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Mount Vernon
Henry (Harry) Washington
Born on the
Gambia River around 1740, Henry Washington (real name unknown) was captured and
sold into slavery sometime before 1763.
He subsequently became the property of George Washington and was a groom
in the stables at Mount Vernon. In
November 1775, the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a
proclamation offering freedom to any slave who would help put down the American
rebels. That December, George
Washington, commanding the Continental Army in Massachusetts, received a report
from his cousin Lund that Lord Dunmore’s proclamation had stirred the passions
of Washington’s own slaves. “There is not a man of them but would leave us if
they believed they could make their escape. Liberty is sweet.” In August 1776, a month after the signing of
the Declaration of Independence, Henry Washington made his escape from Mount
Vernon, making his way to the British lines and joining Lord Dunmore’s all
black “Ethiopian Regiment ”. With
several hundred men under arms, the Ethiopian Regiment fought for the Crown and
the freedom of all blacks in slavery, under the regimental motto, “Liberty to
Slaves”. Lord Dunmore’s forces were
overwhelmed in Virginia and the Ethiopian Regiment disbanded. Henry Washington went on to serve in another
Loyalist regiment, The Black Pioneers under the command of Sir Henry Clinton as
they moved from New York to Philadelphia to Charleston, and, after the fall of
Charleston, back to New York.
Henry Washington
was not alone in joining the British.
The so called “Black Loyalists” in the Revolutionary War are estimated
to have numbered between eighty and one hundred thousand runaways who sought
freedom within the lines of the British army.
By freeing the slaves the British forced slave masters to guard
slaves, one of their chief economic assets, instead of fighting British troops.
The British were willing to emancipate slaves if by so doing they could first
cripple and then crush the rebellion.
Much as in the later American Civil War, military necessity rather than
morality acted as the catalyst of history. The use of slaves by the British for
military purposes soon prompted the American rebels to begin recruiting
blacks. George
Washington gave his approval to Rhode Island's plan to raise an entire regiment
of black slaves (the state bought and emancipated slaves willing to become
soldiers). Similarly, Massachusetts raised an all-black unit, the Bucks of
America under Samuel Middleton, the only black commissioned officer in the
Continental Army. In October 1780, even Maryland accepted “any able-bodied
slave between 16 and 40 years of age, who voluntarily enters into service . . .
with the consent and agreement of his master.” New York began recruiting slaves
in March 1781. By June 1781 some 1,500
of the 6,000 troops under George Washington’s direct command were black.
In 1782, a provisional treaty granting the American colonies
their independence was signed by Great Britain. As the British prepared for
their final evacuation, the Americans demanded the return of runaway slaves, under
the terms of the peace treaty. The British refused to abandon black Loyalists who
had fought for the Crown to their fate. Some four thousand blacks who had
served the Crown during the war, together with their families, were listed in
“The Book of Negroes” (George Washington insisted that such a list be made so
that masters could be compensated for their lost property). Those lucky enough to make the list sailed to
freedom in Canada and England. Among
them was Henry Washington.
Henry Washington
embarked on the ship L’Abondance in July 1783, with 405 other black loyalists,
including women and children, bound for Nova Scotia. He was forty three years old. His wife, Jenny was twenty four. Most of the black loyalists on board
L’Abondance were followers of a blind preacher called “Daddy Moses” who settled
as a community in a place they named Birchtown.
Life in Nova
Scotia was hard. The Crown was slow in
allocating land, the weather was harsh, and the soil rocky and poor. After several unhappy years in Nova Scotia,
Henry Washington together with his wife and three children and 1,192 other
black colonists joined an enterprise sponsored by the Sierra Leone Company, and
financed by the British government, which allowed black loyalist refugees to
join the free black community established in Sierra Leone in West Africa. In 1791, Henry Washington and his
family settled in Sierra Leone. New
settlers were promised twenty acres for every man, ten for every woman and five
for every child. They were also given assurances that in Sierra Leone there
would be no discrimination between white and black settlers.
The Company
was long on promises and short on delivery.
Relations between the Company and the colonists deteriorated to the
point that the Company sought a royal charter from the British parliament which
would give the company formal jurisdiction over Sierra Leone. The Company wanted full judicial authority to
suppress dissent. The Company explained,
“…the unwarranted pretensions of the disaffected settlers, their narrow
misguided views; their excessive jealousy of Europeans; the crude notions they
had formed of their own rights; and the impetuosity of their tempers…” would
soon produce a “ruinous effect.”
The settlers,
who regarded themselves as loyal British subjects, petitioned the King, explaining
how the black settlers had been given land by the British government as a
consequence of “our good behavior in the last war.” The King hearing of their
unhappiness about living a cold country offered to “remove us to Sierra Leone
where we may be comfortable.” Things had not turned out in accordance with the
terms of His Majesty’s offer, and the settlers sought redress. The Company
insured that the settler’s petition never reached the King.
By
1799, Sierra Leone’s settlers had grown so discontented, so revolutionary in
their rejection of the Company’s rule over the colony, that some in London
likened them to the revolutionaries in France.
The Company noted with alarm, “meetings of a most seditious and dangerous
nature.” The governor sent armed
marshals to arrest several men on charges of treason. Within a week thirty one men were in
custody. A military tribunal was set up
to try the prisoners for “open and unprovoked rebellion.” Henry Washington and twenty three others were
banished to the colony’s desolate northern shore.
The
exiles elected Henry Washington their leader in 1800, only months after George
Washington’s death at Mount Vernon. In
the love of liberty, Henry Washington was not excelled by the better known
George Washington.
These are the often overlooked stories of early
America. Stories such as the roots of racism in America, famous murders that
rocked the colonies, the scandalous doings of some of the most famous of the
Founding Fathers, the first Emancipation Proclamation that got revoked, and
stories of several notorious generals who have been swept under history’s rug.
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