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

Picking up after the end of the American Revolution, Chapter 2 begins within the context of the fledgling United States, with George Washington returning home from the war tired and lacking faith in the country he’d helped to get started. Washington is elected president unanimously and he and his family prepare to move to New York, then the site of the new nation’s capital.

Dunbar emphasizes Washington’s ties to Virginia, his deep desire to return there after the war, and his reluctance to leave once elected president. From Washington’s perspective, the desires are rooted in a yearning for family and rest; from Dunbar’s perspective, Washington’s deep ties to Virginia inform his attitudes regarding slavery even as other parts of the country–where he would have to live as president–were pulling in other directions. George leaves for New York, leaving Martha to tie up matters in Virginia before joining him. Dunbar carries George’s ties to the South forward to Martha, who is even more reluctant to leave and entrenched in her beliefs regarding slavery.

In Chapter 2, Dunbar also lays the seeds for her book-long discussion of Black freedom and its history, beginning by comparing attitudes in the North to those in the South.