Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History Read Online Free PDF Page B

remarked that she’d never been mistreated by the Washingtons but was opposed, not unreasonably, to being enslaved for the rest of her life. In fact, Judge surprised Whipple by offering to return to President Washington if he would promise to manumit her upon his death. Whipple was relieved to have struck a compromise and communicated Judge’s proposal to the president.
    The commander-in-chief was not in the habit of negotiating with slaves and upbraided Whipple for even considering her offer. “I regret that the attempt you made to restore the Girl should have been attended with so little Success,” Washington replied frostily. “To enter into such a compromise with her , as she suggested to you , is totally inadmissible.”
    Making matters worse for Washington was that by December 1796, Judge was engaged to Jack Staines, a sailor of mixed race who had fought in the Revolution. Any hope of delivering Judge back to Virginia against her will and without “exciting a mob or a riot—or creating uneasy sensations in the minds of well disposed Citizens,” as Whipple humbly (very,
very
humbly) wrote to Washington on December 22, was complicated by this new state of affairs. To prove his fealty to the president, Whipple persuaded the Portsmouth town clerk to deny Judge and Staines their marriage license.
    The couple simply applied for one in a nearby town, Greenland, where it was granted, and they wed in January 1797. Judge gave birth to their first child, a baby girl, that summer.
    By then Washington was a former president, having retired to his beloved Mount Vernon, and Judge believed that at long last she could achieve some peace of mind.
    She could not. In the fall of 1799, almost three and a half years after abandoning Philadelphia, Judge received a visitor traveling through Portsmouth on business. He was Martha Washington’s nephew, Burwell Bassett. Judge’s husband was out to sea, leaving her unprotected and alone with their daughter. (Because Judge was a fugitive slave, the child was born a slave, too.) At first Bassett tried flattery and persuasion,entreating Judge to move to Mount Vernon with the Washingtons. She held firm: No.
    Bassett left but disclosed to his Portsmouth host later that night his intention to abduct “[Judge] and her infant child by force” if necessary. Aghast, Bassett’s host secretly relayed a message to Judge that she was in grave danger. Judge went into hiding, and Martha’s nephew returned to Virginia empty-handed. Judge’s guardian angel was Senator John Langdon, whose teenage daughter had bumped into Judge three years earlier and inadvertently blown her cover.
    George Washington passed away just months after Bassett’s visit, and with his death all attempts to cajole or capture Ona Judge finally ended.
    Judge died a widow in 1848, alone and impoverished. Before passing away, she was asked by an abolitionist newspaper reporter if she ever regretted relinquishing the relative comfort of the Washingtons’ presidential mansion for the hardships she’d later face. “No,” Judge said. “I am free and have, I trust, been made a child of God by the means.”
    Vicky and I step over a trickling creek and approach two squat rock walls shaped like an
L
, the last remnants of the property boundary in Greenland where Judge and Jack Staines made their home. About a hundred feet away is her grave marker, now just a nub of gray stone poking through a thin carpet of red pine needles on the forest floor. There’s a sense of privacy and serenity to this spot that befits a woman who wasn’t seeking acclaim or recognition but only to live her life, marry, and worship as she chose.
    “I’m really torn about all of this,” I confide to Vicky as we walk back to her car. “I’ve always considered Washington a heroic soul—”
    “I think he was heroic, too!” she interjects.
    “—and I’m not out to bash his reputation.” This was a man renowned for valor under fire, emerging from a single