Passenger on the Pearl

by Winifred Conkling

  It had to be well past 9 p.m. by now, dangerously close to the “colored curfew.” Keep moving, keep moving. Emily listened for the sound of the bell at the Perseverance Fire Company signaling the hour. When the ten o’clock bell rang, all black people—both free and enslaved—had to be off the streets or they could be arrested, fined, and flogged or beaten.

  They walked a little faster, marching down Seventh Street and across the Washington City Canal, which smelled of rotting fish and discarded produce. They hurried on in the direction of the Potomac River, then turned east on a secluded path toward White House Wharf, named for the single white house perched on the bluff overlooking the river. The dampness of the grass soaked her feet and weighed down the hem of her skirt as Emily crossed a field. As she approached the landing down by the river, she first saw two lights marking the bow and stern of a ship. Eventually, the fog and mist thinned enough for her to make out the shape of a two-masted vessel. That was it, her passage to freedom: the Pearl.

  Discrimination: A Matter of Law

  If you were black and you lived in the nation’s capital in 1848, you had more to worry about than simply a 10 p.m. curfew. A group of regulations known as the Black Code established a legal system of discrimination against black residents. The law, spelled out in The Black Code of the District of Columbia, stated that among other infractions, it was illegal for blacks, whether free or enslaved, to vote, hold elective office, testify against whites in court, serve on juries, own firearms, bathe in certain waters, stay out past 10 p.m., hold dances, or fly kites.

  In addition, blacks were considered enslaved unless they could document their free status. In an absurd miscarriage of justice, some free black people who did not have their papers when they were stopped were falsely accused of being slaves and imprisoned because they could not prove their status. They were then responsible for paying their jail fees; if they could not afford to pay, they were sold as slaves. One of the most notorious examples of this practice was the capture of Solomon Northup, a free man who was sold into slavery because he did not have his free papers with him. His story was documented in his 1853 autobiography, Twelve Years a Slave.

  Black people who could not present documentation of their free status could be imprisoned in slave pens such as this one in Alexandria, Virginia, shown in a photo from the early 1860s.

  Escape on the Pearl

  When the Edmonsons boarded the Pearl, they were unaware that they were about to take part in the largest and most ambitious slave escape attempt in United States history. They knew only the basic plan: The Pearl was to sail about 225 miles down the Potomac River and up the Chesapeake Bay to Frenchtown Wharf, Maryland. This was one of the few ports deep enough for a ship of that size to dock. After the journey on the water, which was expected to take three to five days, depending on the weather, the fugitives planned to travel to Philadelphia, most likely making the 16-mile journey along the New Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike on foot or in carriages.

  The original plan had been modest in scale, but the abolitionist organizers allowed the plot to expand, ultimately inviting 77 runaways to take part. They hoped that the size and scope of the escape would draw nationwide attention to the debate over slavery in the nation’s capital. At the time, the existence of slavery was a matter left to the states, but Washington, D.C., was different. Congress had the authority to abolish slavery in the District, if it chose to do so. The presence of slavery in the District of Columbia had become the center of an increasingly serious nationwide conflict between abolitionists and advocates of slavery.

  BOARDING THE PEARL

  Emily paused at the edge of the wharf, aware that when she boarded the boat she was going to change her life in ways she could not predict: She had never disobeyed her owner’s wishes before; she had never broken the law before; she had never done anything so dangerous before. She drew a deep breath and moved forward.

  On board, a nervous young white man flashed a lantern in Emily’s face and looked her over, head to toe. Without speaking, he opened the hatch, permitting Emily and her siblings to go below deck. She glanced back toward the city, toward the life she was leaving behind, and she followed her sister and brother down a wooden ladder to the hold below.

