Harry Washington

In Human Tradition in the Atlantic World, 1500–1850, Cassandra Pybus discusses the story of Henry “Harry” Washington.  Harry Washington was a slave of George Washington who sought refuge behind British lines during the Revolutionary War.  After his service to the British Crown, Harry embarked on a transatlantic journey around the Atlantic World to attain his own sense of independence and freedom from the plantation slave society in Virginia.  Unfortunately, Harry Washington and his fellow runaway slaves found that their promise of freedom and independence would remain ultimately unfulfilled.  Harry Washington’s account and Richard Price’s discussion of the Saramaka Maroons are similar in their process of creolization – or cultural change.  The Saramaka Maroons were runaway slaves that wished to escape slave society and used their general African ancestry to form a community that was unique, but still retained New World concepts of culture – all characteristics that Harry Washington and his group of runaway slaves exhibited. 

George Washington often spoke about the tyranny of the British Crown over the American colonies and his desire for independence and political freedom in his home on Mount Vernon.  Harry Washington, his slave, also desired to discard the tyranny of slavery.  Thus, “As the king was now Washington’s enemy, it was to His Majesty that Harry should entrust his aspirations for freedom” (Racine, 103).  Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, invited runaway slaves to join his regiment with the promise of freedom for their loyalty to the British Crown.  Harry Washington joined Dunmore’s black regiment in a non-combatant support position in the Black Pioneers (Racine, 105).  As noted by Richard Price, the Saramaka Maroons were runaway slaves that resided in Suriname or French Guiana in South America.  The goal of Harry Washington and the Saramaka Maroons were essentially freedom, but the means in which they strove to acquire it were different according to their respective time period and surrounding world events.

After the war, negotiations commenced between the British Crown and the newly independent American colonies – with an uncertain future for the runaway slaves.  Harry Washington, along with other runaway slaves that served for the British Crown in the war, settled in British New York where they formed unique communities.   “Whether they lived in barracks or in the canvas town of the burned-out districts on Manhattan, the black allies of the British formed a community, bound together by the struggle to survive and by forms of cultural expression that reached back to an African past” (Racine, 106).  The runaway slaves found that their common African past served as a solid foundation for the newly formed community in British New York as it did for the Saramaka Maroons (Price, 518). 

Once England had officially granted independence to the American colonies, the question of how to upkeep former promises of freedom to the runaway slaves came to the forefront.  The Treaty of Paris 1783 had prohibited the British Crown from, “carrying away any Negroes or other property of the American Inhabitants” (Racine, 107).  The former slave owners arrived in New York to reclaim their runaway slaves through coercion or kidnapping.  The Maroons also struggled to retain their community, “Seeking refuge in a harsh and hostile environment, they were faced with the task of creating a whole new society and culture even as they were being relentlessly pursued by heavily armed colonial troops bent on the destruction of their communities” (Price, 517).  The runaway slaves pressed the British authorities to keep their promises and protect them from their former masters, in which the British assured they would keep their moral obligation.  

Harry Washington went on a British ship with almost 400 other Africans to Birchtown, Nova Scotia in which the climate proved to be inhospitable.  The black settlers found that their promises of land grants were not fulfilled and that tensions between the white settlers were increasingly strained due to widespread poverty.  Once the prospects proved dim, Harry Washington and many other black settlers took a ship to West Africa to settle in Sierra Leone.  In Sierra Leone, the black settlers once again found their promises unfulfilled as in Nova Scotia.  Conflicts with the company that financed the land grants in Sierra Leone forced some black settlers such as Harry to runaway once again and form their own camp in which they formed their own system of politics.  The runaway black settlers were hunted down by the Sierra Leone Company to pay their debts where they were executed, forced into slavery, or banished from the colony.  Harry was banished from the colony and his experience of hardship is emulated through the words of Price describing the fortunes and misfortunes of the Maroons, “creolization involved rupture and loss, creativity and transformation, and celebration as well as silencing of cultural continuities and discontinuities.”

 Overall, the account of Harry Washington who was a runaway slave and the account of the Saramaka Maroons are very similar despite different environments and political situations.  The Saramaka Maroons simply wished to attain independence from slave society and form their own community.  Harry Washington and the American runaway slaves desired freedom as well, but extended their definition of freedom to include political rights due to the influence of the American Revolutionary War.  Through their identity of runaway slaves that used a common African past to form unique communities which emulated New World concepts – Harry Washington and the Saramaka Maroons revolved around Price’s concept of creolization and cultural change.