to apprehend in distinguishing between real and feigned sickness, or when a person is much afflicted with pain.  Nobody can be very sick without having a fever, or any other disorder continue long upon anyone without reducing them....  But my people, many of them, will lay up a month, at the end of which no visible change in their countenance nor the loss of an ounce of flesh is discoverable; and their allowance of provision is going on as if nothing ailed them.”  Runaways were occasional.  Of one of them Washington directed:  “Let Abram get his deserts when taken, by way of example; but do not trust Crow to give it to him, for I have reason to believe he is swayed more by passion than by judgment in all his corrections.”  Of another, whom he had previously described as an idler beyond hope of correction:  “Nor is it worth while, except for the sake of example, ... to be at much trouble, or any expence over a trifle, to hunt him up.”  Of a third, who was thought to have escaped in company with a neighbor’s slave:  “If Mr. Dulany is disposed to pursue any measure for the purpose of recovering his man, I will join him in the expence so far as it may respect Paul; but I would not have my name appear in any advertisement, or other measure, leading to it.”  Again, when asking that a woman of his who had fled to New Hampshire be seized and sent back if it could be done without exciting a mob:  “However well disposed I might be to gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of people (if the latter was in itself practicable), at this moment it would neither be politic nor just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference, and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow serv’ts who, by their steady attachment, are far more deserving than herself of favor."[27] Finally:  “The running off of my cook has been a most inconvenient thing to this family, and what rendered it more disagreeable is that I had resolved never to become the master of another slave by purchase.  But this resolution I fear I must break.  I have endeavored to hire, black or white, but am not yet supplied.”  As to provisions, the slaves were given fish from Washington’s Potomac fishery while the supply lasted, “meat, fat and other things ... now and then,” and of meal “as much as they can eat without waste, and no more.”  The housing and clothing appear to have been adequate.  The “father of his country” displayed little tenderness for his slaves.  He was doubtless just, so far as a business-like absentee master could be; but his only generosity to them seems to have been the provision in his will for their manumission after the death of his wife.

[Footnote 27:  Marion G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves( Boston, 1891), p. 36.]