Ona Judge Staines Escaped from Slavery at Mount Vernon

While 5000 or so men of African descent were fighting for American independence, some 400,000 were held in slavery. Both are part of the story of our revolution, and early decades of independence. While many who inherited title to enslaved persons were motivated by the rhetoric of the revolution to free them, others, even George Washington, were motivated to keep title intact. The organization that preserves and organizes tours of Mount Vernon has done a magnificent job in recent years at telling the whole story of the place. I cannot improve on the linked article from the Mount Vernon website:

On January 1, 1847, the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator published a letter from Reverend Benjamin Chase describing his recent visit with an elderly African American woman near Portsmouth, New Hampshire.