be relatively safe in a place like Portsmouth, somewhat tucked out of the way.

It was a seaport town, but not New York, a place where she had lived, where she might be known or Boston as well, where there were people who, who might know her.

RUBENSTEIN: But there was one problem with Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which is that somebody who knew her as a slave sees her, and who is that person and what does that person do?

ARMSTRONG: Ona arrives in the summer and she's, for the most part, feeling as though she's relatively safe, as safe as a fugitive could be.

But she is spotted.

She is, she is, uh, sort of seen by, um, the daughter of a senator and the governor of, um, of New Hampshire who knows Ona, who recognizes her, who, um, has seen her and because her parents interacted with the Washington's.

And she sees her and she's, she's somewhat surprised, startled, she second guesses herself.

And she returns, um, the, to her, her father and reports what she's sees.

And so, literally, Ona runs away in May.

By August the Washington's know exactly where she is.

RUBENSTEIN: So George Washington learning about this, he authorizes somebody to bring her back.

Who is that person and what happened with that effort?

ARMSTRONG: George Washington makes the decision to lean on the Secretary of the Treasury to help him, uh, recover Ona Judge.

And, uh, the Secretary of the Treasury, as well as a customs collector, uh, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, were all sort of brought into this web of, of what we should call slave catching, uh, to try and attempt to coax Ona Judge, um, out of this sort of shadows of Portsmouth.

And to eventually locate her and, and place her on a boat bound for Virginia, if not for Philadelphia.

And so he does, we have the letters, um, as, as evidence, he writes to the Secretary of the Treasury, he writes to the customs collector and says, "Listen, I want you to, uh, reclaim this woman.

Uh, I want you to reclaim her.

I want you to do it as quickly and as cheaply as possible."

Um, and to do it without, hmm, raising the sensibilities or the hackles of any, um, of those who might live in Portsmouth, who might be against the institution of slavery.

He was very invested in this idea of discretion.

He did not want a super public search, although, um, he and Martha Washington placed an advertisement for, for Ona, uh, very shortly after she, she left Philadelphia.

RUBENSTEIN: Does the person persuade her that it's the better course for her life to go back and become a slave again?

ARMSTRONG: Well, this, the, the customs collector actually has a conversation with her and says, um, "Listen, they know where you are and let's try to negotiate something."

Um, and that's a sort of incredible, let's just stop for a moment.

That's an incredible thing to think about it, 1796 and the customs collector is attempting to negotiate a deal between the President of the United States and a runaway, a enslaved woman who's a fugitive.

And he basically says, "Listen, if I can get them to agree to set you free once, uh, once they're no longer living, will that be good enough?

They promise they'll be good to you.

They, they won't hurt you."

And, and Ona at this point she, when she realizes that, um, all of this, that her meeting with the customs collector was all sort of, uh, a ploy to get her back to the Washington's, she sort of simply just agrees and shakes her head and says, "Okay, I'll do it."

And there's a, uh, a trip planned on a vessel that was supposed to dock in Portsmouth and when the vessel arrives in port, she disappears.

She never arrives and never had any intention of returning to the Washington's.

RUBENSTEIN: Subsequent to that when, uh, George Washington learns that that effort doesn't, uh, succeed, he later makes another effort sending a relative of his to persuade Ona Judge to come back.

How did that effort go?

ARMSTRONG: He basically has the nephew, uh, travel up to New Hampshire, to Portsmouth, to stay with, um, the Governor, Senator Langdon, um, in order to reclaim Ona Judge.

So once again, we can see that, uh, there are still, uh, uh, sort of a quest for her, a desire to, to bring her back.

Part of that is because of anger, right?

But the, uh, that she's actually absconded, that she's broken the rules, that she's, um, violated, uh, a trust that perhaps they had in her.

But also, you know, this is a marker of whether or not a slave holder can control their enslaved property.

So, all of the attempts to reclaim her were really about, um, Martha Washington's property and Martha Washington's desire to, to get Ona back.

Burwell Bassett her, her nephew goes up to, to, to Portsmouth.

And by this moment, Ona's life has changed.

Uh, she's married, she has a child.

And so, the stakes are higher.

This isn't just about returning Ona to Mount Vernon.

This of course meant the return of her daughter as well.

Any, uh, children that Ona would have would technically be the property of Martha Washington's estate.

Basset shows up at her door, knocks, enters.

He tries to sort of convince her gently, um, to return.

And she's found this sort of the voice of freedom.

She's found... She's lived as a free person, although she's technically not free.

And she tells him "No, I won't return."

And when he actually does return to get her via force, she's fled, she's left the city with her child.

Um, and it's the last time that she would see Burwell Bassett again.

RUBENSTEIN: And how long does she live?

When does she die?

ARMSTRONG: Ona Judge, actually she lives uh, quite a long time.

She outlives, um, she has three children, two daughters and a son.

She was married.

Um, unfortunately her, her marriage ended kind of early.

Her, her husband, um, died early, died young.

Uh, and she, she lived a kind of difficult life.

It was, um, really one where she was hidden in the shadows.

She, she left Portsmouth.

She felt like it was too, um, too risky to be there.

And she basically lived, uh, in Greenland, New Hampshire, which was it, virtually, it was the woods, um, sort of living in the shadows of slavery.

And so, she actually lives until, until her 70's.

She, she dies in, in 1848.

And we know this in part because we have records that, that tell us as well as her obituary.

RUBENSTEIN: George Washington dies in 1799.

And at that time, he becomes, uh, the only founding father then, or ever to free his slaves, though he freed only his slaves upon the death of his wife.

Is that right?

ARMSTRONG: I think in many ways, we've given George Washington a bit of a pass on the issue of slavery.

We've turned our attention to Thomas Jefferson and others in part, because of this act, you know what he did, he, he in his will, he mandated that his enslaved men, women and children were to be emancipated upon the death of Martha.

And for that reason, um, that was seen as somewhat radical, as somewhat revolutionary.

And I, you know, I, I push back on that a little bit, and I say, imagine what would have happened if Washington had emancipated his, his enslaved people while he was living, imagine what kind of precedent that might have set.

But he didn't.

And in many ways, he was, um, able to do this in part, because he had no biological children expecting any kind of inheritance, um, in the form of enslaved people or property.

And in some ways that gave George Washington, um, an exit strategy, uh, out of, out of slavery.

RUBENSTEIN: This is a very interesting story that is really not well known.

And I want to thank you for writing this book, Never Caught.

We've been in conversation with Erica Armstrong Dunbar.

I want to thank you very much for this conversation and for being with us today.

ARMSTRONG: Thank you for having me.

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