Washington made two concerted attempts to re-enslave Ona. First, while still in office, he sent a letter through Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Jr. to Joseph Whipple, Portsmouth’s collector of customs.

“As there was no suspicion of her going off nor no provocation to do so, it is not easy to conjecture whither she has gone, or fully, what her design is.”12“Runaway Advertisement,” Frederick Kitt, Philadelphia, 24 May 1796. Of course, it never occurred to the Washingtons that enslavement served as plenty of provocation for Ona to escape. They believed they had treated her like a daughter and felt betrayed by her departure.

Her friends in the free black community had already carried her belongings to the port and they were waiting for her when she arrived at the docks.

At some point during the spring of 1796, Ona made contact with members of the free black community that would facilitate her escape. There are no records of how she was introduced to this community or who helped her, and Ona kept this information secret to protect everyone’s safety.

Ona said “she was determined never to be her slave,” referring to Eliza Custis.8“Washington’s Runaway Slave,” Granite Freeman, T.H.A., May 1845. Eliza had earned a reputation among the enslaved women for being highly volatile and erratic—dangerous qualities in a slave owner. Finally, Ona may have worried about Law’s questionable reputation. When Law arrived in Philadelphia, he brought his two illegitimate children that he had fathered while in India and he was plagued by rumors about his character. Given Ona’s enslaved status, any white man could sexually assault her without punishment and she may have feared for her safety in a new household with a disreputable owner.9Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (New York: 37INK, 2017), 95-97. Show Me More

wore out her shoes while accompanying Martha on her visits. Moll, the enslaved nanny for Martha’s grandchildren, did not usually join them out of the house, so she likely needed fewer pairs of new shoes.

Ona also accompanied Martha on her social visits and attended to the first lady’s needs at home. Ona’s status as Martha’s preferred lady’s maid meant that she received a fancier wardrobe than most enslaved people because she visited homes and buildings normally off-limits to enslaved people. Much like George’s enslaved manservant, coachmen, and postilions, these individuals wore fancy livery because their uniforms needed to reflect the president’s wealth and status; Ona’s clothing was an extension of Martha’s status.

When Martha brought Ona to the President’s House, Ona left her family for the first time. It must have been incredibly scary for sixteen-year-old Ona to travel to New York City, a place she had never visited before. But New York City, and then Philadelphia, offered new opportunities.4In 1789, the new federal government was located in New York City. Washington, his family, and his enslaved workers lived in two different homes in New York City until the summer of 1790. In November 1790, they moved into a new house in Philadelphia when the government relocated. After his election, John Adams resided in the same house in Philadelphia, before moving into the White House in Washington, D.C. on November 1, 1800. Ona encountered a sizable free African-American community for the first time, saw interesting sights, tasted different foods, and met new people. For example, in June 1792, she attended the theater;

While the newspapers did not print the interviews verbatim, the quotes are rare examples of a formerly enslaved person describing their experiences in their own words. Few enslaved workers left written records, let alone participated in interviews with reporters. Whenever possible, this article uses Ona’s words to tell her remarkable story.

lived with Betty in a small cabin near the mansion house, completing simple chores, helping her mother with easy tasks in their cabin, or playing unsupervised with other enslaved children.2Mary V. Thompson, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2019), 158-67. When Ona was twelve, Martha brought her into the mansion house to begin her official training as a housemaid.

Betty, gave birth at Mount Vernon to a daughter named Ona Judge.1Ona was often called Oney by the Washingtons, but later in life introduced herself as Ona, so we have followed her preference. It was common practice for slave owners to give their enslaved workers nicknames that ended in”y” to subtly infantilize adult men and women. Ona’s father was Andrew Judge, a white indentured servant who was employed on the estate.

Allen, an abolitionist who was born enslaved, had moved to Philadelphia after purchasing his freedom. There he joined St. George’s, where he initially preached to integrated congregations. It quickly became clear that integration went only so far: He was directed to preach a separate service designated for black parishioners. Dismayed that black people were still treated as inferiors in what was meant to be a holy space, Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal denomination and started the Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church.

Sugar cane was a brutal crop that required constant work six days a week, and it maimed, burned and killed those involved in its cultivation. The life span of an enslaved person on a sugar plantation could be as little as seven years

through the creation of a Virginia law in 1662 that decreed that the status of the child followed the status of the mother, which meant that enslaved women gave birth to generations of children of African descent who were now seen as commodities. This natural increase allowed the colonies — and then the United States — to become a slave nation.

allowing them to secure political positions and determine the fate of the nation.

