Pearl incident

Last updated
This daguerreotype photograph shows Mary Edmonson (standing) and Emily Edmonson (seated), shortly after they were freed in 1848. Mary&EmilyEdmonson.jpg
This daguerreotype photograph shows Mary Edmonson (standing) and Emily Edmonson (seated), shortly after they were freed in 1848.

The Pearl incident was the largest recorded nonviolent escape attempt by enslaved people in United States history. On April 15, 1848, seventy-seven slaves attempted to escape Washington D.C. by sailing away on a schooner called The Pearl. Their plan was to sail south on the Potomac River, then north up the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River to the free state of New Jersey, a distance of nearly 225 miles (362 km). The attempt was organized by both abolitionist whites and free blacks, who expanded the plan to include many more enslaved people. Paul Jennings, a former slave who had served President James Madison, helped plan the escape.

Contents

The escapees, including men, women, and children, found their passage delayed by winds running against the ship. Two days later, they were captured on the Chesapeake Bay near Point Lookout, Maryland, by an armed posse traveling by steamboat. As punishment, the owners sold most of the escapees to traders, who took them to the Deep South. Freedom for the two Edmonson sisters was purchased that year with funds raised by Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York.

When the ship and its captives were brought back to Washington, a pro-slavery riot broke out in the city. The mob attempted to attack an abolitionist newspaper and other known anti-slavery activists. Extra police patrolled for three days to try to contain the violence until the unrest ended. The episode provoked a slavery debate in Congress, and may have influenced a provision in the Compromise of 1850 that ended the slave trade in the District of Columbia, although not slavery itself. The escape inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe in writing her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), in which people in slavery dreaded being "sold South", and increased support for abolitionism in the North.

Three white men were initially charged on numerous counts with aiding the escape and transporting the captives; the captains Daniel Drayton and Edward Sayres were tried and convicted in 1848. After serving four years in prison, they were pardoned by President Millard Fillmore in 1852.

Background

Like the surrounding states of Maryland and Virginia and others in the South, Washington, D.C. was a "slave society" as defined by the historian Ira Berlin in his Many Thousands Gone: A History of Two Centuries of American Slavery. It supported a major slave market and was a center of the domestic slave trade; with its connection to the Chesapeake Bay by the Potomac River, Washington was an important transit point for captives being shipped or marched overland from the Upper South to markets or owners in the Deep South. Numerous families in the city actively enslaved people, generally forcing them to act as domestic servants and artisans. Some hired out their slaves to work as servants on the waterfront and in other urban jobs.

In 1848, free blacks outnumbered slaves in the District of Columbia by three to one. Abolitionists, both free blacks and whites, were active in the city in trying to end the slave trade and slavery. In addition, since the 1840s, there had been an organized group that supported the Underground Railroad in the district. [1] The abolitionist community demonstrated in its planning for the escape that it could act in a unified way. [2] They sought to plan an event that would capture the attention of Congress and the country to promote an end to slavery in the District of Columbia. white supporters included the abolitionists William L. Chaplin and Gerrit Smith of New York, who helped find the captain Daniel Drayton and pay for a ship. The black community made the project its own, notifying so many families that soon there were 77 slaves who wanted to be part of the escape. [1]

For two days prior to the slaves' escape, many city residents had been celebrating the news from France of the expulsion of King Louis Philippe and the founding of the French Second Republic, with its assertion of universal human rights and liberty. Some free blacks and slaves were inspired by plans to gain similar freedoms for American slaves. [3] People gathered to hear addresses in Lafayette Square in front of the White House. As the historian John H. Paynter recounted:

Among the addresses which aroused the large crowd to enthusiasm were those of Senator Patterson of Tennessee [lower-alpha 1] and Senator Foote of Mississippi. The former likened the Tree of Liberty to the great cotton-wood tree of his section, whose seed is blown far and wide, while the latter spoke eloquently of the universal emancipation of man and the approaching recognition in all countries of the great principles of equality and brotherhood." [3]

In April 1848, Washington Navy Yard blacksmith and former slave Daniel Bell, helped plan one of the largest and most daring slave escapes of the era. Daniel Bell was fearful that with the death of slaveholder Robert Armistead, his wife Mary and their children were to be sold. The Bell family had made numerous unsuccessful attempts to use the courts of the District of Columbia to secure their freedom. [5] Ultimately Daniel's wife Mary, eight of the Bell's children, and two grandchildren would hazard the perilous journey on the schooner Pearl. [6] [7] [8] [9] Paul Jennings, a former slave of President James Madison, was among the free black organizers of the escape. [1]

