Ona Judge: Chose Freedom Over Comfort in the White House

Stories like David and Goliath teach us that the strong don’t always win. The fight for freedom between a sitting US President and a slave girl he owned is just as captivating.

This true story often gets hidden because it shows the fall of the privileged class. Ona Judge was just 22 when she ran away from the US Presidential mansion. She left behind a life of comfort and the efforts of George Washington, the first US President, to keep her enslaved. Her story also reveals the hypocrisy of those in power.

The US government, which claimed to support basic human rights, issued the 1776 Declaration of Independence saying, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This Declaration had no exceptions, but in reality, it did not apply to Blacks and Non-Whites who were not seen as full human beings.

When the Declaration was made, Washington was the head of the US military fighting the British. On 9 July, 1776, he ordered that the Declaration be read to all soldiers in New York. But like many of his successors, he owned slaves and refused to free them.

He called slaves “a Species of Property.” Even when he said, “Not only do I pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can clearly foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle,” he still kept many slaves as his property.

Washington once claimed, “I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.” But his words lacked sincerity.

Ona Judge was the daughter of a slave seamstress who worked for First Lady Martha Washington. Martha had inherited 300 slaves from her late husband, Daniel Parke Custis. Judge began working for Martha at the age of twelve. When Washington became President, Judge was one of seven slaves chosen to serve the First Family in their new home in New York. She moved with them when they relocated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1780, Pennsylvania passed a law that freed slaves of long-term visitors after six months. To avoid this law, President Washington moved his slaves before they could stay that long. He preferred short stays for his slaves in the city because he wrote in 1791, “The idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist.”

As the favored maid of the First Lady, Judge enjoyed some privileges like new clothes. But these things did not matter to her; she wanted freedom.

Judge learned that the Washingtons planned to give her as a wedding gift to the First Lady’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Parke Custis, who was known for being rude.

So, on 21 May, 1796, while the First Family dined at the President’s House in Philadelphia, Judge slipped out to seek freedom. She remembered, “Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn’t know where…For I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I never should get my liberty.”

She escaped North on a ship to Portsmouth. Furious, President Washington launched a manhunt to bring her back. Two days after her escape, his steward, Frederick Kitt, placed an ad in the Philadelphia Gazette saying: “Absconded from the household of the President of the United States. Oney Judge, a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy black hair, she is of middle stature, slender, and delicately, about 20 years of age. She has many changes of good clothes, of all sorts…”

Washington’s anger showed in the ad. He could not understand why she would run away: “As there was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation to do so, it is not easy to conjecture whither she has gone or, fully, what her design is.”

In Portsmouth, Judge found work as a domestic laborer. It was hard work, but at least she was free.

A Senator’s daughter recognized Judge in Portsmouth. Washington sent negotiator Joseph Whipple, the Portsmouth Custom Collector, to try to bring her back. In her 2017 book Never Caught: The Washingtons Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar wrote that the negotiator, in a letter to Washington, said Judge stated she would “rather suffer death than return to slavery and [be] liable to be sold or given to any other persons.”

He added that Judge said if she returned, Washington must agree to her freedom.

Washington replied, “To enter into such a compromise, as she suggested to you, is totally inadmissible, for reasons that must strike at first view: For however well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of people (if the latter was in itself practicable at this moment), it would neither be politic or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference.”

President Washington wanted to find ways to re-enslave Judge. But this plan failed as she remained free for the rest of her life, raising her own family.

In August 1799, Washington sent Burwell Bassett Jr., Martha’s nephew, to convince Judge to return. When he could not persuade her, Bassett Jr. tried to use force. The Governor of New Hampshire learned of the plan and helped Judge escape to safety outside the city.

Four months later, President Washington died on 14 December, 1799, without achieving his goal of re-enslaving Judge. Martha followed him on 22 May, 1802. Judge lived until 25 February, 1848, 49 years after Washington’s death. She showed how the poor and powerless can overcome the rich and powerful.