Passenger on the Pearl Read online

  Passenger on the Pearl

  The True Story of Emily Edmonson’s Flight from Slavery

  WINIFRED CONKLING

  ALGONQUIN YOUNG READERS

  No man can tell the intense agony which is felt by the slave when wavering on the point of making his escape. All that he has is at stake; and even that which he has not is at stake also. The life which he has may be lost, and the liberty which he seeks, may not be gained.

  FREDERICK DOUGLASS

  My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855

  Contents

  List of Photographs and Illustrations

  ONE. A Mother’s Sorrow

  “This Child Isn’t Ours”

  An Uncertain Future

  TWO. Escape: April 15, 1848

  Boarding the Peal

  Discrimination: A Matter of Law

  Escape on the Pearl

  Captain Drayton’s Change of Heart

  THREE. Against the Tide

  Sunday Worship

  Slavery and Literary

  FOUR. Chasing the Pearl

  One Step Ahead

  In the Shadows

  FIVE. Capture

  SIX. Back to Washington

  Behind Bars

  The Release of Chester English

  The Abolitionist Press

  Showdown at the National Era

  SEVEN. Sold

  Into the Night

  Captive at Bruin & Hill

  What Happened to Judson Diggs?

  EIGHT. Baltimore

  Last Minute Negotiations

  What Happened to the Other Fugitives of the Pearl?

  Sold South: The Second Middle Passage

  NINE. New Orleans

  To the Showroom

  Witness to Horrors

  Shades of Black

  The Second Wife

  TEN. An Unexpected Reunion

  Surviving New Orleans

  Beware! Yellow Fever

  ELEVEN. $2,250: The Price of Freedom

  Back to Bruin & Hill

  Coming to Terms

  The Coffle Departs

  Sorrow Songs

  TWELVE. Ransomed

  Gathering at the Tabernacle

  Payment in Full

  Forever Free

  An American Anti-Slavery Society

  Rev. Henry Ward Beecher Finding His Voice

  Was It Wrong to Ransom Mary and Emily?

  THIRTEEN. The Trial of Captain Daniel Drayton

  A Welcome Visitor

  Indicted

  The Trial

  Addressing Congress about the Pearl Escape

  FOURTEEN. A Radical Education

  Boarding School

  Becoming Abolitionists

  The Fugitive Slave Act and the Compromise of 1850

  FIFTEEN. Chaplin’s Surrender

  The Cazenovia Convention

  Jumping Bail

  SIXTEEN. Pardoned

  A Presidential Pardon

  Race to Freedom

  SEVENTEEN. “The Last Two Drops of Blood in My Heart”

  Meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Heartbreak

  The Importance of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

  Mary and Emily, Emmeline and Cassy

  Meeting Milly Edmonson

  EIGHTEEN. Emily, Alone

  From Student to Teacher

  Who Was Myrtilla Miner?

  NINETEEN. Homecoming

  Elizabeth Edmonson: Free to Marry

  Samuel’s Story

  Emancipation in the Nation’s Capital

  Death of a Martyr

  Time Line

  The Edmonsons: A Family Tree

  Sources and Notes

  Bibliography

  For More Information

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  List of Photographs and Illustrations

  “United States Slave Trade,” copper plate, 1830

  “The Sale,” by Henry Louis Stephens, lithograph, 1863

  Cotton picking on a Georgia plantation, wood engraving, 1858

  Woman outside a slave pen, photograph

  The Edmonson's probable route to the Pearl, map

  Slave pen, Alexandria, Virginia, photograph

  Horse-drawn wagon, photograph

  “Black man reading newspaper by candlelight,” by Henry Louis Stephens, watercolor painting, 1863

  Two-masted schooner, photograph

  The Slave Ship, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, oil painting