  Two small lanterns illuminated the crowded space inside the belly of the ship, leaving much of the cabin in darkness. Everywhere Emily looked she saw the anxious faces of neighbors and friends, people she knew well and some she did not recognize at all. Young and old, men, women, and children, all jammed into the small, low-ceilinged space. At five feet, two inches tall, Emily could stand straight, but the taller runaways had to crouch, since the hold had less than six feet of headroom.

  A moment later, Emily saw three of her other brothers—Ephraim, Richard, and John—who waved from the back of the boat. Emily followed Samuel and Mary through the crowd, toward a small cleared space where her older brothers had placed two boxes for their sisters to sit so that they might get a little extra fresh air from the two portholes. Emily greeted her brothers and then took a seat.

  There was no turning back: They were fugitives now.

  Captain Drayton’s Change of Heart

  As a young man, Daniel Drayton had little sympathy for slaves. Enslaved people often asked him, as the captain of a small bay craft, if he would help them make their way to freedom by allowing them to board his ship as stowaways. For years, Drayton ignored their pleas. “At that time, I had regarded the negroes as only fit to be slaves,” Drayton wrote in his 1853 memoir.

  But Drayton’s opinions about slavery changed after he converted to Christianity. “I no longer considered myself as living for myself alone,” he wrote. “I regarded myself as bound to do unto others as I would that they should do to me. … Why had not these black people, so anxious to escape from their masters, as good a right to their liberty as I had to mine?”

  Drayton first helped with a slave escape in 1847, a year before his experience with the Pearl. He docked a ship loaded with oysters at the Seventh Street Wharf in the District of Columbia. Not long after Drayton arrived, a free black man approached him and offered to pay him to smuggle his wife and five children to the North. The desperate man explained that his wife had already paid for her freedom but her owner refused to release her. If Drayton didn’t help him, slave traders would send the man’s family south and he would likely never see them again.

  Drayton sympathized with the family’s situation. He hid the woman and her five children and a niece onboard his ship and took them to the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay, where the woman’s husband met them and escorted them to freedom in Pennsylvania, a state that had outlawed slavery. Pleased with the outcome of the first escape, Drayton agreed to repeat the plan, this time on a boat called the Pearl.

  THREE

  Against the Tide

  JUDSON DIGGS, A free man of color, made his living driving passengers in his carriage. He pulled the reins and his mule, Caesar, halted down by the water just east of the Seventh Street Wharf. Diggs climbed down from the driver’s seat, then helped his two female passengers exit the carriage with their bundles.

  Diggs almost certainly knew that his passengers were runaway slaves. Many people in the black community had heard whispers about arrangements being made for a large-scale escape. When they were unloaded at the wharf, he asked the women for his fare: 25 cents.

  The women apologized, explaining that they did not have the money, but they promised to pay him when they reached freedom.

  Diggs may have sympathized with their desire for freedom, but he did not give free rides and he did not like feeling duped. Diggs did not expect to ever receive payment. Angry, he left the women at the wharf, turned toward the city, and urged his mule back up the wet and muddy path.

  Sometime after ten o’clock, Emily heard the sound of shuffling feet and the noise of heavy ropes and chains dragging and dropping on the deck above. Not much later, the boat rocked gently and the hull creaked and groaned as the ship drifted fr
om the wharf to the middle of the Potomac River. The Pearl had eased its way only about a half mile downriver when it stalled completely. Emily stared out of the small porthole, but the scenery did not change. Where was the wind?

  This horse-drawn wagon may have been similar to the one used by Judson Diggs in 1848.

  Those below deck may have been able to hear the anchor being thrown overboard and splashing into the water. With so little wind to combat the tide, the ship needed to anchor to avoid being pushed back up the river toward Washington. At that point, they were trapped midstream, waiting for the winds to stir and the tides to change. The water was dead calm, stagnant. If the wind didn’t pick up soon, the ship would be a helpless target for slave owners eager to recapture and reclaim their runaways.

