Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge

Finalist for the Nationwide Ebook Award for Nonfiction

A startling and eye-establishing glance into The us’s First Circle of relatives, Never Caught is the robust story a few bold lady of “bizarre grit” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

When George Washington was once elected president, he reluctantly left at the back of his liked Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the brief seat of the country’s capital. In putting in his family he introduced alongside 9 slaves, together with Ona Pass judgement on. Because the President grew familiar with Northern tactics, there was once one modification he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania regulation required enslaved other people be set loose after six months of residency within the state. Fairly than comply, Washington determined to bypass the regulation. Each six months he despatched the slaves backpedal south simply Because the clock was once approximately to run out.

Although Ona Pass judgement on lived a lifetime of relative convenience, she was once denied freedom. So, whilst the chance offered itself one transparent and delightful spring day in Philadelphia, Pass judgement on left the whole thing she knew to flee to New England. But freedom might now not come with out its prices. At simply twenty–years-antique, Ona was the topic of an extreme manhunt led by way of George Washington, who used his political and private contacts to recapture his assets.

“A crisp and compulsively readable feat of analysis and storytelling” (USA TODAY), historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a formidable story and provides interesting new scholarship on how one younger lady risked the whole thing to achieve freedom from the well-known founding father.