  Escape rout to point of capture, map

  “Secrets of the prison-house,” by Arthur Lumley, wood engraving, 1861

  Portrait of Gamaliel Bailey, journalist, photograph

  View from the National Era building, Washington DC, photograph, 1859

  “Slave Market of America,” broadside

  Slave pen, Alexandria, Virginia, photograph

  Ship's manifest listing enslaved passengers

  Domestic slave trade in the United States, map

  “Slaves for Sale: A Scene in New Orleans,” illustration, 1861

  Scars of a Mississippi slave, photograph, 1863

  “The Lash,” by Henry Louis Stephens, lithograph, 1863

  “Creole women of color taking the air,” by Edouard Marquis, watercolor painting, 1867

  Mosquito responsible for spreading yellow fever, illustration

  Slave trader's advertisement, 1835

  Illustration of a chain gang from A Popular History of the United States, 1881

  Portrait of Frederick Douglass, photograph

  “Am I not a man and a brother?” woodcut image

  Anti-Slavery Society flier

  The Broadway Tabernacle, New York City, photograph

  “Plymouth Church, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher Selling a Slave,” illustration

  Portrait of Henry Ward Beecher, illustration

  Portrait of Joshua R. Giddings, photograph

  Portrait of Capt. Daniel Drayton, illustration

  Portrait of Mary and Emily Edmonson, photograph

  Portrait of Jermain Wesley Loguen, photograph

  “Effects of the Fugitive Slave Law,” by Theodore Kaufmann, lithograph

  Portrait of William Chaplin, illustration

  Frederick Douglass at the Cazenovia Convention, daguerreotype

  Portrait of Millard Fillmore, photograph

  Portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe, photograph

  Cover of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852

  Portrait of Amelia "Milly" Edmonson, photograph

  Portrait of Myrtilla Miner, illustration

  Miner Teacher's College building, photograph

  Compensated Emancipation Act celebration, illustration

  ONE

  A Mother’s Sorrow

  WHEN AMELIA CULVER met Paul Edmonson, she had no intention of ever marrying. Milly, as she was known, enjoyed spending time with Paul at church on Sundays, and the more she learned about him the more she cared for him, but she did not want to be his wife. She realized that she had fallen in love, but she was not concerned about love. Milly knew the truth: She was enslaved, and in Montgomery County, Maryland, in the early 19th century, her future did not belong to her.

  At the time, Paul was enslaved on a nearby farm. They would not be able to live together as man and wife because they had different owners; but if they married, Milly and Paul would be able to see each other from time to time. Any children they might have would be born into bondage, owned by Milly’s master. Milly understood that the joy of marriage and family would end in heartbreak when her children—her babies—grew old enough to be torn away from her to work or to be sold in the slave market.

  Despite what seemed like inevitable sadness, Paul asked Milly to marry h
im. She turned him down. Milly longed for love and family, but still more, she longed for liberty. “I loved Paul very much,” Milly said. “But I thought it wasn’t right to bring children into the world to be slaves.”

  Milly’s family and others at Asbury Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., urged her to reconsider Paul’s offer, arguing that Paul was a good man and it was her Christian duty to marry and have children.

  Paul proposed again, and this time she accepted.

  The copper plate used to make this engraving was discovered by workmen clearing the ruins of Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia, which was built by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. After it was completed, the building stood for only three days before it was burned to the ground by anti-black rioters on May 17, 1838.

  “THIS CHILD ISN’T OURS”

  As Milly had predicted, the painful realities of love within slavery soon followed. “Well, Paul and me, we was married, and we was happy enough,” Milly said. “But when our first child was born I says to him, ‘There ’tis now, Paul, our troubles is begun. This child isn’t ours.

  “ ‘Oh, Paul,’ says I, ‘what a thing it is to have children that isn’t ours!’

  “Paul, he says to me, ‘Milly, my dear, if they be God’s children, it ain’t so much matter whether they be ours or no; they may be heirs of the kingdom.’” Milly tried to find peace in his words, but she still worried.

