65 pages • 2 hours read
Erica Armstrong DunbarNever Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Fugitive”
Dunbar opens Chapter 8 with a lengthy speculation about Judge’s thoughts and feelings shortly before she is to be sent back to Mount Vernon, to become Eliza’s property. Through Judge’s potential stream of thoughts, Dunbar explains various perils that awaited runaway enslaved individuals, including the unique dangers posed by different seasons, highlighting the many dangers that threatened the lives of enslaved individuals who escaped slavery. Dunbar also considers the difficulty many Black women had of being most capable of running away during years when they were likely to bear children. Having no children yet, Judge has one advantage when considering her situation.
At this point, Dunbar specifically mentions Washington having signed the Fugitive Slave Act into law several years prior. While out of chronology historically, her mentioning the law at this point serves to underscore Judge’s escape and the perils that await her:
According to this act, a slave owner or his agent could legally seize a runaway and force the apprehended slave to appear in front of a judge or magistrate in the locality where he or she was captured. After written or oral ‘proof of ownership’ was presented by the slaveholder, a judge could order the return of the alleged fugitive (105).
Anyone purposely interfering with recapture could also be fined. The signing of this law further deepened the divide between North and South, with several states in the North implementing their own laws to circumvent the federal law.
Having realized that she will never be anything more than property to the Washingtons, Judge resolves to run away. In order to do so, Judge employs the help of free Blacks, particularly (most likely) Reverend Richard Allen, who was an influential leader in the free Black community. Judge trusts no one in the Executive Mansion with her plans, for fear of them being spoiled. Her only opportunity comes during dinner preparations, and on “Saturday, May 21, 1796, Ona Judge slipped out of the Executive Mansion while the Washingtons ate their supper” (110), ultimately escaping by boat to New Hampshire.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Slavery and Freedom in New Hampshire”
Now in New Hampshire, Judges tries to pass as a free, Northern Black woman and is aided by her light skin, due to her biracial background. Dunbar points out that “this was the first time that Judge moved without the comfort of family or friends […] She was completely alone” (120). Furthermore, “there were fewer Blacks in the entire city of Portsmouth than there were slaves living at Mount Vernon” (121). With very little idea of where to go once she reaches Portsmouth, Judge’s life becomes nothing but uncertainty.
Judge looks for work, and like most women, particularly Black women, she can only find domestic work, which frequently causes injury, incapacitation, or death. Dunbar describes in detail the various tasks of a domestic, from laundry to food preparation and cleaning. Each of those tasks requires considerable strength and stamina, often putting enormous strain on the bodies of those carrying out the tasks. Any maladies caused by work are exacerbated by poor living conditions. Dunbar writes that “the majority of black women in New England did not live beyond the age of forty” (124).
Dunbar briefly notes the history of slavery in New Hampshire, including a chronology that mentions that slavery disappeared from Portsmouth by 1805—far earlier than in many other places. While Judge may face difficulties, her choice of going to New Hampshire seems a good one.
Chapter 10 Summary: “A Close Call”
Judge settles into her new life in Portsmouth, becoming more accustomed to domestic work and striving to eventually move into more rewarding work, such as making clothing. She makes efforts to ensure her hosts are happy with her, demonstrating how much she appreciates their help.
One of the dangers in Portsmouth is the possibility of running into the Langdon family, who are close friends and political associates of the Washingtons. Dunbar gives some background on John Langdon, who was “a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention” (130). Dunbar points out that Washington’s grandchildren and Langdon’s children would have played together, and Judge would have been present when that happened, meaning the Langdons could easily identify her.
Eventually, Judge’s worst fears come true and she runs into Elizabeth Langdon on the street. Langdon tells her parents, who tell the Washingtons, and Judge must decide what to do, now that her former masters know where she is.
Chapters 8-10 Analysis
These chapters cover the period immediately following Judge’s escape to the moment when the Washingtons find out where she has gone. Building on ideas introduced in Chapters 4-7, Dunbar acknowledges that the price of freedom is never too high, even though there were very few “good choices” for people of color in American history. Judge is plagued by constant fears, needing to remain vigilant and rarely trusting anyone. She takes work that is physically and emotionally taxing just to survive. Dunbar makes clear that in many ways, Judge’s life becomes significantly more difficult after she escaped slavery, and yet those difficulties are tolerable if they mean that her life is her own.
As part of her analysis of Judge’s new situation, Dunbar introduces in these chapters the idea that Judge’s time at Mount Vernon may have helped prepare her for a better life as a free Black woman than many other free Black persons would have. Historically, many free people of color lived in abject poverty, with few skills to help improve their situations and no way of learning them. However, the “skill that [Judge] perfected back at Mount Vernon and in the Executive Mansion might allow her to find a way out from underneath crippling poverty” (129). By serving Martha Washington and learning a trade (as a seamstress), Judge possibly could earn a more significant living and obtain a slightly higher status than other free African Americans, and escape the type of work that often killed women in her position.
Judge’s acquired skill set also supports Dunbar’s belief that Judge is particularly special as a historical figure. Earlier in the book, Judge is described as being born during an unusual weather event (snow in June in Virginia) and moving to Philadelphia during a solar eclipse—a poorly understood phenomenon at the time that many believed to signify great change. Growing up in the main house of the man who would become the first president of the United States, Judge is quite literally one of a kind, and Dunbar uses Judge’s early months as a free woman as a reminder of how her unique background shapes her life.
These chapters also delve more deeply into the idea of the so-called “noble” enslaver. While Dunbar has threaded in suggestions that such a thing does not exist throughout the book up to this point, in this section she makes her case explicitly and at length. In describing the Langdons, Dunbar notes, “In their minds, they had been noble enslavers who provided food and shelter for their slaves, whom they believed to be incapable of caring for themselves” (134). The inherent racism driving such a belief is clear. Dunbar shines a light in that dark place, revealing that just because men like Washington and Langdon had incredible impact and are fondly remembered in history books does not mean they were without fault.
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