The Black History of the White House Page 8
In any case, whether or not a socio-culinary bond existed between black cooks and white presidents, Washington felt deeply motivated to go after Hercules. Believing Hercules to be in Philadelphia, Washington spent months unsuccessfully looking for him there. On March 10, 1797, Washington ordered Lear to “make all the enquiry he can after Hercules, and send him around in the Vessel if he can be discovered and apprehended.”21 Meanwhile, the president’s stomach seemed to be growling. Lear writes in his memoir that Washington became so desperate to find a suitable cook for himself and Martha that he broke his vow not to buy any more slaves and sought to buy one who had an excellent reputation as a cook. Washington had written on November 13, 1797, “The running off of my cook has been the most inconvenient thing to this family, and what renders it more disagreeable, is, that I had resolved never to become the master of another slave by purchase, but this resolution I fear I must break.”22
In the personal battle between refusing to participate in human trafficking or eating well, the latter won out. After returning to Mount Vernon, Washington sought to have his former household steward Frederick Kitt pursue Hercules. On January 10, 1798, he wrote Kitt to seek his help in locating and retrieving Hercules. Continuing to complain about his gastronomical needs and the possibility of buying another black slave, Washington wrote, “If you could accomplish this for me, it would render me an acceptable service as I neither have, nor can get a good Cook to hire, and am disinclined to hold another slave by purchase.”23 Kitt would have no more skill or luck in finding Hercules than had Lear.
Unlike Oney, Hercules was never found. While George and Martha felt disturbed and betrayed by the escape, it was not a sentiment shared by the blacks the Washingtons continued to enslave, including members of Hercules’ family whom he had left behind.24
When a foreign visitor asked his little daughter if she was sad that her father had gone and left her behind, still enslaved to Washington, she stated with unbridled emotion, “Oh! Sir, I am very glad, because he is free now.”25
A Home for the President of the United States of America
Although the “White House” is known worldwide as the residence of the U.S. president, its nomenclature has not been consistent. The Philadelphia home in which Presidents George Washington and John Adams lived for most of their terms went by many names, including the Masters-Penn House, the Robert Morris House, the Washington Mansion, the Executive Mansion, the Presidential Mansion, and other names. The first two reflected the names of various owners of the house, while the latter three were popularly used by the local population. However, the label used formally by Washington and Adams was “President’s House.”26
Under Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution, Congress was empowered to build a federal enclave to “exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.” As it turned out, the president’s house was one of those “needful Buildings.”
While the Constitution authorized the construction of what would be officially named the “District of Columbia” but referred to as “Washington,” it was the Residence Act of 1790 that clarified exactly where the nation’s capital and the president’s residence were to be constructed. It mandated that “all offices attached to the seat of the government of the United States” would be moved to the capital city no later than the first Monday in December 1800. It also stipulated, under the influence of Washington, that the district “be located as hereafter directed on the river Potomack, at some place between the mouths of the Eastern-Branch [now called the Anacostia] and Connogochegue.”27 Despite the fact that the majority of the white population lived in the North, it would be the South where the new government, including the president’s quarters, would be situated. Once again, the ongoing issue of slavery played a key role in that determination.
At the time of the passage of the Residence Act, the seat of the U.S. government was in New York City. During the Revolutionary War, the Constitutional Congress had been displaced on numerous occasions but met often either in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence had been announced and the Constitution written and signed, or in New York. The president’s residence was in New York at that time.
Southern states, however, were wary of having the government located in the North where those pesky, aggressive abolitionists were growing in numbers and power. Among Southerners, whispers grew louder that they would not accept a permanent federal district that was in the North. The South-North divide was once again raising its head. Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania delegation argued that the capital should be in Philadelphia, both because of the city’s role in the Revolution and because of its stature as a modern, thriving metropolis. As Pennsylvania was the second-largest state, after Virginia, its wishes could not be ignored without there being serious consequences. Clearly, compromises had to be made.
The most common story told is that there was a decision to separate the issues of the two homes that were needed for the president of the United States—the permanent one that needed to be built and the temporary one to be used in the meantime. New York and Boston both made unsuccessful bids to host the interim residence, losing to Pennsylvania. Choosing Philadelphia as the temporary home quieted the influential Pennsylvania delegates who believed that once the seat of government was established in their great city for ten years, it would not want to leave. The Philadelphia federalists, however, underestimated the distaste that southern political leaders felt toward urban areas and the North in general. The Southerners could tolerate a temporary home for the national government in a state that was kind of north, and given the Southerners’ view that states’ rights as opposed to an overwhelming national authority would define the political character of the new country a stay in Philadelphia seemed to be a minor threat. But it was unrealistic to believe that they would support long-term placement of the nation’s capital in Philadelphia.
