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A review by audrarussellwrites
Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
5.0
My, my, my. That's all I kept saying as I read this book. I cannot imagine the amount of hours the author, Ms. Dunbar, spent going through records to put together this detailed account of Ona Judge's escape from the evil clutches of slavery.
I've never held any of our founding fathers in high esteem, knowing that they were all slave owners. But to know that george and martha constantly moved Ona and others between Philadelphia and Mount Vernon every six months to get around slavery laws heightened my resolve that george and martha were reprehensible humans (and I use the term humans very loosely).
Ona Judge's life was not easy after her escape, either. No, she lived in constant fear of being brought back into bondage, especially after george signed into the Fugitive Slave Act. She did manage to marry, but when her daughters were teens, she put them into indentured servitude to try and fight the abject poverty they were in. Life dealt her an even more cruel blow when both of her daughters died before her.
Through it all, Ona never was never caught by george and martha -- she outlived them both. Her life was a hard one, even as a free woman. My heart raced as I read about the two times that she was faced with captors who had come to drag her back into slavery. But she made it very clear to them both that she "would rather suffer death" than return to the inhumane bondage and terrorism of slavery.
I think one of the more poignant paragraphs in this book was this one:
"Judge's escape made a new case for a growing number of Northerners who bristled at the thought of African slavery: it mattered not if a slave was well dressed and offered small tokens of kindness, worked in luxurious settings or in the blistering heat. Enslavement was [NEVER] preferable over freedom for any human being, and if given the opportunity, a slave, even the president's slave, preferred freedom."
Capitalization of the word never was mine because I often hear white people justify slavery by saying that some slave owners were kind to their slaves, and they don't even understand how asinine that statement is.
Well done, Ms. Dunbar. Thank you for your hard work.
I've never held any of our founding fathers in high esteem, knowing that they were all slave owners. But to know that george and martha constantly moved Ona and others between Philadelphia and Mount Vernon every six months to get around slavery laws heightened my resolve that george and martha were reprehensible humans (and I use the term humans very loosely).
Ona Judge's life was not easy after her escape, either. No, she lived in constant fear of being brought back into bondage, especially after george signed into the Fugitive Slave Act. She did manage to marry, but when her daughters were teens, she put them into indentured servitude to try and fight the abject poverty they were in. Life dealt her an even more cruel blow when both of her daughters died before her.
Through it all, Ona never was never caught by george and martha -- she outlived them both. Her life was a hard one, even as a free woman. My heart raced as I read about the two times that she was faced with captors who had come to drag her back into slavery. But she made it very clear to them both that she "would rather suffer death" than return to the inhumane bondage and terrorism of slavery.
I think one of the more poignant paragraphs in this book was this one:
"Judge's escape made a new case for a growing number of Northerners who bristled at the thought of African slavery: it mattered not if a slave was well dressed and offered small tokens of kindness, worked in luxurious settings or in the blistering heat. Enslavement was [NEVER] preferable over freedom for any human being, and if given the opportunity, a slave, even the president's slave, preferred freedom."
Capitalization of the word never was mine because I often hear white people justify slavery by saying that some slave owners were kind to their slaves, and they don't even understand how asinine that statement is.
Well done, Ms. Dunbar. Thank you for your hard work.