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George Washington’s 1795 Thanksgiving celebrated liberty. But the chef
behind the feast had none.
Genre painter Eastman Johnson's “Washington's Kitchen, Mount Vernon”
(1864). (Eastman Johnson/Gavin Ashworth/Mount Vernon)
Genre painter Eastman Johnson's “Washington's Kitchen, Mount Vernon”
(1864). (Eastman Johnson/Gavin Ashworth/Mount Vernon)
ByRamin Ganeshram
Washington Post, November 19, 2020 at 12:00 p.m. EST
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On the third Thursday of February 1795, President George Washington
proclaimed a day of national thanksgiving to thank God “for the
Constitutions of Government which unite and by their union establish
liberty.”
The second such proclamation by Washington, it called for a religious
rather than a feasting holiday, and that day’s menu is unknown. As a
regular night for the Congress dinners hosted by the president, it would
have been presided over by Washington’s cook,Hercules Posey
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-man-who-fed-the-first-president-and-hungered-for-freedom/2017/02/24/7897d572-f475-11e6-b9c9-e83fce42fb61_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_4>—
a chef so notable that he was famous in his own time. Yet, the liberty
Washington extolled was not something Posey enjoyed: He was enslaved.
The Thanksgiving sheet-pan plan
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/voraciously/thanksgiving-turkey-duck-sheet-pan/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_5>
Posey came to Washington about 1770 as forfeited property used to secure
a debt owed Washington by his profligate friend and neighbor John Posey.
Listed as a “ferryman” managing a cross-Potomac boat service owned by
his former owner, Posey was probably about 16 when he came to Mount
Vernon, Washington’s Virginia estate, which included five farms. The
most famous was Mansion House Farm, known today simply as Mount Vernon.
More than 300 captive people labored there as both skilled and unskilled
workers. Most were owned by the estate of Martha Washington’s first
husband, Daniel Parke Custis, who had died two years before she married
Washington. By the time of his own death in 1799, Washington personally
owned just over 50 human beings.
As president, Washington moved to New York City, then the federal
capital, bringing a small contingent of enslaved people as household and
livery staff. When the capital moved to Philadelphia, Washington,
unsatisfied with hired cooks, added Posey to the group.
Philadelphia in 1800. (William Birch & Son/Birch’s Views of
Philadelphia/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
Philadelphia in 1800. (William Birch & Son/Birch’s Views of
Philadelphia/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
Known until 2018 only as Hercules, or as “Uncle Harkless” — a
diminishing nickname that surely rankled — Posey would have directed the
meal that was served on that Thanksgiving holiday.
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Working in the kitchen of a fine household — much less a presidential
one — would not have been easy. Meals were elaborate, multicourse
affairs with an astounding variety of local and imported foods. As
described by Rep. Theophilus Bradbury (Federalist-Mass.) in 1795, the
average Thursday Congress dinner would have put any modern Thanksgiving
feast to shame, featuring “an elegant variety of roast beef, veal,
turkeys, ducks, fowls, hams, & puddings, jellies, oranges, apples, nuts,
and almonds, figs, raisins, and a variety of wines and punch.”
143 years of Thanksgiving coverage in The Post
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2020/11/09/thanksgiving-history-washington-post/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_13>
Producing these meals meant a 12-to-16-hour workday with a variety of
cooks and assistants working under Posey. Remarkably, the Washington
household accounts tell us that these staff members would have been
hired and White indentured laborers — all taking orders from an enslaved
Black man.
And yet no one dared step out of line. In his biography of Washington,
the president’s step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, called
Posey an “artiste” who ran his kitchen with “iron discipline,” quick to
punish those who disobeyed.
In the nearly three pages devoted to Posey, Custis described his
carriage, skill, exacting demeanor and love of fine clothes, comparing
him to a “veriest dandy.” While preparing the Congress dinners, Posey
“shone in an all his splendor,” Custis wrote, and “his underlings flew
in all directions to execute his orders.”
Portrait painter Edward Savage’s “La Famille de Washington” (1798).
(Edward Savage/Gavin Ashworth/Mount Vernon)
Portrait painter Edward Savage’s “La Famille de Washington” (1798).
(Edward Savage/Gavin Ashworth/Mount Vernon)
These dinners set the standard for presidential and diplomatic dining in
the early republic. Washington was unconcerned with fancy foods yet
fastidious about the niceties of the table, and Posey had the daunting
task of presenting meals that featured the bountiful yet humble American
fare the first president favored, as well as elegant preparations that
spoke to his status. It was not uncommon for a Virginia ham to be
featured alongside elaborate continental meat pastries. This showcasing
of classical culinary skill and American bounty became the prototype for
diplomatic dinners and executive functions thereafter.
