When I was a very young girl, studying the classics, I read that the ancient Greeks honored their Olympic game heroes by knocking out a portion of the wall that protected their city — the heroes stood in that spot for the rest of the day, the idea being that with champions such as them a wall was not needed. On December 14 it felt across this country, and especially at Mount Vernon, that we had lost not only a hero but one of the very foundations of our house. For days after his passing I spoke to no one about the depth of this absence save to my dearest and closest friends. Nor did I speak of how subtly I began to see a change in our servants. At first, I thought the smiles with which they greeted me were simply intended to cheer me a little. Then, ever so slowly, I realized they were smiling too much. And too often. Sometimes when I started to enter the kitchen, I'd stop outside the door, listening to the blacks laughing whilst they prepared my meals, and once our cook told the chambermaid how pleased she was that now she'd never again have to slave all day to prepare the elaborate desserts the Old Man was so fond of. At that point, I strode inside. Seeing me, both women went fussily back to work, ducking their heads, but I saw one of them, I swear, wink at the other.
Strangely enough, the worst among them was Billy Lee. With my husband dead and buried, he started behaving as if he was now the master of Mount Vernon, or at least over the other servants. This would have been impossible, I realized, had George and I not become so dependent upon the blacks. We'd delegated so many household responsibilities to them, and not just in the manor but in the tobacco fields as well, that I would be at pains to tell you the inventory of our kitchen, or how well the Old Man's latest agricultural experiments were proceeding. Ironically, we were enslaved to them, shackled to their industry, the knowledge they'd acquired because we were too busy running the country to develop it ourselves!
One afternoon last week Billy brought me my tea as I was writing thank-you notes to those many people who'd sent me condolences. He actually pointed his dark finger at me, wagged it, and said, "Lady Washington, you should let them scribes the master hired do that." I mean, he was telling me what I should do. More than once I sniffed our best brandy on his breath. I heard him swearing at a stable hand, and do you think he was at all ashamed when I chastised him? Hardly!
It was, then, perhaps a month after the Old Man's death, that I began to fear the Negroes who resided in every nook and cranny of my life. At night, from their quarters, I began to hear drums, which George had expressly forbidden them to play. Food began to disappear from our pantries. Many of our plants died in the greenhouse from neglect. And there I was, an old woman still grieving over the love of her youth, surrounded on all sides by George's slaves who knew that when I expired they were free. (My own servants we had not yet decided about.) Privately, with me and friends, my husband declared his repugnance for slavery. He knew it was wrong. And hoping to right that wrong — one he'd known as a slave master since his eleventh year — he built liberation for his Negroes after my death into his last will and testament. (No, I was not thoroughly consulted on this matter.) And by doing so, he created the most frightening prison for me.
I am afraid to be alone in any room in my house with Billy Lee, given the way I sometimes catch him looking at me out of the corner of his eye. My Lord, I am afraid to eat, for anything they serve me might be poisoned. It chills me to hear the footsteps of any of our servants behind me when I am on the stairs, or outside my bedroom door at night. Oh, George, you were not a thinker. Had you been, you would not out of Christian kindness to the blacks unwittingly consigned me to a hellish house, where in the face of each of our formerly loving attendants I now see my possible executioner.
How many days, or weeks, I have lived in this agony, I do not know. How long I have to live after my dear husband's departure is also a mystery. But I awoke this morning with a clear resolve. I bade one of the black children to have our coachman ready the carriage to take me in a few moments to Fairfax County court There, I will sign the papers necessary to release from servitude all of George's Negroes. They must be manumitted now. This very afternoon.
Then, and only then, will they and I be free of the errors of George Washington.
The Plague
JULY 5,1793
FRIDAY, 8:30 P.M.
I have kept this journal for a few months now, initially to document for posterity the early work I am doing to open — soon, I hope — the doors of a church I will call Bethel, hut as we now enter the second (or perhaps it is the third) month of deaths due to the yellow fever, I wonder if it might be more appropriate to title these pages The Plague Journal.
Death is all around us, like a biblical parable on (white) vanity. Should I make that the subject of my five o'clock sermon tomorrow morning? I wonder how it might be received? Perhaps well, insofar as my congregation is entirely Cainite — so white men call us — the colored outcasts violently driven from St. George's, one of Philadelphia's largest Methodist churches just last year. I know in the eyes of God, the behavior of this city's Abelites was scandalous. We, free men and women, came humbly to their church to pray to the Creator. Rev. Absalom Jones and I were a little late. Without causing any noise or commotion whatsoever, we quickly went up the stairs of St. George to the newly built gallery, which was just above the seats we'd occupied the week before. The strains of the first hymn were ending as we sat down, then the church elder told all those present to pray. Obediently, we got down on our knees. But hardly was I a minute into silent meditation when at my right I heard Absalom make a sound. Opening my eyes, I saw one of St. George's trustees hauling my companion to his feet, telling him Negroes were never, never, never to sit in this section of the gallery. Naturally, my friends and I left, turning our backs on all of Philadelphia's white churches. One Sabbath after the next we were subjected to humiliations it pains me to remember. Good Christians, for example, who refused to take the sacrament if it meant sipping from the same chalice that had touched the lips of their darker brethren. Oh yes, Absalom was compelled to organize St. Thomas Episcopal Church after that sad incident, and I dream of a ground-breaking ceremony someday at Bethel, that we might better separate ourselves from those who reject us, and all of this simply that we can worship our common Father in the spirit He intended. now, ironically, He has visited upon this city's whites a plague of medieval proportions. It is a swift disease. It can kill in a single day. Week by week, the death toll mounts. Frightened whites flee this capital city of Philadelphia by the thousands, abandoning their families and friends. Those who remain are helpless in the grip of this growing malignancy, for the country's government is paralyzed. The crisis is unparalleled in this country's history. But word has spread that Negroes are immune to the disease, which is not true, of course. Nonetheless, the Abelites believe we are protected, and so Dr. Benjamin Rush, knowing of the leadership position I occupy through God's grace among my own people, has appealed to me to plead with them to assist the city's remaining civic leaders in combating the curse that is laying them low.