  In the early years of her marriage, Milly and her young children lived with her mistress, Rebecca Culver, and Culver’s married sister in Colesville, Maryland. It was not uncommon for an enslaved person to be freed when his owner died, and in 1821, Paul’s owner freed him in her will. While many owners did not recognize slave marriages, Culver allowed Milly to work as a seamstress and live with Paul and their children on a local farm. Milly and Paul continued to have children, increasing Culver’s wealth significantly.

  “I had mostly sewing,” Milly said. “Sometimes a shirt to make in a day—it was coarse like, you know—or a pair of sheets or some such, but whatever ’twas, I always got it done. Then I had all my housework and babies to take care of and many’s the time after ten o’clock I’ve took my children’s clothes and washed ’em all out and ironed ’em late in the night ’cause I couldn’t never bear to see my children dirty. Always wanted to see ’em sweet and clean. I brought ’em up and taught ’em the very best ways I was able.”

  Culver was mentally challenged and she was never able to manage her finances on her own. In 1827, Culver’s brother petitioned the court in Montgomery County to have her ruled legally incompetent. The judge agreed and named her brother-in-law, Francis Valdenar, as guardian of her business affairs, which included oversight of Milly and her children.

  By the mid-1830s, Milly had given birth to fourteen children, eight girls and six boys. She lived in constant fear that they would be taken from her. “I never seen a white man come onto the place that I didn’t think, There, now, he’s coming to look at my children,” Milly said. “And when I saw any white man going by, I’ve called in my children and hid ’em for fear he’d see ’em and want to buy ’em.”

  In time, Milly’s fears were realized. As was common practice at the time, when any of her children reached age 12 or 13, he or she was taken from home and hired out to families in the Washington, D.C., area to live and work as domestic slaves. Their wages were sent back to Culver, who depended on this income.

  Heartbroken, Milly begged her girls not to marry until they were free so that they would not become mothers of children born into slavery. She said, “Now, girls, don’t you never come to the sorrows that I have. Don’t you never marry till you get your liberty. Don’t you marry to be mothers to children that ain’t your own.” Each of the Edmonson children, both the boys and the girls, shared their mother’s belief that aside from their duty to God, nothing was more important than freedom.

  In 1863, Henry Louis Stephens (1824 –1882) created this lithograph titled “The Sale.” The image is the third in a 12-part series of antislavery trading cards titled “Journey of a Slave from the Plantation to the Battlefield.” Abolitionists distributed the cards as a means of spreading their message.

  AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

  Over the years, Valdenar had allowed the five oldest Edmonson sisters—Elizabeth, Martha, Eveline, Henrietta, and Eliza—to buy their freedom. They raised the money by taking on extra work and keeping a portion of their earnings, or by accepting money from family and friends. By 1848, Culver was in poor health, and she faced growing debts. Six of the Edmonson children were hired out at the time. There were no plans for their imminent sale, but the siblings realized that their futures were far from secure. Slave owners prized the Edmonson children for their honesty, intelligence, and morality; slave dealers prized them because they could demand a high price on the auction block. Would Valdenar sell one or more of them to pay Culver’s expenses?

  If they were sold, they could end up in fine homes working as domestics and butlers or they could end up in the Lower South, working as field hands or, worse yet, as “fancy girls” in the New Orleans sex trade. The two hired-out Edmonson sisters, Mary and Emily, had pale complexions and fine features, which meant that they could fetch a high price in the southern market. They were only 15 and 13 years old, respectively—a bit young to be sold into this line of work even by the standards of the time, but their true age did not matter. In such circumstances, slave traders were known to falsify documents and add a year or more to the reported age of their young female slaves.

  The Edmonson siblings feared being sold south to work in the fields as shown in this 1858 wood engraving of cotton picking on a Georgia plantation.

  All of the enslaved Edmonson children had discussed with their parents the possibility of running away. They faced difficult choices: If they stayed, they risked being sold south at their owner’s convenience. If they ran away and were caught, they faced the likelihood that they would be sold to harsher owners in the South.