1832 appraisal of the estate of Robert Armistead listing the enslaved children of Daniel and Mary Bell and their appraised valuation. Mary Bell is mentioned at the bottom of the document. NARA RG21 Robert armistead case file with list of enslaved Bell family children.jpg
1832 appraisal of the estate of Robert Armistead listing the enslaved children of Daniel and Mary Bell and their appraised valuation. Mary Bell is mentioned at the bottom of the document. NARA RG21

Among the slaves planning to leave were six grown siblings of the Paul and Amelia Edmonson family; because Amelia was a slave, their fourteen children had been born into slavery. Paul Edmonson was a free black. The two sisters and four brothers had all been "hired out" by their master to work for pay in the city. [1] A variety of other families also hoped to escape. The Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay provided a water route to the free states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but the organizers had to acquire a ship to transport the slaves over the 225 miles of water. Jennings confessed his role in organizing the escape in a letter to his mentor, the northern senator Daniel Webster, an abolitionist. Jennings escaped public notice at the time for his role. [1]

The captain found to pilot the ship, Daniel Drayton, was from Philadelphia and supported abolition, [1] but admitted that he was offered money to transport the slaves. He found a ship and willing partner in Edward Sayres, the pilot of the 54-ton schooner The Pearl. [10] His only other crew was Chester English, a cook. "In the darkness of the night seventy-seven colored men, women, and children found their way to the schooner." [11] [lower-alpha 2] With Drayton and Sayres accepting the risk of transporting them, on Saturday night, April 15, the slaves boarded the ship. Chester English, the cook, was on The Pearl to supply the passengers until they reached freedom. [10]

Escape plan and capture

The organizers intended for the ship to sail 100 miles (160 km) down the Potomac River, then 125 miles (201 km) north up the Chesapeake Bay to freedom in New Jersey, a free state. But the wind was against the schooner, so the ship had to anchor for the night. [10] The next morning, numerous slaveowners realized their slaves were missing and sent out an armed posse of 35 men aboard one slaveowner's steamboat, The Salem. [10]

Drayton described the capture of The Pearl in his later memoir:

A Mr. Dodge, of Georgetown, a wealthy old gentleman, originally from New England, missed three or four slaves from his family, and a small steamboat, of which he was the proprietor, was readily obtained. Thirty-five men, including a son or two of old Dodge, and several of those whose slaves were missing, volunteered to man her; and they set out about Sunday noon. [12]

The party on The Salem found The Pearl on Monday morning near Point Lookout in Maryland, upon which they immediately took the slaves and ship back to Washington. [10]

Betrayal

In 1916, the author John H. Paynter identified Judson Diggs as the slave who had betrayed the fugitives. Diggs drove a participant to the dock and accepted the destitute fugitive's promise of future payment. However, Diggs then reported the suspicious activity. Paynter, a descendant of the Edmonson siblings, interviewed descendants of the escapees. He wrote: "Judson Diggs, one of their own people, a man who in all reason might have been expected to sympathize with their effort, took upon himself the role of Judas." [3]

Riots

Supporters of slavery were outraged by the attempted escape, and an angry mob formed. For three days, crowds were riled in the Washington Riot, and numerous police were called in to protect one of their targets. They fixed on Gamaliel Bailey, the publisher of the anti-slavery newspaper New Era . [lower-alpha 3] Suspecting him because of his record of abolitionist publishing, a mob of slave owners almost destroyed the newspaper building but were held off by the police. [13]

This 1848 poster was made by the District of Columbia government to warn alarmed white citizens fearing a slave revolt, not to riot or commit acts of violence. The poster was in response to public concern and rumors of a slave uprising, following the capture of the schooner Pearl Washington DC Poster 1848 re Pearl.jpg
This 1848 poster was made by the District of Columbia government to warn alarmed white citizens fearing a slave revolt, not to riot or commit acts of violence. The poster was in response to public concern and rumors of a slave uprising, following the capture of the schooner Pearl

Once the mob dissipated, the slave owners debated how to punish their slaves. They sold all seventy-seven slaves to slave traders from Georgia and Louisiana, who would take them to the Deep South and the New Orleans slave market. There they would likely be sold to work on the large sugar and cotton plantations, which held two-thirds of the slaves in the South by the time of the Civil War. [14] Congressman John I. Slingerland, an abolitionist from New York, alerted anti-slavery activists to the actions of the slave owners and slave traders, which helped increase the effort to end the slave trade in the nation's capital. [15] Friends and families scrambled to try to locate their loved ones and buy them from the traders before they were taken south. The case of the two young Edmonson sisters in particular attracted national attention.