The slave trade provided political power, social standing and wealth for the church, European nation-states, New World colonies and individuals.

Enslaved people did not meekly accept their fate. Approximately one out of 10 slave ships experienced resistance, ranging from individual defiance (like refusing to eat or jumping overboard) to full-blown mutiny.

Suicide attempts were so common that many captains placed netting around their ships to prevent loss of human cargo and therefore profit; working-class white crew members, too, committed suicide or ran away at port to escape the brutality.

“The iron entered into our souls,” lamented a formerly enslaved man named Caesar, as he remembered the shackles he had to wear during his forced passage from his home in Africa to the New World. Used as restraints around the arms and legs, the coarse metal cut into captive Africans’ skin for the many months they spent at sea. Children made up about 26 percent of the captives.

Njinga was forced to flee in the face of Portuguese attack. Eventually, however, she conquered a nearby kingdom called Matamba. Njinga continued to fight fiercely against Portuguese forces in the region for many years, and she later provided shelter for runaway slaves.

Eventually other European nation-states — the Netherlands, France, Denmark and England — seeking similar economic and geopolitical power joined in the trade, exchanging goods and people with leaders along the West African coast, who ran self-sustaining societies known for their mineral-rich land and wealth in gold and other trade goods.

It granted the right to invade, plunder and “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”

In the 15th century, the Roman Catholic Church divided the world in half, granting Portugal a monopoly on trade in West Africa and Spain the right to colonize the New World in its quest for land and gold.

Slavery, rather than symbolic religious conict, may have provided the deepunderpinning of the southwestern events. Legal enslavement of AmericanIndians by Spaniards had been forbidden by royal decree since the mid-sixteenth century, but that did not stop the actual practice. So-called "justwars" provided one loophole, and on that basis Apaches, Utes, and otherswho refused to acknowledge Spanish authority were fair game for enslavers

I went up and down mourning and lamenting; and my spirit was ready to sink with the thoughts of my poor children. My son was ill, and I could not but think of his mournful looks, and no Christian friend was near him, to do any office of love for him, either for soul or body. And my poor girl, I knew not where she was, nor whether she was sick, or well, or alive, or dead.

yet not one of them offered the least imaginable miscarriage to me.

He answered me that he was not asleep, but at prayer; and lay so, that they might not observe what he was doing. I pray God he may remember these things now he is returned in safety.

I offered the money to my master, but he bade me keep it; and with it I bought a piece of horse flesh. Afterwards he asked me to make a cap for his boy, for which he invited me to dinner. I went, and he gave me a pancake, about as big as two fingers. It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear's grease, but I thought I never tasted pleasanter meat in my life. There was a squaw who spake to me to make a shirt for her sannup, for which she gave me a piece of bear. Another asked me to knit a pair of stockings, for which she gave me a quart of peas.

I was presently ready for another, such a bewitching thing it is.

"No," said he, "none will hurt you." Then came one of them and gave me two spoonfuls of meal to comfort me, and another gave me half a pint of peas; which was more worth than many bushels at another time.

preserving us in the wilderness, while under the enemy's hand, and returning of us in safety again.

The cause of this rout was, as I thought, their espying some English scouts, who were thereabout.

But before it was half ready they got half of it away from me, so that I was fain to take the rest and eat it as it was, with the blood about my mouth, and yet a savory bit it was to me: "For to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet."

English cattle had been. That was comfort to me,

no Christian soul near me, and yet how hath the Lord preserved me in safety?

I went along that day mourning and lamenting, leaving farther my own country, and traveling into a vast and howling wilderness,

And here I cannot but take notice of the strange providence of God in preserving the heathen.

I could think how formerly my stomach would turn against this or that, and I could starve and die before I could eat such things, yet they were sweet and savory to my taste.

"When thou passeth through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee" (Isaiah 43.2).

I was somewhat favored in my load; I carried only my knitting work and two quarts of parched meal.

The occasion (as I thought) of their moving at this time was the English army, it being near and following them. For they went as if they had gone for their lives, for some considerable way, and then they made a stop, and chose some of their stoutest men, and sent them back to hold the English army in play whilst the rest escaped.

Clinton won the popular vote

In 2016, months of national polls confidently showed Hillary Clinton ahead, and set many Americans up for a shock on Election Night, when the Electoral College tilted decisively in Trump’s favor