After being in bondage for almost thirty years, Mum Bett finally found a way to gain her freedom. One day Hannah Ashley was particularly mad at Lizzie for not completing her chores; so mad that she picked up a “fire-heated hearth shovel” and tried to hit Lizzie with it. However, Mum Bett stepped in to save her sister and intercepted the blow. Unfortunately, the hit from the shovel left a nasty scar on her arm that would be visible for the rest of her life.[9] Although this was a scar, it was also a “badge of bravery” since Bett was willing to stand up to the violent and inhumane behavior of her master.[10] After this incident, Mum Bett decided to take charge and sought out Theodore Sedgwick, a respected lawyer that often came to the Ashley house to discuss politics, to ask him to be her lawyer in her trial for her freedom. Mum Bett had summoned the courage to fight for her freedom towards the end of the Revolutionary War.[11] The fact that a white man agreed to defend a black African American woman in court and that a former slave would even think to go to court, shows that there was a significant shift or transition in the way some people thought about slavery during this time period.