Passenger on the Pearl

by Winifred Conkling

  In the morning, ten o’clock came—and went—without violence. The press remained intact and Bailey published the regular weekly edition of the National Era. In it he described the attacks against him, calling them an outrage against freedom. He also denied any involvement in the escape on the Pearl and pledged that he would never “take part in any movement that would involve treachery of any kind.”

  Other newspapers also called for an end to the violence. On April 20, 1848, the board of aldermen and Auxiliary Guard published handbills promoting peace and stating that “events have transpired within the last few days deeply affecting the peace and character of our community.” The notices warned that “fearful acts of lawless and irresponsible violence can only aggregate the evil.”

  Whether the crowds found the arguments persuasive or they lost interest in the cause can’t be known, but after three days of turmoil and tension, the city grew quiet again.

  SEVEN

  Sold

  AFTER A RESTLESS night in jail, Emily, Mary, and the other runaways were taken downstairs. The justices of the peace called the prisoners forward one by one so that they could be identified by their owners and reclaimed. Some of the runaways stared at the floor in submission; others looked at their captors with contempt. Some wept; others stood silent, resigned to their future and too physically and emotionally exhausted to protest.

  During the proceedings, Emily listened as one female slave who tried to run away with her child was given the chance to repent and return to her owner rather than risk being sold south. She refused. When a newspaper reporter covering the event asked the woman why she had rejected her owner’s offer, she said: “Have I not the same right to my freedom that you have, and could you have neglected a chance of gaining it had you been a slave?”

  Moments later, another woman stepped forward when she heard her name called and said: “Here I am, sir, once free, again a slave.”

  Emily recognized Valdenar, the man who managed Culver’s business affairs. When their names were called by the judge, Emily and the other Edmonson runaways stepped forward. As they passed the two white captains, one of the girls (probably Mary) said: “God bless you, sirs. You did all you could. It is not your fault that we are not free.”

  Valdenar did not take the Edmonsons with him. Instead, he went outside the jail to speak with the slave dealers who had come to negotiate with owners who were willing to sell their runaways at a discount rather than take the chance that they would escape again. How much could he get if he sold all six of the Edmonsons on the spot?

  Acting on behalf of the family, John Brent, Elizabeth’s husband, came down to the jail and asked Valdenar what it would cost to buy his family’s freedom. Brent explained to Valdenar that he did not have all the money he needed on hand, but he begged the agent to give him time to raise the necessary funds from sympathetic family and friends.

  The cost to buy six slaves was enormous. Strong, able-bodied men and youthful, attractive women—especially those like Emily and Mary with pale complexions—routinely sold for $800 to $1,000 apiece, sometimes more. Paul Edmonson, father of the runaways, was freed when his owner died and emancipated him in her will, and he worked to save money to buy a 40-acre farm in Montgomery County. He grew oats, corn, and potatoes; he also owned several cows, pigs, and horses. If he sold everything he had, the farm and everything on it, he would not have enough money to buy back a single one of his children.

  Valdenar considered the offer and told Brent that he could have one day, 24 hours, to raise a good-faith deposit. Brent hurried away, grateful for the chance to ransom his family but daunted by the task that lay ahead.

  The following morning, Brent went to Valdenar’s home to negotiate a final price. Instead of naming a figure, Valdenar told Brent that he had already sold the six Edmonson siblings to Bruin & Hill, slave dealers from Alexandria and Baltimore, for $4,500.

  It would do no good for Brent to protest; the sale had been completed. Now that a slave dealer was involved, the price would be even higher, making it much more difficult to ransom them. How could he ever raise enough money to buy their freedom?

  Although the cause seemed hopeless, Brent went to Alexandria, Virginia, to beg the slave trader, 39-year-old Joseph Bruin, to let him buy back his wife’s brothers and sisters. Bruin refused to consider selling them, explaining that he had had his eyes on the family for years and could get twice what he had paid for them in the New Orleans market. Brent’s pleading had no impact on Bruin. Hopeless and distraught, Brent had to leave, knowing he might never see Emily and the other runaway members of his family again.