Trial

Drayton, Sayres, and English were initially indicted; the educator Horace Mann, who had helped the slaves from the La Amistad mutiny in 1839, was hired as their main lawyer. The following July, both Drayton and Sayres were charged with 77 counts each of aiding a slave escape and illegally transporting a slave. English was released because his role was minor and indirect.

After appeals were filed and charges were reduced, a jury convicted both Drayton and Sayres. They were sentenced to jail because neither could pay the fines associated with the convictions and the court costs, amounting to $10,000. After they had been imprisoned for four years, Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist, petitioned President Millard Fillmore for pardons for the men. The President pardoned them in 1852. [12] [14]

Aftermath

In response to the escape attempt and the riot, Congress ended the slave trade in the District of Columbia, although it did not abolish slavery. Prohibiting the slave trade was a provision of the Compromise of 1850, which dealt primarily with the issue of whether new states in the West would be admitted to the Union as slave states or as free states. [14] Daniel Bell although an organizer was not on the Pearl at the time of its capture. While he may have been interrogated, he was fortunate in one respect as he was never charged with aiding or abetting the plot and was able to keep his job at the navy yard, although his wage was reduced from $1.20 per day to $1.12 per day. [16] [17]

The failed attempt provoked reactions from abolitionists and pro-slavery activists across the country and contributed to the divisive rhetoric that ultimately led to the American Civil War. It also inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe in her writing of Uncle Tom's Cabin , an immediately popular anti-slavery novel published in 1852. [18]

In 2017, a street in The Wharf development in Washington, D.C.'s Southwest Waterfront neighborhood was named "Pearl Street" in commemoration of the incident. [19]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Despite Paynter's recollection, Patterson was not elected as senator until 1866; in 1848 he was still an attorney in Greeneville, Tennessee. [4]
  2. ↑ Ricks' 2007 book and other sources state the number of slaves as seventy-seven.
  3. ↑ The abolitionist Frederick Douglass later took over the paper and renamed it New National Era.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Underground Railroad</span> Network for fugitive slaves in 19th-century U.S.

The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and from there to Canada. The network, primarily the work of free African Americans, was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. The slaves who risked capture and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the passengers and conductors of the Railroad, respectively. Various other routes led to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished, and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade. An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession, existed from the late 17th century until approximately 1790. However, the network generally known as the Underground Railroad began in the late 18th century. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. One estimate suggests that, by 1850, approximately 100,000 slaves had escaped to freedom via the network.

<i>United States v. The Amistad</i> 1841 U.S. Supreme Court case on the legality of the Atlantic slave trade

United States v. Schooner Amistad, 40 U.S. 518 (1841), was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839. It was an unusual freedom suit that involved international diplomacy as well as United States law. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison described it in 1969 as the most important court case involving slavery before being eclipsed by that of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fugitive Slave Act of 1850</span> Act of the United States Congress

The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was a law passed by the 31st United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fugitive Slave Act of 1793</span> Act of the United States Congress

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was an Act of the United States Congress to give effect to the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which was later superseded by the Thirteenth Amendment, and to also give effect to the Extradition Clause. The Constitution’s Fugitive Slave Clause guaranteed a right for a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave. The subsequent Act, "An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters", created the legal mechanism by which that could be accomplished.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fugitive slaves in the United States</span>

In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freedom seekers to avoid implying that the enslaved person had committed a crime and that the slaveholder was the injured party.

<i>Creole</i> mutiny Slave revolt on board the ship named Creole

The Creole mutiny, sometimes called the Creole case, was a slave revolt aboard the American slave ship Creole in November 1841, when the brig was seized by the 128 slaves who were aboard the ship when it reached Nassau in the British colony of the Bahamas where slavery was abolished. The brig was transporting enslaved people as part of the coastwise slave trade in the American South. It has been described as the "most successful slave revolt in US history". Two died in the revolt, an enslaved person and a member of the crew.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Glover</span> Runaway slave from St. Louis, Missouri

Joshua Glover was a fugitive slave who escaped from the United States to Canada in the 1850s. His escape from recapture was part of the chain of events that led to the Civil War and the end of slavery in the U.S.

