from a guest the previous year.12 Washington assumed the alleged robbery was a part of a plan to escape, and sent Hercules back to Mount Vernon—but not to the kitchen. Hercules spent the rest of 1796 and early 1797 crushing gravel, digging ditches, and doing whatever backbreaking work was assigned to him, under an overseer’s watchful eye, and whip. This suggests he was telling the truth when he pledged fidelity to Lear six years earlier, and it was the punishment he received that prompted him to flee, leaving behind his three children.
