BFW Revisited: Running from Bondage in the American Revolution

BFW Revisited: Running from Bondage in the American Revolution

She fled on horseback in the thick of war. Her six-year-old son rode with her. The white tailor at her side would pass, when anyone asked, as her husband.
Her name was Sarah. She was one of tens of thousands of enslaved people who self-emancipated during the American Revolution, and one of the many women earlier histories barely noticed.
In this Revisited episode, Karen Cook-Bell, author of Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and the Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America, recovers their stories.
We learn how Lord Dunmore's 1775 proclamation reshaped the landscape of resistance, why motherhood drove women to flee rather than keeping them in place, and what creative, subversive strategies they used to slip out of bondage and into freedom.

This is the companion conversation to Ep. 440's exploration of Jefferson's cut grievance. If Brooke Newman gave us the view from the throne, Karen Cook-Bell gives us the view from the ground. And it changes what the proclamations look like.

Karen's Website | Book |
Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/322
RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES
🎧 Episode 137: The Washingtons' Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
🎧 Episode 157: The Revolution's African American Soldiers
🎧 Episode 162: Dunmore's New World
🎧 Episode 312: The Domestic Slave Trade
🎧 Episode 424: Dunmore's Proclamation and the American Revolution in Virginia
🎧 Episode 440: Jefferson's Cut Grievances and the British Monarchy's Role in Slavery
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Episoder(511)

448 The Declaration of Independence as American Scripture

448 The Declaration of Independence as American Scripture

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BFW Revisited Threads of Power

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For the Haudenosaunee, the Six Nations People, the American Revolution brought not liberty, but land loss, displacement, and the dismantling of their world. The new United States seized land from Haud...

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447 The Other Committee Members: Robert R. Livingston, Roger Sherman, and the Declaration of Independence

447 The Other Committee Members: Robert R. Livingston, Roger Sherman, and the Declaration of Independence

Five men served on the Continental Congress’s Declaration Committee. We know three of them well: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. But who were the other two?In this episode, we exp...

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BFW Revisited: A Declaration in Draft, 2026

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446  The Declaration of Independence at 250

446 The Declaration of Independence at 250

250 years after its signing, the Declaration of Independence remains an unfinished document. Its famous assertion "that all men are created equal" and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty,...

7 Jul 43min

445 How Independence Happened, Pt 3: The Articles of Confederation

445 How Independence Happened, Pt 3: The Articles of Confederation

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30 Jun 1h 23min

444 How Independence Happened, Part 2: The Model Treaty

444 How Independence Happened, Part 2: The Model Treaty

Declaring independence on July 2, 1776 was only the beginning. To actually become a nation, the United States needed something else: foreign allies, international recognition, and the credibility to n...

23 Jun 1h 16min

443 How Independence Happened, Part 1: The Lee Resolution

443 How Independence Happened, Part 1: The Lee Resolution

Declaring independence on July 2, 1776, was only the beginning. To actually become a nation, the United States needed something else: foreign allies, international recognition, and the credibility to ...

16 Jun 1h 15min

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