The Ballad of Oney Judge

Everyone liked Martha Washington, even Abigail Adams. Martha was kind, and she was kind to the more than one hundred human slaves she held in trust for the descendants of her first marriage. Oney Judge was her main maidservant and decidely Martha's favorite enslaved individual. You can imagine Oney's shock when Martha decided to give her as a wedding present to Martha's granddaughter, Eliza Custis, who was not a nice person to work for. Oney packed her clothes and slipped away, headed north. The Washingtons regarded this flight as an act of disloyalty, which was unforgivable.

If Oney had been one of George Washington's slaves, he might not have tried hard to recapture her. George owned many slaves, more than were useful in running his tobacco farms etc.  That was bad for his bottom line, and George was a bottom line guy. He actually wanted to get rid of some slaves, but he did not like to break up families, so he  couldn't sell them. George was also aware that slavery did not make sense in a nation devoted to liberty. He planned to free his slaves in his will (and did so). But Oney was not his disloyal slave. In a sense he had had her on loan. If he didn't recover her, he would owe the Custis estate her value, a lot of money. And he was a bottom line guy. 

Oney made it to New Hampshire, where she married and settled down, but Washington's contacts found her. Plans were laid to seize her and return her to slavery, but with the help of some decent people, Oney managed to flee in time and spent the rest of her life hiding, I guess. Washington never gave up. 

According to federal law, Washington had every right to demand the return of his wife's property. Some of the northern states, though, insisted that they reserved the right under the Constitution to defy federal law. That was before the Civil War, and if there was one thing the South detested more than abolitionists like Benjamin Franklyn, it was the satanic New England theory called states rights.