<i>La Amistad</i> Slave ship

La Amistad was a 19th-century two-masted schooner owned by a Spaniard living in Cuba. It became renowned in July 1839 for a slave revolt by Mende captives who had been captured and sold to European slave traders and illegally transported by a Portuguese ship from West Africa to Cuba, in violation of European treaties against the Atlantic slave trade. Spanish plantation owners Don José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montes bought 53 captives in Havana, Cuba, including four children, and were transporting them on the ship to their plantations near Puerto Príncipe. The revolt began after the schooner's cook jokingly told the slaves that they were to be "killed, salted, and cooked." Sengbe Pieh unshackled himself and the others on the third day and started the revolt. They took control of the ship, killing the captain and the cook. Three Africans were also killed in the melee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Sims</span> American who escaped slavery but was reenslaved by law

Thomas Sims was an African American who escaped from slavery in Georgia and fled to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1851. He was arrested the same year under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, had a court hearing, and was forced to return to enslavement. A second escape brought him back to Boston in 1863, where he was later appointed to a position in the U.S. Department of Justice in 1877. Sims was one of the first slaves to be forcibly returned from Boston under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The failure to stop his case from progressing was a significant blow to the abolitionists, as it showed the extent of the power and influence which slavery had on American society and politics. The case was one of many events leading to the American Civil War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edmonson sisters</span> 19th-century African-American abolitionists

Mary Edmonson (1832–1853) and Emily Edmonson, "two respectable young women of light complexion", were African Americans who became celebrities in the United States abolitionist movement after gaining their freedom from slavery. On April 15, 1848, they were among the 77 slaves who tried to escape from Washington, DC on the schooner The Pearl to sail up the Chesapeake Bay to freedom in New Jersey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kidnapping into slavery in the United States</span> Practice of kidnapping people for slave labour in the United States

The pre-American Civil War practice of kidnapping into slavery in the United States occurred in both free and slave states, and both fugitive slaves and free negroes were transported to slave markets and sold, often multiple times. There were also rewards for the return of fugitives. Three types of kidnapping methods were employed: physical abduction, inveiglement of free blacks, and apprehension of fugitives. The enslavement, or re-enslavement, of free blacks occurred for 85 years, from 1780 to 1865.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Bibb</span> American ex slave, writer, and abolitionist

Henry Walton Bibb, was an American author and abolitionist who was born into slavery. Bibb told his life story in his Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, which included many failed escape attempts followed finally by success when he escaped to Detroit. After leaving Detroit to move to Canada with his family, due to issues with the legality of his assistance in the Underground Railroad, he founded the abolitionist newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive. He lived in Canada until his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boston Vigilance Committee</span> US abolitionist organization

The Boston Vigilance Committee (1841–1861) was an abolitionist organization formed in Boston, Massachusetts, to protect escaped slaves from being kidnapped and returned to slavery in the South. The Committee aided hundreds of escapees, most of whom arrived as stowaways on coastal trading vessels and stayed a short time before moving on to Canada or England. Notably, members of the Committee provided legal and other aid to George Latimer, Ellen and William Craft, Shadrach Minkins, Thomas Sims, and Anthony Burns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Jennings (abolitionist)</span> American Author, First White House Memoirist

Paul Jennings (1799–1874) was an American abolitionist and author. Enslaved as a young man by President James Madison during and after his White House years, Jennings published, in 1865, the first White House memoir. His book was A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison, described as "a singular document in the history of slavery and the early American republic."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William L. Chaplin</span> American abolitionist (1796–1871)

William Lawrence Chaplin was a prominent abolitionist in the years before the American Civil War. Known by the title of "General," he was an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society and a general agent for the Underground Railroad. He was imprisoned for the attempted escape of two individuals, which required $25,000 to get out of jail and safely out of Maryland. He was an editor at two anti-slavery newspapers and he was a Harvard-educated lawyer for a couple of years. He and his wife operated the Glen Haven Water Cure spa in his later years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fugitive Slave Convention</span> Convention held to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

The Fugitive Slave Convention was held in Cazenovia, New York, on August 21 and 22, 1850. It was a fugitive slave meeting, the biggest ever held in the United States. Madison County, New York, was the abolition headquarters of the country, because of philanthropist and activist Gerrit Smith, who lived in neighboring Peterboro, New York, and called the meeting "in behalf of the New York State Vigilance Committee." Hostile newspaper reports refer to the meeting as "Gerrit Smith's Convention". Nearly fifty fugitives attended—the largest gathering of fugitive slaves in the nation's history.