  While she had not experienced such hardships herself, Emily had seen coffles of slaves shuffling down the streets of the city, men and women walking with shackles around their ankles and handcuffs on their wrists, paired together and linked by long metal chains. These human herds were driven like cattle or swine down Pennsylvania Avenue and the streets of Washington, D.C., chained together so that they could not flee while being moved from one place to another. Most coffles were bound for the Deep South to labor as field slaves on cotton and sugar plantations. Field slaves performed backbreaking work from sunrise to sunset, often under the watchful eye of an overseer with a bullwhip; house slaves spent their days cooking and cleaning and watching children.

  The only option Emily and her enslaved brothers and sisters saw to ensure their freedom and safety was to flee—and to pray that they could avoid getting caught. When the Edmonson family learned of a bold escape planned for a spring night in April, they decided to take the chance. A lifetime of freedom was worth the risk of capture, they reasoned.

  A woman outside a slave pen in Alexandria, Virginia. Her attire—a long skirt or dress made of an inexpensive, coarse fabric known as “slave cloth”—was typical of enslaved women in the mid-19th century.

  TWO

  Escape: April 15, 1848

  EMILY EDMONSON WAITED in darkness. Some time near 9 p.m. she heard a handful of dirt scatter across her bedroom window. That was it: the signal.

  She peeked outside and saw her older brother Samuel looking up from the shadows. She grabbed a small bag, snuffed out the candle by her bed, and tiptoed through the silent house. She slipped out the back door, leaving the house for the last time.

  Emily walked along the dark streets, her brother by her side. She wore a plain, ankle-length dress with a wool shawl wrapped around her shoulders to protect against the chill. She had pulled her hair into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. Nothing about her appearance drew attention, but still her heart pounded, fast and steady.

  When they were out of ear
shot, she asked Samuel, “What will Mother think?”

  “Don’t stop to think of her,” Samuel said, not slowing his pace. “She would rather we’d be free than to spend time to talk about her.”

  Emily hurried to keep up. He was right. Of course he was right. Samuel was 21, a grown man, and she trusted him to keep her safe, as safe as possible. This was what Mother wanted; this was what they all wanted—to be free.

  Emily and Samuel walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the north entrance to the Executive Mansion, the building later renamed the White House. Horse-drawn carriages passed them on the unpaved street, and they kept on, heads down to avoid notice. They walked quickly, but not so fast that they appeared hurried or guilty; they preferred not to be noticed at all.

  The dotted line represents the probable route Emily, Mary, and Samuel Edmonson took to get to the Pearl.

  They kept a steady pace, block after block, until they approached the house at the intersection of Thirteenth and G Streets where their sister Mary worked. Emily could see her older sister standing at an upstairs window, waiting and watching for them. Mary’s silhouette disappeared, and a moment later she stepped barefoot out the door. She slipped on her shoes and joined Emily and Samuel.

  The three runaways made a quick stop at a bakery on F Street. Inside, Emily inhaled the yeasty, sweet aroma of freshly baked bread. A friend on the late shift sold Samuel five dozen rolls—no questions asked; then they continued on their way. Many in the black community knew about the plan, but they knew not to talk about it in public: They didn’t want to risk being overheard.

  A drizzly rain began to fall by the time Emily, Samuel, and Mary passed near the homes of slave trader Joseph Gannon and William H. Williams, a slave trader who ran one of the most fearsome slave pens in Washington, D.C. Williams’s house looked like an ordinary residence, except for the high brick wall that surrounded the backyard. That wall hid the truth, a reality that genteel white residents of the nation’s capital didn’t want to see and enslaved people didn’t want to be reminded of. Behind that wall, the yard was lined with prison cells, shackles, whips, and, of course, men, women, and children held in bondage to be sold as slaves. Emily knew that if she and her siblings were caught trying to escape, they could easily end up in a slave pen just like that.