Primary Sources:
Cash Accounts, May 1768, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-08-02-0059.
George Washington to Lund Washington, 15 August 1778, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-16-02-0342.
George Washington to Clement Biddle, 28 July 1784,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0014.
Clement Biddle to George Washington, 27 April 1789, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-02-02-0115.
George Washington to William Pearce, 18 May 1794, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-16-02-0073.
George Washington’s Last Will and Testament, 9 July 1799, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-04-02-0404-0001.
John Trumbull, George Washington and William Lee (1780). Oil on Canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Charles Allen Munn, 1924. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/12822
Legal notes by William Cushing about the Quock Walker case, [1783]. Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=630.
Robert Blair, of Avontoun, Lord Avontoun, "Unto the Right Honourable, The Lords of Council and Session, the Petition of Lieutenant William Stewart, of the Impress-service at Greenock," 2 Aug 1782, Scottish Court of Session Digital Archive Project. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Law Library, 2015-2019. https://scos.law.virginia.edu/node/54751
Somerset v Stewart (1772) 98 ER 499
http://www.commonlii.org/int/cases/EngR/1772/57.pdf
Washington, George. [Diary Entry “April—1785,”] Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-04-02-0002-0004.
Washington’s Slave List, June 1799,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-04-02-0405.
Teaching Resources:
Cannon, Alexandria. “Gradual Abolition Act of 1780.” In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by James P. Ambuske. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/gradual-abolition-act-of-1780/.
Dunbar, Erica Armstrong and Kathleen Van Cleve. Never Caught, The Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington’s Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away; Young Readers Edition. New York: Aladdin Books, 2020.
Lesson Plan: George Washington’s Views on Slavery (High School) https://www.mountvernon.org/education/lesson-plans/lesson/george-washingtons-views-on-slavery/.
“Marquis de Lafayette’s Plan for Slavery.” In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by James P. Ambuske. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/marquis-de-lafayette-s-plan-for-slavery/.
MacLeod, Jessie. “William (Billy) Lee.” In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by James P. Ambuske. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/william-billy-lee/.
MacLeod, Jessie. "Lee, William (fl. 1768-1810). In Encyclopedia Virginia, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lee-william-fl-1768-1810
Thomas, Ebony Elizabeth, James Joshua Coleman, and Lindsay R. Cicchino. “George Washington and Slavery: Going Beyond Picture Books to Teach about Our Flawed Fathers.” Social Education 82, Vol. 3 (2018): 143-148. https://www.socialstudies.org/social-education/82/3/george-washington-and-slavery-going-beyond-picture-books-teach-about-our.
Walli, Amanda. “Custis Family.” In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by James P. Ambuske. Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/custis-family/.
Further Reading:
Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. New York: Vintage, 2001.
Anderson, Fred and Andrew Cayton. The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000. New York: Viking, 2005.
Atkinson, Rick. The British are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019.
Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution: Enlarged Edition. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1967, 1992.
Bell-Cook, Karen. Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Brady, Patricia. Martha Washington: An American Life. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
Brown, Vincent. Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2020.
Brumwell, Stephen. George Washington: Gentleman Warrior. New York: Quercus, 2012.
Bushman, Richard L. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. Vintage Books, 1992.
Cairns, J.W. “After Somerset: The Scottish Experience,” Journal of Legal History, vol. 33, no. 3, (2012): 291-312.
Clark-Pujara, Christy. Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island. New York: New York University Press, 2016.
David, James Corbett. Dunmore’s New World: The Extraordinary Life of a Royal Governor in Revolutionary America—with Jacobites, Counterfeiters, Land Schemes, Shipwrecks, Scalping, Indian Politics, Runaway Slaves, and Two Illegal Royal Weddings. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2013.
Dierksheide, Christa. Amelioration and Empire: Progress and Slavery in the Plantation Americas. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2014.
Dunbar, Erica Armstrong Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. New York: 37 Ink, 2017.
Duncan, Mike. Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution. New York: Public Affairs, 2021.
DuVal, Kathleen. Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. New York: Random House, 2016.
Edelson, S. Max. The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Fischer, David Hackett. Washington’s Crossing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Furstenberg, François. In The Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.
Geake, Robert with Lorén M. Spears. From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution. Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2016.
Glymph, Thavolia. Out of The House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Holton, Woody. Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia. Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Jeffers, Honorée Fanonne. The Age of Phillis. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2020.
Johnson, Donald F. Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.
Jones, Brad A. Resisting Independence: Popular Loyalism in the Revolutionary British Atlantic. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2021.
Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.
Kukla, Jon. Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017.
Longmore, Paul K. The Invention of George Washington. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1999.
Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1972, 1991.
Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.
Martin, James Kirby and Mark Edward Lender. A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789. 2nd edition. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2006.
McConville, Brendan. The King’s Three Faces: The Rise & Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776. Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: Norton & Company Inc., 1975, 2003.
Morgan, Philip D. “‘To Get Quit of Negroes’: George Washington and Slavery.” Journal of American Studies 39, no. 3 (2005): 403–29.
Nash, Gary B. The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
O’Shaughnessy, Andrew Jackson. The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, and the Fate of the Empire. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013.
Paley, Ruth. “Imperial Politics and English Law: The Many Contexts of ‘Somerset.’” Law and History Review 24, no. 3 (2006): 659–64.
Parkinson, Robert G. The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
Pybus, Cassandra. Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.
Ragsdale, Bruce A. Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2021.
Royster, Charles. A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army & American Character, 1775-1783. Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
Rozbicki, Michal Jan. Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
Saxon, Martha. The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.
Schama, Simon. Rough Crossings: Britain, The Slaves, and the American Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.
Taylor, Alan. The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013.
Thompson, Mary. “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019.
Van Buskirk, Judith L. Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018.
Van Horn, Jennifer. The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America. Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
Waldstreicher, David. Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010.
Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Chapel Hill: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 1969, 1998.
Zabin, Serena. The Boston Massacre: A Family History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.