The second deal to be struck was that in exchange for the South supporting Alexander Hamilton’s proposal, known as the Assumption Act, that would allow the new and somewhat broke national government to assume wartime debts that states had incurred during the Revolutionary War, the national capital itself would be located in the South. Or so the story goes. In this narrative, the Southerners were really open to negotiations and simply drove a hard bargain.
Yet, as historian Garry Wills points out, in reality, the bargain to establish the capital was engineered by three Virginians—James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington—who wanted not only to appease their Southern allies but also ensure that the issue of slavery would be minimized. “The capital was purposely embedded in slave territory,” argues Wills (emphasis in the original).28 Just as the South would not have joined the revolution if there had not been a guarantee of protection for slavery, it was certainly not going to accept that the permanent seat of the nation’s government be located in an abolitionist stronghold like Philadelphia. Pennsylvania was already leading the nation in the passage of bills that sought to undermine or end slavery. Furthermore, Washington, Madison, and Jefferson all enslaved black people. It would not do for the nation’s leader to be in a city or state where protests against slavery were frequent and where legal actions could possibly be taken against him by white abolitionist activists pursuing the freedom of the blacks he enslaved.
Before settling into the friendly culture on land ceded by the two slave states of Virginia and Maryland, the president’s residence would be situated first in New York City and then in Philadelphia. And the practice of slave labor in the president’s house would travel this road as well.
Washington Moves to Public Housing
As president, George Washington never lived in the city that would one day be named after him. He spent a brief time in New York between 1789 and 1790, then took up temporary residence in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1797.
Washington could and did live away from his wife, Martha, but found it impossible to live away from his slaves. In New York and Philadelphia, he brought with him a number of individuals he enslaved, thus establishing a tradition of black slave labor in the president’s home that would continue with few exceptions up to the Civil War. All the euphemisms that had been employed in the founding documents to cover up the embarrassment and hypocrisy of slavery could not negate the reality that the first president of the United States was enslaving hundreds of men, women, and children, a reality visible for all to see.
Despite his short stay in New York City, it was really in Philadelphia that Washington’s presidency unfolded. Unlike New York, with a ratio of enslaved to free blacks of nearly five to one (21,324 enslaved, 4,654 free), Pennsylvania was one of four states where free blacks (6,537) outnumbered those who were not (3,737).29 Washington would contribute at least ten additional slaves to the state’s numbers. His slave-labor force in Philadelphia over time included six who arrived with him from New York—Moll, Austin, Giles, Paris, Christopher, and the aforementioned Oney—plus Hercules and his son Richmond. Another slave, Joe, who would serve as a horse footman, arrived later. And, of course, William Lee was by his side at least for a short while. Ironically, they would all reside in a city that became the epicenter for early abolitionism and black radicalism.
In Philadelphia, the first presidential residence was a home owned by Robert Morris, one of the richest men in the country at the time. The Market Street house had been built in the late 1760s and was one of the largest in the city. During the Revolutionary War, it had been occupied for a time by General Benedict Arnold until he was forced out due to corruption and other problems. Washington, who was close to the Morris family, was extremely familiar with the property and had even lodged there on many occasions, including during his stay in the city for the Constitutional Convention. Although the city proposed and started to construct a larger residence for the president, Washington would live in the Morris house for nine years (1790–1799) and Adams for one year (1799–1800) until the White House was ready in 1800.30
Washington renovated the house, adding a servants’ hall and two rooms in an extension of the smokehouse that would house both his servants and the men and women he enslaved. It is this part of the house that would generate passionate controversy over 200 years later.
Abolitionism in Philadelphia
The selection of Pennsylvania to temporarily house the nation’s government seems counterintuitive for several reasons. First, it was clearly a concession to the North by the South. Although the permanent home of the federal government was being built in the South, a ten-year commitment was a fairly strong victory for political forces of the North across what was shaping up as a major fault line in American politics between the two regions. Second, while the slavery-enabling Constitution was being written at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, others in the city were igniting new fires against the institution. The Pennsylvania Abolition Society was reorganizing and reasserting itself, and black activists across the city were establishing institutions that would last until this very day. The president’s house under both Washington and Adams would attempt to remain aloof from these developments, but nevertheless, the abolitionists’ energies would vex presidents for decades to come.
