Abigail was killed by Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Sarah Livingston Jay in 1783, for trying to be free. Due to the immense gloss provided to her murderers, her story has always been suppressed.

But times have changed, at least a little bit. Abigail’s story was set forth in the New York Times yesterday, written by Martha S. Jones, from Paris. Jones took the time to follow up on the old story, to help us understand the lives of the enslaved and the enslavers.

Franklin and Jay were in France to obtain support and money for their own American Revolutionary War. When John Jay left for England to settle an inheritance in October, 1783, Abigail took the opportunity to run away, to the home of an English washerwoman who promised to pay her for her work, “taking only her clothes.” The Abigail letters can be found in Richard B. Morris’ “John Jay: The Winning of the Peace, Unpublished Papers 1780-1784” (1980). Morris had the integrity to include these letters, long before diversity was a common concept.

Franklin could have remained uninvolved; instead he sought to impress the lovely Sarah by putting her runaway maid in jail. Sarah could have requested Abigail’s freedom, as many white women did at one time or another, but instead took Franklin’s advice to leave her in jail. John Jay could have taken a different path, but instead acted just like a slaveowner and advised Sarah to take Franklin’s advice.

Abigail became very ill in jail, spent time at the infirmary, and finally asked to “come home.” She died of her illness a week later. The servants felt haunted, but Sarah simply laughed at them. John promised to find her another maid.

As Frederick Douglass has noted, slavery inevitably ruins the character of the enslaver. The Abigail letters are a strong example of this ruination.