Great Exodus From Bondage

N-42

The former Farmers’ Bank building at this intersection was once the home and workplace of John Washington (1838-1918), who early in the 1870s wrote a memoir of his life in slavery. On 18 April 1862, about eight months before the Emancipation Proclamation, Washington fled Fredericksburg and crossed the Rappahannock River to Falmouth, where Union forces had just arrived. He was among the first of more than 10,000 refugees enslaved in surrounding counties who escaped to Union lines and freedom over the next four months. These acts of self-emancipation accelerated a shift in federal policy that ultimately led to the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ending chattel slavery in the United States.

Department of Historic Resources, 2022

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies; Series I-Volume XII; Series I-Volume LI, Part I, Reports, Union Correspondence, etc. Brendan Wolfe, “John M. Washington (1838–1918)” Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities (22 Dec. 2021). (https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/washington-john-m-1838-1918/) Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, & Leslie Rowland, Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation (London: Cambridge University Press, 1992). David W. Blight, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation (New York: Harcourt, 2007). Crandall Shiflett, ed., John’s Washington’s Civil War: A Slave Narrative (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008). Fredericksburg Christian Banner, 2 July 1862. New York Herald, 20 July 1862.