  Throughout the night, those on board prayed for stronger winds to complete their escape or for compassion from their captors if they made it no farther. After dawn on Sunday morning, the sun began to dissolve the fog and stir the air. They heard chains rattling on the deck as someone raised the anchor and the ship began to drift. A middle-aged white man with a thin, weathered face and long, wavy hair uncovered the hatches, allowing a rush of fresh air to flood the cabin below deck. The man distributed bread and removed the bulkhead between the hold and the cabin so that those who wanted to could get into the cabin to cook.

  At last, the wind began to grow stronger and the boat hurried along, trying to make up for lost time. The sound of water sloshing against the hull and the bounce of the ship in the waves reassured those on board that they were, at last, on their way.

  SUNDAY WORSHIP

  No one knows what scripture was read or what prayers were shared aloud, but it is known that the runaways staged an impromptu church service in the dark cabin below deck on Sunday morning. Several people rummaged through their belongings and pulled out the Bibles that they had brought with them, and they took turns reading aloud. At home, Emily and Mary had worshiped regularly at the Asbury Methodist Church on the corner of Eleventh and K Streets, so they would have found comfort in the familiar words and affirming messages. Emily remained frightened and expected the journey to freedom to be difficult, but she believed the promise that salvation would follow their time of trial. Mary, always poised and pious, was a source of strength with her faith and steadfast belief in the Divine. Mary may have been only 15 years old, but sitting next to her made Emily feel safer.

  Emily listened intently. When someone near her held out the Bible and offered to pass it to her for a turn at reading, Emily smiled and shook her head. She and Mary could neither take a turn reading aloud nor follow the words in the text because neither of them knew how to read. Instead, Emily listened and prayed—for safe passage, for steady winds, for family left behind, for freedom. She felt grateful that she and her brothers and sister and all those on board had made it through their first night as fugitives.

  During the service, Emily may have thought about her mother and the family she had left behind. On the afternoon of their escape, Emily, Mary, and Samuel had visited their parents and older sisters. When it was time to say good-bye, Emily’s mother had held each of her children and said, as she did each time they parted, “Be good children and the blessed Lord will take care of you.” Her mother’s final words were the same she always said, but those words now took on special meaning.

  All around her, voices rose up, singing familiar hymns. Emily added her voice to Mary’s and the others’, letting the words and melodies fill the stale, dark cabin and transform it into a holy place.

  The blessed Lord will take care of you. Please, yes, please.

  Slavery and Literacy

  Laws against educating enslaved people are older than the Declaration of Independence. As far back as 1740, the South Carolina General Assembly had enacted a law that made it illegal to teach someone in bondage to write. Writing was considered a sign of status and deemed unnecessary for black Americans, free or enslaved. Reading, on the other hand, was encouraged during the colonial period, so that slaves could become familiar with the Bible.

  The literacy laws that made it illegal for slaves to both read and write came almost 100 years later, in reaction to Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion, in which he and his supporters killed 60 white people while attempting to launch a revolution against slavery. After that event, slave owners feared that their slaves would learn to read and write passes (letters of permission for travel) and antislavery materials and that with these skills they could more easily prepare an organized uprising.

  Despite the laws, some enslaved people became literate. Instruction was done in secret because in the South, those who were caught teaching black people to read could be fined, beaten, or imprisoned. Slaves learning to read were often beaten, and some had their fingers and toes amputated. Still, reading offered intellectual freedom, and for many, the desire to read and write overshadowed the risks of punishment.

  The watercolor “Black man reading newspaper by candlelight” was painted in 1863 by Henry Louis Stephens. The headline of the newspaper he is reading says, “Presidential Proclamation, Slavery.”

  FOUR

  Chasing the Pearl

  ON SUNDAY, APRIL 16, 1848, in Washington, D.C., dozens of white families woke up to find that their morning fires had not been lit, their livestock had not been fed, and their breakfast had not been prepared. Where were their slaves?