Among whites, the abolitionist movement was rooted in the Quaker religion, whose members had founded Pennsylvania. On April 18, 1688, only six years after the arrival of state founder William Penn, four Quakers—Gerrit Hendricks, Derick op den Graeff, Francis Daniel Pastorius, and Abraham op den Graeff—wrote a letter launching a protest opposing slavery, railing against “the traffic of men-body” and asking “what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange countries.”31 This is believed to be the first formal protest by white people against slavery in North America’s history.
Anthony Benezet instructing black children. He was one of the earliest American abolitionists and founded the first anti-slavery society, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.
Historian Maurice Jackson has argued that the Quaker opposition to slavery was rooted in their theological beliefs. First, he contends, Quakers rejected both the notion of “original sin” and the practice of enslaving newborns. Second, they also rejected the notion of “just war” that was used by some to argue that individuals and communities could be taken as part of the booty of war and then enslaved. Linked to that notion, Quakers also preached nonviolence and that no institution was as violent as that of slavery. And third, according to Jackson, Quaker leaders such as Anthony Benezet criticized the institution of slavery on the grounds that it was driven by greed and a lust for money at any cost.32 For Quakers and others, such values were immoral and ungodly, and fighting to end slavery was not an option but an obligation.
In April 1775, led by Benezet, the Quakers and others formed the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Their activities apparently got under the skin of then General George Washington who, in 1786, wrote a letter supporting a friend and fellow Virginia slaveholder who had to deal with “a vexatious lawsuit respecting a slave of his, which a Society of Quakers in the city (formed for such purposes) have attempted to liberate.”33 The war and the untimely death in 1784 of Benezet, the Society’s intellectual and political leader, forced a curtailment of their activities.34
The group persevered, however, renaming itself the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1787, and pledged to “use such means as are in their power to extend the blessings of freedom to every part of the human race.”35 The group’s members achieved a coup when they convinced the ever popular Benjamin Franklin, aged but still energetic, to join the cause. They quickly selected him to become the Abolition Society’s president, a position he accepted and held until he died in 1790. Like most of the founding fathers, Franklin had been a slaveholder for many years, but unlike most, he came to see the evil and immorality of the slave system and vigorously spoke out against it in his later years. The Pennsylvania Abolition Society helped to buy freedom for some, provided legal aid to runaways or those who were unlawfully abducted by slave catchers, and promoted pro-abolition legislation. As the Pennsylvania Abolition Society developed, it also formed networks with other abolitionist groups and movements around the world, including groups in Canada and parts of the Caribbean.
Despite its groundbreaking efforts to end slavery, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society had several glaring weaknesses. First, its strategy relied primarily on petitions and legal remedies. The former had propaganda and educational value, but little real-world impact to end slave system. Congress and state legislatures put them on the shelf never to be seen or heard of again. In legal efforts, on the other hand, the Society played a central role in the development of the Gradual Abolition Act (discussed in Chapter 1) and sought other legislative and legal solutions, achieving more than expected given the national and even local social climate. But slavery continued to grow, and other efforts began to overshadow its work, such as those of the American Colonization Society, whose members advocated sending blacks to Africa, or those supporting more radical demands such as slave uprisings or establishing maroon societies. While the Pennsylvania Abolition Society settled for a gradualist policy, others advocated for what writer Richard Newman termed “immediatism”—an immediate end to slavery and the establishment of full equality for African Americans.36
Second, and perhaps most telling, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society was segregated and did not allow black members until the 1830s, by which time other integrated or all-black initiatives were well established. The segregationist policy of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society was not that different from that o
f any other political or social institution of the period. Despite genuinely seeking an end to slavery, its policies reflected the underlying reality that blacks were not seen as equals by even “progressive” whites. The benevolence of the organization might best be seen, then, as more patronizing and moralistic than as part of a political movement for genuine racial equality. That demand would come from the black community itself.
Black Activism Then and Now
At the same time the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia to frame the terms of the slavery-permissive U.S. Constitution, the city’s black community was actively organizing to abolish slavery. Living in the largest enclave of free blacks in the nation, African Americans in Pennsylvania consolidated and began a concerted push to end slavery and ensconce equal rights and social justice. Movement activity took many forms—speeches, petitions, pamphlets, public gatherings, and the development of black newspapers.
Religious leaders were particularly important in these campaigns. In fall 1787, Methodist convert and former slave Richard Allen, along with Absalom Jones and Peter Williams, knelt down to pray in Philadelphia’s St. George Church. The church had recently begun to segregate the increased number of blacks who attended, many of whom came to hear Allen preach. Coordinating segregation, however, became more and more difficult as the black congregation grew. On that particular November Sunday there was confusion regarding exactly where Allen and the others should worship. As the men were kneeling in prayer, church officials first implored them to move and then, when they refused, literally lifted them off their knees and physically removed them from the church.