Passenger on the Pearl Read online

  They finally settled the argument and decided to anchor the Pearl in Cornfield Harbor, a deepwater shelter used by ships facing dangerous winds. They would go on when the winds calmed, but until then, all they could do was rest and wait out the storm.

  IN THE SHADOWS

  The Salem sped through the night, hoping to capture the Pearl before it entered the bay, where it would be much more difficult to find. Wind and waves rocked the steamship, which powered on through the storm.

  Just after midnight, the Salem reached the mouth of the Potomac River, near the Chesapeake Bay. The winds whipped around the ship and limited visibility. Their 140-mile journey had ended; they could go no farther because Dodge’s steamship had not been insured for travel on the more tumultuous open waters of the bay.

  The Slave Ship, painted by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 –1851), shows a schooner caught in a violent storm. The Pearl was not built to withstand the intense conditions of open waters in a storm.

  Williams prepared to turn back, assuming he had lost the chase. Unwilling to accept defeat, the crew continued to scan the darkness, searching for signs of the Pearl.

  One of the men noticed something unusual near the shoreline. Was it real or a figment of his wishful thinking? The crew studied the shadows in the marshes of Cornfield Harbor and one by one they made out a shape in the darkness, a shape that looked quite a bit like the silhouette of the missing schooner.

  The Pearl escaped down the Potomac River. The ship was captured at Point Lookout before it was able to travel north into the Chesapeake Bay.

  FIVE

  Capture

  EMILY WOKE FROM a fitful sleep when she heard the whistle and hiss of a steamboat blowing off air nearby. Startled, she sat up and listened. Was that noise a trick of the wind? Or had they been discovered? She strained to hear more. A moment later, footsteps thundered on the deck above them and muffled voices mixed with the noise of the pummeling rain. No! It couldn’t be. They had been free for scarcely 24 hours.

  The runaways must have turned to one another, eyes wide, unsure of what to do. Mothers put their arms around their children and held them close. Some of the men searched for objects that could be used in self-defense, if necessary, but resistance would be futile; they had no guns, no knives, no weapons of any kind.

  Emily and Mary joined their brothers and a group of other young fugitives to consider the essential question: Should they fight or surrender peacefully?

  Samuel searched the cargo hold for something—anything—that he could use as a weapon. He found nothing suitable. He understood that he would be defeated, but the thought of being put in chains and having his sisters sent to New Orleans was too much to accept without a fight.

  Emily and Richard urged Samuel to surrender peacefully to avoid bloodshed. If they fought, they would die. A moment later, an angry white man lifted the hatch and looked down at the frightened faces of the fugitives below. Emily stared up at him, unsure what to do. The cabin buzzed with frenzy and fright. Children cried and clung to their mothers’ skirts; some of the women wailed, some called out for mercy, and some lowered their heads in silent defeat.

  Emily watched Richard and Samuel and several of the other men bound up the stairs and onto the deck of the ship without warning. In a loud voice, Richard said, “Do yourselves no harm, gentlemen, for we are here!”

  Rather than reassure the nervous posse, the sudden appearance of the muscular young runaways startled their captors. Were the men surrendering or about to put up a fight? In the rain and dim lantern light, the situation became confusing. While Emily may not have been able to discern clearly what was happening in the chaos on deck, she may have been able to see a jittery member of the posse try to throw a punch in Samuel’s direction. Luckily for Samuel, at that moment, a wave crashed into the boat and the Pearl lurched, causing the blow to glance off the side of Samuel’s head and strike someone else in the back.

  Above the noise of the scuffle that followed, Emily heard the voice of the captain of the Pearl, urging everyone to stay calm. He pointed out that the slaves were not resisting, so there was no need for violence. No doubt the captain’s appeal helped maintain peace and prevent an all-out brawl, which almost certainly would have ended in injury or death for many of the fugitives.

  When order was restored, the four Edmonson brothers and the other male slaves were chained together, wrist to wrist, and moved onto the Salem, where they could be supervised and controlled more easily. Emily and the other women and children remained on the Pearl, locked below deck. They were once again enslaved, their short-lived freedom stolen from them by angry slaveholders intent on revenge.

  SIX

  Back to Washington

  MORNING DAWNED, THE waters calmed, and the Pearl began its voyage back to the nation’s capital, towed behind the steamship Salem. This time their progress proved steady and predictable, leaving the runaways plenty of opportunity to agonize over what would happen when they reached Washington, D.C.

  Just after sunrise the following morning, the Salem arrived at Alexandria, Virginia, where Emily saw a mob of angry citizens gathered on the wharves. When the passengers were in sight of the shore, their captors ordered up on deck the white men who had helped with the escape and many of the male runaways, exhibiting them like trophies after a hunting expedition, the winnings after a day of slave-hunting as sport.

  At the sight of the fugitives, the crowd went wild, yelling and cheering for their captors. If people were this worked up outside the city, what kind of angry mob would be waiting for them in Washington?

