Pearl Incident - Background

Background

Like the surrounding states of Maryland and Virginia and others to the South, Washington, DC 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 had a major slave market and was a center of the domestic slave trade; with its connection to the Chesapeake Bay by the Potomac River, it was a transit point for slaves being shipped or marched overland from the Upper South to markets or owners in the Deep South. Numerous families in the city held slaves, generally as domestic servants and artisans. Some owners hired out their slaves to work as servants or on the waterfront and in other urban jobs.

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. 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 75 slaves who wanted to be part of the escape.

In 1848 free blacks outnumbered slaves in the District of Columbia by three to one; the community demonstrated in its planning for the escape that it could act in a unified way. They wanted to plan an event that would capture the attention of Congress (which was dominated by representatives from the South because of the three-fifths compromise under the Constitution) and the country to promote an end to slavery in the District of Columbia.

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 had plans to gain such freedom for many slaves. 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 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."

(Note: Patterson was not elected as senator until 1866; in 1848 he was still an attorney in Greeneville, Tennessee.)

Paul Jennings, a former slave of President James Madison, was among the free black organizers of the escape. Among the slaves planning to leave were six siblings of the Edmonson family, and a variety of other families. 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.

The captain Daniel Drayton was from Philadelphia and supported abolition, 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. His only other crew was Chester English, a cook.

"In the darkness of the night seventy-six colored men, women, and children found their way to the schooner." 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.

The slaves included six grown siblings from the family of Paul and Amelia Edmonson; 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.