VA, USA
April 1781: Seventeen Choose the British
On an April night in 1781, with a British warship anchored in the Potomac and Lund Washington negotiating on the bank, seventeen enslaved people at Mount Vernon made the most consequential decision of their lives. They walked away from the estate. They went aboard the HMS Savage. They chose the British.
We know their names from Washington's later attempts to recover them: Gunner and his wife Esther, Lewis and Lil; Deborah and Frederick; Peter and several others. Some were skilled workers. Some were household servants. They had, between them, decades of service to Washington's estate and no share in the liberty Washington was fighting to establish.
Lund Washington's account of the episode is the primary source. He went aboard the ship to negotiate — hoping, apparently, to retrieve the enslaved people and possibly recover livestock the British had taken. He brought food and supplies. The negotiations failed in the sense that none of the seventeen were returned. The British kept their word: they did not attack the estate.
Washington's reaction, in the letter to Lund, focuses almost entirely on the provisioning of the enemy ship. He was furious about that: "to go on board their vessels; carry them refreshments; commune with a parcel of plundering Scoundrels." He mentions the enslaved people who left in a single sentence, noting that he had taken steps to try to recover them. He seems less exercised about the departures than about the political embarrassment of his estate manager feeding British sailors.
Of the seventeen, most died within a few years of smallpox and other diseases that decimated the thousands of enslaved people who sought freedom with the British. Washington tracked at least one, Deborah, to Philadelphia after the war, but could not recover her. She and the others had chosen a freedom that cost many of them their lives. The cost of staying, of another lifetime of unpaid labor, had simply seemed higher.
Sources
Primary & Secondary Sources
Lund Washington to George Washington: Mount Vernon Management Letters, 1775-1783
Library of Congress, George Washington Papers · PRIMARY · TIER1
Letters from Washington's cousin and estate manager reporting on Mount Vernon's operations during the general's long absence at war. Includes the account of the British warship HMS Savage threatening the estate in 1781 and Lund Washington's controversial delivery of supplies.
Mount Vernon Research Library and Collections
Mount Vernon Ladies' Association · INSTITUTIONAL · TIER1
The MVLA Research Library holds the most comprehensive collection of Washington primary sources outside the Library of Congress, including estate account books, plantation records, and incoming correspondence from the Revolutionary period.
Mount Vernon Slave Inventories and Will of George Washington, 1799
Mount Vernon Ladies' Association / Fairfax County Court Records · PRIMARY · TIER1
Washington's 1799 will freeing his enslaved people and the associated estate inventories documenting the enslaved workforce at Mount Vernon throughout the Revolutionary period. Critical for understanding the human cost of the estate's wartime operation.
The Diaries of George Washington, 1748-1799 (6 vols.)
University Press of Virginia (Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds.) · PRIMARY · TIER1
Authoritative critical edition of Washington's personal diaries. Covers his life at Mount Vernon before the war, his single wartime visit in 1781 (en route to Yorktown), and his return after the Revolution. Essential primary source.
The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition
University of Virginia Press · DATASET · TIER1
Comprehensive scholarly edition of Washington's complete papers. The Colonial Series and Revolutionary War Series contain all surviving Washington correspondence, including letters to and from Mount Vernon during the war.
An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Henry Wiencek) · SECONDARY · TIER2
Scholarly examination of Washington's relationship with slavery at Mount Vernon. Uses estate records, Lund Washington's letters, and the will to analyze the enslaved community's wartime experience and the tension between Washington's Revolutionary ideals and his slaveholding.
George Washington's Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America
Oxford University Press (Robert F. Dalzell Jr. and Lee Baldwin Dalzell) · SECONDARY · TIER2
Architectural and social history of Mount Vernon as a place. Examines how Washington designed and expanded the estate as an expression of his values and ambitions. Substantial wartime chapter using Lund Washington's letters.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-31-02-0415
founders.archives.gov · SECONDARY · TIER2
Discovered by agentic enrichment for Mount Vernon
https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/resistance-and-punishment/savage
www.mountvernon.org · SECONDARY · TIER2
Discovered by agentic enrichment for Mount Vernon
https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/h-m-s-savage
www.mountvernon.org · SECONDARY · TIER2
Discovered by agentic enrichment for Mount Vernon
Martha Washington: An American Life
Viking (Patricia Brady) · SECONDARY · TIER2
Modern biography drawing on the surviving Martha Washington correspondence and camp accounts. Illuminates Mount Vernon's wartime experience from Martha's perspective during her extended periods alone at the estate.
Mount Vernon Archaeological Research Reports
Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, Archaeology Department · SECONDARY · TIER2
Ongoing archaeological research at the Mount Vernon estate. Excavations of the slave quarter areas (House for Families, Greenhouse Quarter) have recovered material culture from the Revolutionary period, supplementing documentary records.
Mount Vernon National Historic Landmark Nomination
National Park Service · INSTITUTIONAL · TIER2
NPS nomination documentation providing architectural, archaeological, and historical analysis of Mount Vernon. The historical statement of significance covers the estate's Revolutionary-era role and Washington's relationship to the property.
Mount Vernon -- Wikipedia
Wikipedia · TERTIARY · TIER3
General reference entry on the estate. Covers Washington's ownership, the wartime situation, and the estate's subsequent history. Well-linked to secondary literature.
Mount Vernon Estate Visitor Guide
Mount Vernon Ladies' Association · TERTIARY · TIER3
Visitor-oriented guide to the estate grounds. Useful for identifying the physical locations of the mansion, slave quarters, greenhouse, and working farm areas as they existed during the Revolutionary period.