In the Shadow of Liberty: Chapter 3

What Washington saw as laziness or stupidity was really resistance. Not working hard and not caring—even theft—were subtle types of rebellion, the only ways for enslaved people to fight back.

When Washington acquired William Lee and his younger brother Frank in October 1767, he didn’t note what became of Frank and Will’s mother or any other siblings.

Family stories described Billy as short, compact, and powerfully built without reference to his skin color.

In the few portraits of Washington in which Billy appears, a horse usually obscures his body, but he is depicted with fairly dark skin.

To American slaveholders, servants in British-style livery—elaborate colorful uniforms—were considered status symbols, especially if they were lighter skinned.

“And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white...preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race?”

Frank was trained as a waiter and later became Mount Vernon’s head butler, a crucial and prestigious job in a household like Washington’s.

Living near them were other enslaved people with special skills, such as masons and carpenters like Sambo Andersen.

They were expected in the fields as soon as there was light—which meant rising in the darkness and walking to work before the sun was up. And they were kept at it, under the eye of the ever-present overseers, without rest except to eat, until dark.

The husband and wife sleep on a mean pallet [straw-filled mattress], the children on the ground; a very bad fireplace, some utensils for cooking, but in the middle of this poverty some cups and a teapot.

On Sundays, their one regular day off, Washington’s enslaved people—with a requisite pass, or “remit”—could travel to the nearby town of Alexandria and its farm markets, where they could sell chickens, eggs, and garden produce.

Raising small amounts of cash gave the enslaved people a chance to supplement their meager food and clothing allowances.

But there were roving slave patrollers, who made a living capturing runaways for bounties.

To the pattyroller, any black person found wandering the countryside was assumed to be a runaway.

Even a few lashes raised welts, cut flesh, and left scars.

The other, Peros, speaks much better than either, indeed has little of his Country Dialect left, and is esteemed a sensible judicious Negro.

Whoever apprehends the said Negroes, so that the Subscriber may readily get them, shall have, if taken up in this County, Forty Shillings Reward, beside what the Law allows: and if at any greater Distance, or out of the Colony, a proportional Recompence, paid them.

Ten years before the Revolution, Washington had ordered some of the most disobedient or “willful” enslaved people to be sold to the West Indies to work in the sugar fields, a near-certain death sentence because the work there was harder and the conditions were harsher and more deadly.

Washington added, “That this Fellow is both a Rogue & Runaway...I shall not pretend to deny—But that he is exceedingly healthy, strong, and good at the Hoe, the whole neighbourhood can testifie.”

But he had still acquired a hero’s reputation for bravery and staunch leadership under fire.

“With the spring of a deer,” Washington jumped from his saddle and, said Trask, “threw the reins of his bridle into the hands of his servant.”

Warily watching the British in Boston, “Washington frequently had Billy Lee remove his mahogany and brass spyglass from its handsome leather case so he could engage in surveillance of his adversary,” biographer Ron Chernow records.

Set in New York near West Point in 1776, it shows Billy Lee in the background, again in Washington’s shadow, his head wrapped in what looks like a bright red turban. The son of Connecticut’s governor, Trumbull was a talented young artist who sketched maps for Washington and joined his military staff. Is this a true likeness of Billy?

Many Americans had been taken prisoner and held in appalling conditions in city warehouses or on British prison ships in the East River, where as many as 11,500 men perished in one of the great atrocities of the war.

And Billy was certainly there during the long, cold, bleak winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge.

The contradiction between the ideals he had fought for and the enslavement of people like Billy Lee was now obvious.

A large, robust, athletic man, Washington was plagued by headaches, stomach troubles, and bouts of rheumatism—a painful condition affecting the joints such as knees and elbows.

The two men stayed in the lavish home of businessman and merchant Robert Morris, the man who had helped finance the American Revolution.

For months, the Framers—as these men are known since they wrote or “framed” the Constitution—debated ideas for a new national government.

States with small populations feared that large states would be too powerful and overwhelm them if votes were based on population alone.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Some delegates objected and argued that if slaves were “property,” why not count all property, including horses and houses? But the delegates from the slave states threatened to walk out of the convention if they did not get this important concession.

The Constitution also included a requirement that the federal government had to assist in the return of any escaped enslaved people, or fugitives.

Article IV read, “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”

Under its terms, Congress would not limit the foreign slave trade until at least 1808—twenty years after the Constitution was ratified, or accepted by the necessary number of states.

Article I, Section 9, reads, “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”

After Washington left office and returned home in 1797, he wrote a new version of his last will and testament. Drawn up in the summer of 1799, it provided for the eventual emancipation of the enslaved people who were his “property.”

As promised, after Washington died in December 1799, Billy was freed and received a pension, paid to him every three months, and the invitation to remain at Mount Vernon, which he accepted.

This uncertainty—the wide disparity in these dates 1810 and 1828 and the location of Billy Lee’s remains—shows again how enslaved people lived in the shadows of the white world.

In a separate act, the Continental Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance, which outlaws slavery in the territories north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi Rivers.