  Not long after, the Salem docked at a steamboat wharf on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. The passengers were forced to leave the ships in an orderly procession: first, the three white men, followed by the male slaves chained together, two by two, then the female slaves—many with babies in their arms—followed by the older children. Altogether there were 77 enslaved people: 38 men and older boys, 26 women and older girls, and 13 children.

  Emily paired with Mary, of course. The two Edmonson sisters stood tall and marched toward the city with as much poise and dignity as they could muster. Each wore her long hair parted in the middle and braided into ropes that were twisted into buns. They knew they could not flee, so they trudged steadily forward, their arms around each other’s waist for comfort and support.

  As they made their way up Seventh Street, the crowd of spectators grew denser and more hostile. The runaways were surrounded prey in the sights of a pack of wolves, hungry for revenge. People yelled and taunted the girls as they passed. At one point someone in the mob yelled to Emily: “Aren’t you ashamed to run away and make all this trouble for everybody?”

  “No, sir,” she replied. “We are not and if we had to go through it again, we’d do the same thing.”

  The man turned to the person next to him and said, “Ain’t she got good spunk?”

  Tears streaked the faces of many black people watching the procession, stunned and powerless, no doubt thinking about the harsh treatment that awaited the recaptured runaways. One of the faces in the crowd belonged to their brother-in-law John Brent, who watched the line of fugitives, looking for members of the family. When he saw Emily and her siblings marching toward the jail, Brent fainted; his greatest fear about the escape attempt had come to pass.

  Ahead of Emily, people in the mob jeered and pushed and threatened the prisoners, especially the white men who had helped with the escape. Members of the posse flanked them as human shields, holding back the hostile crowd. Their captors had become their guardians, their only defense against assault from the irate mob.

  This wood engraving titled “Secrets of the prison-house” by Arthur Lumley appeared in Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper in 1861.

  As the prisoners marched, the size of the mob continued to increase. When they passed Joseph Gannon’s slave pen—the same pen they had passed on the first night of their escape—the slave trader, armed with a bowie knife, rushed out, reached a
round the police escorts, and stabbed in the direction of one of the white captains. The blade nicked the captain’s ear, causing blood to run down the man’s neck as he continued to march toward the jail.

  A lawman told the slave trader that the captain was in the hands of the law.

  “Damn the law!” Gannon said. “I have three Negroes and I will give them all for one thrust at this scoundrel!”

  The procession kept moving forward, and he followed, waiting for an opportunity to attack again. Eventually, the would-be attacker fell back in the crowd, but there were plenty of others to yell and wave fists in his place.

  By this time, the crowd had grown to several thousand people. When the prisoners had almost reached Pennsylvania Avenue, the mob began to chant: “Lynch them! Lynch them!”

  The lawmen had lost control of the crowd. If the mob moved to hang the accused, nothing could be done to stop them. Not long after, one of the police officers hired a carriage and shoved the white men into it. The mob surrounded the carriage and followed as it made its way toward the jail. The white men were safer in jail than they would have been on the street.

  The Release of Chester English

  While they were being marched toward the Washington City Jail, the captain of the Pearl, Daniel Drayton, urged his captors to release crew member Chester English. English was a young married father, probably in his early twenties, and he had been told nothing about the escape plan. Drayton didn’t want to take English on the journey in the first place, but the captain who owned the boat insisted because he had already hired English as cook and crew, and he wanted to keep him.

  Drayton told English that they would be transporting a load of timber to the nation’s capital. On their way to Washington they did, in fact, stop in Machodock, Virginia, to buy about 20 cords of wood, but that was not the purpose of their journey. On the night of the escape, Drayton said that a number of black people planned to join them for a trip down the bay, and that all English had to do was lift up the hatch and let them enter the hold. English was baffled by the instructions, but he promised to do what he was told. According to Drayton, English never understood that the passengers were escaping; he thought they were going on a pleasure cruise.

  English had not been charged with a crime and it was clear that he was confused about what was happening. When it came time to move Drayton and the other white man into the carriage to get them away from the surrounding mob, one of the police officers released English.

  Once freed, English turned and walked through the crowd, all but unnoticed. He wandered back down to the steamboat wharf, the only landmark he recognized in the city. When he arrived, the steamer Salem was gone.

  Alone in a strange place, English was not sure what to do. Before his voyage on the Pearl, he had never been more than 30 miles from his home in Philadelphia. He approached a man near the wharf and rather than simply asking for help returning home, he told his entire story, including information about helping the runaways on the Pearl. In response, the stranger secured him in a hack and sent him back to the jail. English remained imprisoned there until the trials were held, when charges against him were dropped in exchange for his testimony against Drayton and Edward Sayres, the second captain of the Pearl.

  BEHIND BARS

  Emily and the other runaways kept marching and eventually arrived at the Washington City Jail, more commonly known as the Blue Jug because of the garish shade of blue paint covering the three-story stone building with iron bars on the windows. When they arrived at the jail, most of the fugitives were forced into the cold, damp basement cells, but Emily and Mary were directed to the women’s quarters upstairs. Their cell had no bed or chairs or other furnishings, just a single blanket to protect them from the hard, cold floor, but they found comfort in being together.

