to December 1790. Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789. The first presidential household consisted of about twenty servants, including seven slaves from Mount Vernon — Oney Judge, Austin, Giles, Paris, Moll, Christopher Sheels, and William Lee. Under the July 1790 Residence Act, Congress moved the national capital to Philadelphia for a ten-year period, while the permanent national capital was under construction in the District of Columbia. The Philadelphia President's House had a larger household, about twenty-four servants initially, including eight slaves from Mount Vernon — Oney Judge, Austin, Giles, Paris, Moll, Hercules, Richmond, and Christopher Sheels. Will Lee was never part of the Philadelphia presidential household. He was permanently returned to Mount Vernon, where he became the plantation's shoemaker. Following Austin's 1794 death, "Postilion Joe" (Richardson) joined the Philadelphia presidential household. Gradual Abolition Act With the 1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, Pennsylvania's government was the first to begin an abolition of slavery. But the state law was very gradual, and highly-respectful of the property rights of slaveholders. It freed only the future children of enslaved mothers. Every person enslaved in Pennsylvania before the law went into effect remained enslaved-for-life. Non-resident slaveholders could keep their slaves for six months while in the state. But, if those slaves were held in Pennsylvania longer than six months, the state law empowered them to legally free themselves. Philadelphia had functioned as the national capital during the Revolutionary War. When the Gradual Abolition Act was drafted, the federal government had a single branch – Congress – which met in the city. Pennsylvania specifically exempted Congressmen and their personal slaves from the 1780 state law. Ten years later, when the national capital returned to Philadelphia, the U.S. Constitution had been ratified and the federal government had three branches. Members of Congress remained exempt from Pennsylvania's Gradual Abolition Act, however, the law's effects on slaveholding officers of the Judicial and Executive branches remained unclear. Washington argued, privately, that his presence in Pennsylvania was solely a consequence of Philadelphia's being the temporary seat of the federal government, that he remained a citizen of Virginia, and Pennsylvania law should not apply to him. On the advice of his attorney general, Edmund Randolph, he systematically rotated the President's House slaves in and out of the state to prevent their establishing a six-month continuous residency. This rotation was arguably a violation of a 1788 amendment to the