The man who fed the first president — and hungered for freedom
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/the-man-who-fed-the-first-president-and-hungered-for-freedom/2017/02/24/7897d572-f475-11e6-b9c9-e83fce42fb61_story.html?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_19>
Washington also had little patience for chit chat. Meals with “the
General,” as he was commonly called, were strained affairs — all the
more reason for the food to be exquisite enough to maintain diners’ focus.
AD
Posey’s approach to commanding his kitchen set the stage for the
American celebrity chef whose artistry was considered necessary in the
most powerful American homes. As president, Thomas Jefferson was adamant
that French-trained chef James Hemings, a man he had formerly enslaved,
should be his cook. Hemings, who was by then free, declined.
Living between worlds
Posey, well-known in Philadelphia as “the General’s cook,” was allowed
to come and go freely once his work was complete, and he returned at
night. He also earned the equivalent of twice the average man’s annual
wages selling kitchen slops with Washington’s permission, and some of
this money was spent on a gold-headed cane. Washington also sent for
Posey’s son, Richmond — not because the young man demonstrated any
culinary ability but because his father wished it.
Once, when a prominent guest arrived late to dinner, Washington began
the meal, although social norms would have dictated he wait, telling his
guest, “My cook never asks whether the company has arrived, but whether
the hour has come.”
A re-created bunkroom in the greenhouse slave quarters at Mount Vernon.
(Mount Vernon)
A re-created bunkroom in the greenhouse slave quarters at Mount Vernon.
(Mount Vernon)
Yet Posey lived in a netherworld between free and unfree. Washington
kept him and the other enslaved members of the president’s house in
bondage by circumventing the Pennsylvania abolition law that allowed
them to petition for freedom if they remained in the state more than six
months. The Washingtons regularly rotated people back to Virginia or, in
a pinch, over the border to New Jersey — a slave state — to reset their
time in the capital before six months were up. The only one allowed to
overstay this time was Posey.
AD
As a chef and a man, Posey honed his bold self-possession, despite being
born into chattel slavery in Virginia. It’s likely he was strongly
influenced by living in Philadelphia, where more than 90 percent of
African Americans were free. Although captive in the president’s house,
he moved about an abolitionist city with a growing and influential Black
community, including such men as Richard Allen and Absalom Jones,
abolitionists and founders of the Free African Society.
Most of all, Philadelphia was the greatest food city in America, a
bustling international port positioned ideally to receive foods and
culinary influence from the North, the South and the West Indies. Posey
experienced a world of food artisanship and culinary creativity largely
advanced by people of color, including Charles Sang, a celebrated
confectioner; Polly Haine, famed for her pepperpot stand in the public
market; Benjamin Johnson, an oysterman; numerous cake sellers and bread
bakers; and, for a time, Hemings, who lived across the street from the
president’s house.
Why Posey didn’t escape into the world of free Black Philadelphia has
puzzled scholars for decades. When he finally self-emancipated, it was
from Mount Vernon, on the president’s 65th birthday in 1797. He was seen
once more in 1801, after Washington had died and freed him and the
others he owned in his will. When New York Mayor Richard Varick offered
to apprehend Posey for Mrs. Washington, she declined, claiming she had
“found a white cook who answers just as well.” The truth was that Posey
was a free man three times over: having remained in Philadelphia more
than six months; by virtue of Washington’s will; and by his own agency.
In New York, Posey’s skill as a chef allowed him to build a life in a
thriving free Black community. He lived there, working as a cook, until
his death in 1812.
Edward Savage’s “The West Front of Mount Vernon.” (Edward Savage/Gavin
Ashworth/Mount Vernon)
Edward Savage’s “The West Front of Mount Vernon.” (Edward Savage/Gavin
Ashworth/Mount Vernon)
Nothing is known of the meals Posey cooked as a free man, but even if
there were, it would be his triumphs in the presidential kitchen for
which he would be remembered, especially those accompanying Washington’s
most sweeping proclamations, such as his 1795 day of thanksgiving.
AD
More than 200 years later, we are trying to square the heroic myths of
America’s founding with the truths about its creators, who enjoyed and
profited from the enslavement of African Americans such as Posey, who
cooked feasts praising the idea of liberty while his own hands were
shackled. It would be a half-century after Posey’s death before
President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation would change that
equation for those like him. The same year, 1863, Thanksgiving became a
regular national observance by Lincoln’s hand.
/Ganeshram is executive director of the Westport Museum for History and
Culture and author of a novel about Hercules Posey, “The General’s Cook.”/
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