  The haunting and mournful voices and cries of the prisoners bounced off the walls. Although they had been enslaved all their lives, until they heard the clang of the cell door lock behind them that day, Emily and Mary had never been caged.

  The Abolitionist Press

  Abolitionists used the press to change public opinion and promote their antislavery agenda. Starting around 1820, abolitionists published a steady stream of newspapers, children’s books, sermons, speeches, broadsides, memoirs of former slaves, and other documents that helped to present their case. In the mid-19th century, more than 40 newspapers promoted the emancipation of slaves, including William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator (1831 – 1865), Frederick Douglass’s North Star (1838 – 1851), and the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1840 – 1870), the official newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

  Showdown at the National Era

  On the day the fugitives from the Pearl marched through Washington, D.C., the mob followed them all the way to the front of the Washington City Jail. After the prisoners were secured inside, the mob continued to grow. Someone suggested that they move several blocks down the street to the office of the National Era, an antislavery newspaper edited by abolitionist Gamaliel Bailey. No one in the crowd had any evidence that the newspaper had anything to do with the escape on the Pearl, but many of the protesters assumed that the press and its editor were at least sympathetic to the cause.

  The mob moved down the street to the newspaper building across from the U.S. Patent Office, on Seventh Street. As the evening wore on, the crowd became increasingly excited and belligerent—louder, bigger, angrier. At one point, someone picked up a stone and hurled it toward the building. Someone else grabbed a brick and broke a window and a door, adding the sound of shattering glass to the din of the night.

  Captain John H. Goddard, a leader in the city’s Auxiliary Guard, tried to calm the crowd, attempting to convince the agitators that they didn’t want to give the sympathizers in the North any more reason to become involved in District business. Someone else in the crowd defended the right of a free press, even an abolitionist press.

  Gamaliel Bailey (1807–1859) used journalism to promote the abolitionist cause. Before editing the National Era, he worked at the Cincinnati Philanthropist, the first antislavery newspaper in the west.

  The mob had reached a pivotal moment—that turning point at which it must decide whether to press on with violence or settle down and act with civility. Suddenly, a strong wind stirred and brought with it an unexpected downpour. The energy shifted; the rain dampened the enthusiasm of the rioters. The crowd cleared around ten o’clock, but not before agreeing to meet again the following night.

  The second night, a crowd of several thousand people, most from Maryland and Virginia rather than the District, gathered once again outside the National Era building, threatening to destroy the press and run its editor, 40-year-old Gamaliel Bailey, out of town. From the steps of the Patent Office, across from the Era, Daniel Radcliffe, a prominent Washington lawyer, tried to convince the members of the crowd to go home, but they grew more agitated. When it became clear that the crowd would not leave without some action, Radcliffe negotiated a compromise in which a committee of 50, five men from each ward in the city plus Georgetown and Tenleytown, agreed to present their case to Bailey.

  Members of the committee assembled outside Bailey’s home, a block away from the Era offices. The newspaper editor opened his door and stood on his front porch to address the crowd. A spokesman for the group tried to convince Bailey to shut down the press voluntarily: “This community is satisfied that the existence of your press among us is endangering the public peace.” He told Bailey that he had until 10 a.m. the following day to close the Era or face the consequences.

  Bailey listened to his critics’ complaints. He could hear the shouting and chanting of the angry crowd a block away. When the members of the committee finished, Bailey addressed the mob: “Let me say to you that I am a peace-man. I have taken no measures to defend my office, my house or myself. I appeal to the good sense and intelligence of the community, and stand upon my rights as an American citizen, looking to the law alone for protection.”

/>   The protesters urged him to reconsider his position: “We advise you to be out of the way! The people think that your press endangers their property and their lives; and they have appointed us to tell you so, and ask you to remove it tomorrow. If you say that you will do so, they will retire satisfied. If you refuse, they say they will tear it down.”

  The discussion continued, but they had reached an impasse.

  Finally, Bailey, whose previous abolitionist press had been destroyed three times by mob violence, said: “I cannot surrender my rights. Were I to die for it, I cannot surrender my rights! Tell those who sent you hither that my press and my house are undefended. They must do as they see proper. I maintain my rights and I make no resistance!”

  This 1859 photograph shows the view from the National Era building, including the front of the U.S. Patent Office Building on Seventh Street and the U.S. Post Office on the right. The angry mob gathered in the open space, and those addressing the crowd stood on the stairs of the Patent Office in front of the pillars.

  Bailey went inside his home and closed the door.

  Outside, the crowd chanted, “Down with the Era!” “Gut the office!”

  The mob retreated and regrouped at the newspaper offices a block away. Once they left, Bailey woke his six young children and moved them to the safety of his next-door neighbor’s house just in case the protesters returned to attack his home and family.

  When the gang arrived at the Era offices, they found that city police had been stationed to guard the building. Rather than challenging the officers, the mob passed a resolution “to pull it down the next day at ten o’clock if the press was not meanwhile removed.”