  They soon learned that other owners’ slaves were missing, too. Joseph Downing discovered that his slave, John Brooke, was missing; former first lady Dolley Madison’s slave Mary Stewart could not be found; John Stull learned that his slave, Mary Ann, and two of her sons were gone. During the course of the morning, word of the escapes traveled from house to house; the total number of known missing slaves grew by the hour. Runaway slaves were fairly common, but they usually fled alone or in pairs or small family groups. Could scores of enslaved people have been so bold and reckless as to escape together?

  There was no time to waste. Major Hampton C. Williams, justice of the peace, rang the church and fire bells, calling the men in the surrounding neighborhoods into action. Within the hour, Williams and a half dozen other men had formed a search party, mounted their horses, and started toward the roads leading north out of the city, the most common escape routes used by fleeing slaves.

  Williams slowed his horse when, on the outskirts of town, he encountered Judson Diggs, the carriage driver who had been cheated out of his 25-cent fare the night before. He asked Diggs what he knew about the escape.

  Diggs could have said he knew nothing. He could have encouraged the posse to explore the roads out of town or steered them onto another false path. Instead, Diggs told Williams that he and his men were headed the wrong way and to look down at the Seventh Street Wharf.

  Williams sized up his informant: Could Diggs be trusted? Williams hadn’t considered an escape on the water, and he wasn’t confident about the accuracy of the information.

  With no time to waste, Williams divided the search party, and one group continued toward the main roads while he and several others circled back toward the wharf. Williams went down to the water and learned that a schooner known as the Pearl had been docked there but left in the middle of the night. Williams knew that Diggs had been telling the truth.

  One of the men in the posse, Francis Dodge Jr., offered the use of his steamboat so that they could continue the search on the water. Dodge, a wealthy tobacco trader from Georgetown, owned three of the runaway slaves. By noon, Williams, Dodge, and about 30 other men set out on Dodge’s steamboat, the Salem.

  Williams and his men knew that the Pearl had a big head start, but they didn’t know how far ahead the runaways might be. The weather had turned windy, which made sea travel unsafe, but they had no choice except to ignore the approaching storm. When they met a passenger steamboat making its way north up the Potomac River, Samuel Baker, the captain of the Salem, flagged down the boat and asked the captain if he had seen a schooner headed down the Potomac toward the Che
sapeake Bay. He learned that the Pearl wasn’t far ahead.

  The Edmonsons boarded the Pearl, a ship that resembled this two-masted schooner. These bay craft boats transported coal, wood, and other cargo in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

  ONE STEP AHEAD

  By Sunday afternoon, the wind kicked up another notch. The Pearl began to rock and sway—back and forth, back and forth—the rhythm occasionally broken by the jolt of an unexpected wave. Emily’s stomach soured and she felt cold sweat develop across her brow. Her queasy stomach left her shaky and faint. She tried to breathe steadily to calm her stomach, but the damp, stale air below deck offered no relief. Mary could not console her because she, too, suffered from seasickness.

  The girls wanted to go up on deck for a breath of fresh air, but they had to wait until after sundown so that they would not be seen by passing boats. When it was finally dark enough to climb on deck, Emily was so weak from hours of illness that she could not lift herself, so her brothers had to carry her. Emily was not as tall and slender as her sister, but her brothers did not struggle to move either one of them. Once on deck, Emily breathed the fresh air and let the wind blow across her face until she began to feel like herself again.

  By nightfall, the wind had gone from gusty to gale force in strength. The Pearl creaked and moaned as the waves thrashed it back and forth. Could the boat survive a journey on the rough waters of the Chesapeake Bay?

  On the deck, two men quarreled as the wind and rain battered the Pearl. One argued that they should change the route and travel to Delaware by way of the outside passage in the Atlantic Ocean; the other insisted that the ship was not seaworthy and no one would ever survive the journey. At that point, some on board may have asked themselves whether it would be worse to drown at sea or return to a brutal beating and the ongoing cruelty of slavery.