Artist’s rendering of Deborah Squash
Christopher Zaccone, “Artist’s rendering of Deborah Squash,” 2005. The New York Historical.
Very few images of Black people were recorded in the Colonial Era. The drawing that accompanies this life story is an artist’s interpretation of Deborah Squash based on some of the earliest available photographs of Black people from the mid-1800s. It is intended to help students understand that Deborah was a real person not fundamentally different from us.
Deborah Squash spent her childhood enslaved on a plantation called Mount Vernon in Virginia. She was one of about 300 people enslaved by George and Martha Washington. There are no records of her early life, so it is impossible to know whether she worked in the fields or in one of the homes on their property. But it is certain that Deborah worked hard, because George Washington believed that all people, male and female, enslaved and free, should work as hard and as long as their strength would allow.
The outbreak of the American Revolution created new possibilities for the enslaved people who lived and worked in the English colonies. Some hoped that the new country would truly embrace the idea that “all men are created equal” and lead its local governments to abolish slavery. Others took advantage of the chaos of the war to run away and start new lives. Still others took advantage of Lord Dunmore’s proclamation of 1775. This proclamation promised freedom to any person enslaved by a Patriot who escaped their owner and supported the British forces. Other British leaders issued similar decrees as the war dragged on. When the British Army and Navy moved to Virginia, thousands of enslaved people joined their ranks, hoping to earn their freedom.
Deborah was one of these hopefuls. In April of 1781 a British ship called the Savage was plundering its way up the Potomac when it arrived within a quarter mile of Mount Vernon. Sixteen-year-old Deborah ran away from the plantation that had been her home all her life and boarded the ship. Sixteen other enslaved people from Mount Vernon ran with her. Lund Washington, George Washington’s cousin, was in charge of managing Mount Vernon while George was away fighting the war. When he learned of the escape, he was furious. He pursued the captives and boarded the British ship, offering supplies in exchange for the return of the people he considered slaves. The ship captain happily took the supplies but refused to return the self-emancipated people.
News of Lund’s actions traveled fast in the Continental Army. Many people were horrified that a member of Washington’s own family had given supplies to the enemy. General Lafayette wrote to George Washington to demand something be done about it. Washington wrote his cousin a very stern letter calling his actions “exceedingly ill-judged.”
Following her daring escape Deborah was free, but she was not safe. She joined the thousands of self-emancipated people who followed the British Army as they marched through the southern states. The British were happy to encourage escaping enslaved people to weaken their American foes, but they had no means to support them. Cold, starvation, and disease took a terrible toll on the self-emancipated during the Revolutionary War. Historians estimate that nearly fifty percent of the enslaved people who escaped to British lines died before the end of the war.
Deborah survived all of these hardships, including a case of smallpox, and made her way to New York City. New York was the headquarters of the British armed forces during the war. At some point she married Henry Squash, another formerly enslaved person who gained their freedom by helping the British. By 1783 they were living together in New York City, where over 3,000 self-emancipated Black people worked hard every day in the hope that the British would confirm their freedom at the end of the war.
When the British were defeated at the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781, Deborah’s future looked grim. The Americans demanded that the British return all self-emancipated people to their enslavers. But Sir Guy Carleton, the British administrator in charge of evacuating the British Army and Loyalists from the colonies, refused to carry out this order. He feared that the self-emancipated people would face a life of punishment, or even execution, at the hands of their angry enslavers. He believed that would be a very poor outcome for people who had risked everything to help the British cause. Instead, he offered to compensate American enslavers for every self-emancipated person evacuated by the British. General Washington did not have the power to stop him. This resulted in the creation of the famous Book of Negroes, where Carleton’s clerks recorded information about every enslaved person who boarded a British navy ship. But there is no evidence that the British ever actually paid the money they promised American enslavers.
Following her daring escape Deborah was free, but she was not safe.
The entire emancipated Black population of New York was interviewed to determine who had served the British cause faithfully. Those deemed worthy were given official certificates of freedom and safe passage out of the colonies so they would never be enslaved again. Deborah Squash and her husband were both cleared and boarded a boat for Port Roseway, Nova Scotia on April 27, 1783. The very next day Washington wrote to the commissioner of embarkation at New York, asking him to privately imprison any self-emancipated people who had once belonged to Washington and his family. Luckily for Deborah, she was already far beyond his grasp.
Vocabulary
- Loyalist: A person who supported the British during the American Revolution.
- self-emancipated: People who have freed themselves from slavery, usually by running away or purchasing their freedom.
- smallpox: A deadly, highly contagious disease that causes a high fever and pustules. It leaves permanent scars on survivors.
- Treaty of Paris: The official peace treaty between the United States of America and Great Britain that ended the American Revolutionary War. It was signed on September 4, 1783.
Discussion Questions
- What does Deborah Squash’s story teach us about enslavement during the American Revolution?
- What challenges did Deborah Squash face in her pursuit of freedom?
- What does this story teach us about George Washington’s attitude towards the practice of slavery?
Suggested Activities
- APUSH Connections:
- 2.6: Slavery in the British colonies
- 3.5: American Revolution
- To better understand Deborah Squash’s story, learn more about Dunmore’s Proclamation.
- A complete list of the enslaved people who self-emancipated from Mount Vernon with Deborah Squash is available here. Have your students use the database in Evacuating the Colonies to determine whether any of Deborah Squash’s companions survived to leave with the British.
- Deborah Squash and Peggy Gwynn had very different outcomes to their bids for freedom during the American Revolution. Ask the students to compare their life stories and discuss what differences led to their disparate conclusions.
- For a lesson about how enslaved women responded to the outbreak of the American Revolution, pair this life story together with any or all of the following:
Themes
AMERICAN IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP; POWER AND POLITICS
The New York Historical Curriculum Library Connections
- For resources relating to the American Revolution in New York, see The Battle of Brooklyn.
