Christopher Haciotes (18:47)
That's true. One of the things I wanted to talk about was Washington's slaveholding. It's not really a happy topic because we're talking about enslaved people, but it's a fact of life at the time, especially for landowners. And Washington had control over hundreds of slaves, more than 300 people. Washington gets a lot of credit for quote, unquote, freeing his slaves in his will. That's one thing that people who defend the practice of enslaving others when it comes to Washington, who is rightly revered as one of the fathers of our country and who put a lot of great systems in motion. But that doesn't change the fact that he ran this giant plantation. And a plantation of that size in what's sort of the south at the time was run essentially on the free labor of enslaved Africans. And at the time of his death, Washington owned more than 300 slaves. He inherited his first slave at 11 when his father passed away. So you had this young man, George Washington, who was born into a life of maintaining control over other human beings. When he passed in 1799, he had 123 slaves who were legally his. And then there were 193 that he also controlled that were known as dower slaves. And what that means is they were technically legally owned by his wife, Martha. Now, Martha married George when she was 25. She was a widow at the time, and she had taken on slaves both from her own family and from her ex husband who passed away. So it's really, really interesting and it can be kind of fascinating to look at the legal structure of slavery until you remember that we're talking about actual human beings. But the way that slavery and the legality of who owns what was structured in the 1700s is it's just to me, it's so odd that you can be talking about a human being in this way. So the 123 slaves that Washington himself had, they were matched with 193, which were legally Martha's, but as a married couple were legally controlled by George. And there's all this strange legalese that when George or Martha dies, certain segments of the Washingtonian Slaves are passed to a grandchild or a cousin, and it all depends on this sort of weird, patriarchal, but then also matrilineal lineage of ownership of another person. But there is one enslaved person that I want to talk about, and that's Onei Judge. Now, Oney Judge is one of the most well known enslaved people involved in Washington, and that's because she escaped. She was able to tell her story to abolitionist newspapers at the time and got her account out there. Now, what makes this such a strange bit of history is that Oney Judge was a slave that Washington pursued until the end of his life. She got away. And if you listen to the episode from last week, Noel talked about how Washington's thoughts on slavery were somewhat liberal and they evolved over time. And that's true. He did grow to oppose the idea of slavery, the idea of holding other people in bondage. But he never freed his own slaves. He still kept them enslaved. He used their free labor and he built his fortune and his empire, whether it was a large fortune or not, on the labor of others. So let's talk about Oni Judd. She was born in 1773. She probably came into the Washington family when she was around 10 or 11 and was purchased as a playmate, it's thought, for one of the family members. Now, Ownie has her own interesting history. Her father was a British businessman. He was white, but he never acknowledged paternity. And so she was able to be sold into slavery. And that's where she comes in. Now, in 1796, Oney learned that she was going to be gifted to Washington's granddaughter. And when we talk about the granddaughters of Washington, basically we're talking about the children of Martha Washington and kind of her folks, because as we just mentioned, George himself never had any kids. And so in 1796, Oni learns that she's going to be gifted, presented as a wedding present to these new newlyweds. So she escapes. In May of 1796, she, she flies the coop and for a couple years she's, she's free. But a couple years later, she's spotted in New Hampshire. And this whole time the Washington family is, is after her. They've lost property. Despite the fact that Washington had mixed feelings about slavery, it seems like from the historical record that a lot of his family, including Martha, did not have mixed feelings. And they felt pretty strongly that enslaved Africans were their property and were owned wholly by them. So they took out ads in local papers advertising a reward for the return of Oni. And a couple years later, she's spotted in New Hampshire, and Washington reaches out to a friend of his in New Hampshire and asks him to abduct Oni to return this person back to Mount Vernon. And so, you know, he's encouraging kidnapping. At the time, he probably saw it as a return of property. But the thing about Washington and his slave holding is it wasn't as straightforward. It wasn't wholly villainous as it's easy to paint, but it also wasn't wholly by the books. Washington was pretty eager to skirt some of the laws when it came to slavery. When he was president, he was living in Philadelphia, which at the time was the capital of the United States. And Pennsylvania had certain laws for slaveholders and citizens of Pennsylvania because at the time, different states had their own citizenship. Washington argued, though, that he was a citizen of Virginia so that he didn't have to abide by some of the slavery laws of Pennsylvania.