John H. Paynter (1862-1947) was an African American writer of poetry and nonfiction who wrote the book Fugitives of the Pearl (1930), a popular history of the largest known mass escape attempt of enslaved people in the United States. The story was based on his own 1916 short story first published in The Journal of Negro History and then published as a serial in the Washington Tribune, written based on news accounts and oral histories from his own family. He was a descendant of the Edmonson sisters, three sisters who attempted to escape slavery on The Pearl, and a grandson of John and Elizabeth Edmonson Brent, who were born slaves and purchased their own freedom before founding the John Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church at 14th and Corcoran streets NW in Washington, D.C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Bell (freedman)</span> 19th-century freed American slave

Daniel Bell was a formerly enslaved man who gained his freedom and then sought the freedom of his wife, Mary, and their children. Due to a series of unfortunate events, it took decades for the Bell family to obtain their freedom. Daniel and his wife had both been enslaved again after they had obtained their freedom. Two of their children who were born free were enslaved.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tilly Escape</span> Slave escape aided by Harriet Tubman

The Tilly Escape occurred in October 1856 when an enslaved woman, Tilly, was led by Harriet Tubman from slavery in Baltimore to safety in Philadelphia. Historians who have studied Tubman consider it "one of her most complicated and clever escape attempts." It was a risky trip because Tubman and Tilly would not have been able to travel directly from Baltimore to Philadelphia without proof that they were free women. In addition, local slave traders would have recognized strangers. Tubman sought to evade capture by going south, before heading north, and using different modes of transportation over water and land.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Mary Kay Ricks, Escape On The Pearl: The Heroic Bid For Freedom On The Underground Railroad, New York: William Morrow, 2007
  2. ↑ Mary Beth Corrigan, "The Legacy and Significance of a Failed Mass Slave Escape", H-Net Reviews: Josephine Pacheco, The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac, April 2006, accessed 12 Jan 2009
  3. 1 2 3 John H. Paynter, “The Fugitives of the Pearl (excerpt)” Archived 2006-09-02 at the Wayback Machine , The Journal of Negro History, 1 (July 1916), 4, at HU ArchivesNet, Howard University. Accessed 23 January 2007.
  4. ↑ "David T. Patterson", Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress
  5. ↑ O Say Can You See, Early Washington D.C. Law and Family Mary Bell v. Susan Armistead 13 September 1844 Summons of Susan Armistead 13 Sept 1844 http://earlywashingtondc.org/doc/oscys.case.0172.001
  6. ↑ Josephine E. Pacheco, The Pearl, A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), p. 113.
  7. ↑ Mary Kay Ricks, Escape on the Pearl The Heroic Bid For Freedom on the Underground Railroad (Harper-Collins: New York 2007), p. 37.
  8. ↑ John G. Sharp, Daniel Bell Blacksmith Striker circa 1804 -1877 , Genealogy Trails, 2008. Accessed 2 May 2018.
  9. ↑ Chris Myers Ash & George Dereck Musgrove, Chocolate City A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital (University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2017), p. 90.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 Josephine F. Pacheco, The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 53, 55-58.
  11. ↑ Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital: From its Foundation through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic Act, 2: 1815-1878 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916), 385.
  12. 1 2 Daniel Drayton, Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months, A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) in Washington Jail, Boston, MA: B. Marsh, 1853; reproduced in Project Gutenberg, pp. 13, 29-53. Accessed 2 February 2007.
  13. ↑ Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: Village and Capital, 1800-1878, 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 176.
  14. 1 2 3 David L. Lewis, District of Columbia: A Bicentennial History, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976), 54-56.
  15. ↑ Josephine F. Pacheco, The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac, 2005, page 94
  16. ↑ Ricks, Ibid, p.177.
  17. ↑ Sharp, John G M., Daniel and Mary Bell and the Struggle for Freedom http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/wny&db.html Archived 2021-05-13 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 9 March 2021
  18. ↑ Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co, 1852; reprint edition, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), 491.
  19. ↑ Chung, Payton (30 August 2017). "DC will get nine blocks of "shared streets" this fall". Greater Greater Washington. Retrieved 15 September 2020.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.