Their wealth as landed gentry was directly tied to the people they claimed as slaves, and emancipation would cause them financial ruin. Whatever the Pennsylvania law’s roots, it provided the Washingtons with a distinct problem. A wage labor system that does not work with a system of slavery alongside it would perhaps force some to be against the institution of slavery.” “There were of course people who did feel that way, but I would also argue it was the economy. “I don’t want us to paint the image of the benevolent North who were against slavery because they understood the moral bankruptcy behind it,” Dunbar said. Pennsylvania law, Dunbar writes in Never Caught, “required the emancipation of all adult slaves who were brought into the commonwealth for more than a period of six months.” But it was when the capital and the president were relocated to Philadelphia that Judge grew aware of the differences in the public’s acceptance of slavery between Northern and Southern states. Senate to become President of the United States, Judge was among a small group of slaves who accompanied the “first family” to New York, the nation’s capital at the time. ![]() In 1789, when George was unanimously chosen by the U.S. Ona Maria Judge was born in 1773 to Betty, one of Martha’s most trusted slaves, and Andrew Judge, an English-born white man who had served the Washingtons as an indentured servant. That project became Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Dunbar’s sophomore book released in February. “Who is this person and what happened to them-and why don’t I know this?”ĭunbar considered including Judge’s story in A Fragile Freedom, but she decided against it in favor of later creating a project devoted to Judge’s life. It seemed a little odd to me,” Dunbar said in a telephone interview with Paste. ![]() “Her name and the situation behind the advertisement were more than intriguing. While scanning the pages of a Philadelphia periodical, Dunbar discovered an advertisement announcing that a “light Mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes, and bushy black hair” had run away from the president’s home. Judge was Martha Washington’s* legal property, and Martha’s wealth-heavily concentrated in the humans she claimed-far exceeded her husband’s.ĭunbar first came across Judge’s name while conducting archival research for her debut book, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City, an academic study of free black women in the 19th century. Historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar has written a book that, in detailing Ona Judge’s extraordinary life, illuminates how George Washington* remained committed to the institution of slavery-so much so that he spent years trying to capture Judge and return her to Mount Vernon, where she had been born and raised. Their names were George and Martha Washington. ![]() After all, the couple who claimed her as their property was the most powerful duo in the young nation. Whether or not she knew the law’s specifics, Judge understood the manifold challenges she was facing by leaving Philadelphia behind. The law established guidelines by which slave owners could pursue their slaves into northern states that were moving away from slavery and into a wage labor system. Runaways had become so common for America’s slave-owning gentry that three years before Judge’s escape, they pressured one of their own-the nation’s first president-into signing the Fugitive Slave Act. On May 21, 1796, an enslaved 22-year-old woman named Ona Judge slipped out of her owners’ home in Philadelphia and into an illicit freedom.
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