![]() ![]() Ona Judge learned quickly that life in Philadelphia was quite different from what she had come to know in New York. The city’s large population of free African Americans and its anti-slavery promoters provided inspiration for her decision to escape. The following excerpt examines the growth of anti-slavery sentiment in Philadelphia during the 1780s and 1790s and frames Ona Judge’s decision to run from the President’s House. The rotation plan was something the Washingtons tried to keep hidden in order to avoid negative reactions from the American public. Dunbar brings renewed attention to the Founding Fathers’ deep connections to human slavery. Never Caught discusses the Washingtons’ plan to rotate their enslaved workers back and forth between Mount Vernon and Philadelphia to avoid Pennsylvania’s 1780 “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” and preserve their property. Judge escaped from the Washington household in 1796 in search of her freedom and lived the rest of her life with the threat of recapture looming over her.īy making Ona Judge’s story accessible to a wide audience, Dr. For six years, Judge worked in bondage in the Washingtons’ Philadelphia home on Market Street. ![]() ![]() Erica Armstrong Dunbar paints a vivid picture of the life of Ona Judge, one of the nine enslaved people whom President Washington and Martha Washington brought with them to Philadelphia in 1790 when the city became the nation’s capital. ![]()
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