BFW Revisited: Running from Bondage in the American Revolution

Ben Franklin's World

Liz Covart

History, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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/322RECOMMENDED 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 SlaverySUPPORT OUR WORK🎁 Make a Donation to Ben Franklin’s WorldREQUEST A TOPIC📨 Topic Request Form📫 liz@benfranklinsworld.comWHEN YOU'RE READY🗞️ BFW Gazette Newsletter 👩‍💻 Join the BFW Listener Community🌍 Join the History Explorers ClubTAKE THE QUIZ🧭 Discover How You Explore History (under 2 minutes)👉 https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/quizLISTEN 🎧🍎 Apple Podcasts 💚 Spotify 🎶 Amazon Music🛜 PandoraCONNECT🦋 Liz on Bluesky👩‍💻 Liz on LinkedIn🛜 Liz’s WebsiteSAY THANKS💜 Leave a review on Apple Podcasts💚 Leave a rating on Spotify*Book links are affiliate links. Every purchase supports the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:18.3	Hi, I'm Neil. And I'm Ken. And we are from The Triviality Podcast, a pub trivia-style game show where a lack of
0:24.9	seriousness meets a little bit of knowledge.
0:27.1	Join us each week for an hour-long game of general knowledge trivia, featuring special
0:31.5	guests from around the world, plus tons of extra themed episodes.
0:35.5	If you want to improve your trivia game, or you just want to scream at us in your car when we get easy questions wrong,
0:40.9	then we're the show for you.
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0:45.2	But you know that, because you're already listening to a podcast.
0:49.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.
0:52.8	Ben Franklin's World is a production of Cleo Digital Media.
0:55.9	And support for this episode comes from the Massachusetts Historical Society, the first
1:00.5	historical society founded in the United States in 1791.
1:15.8	Hello and welcome to Ben Franklin's World Revisited,
1:20.2	a series of classic episodes that bring fresh perspective to our latest episodes and add deeper connections to our understanding of early American history.
1:24.5	And I'm your host, Liz Covart.
1:27.4	In episode 440, Brooke Newman walked us through
1:30.3	one of the most striking edits to the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson's cut
1:34.9	grievance that King George III was responsible for the transatlantic slave trade and for
1:39.5	exciting enslaved people to rise in arms against their enslavers during the American War for
1:44.0	independence.
1:45.4	Now, Brooke made a careful and complicated case. While the British monarchy bore deep responsibility
	...

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