Ona Judge Prefers Suffering in Freedom Over Plenty in the U.S. Presidency

Stories such as the biblical David and Goliath illustrate that victory does not always belong to the mighty. The struggle for freedom between a sitting United States President and a slave girl he owned is another striking example.

Ona Judge, a young woman who fled the presidential mansion at the age of 22, left behind the comforts of the White House to seek freedom. Her escape also exposed the hypocrisy of the early American establishment.

The United States, which proclaimed itself a champion of fundamental human rights, declared in its 1776 Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal and independent…with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet those rights were not extended to Black people and non‑whites, who were not considered full human beings.

At the time of the Declaration, George Washington was the commander‑in‑chief of the U.S. forces fighting British colonialism. On 9 July 1776 he ordered the Declaration read aloud to all soldiers in New York. Despite this, Washington, like nine of his successors, was a slave owner who refused to free his captives.

Washington referred to slaves as “a species of property.” Even when he publicly stated, “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 continued to hold many slaves as private property.

Washington once boasted, “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.” Those words, however, were not matched by action.

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, and she moved with them to Philadelphia when the capital was relocated.

In 1780, Pennsylvania passed a law that automatically freed slaves of long‑term visitors who stayed for more than six months. To avoid this, Washington moved his slaves out before they reached the six‑month mark. He also preferred short stays for his slaves in the bustling city, as he wrote in 1791: “The idea of freedom might be too great a temptation for them to resist.”

As Martha’s preferred maid, Judge received occasional new wardrobes that reflected her special status, but these material comforts did not satisfy her. Freedom was her true desire.

Judge also learned that the Washingtons intended to give her as a wedding gift to Martha’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Parke Custis, who was not known for her courtesies.

On 21 May 1796, while the First Family was having dinner at the President’s House in Philadelphia, Judge slipped out of the mansion into freedom. She recalled, “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 fled north on a ship to Portsmouth. President Washington, enraged, launched a relentless search for her. Two days after her escape, his steward, Frederick Kitt, placed an advertisement in the Philadelphia Gazette: “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 was evident in the runaway advertisement. He did not see any reason for her to flee: “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 labourer—a demanding and physically draining job—but she was free.

A senator’s daughter who knew Judge spotted her in Portsmouth. Washington then hired a negotiator, Portsmouth Custom Collector Joseph Whipple, to try to secure her return. In her 2017 book *Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge*, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar records that in an October 1796 letter to Washington, Whipple reported Judge had said she would “rather suffer death than return to slavery and be liable to be sold or given to any other persons.” She added that she would return only if Washington agreed to her eventual freedom.

Washington replied: “To enter into such a compromise, as she suggested to you, is totally inadmissable, 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.”

Washington urged the negotiator to find ways of re‑enslaving Judge. That attempt failed, and Judge remained free for the rest of her life, raising an independent family.

In August 1799, Washington enlisted Burwell Bassett Jr., Martha’s nephew, to persuade Judge to return to slavery. When that failed, Bassett Jr. resorted to force. The Governor of New Hampshire, John Langdon, learned of the plot and helped Judge escape to a safe home outside the city.

John Langdon, a four‑term governor (then called president) of New Hampshire, was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Four months later, President Washington died on 14 December 1799 without achieving his aim of re‑enslaving Judge. Martha Washington followed on 22 May 1802. Judge died on 25 February 1848, 49 years after Washington’s death. She remains an example of the poor and powerless overcoming the rich and powerful.

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