  INTO THE NIGHT

  Back at the jail, Emily watched in anguish as, all around her, families were being destroyed, divided, and sold apart: Children were torn from their parents, wives from their husbands, brothers from their sisters.

  Emily and Mary returned to their jail cell, uncertain of their fate. Emily could not imagine being forced to go on without her family, especially her beloved sister. She tried to settle in for the night, turning and shifting position until she made herself as comfortable as possible on the stone floor. She heard Mary breathing next to her, slow and steady. Not much later, one of the jailers appeared outside the cell and told the girls to get up and follow him. It was past ten o’clock. Why would they be asked to move in the middle of the night?

  Emily looked at Mary. She could not help but hope that members of their family had been able to come up with the money necessary to buy their freedom. Were they being sent home to their mother’s house, no longer enslaved but free?

  This broadside was produced as part of a petition campaign to convince Congress to outlaw slavery in the nation’s capital. The text and images portray the horrors and injustice of slavery. The text notes that on February 8, 1836, the House of Representatives rejected the petition to abolish slavery in Washington, D.C., by a vote of 163 to 47.

  Trying not to wake the others resting in their cells, Emily and Mary went down the stone staircase to the main level of the jail. Their hopes of liberty were lost as soon as they saw their four brothers, their wrists bound by handcuffs.

  Outside the jail, they were loaded into a carriage and taken through the streets of the sleeping city, across the bridge to Alexandria, Virginia. The horses slowed and the carriage stopped at 1707 Duke Street. From the road, the building looked like a comfortable Federal-style brick home, but the high walls around the yard revealed the truth: They had arrived at a slave pen.

  CAPTIVE AT BRUIN & HILL

  Once they were in the backyard, Emily and Mary were separated from their brothers and taken to a large, dark cell without a bed or blanket. Emily could hear the sounds of the night—sleeping, snoring, stirring in the darkness—but she was unsure how many other people were held in the surrounding cells. Emily tried to keep quiet and settle down for the few hours of quiet before morning; she was exhausted and afraid, and she knew it would do no good to make noise now.

  In the morning, Emily saw her brothers eating breakfast and learned that the men were kept together in a lower-level cell. She and Mary were assigned the unpleasant jobs of dumping and cleaning out the chamber pots and doing the laundry for the 13 men also held at Bruin & Hill.

  She learned that Bruin had said that he would not sell any of the Edmonsons, but it was understood that he would do so if enough money was offered. Time was the enemy: Family and friends were collecting money for the girls’ ransom, but where would they find the nearly $5,000 needed to prevent a trip to the New Orleans market?

  The 1861 photograph shows a slave pen in Alexandria, Virginia, similar to Bruin & Hill.

  Samuel wept and apologized to his sisters, begging them to forgive him for leading them into trouble. He said that he would gladly die for them, if that would save them from the fate he feared. Emily tried to reassure her brother and put his heart at peace, but there was nothing any of them could do but wait and pray.

  As the days wore on, Bruin moved Emily and Mary inside hi
s house to work as housekeepers and babysitters. Bruin told Emily that he admired her family; they stood tall, spoke gently, and enjoyed a confidence exhibited by few others in his pen. They were poised, proud, and pious. Bruin observed that they had clearly been raised in a home that promoted strong moral and religious values.

  Although he was a slave trader, Bruin made an effort to present himself as an honorable and upstanding businessman and gentleman, even to the men and women who were considered his property. Bruin waited days and then weeks to see if the Edmonson family could raise the money necessary for their ransom. If they did, he could avoid the expense and risk of sending them south. Profits to be made selling slaves were higher in the South, but so was the risk of losing his valuable property to disease.

  The longer the Edmonsons stayed in Virginia, the less likely it was that they would be sent south. In late May, the slave-trading “season” in New Orleans ended, because traders didn’t want to expose their property to yellow fever and other infectious diseases, which were widespread in the hot, mosquito-filled summer months. By late April, with the end of the slave-selling season fast approaching, Bruin wanted to sell the Edmonsons quickly, either to the family or to the highest bidder in the South.

  Bruin had met with Paul Edmonson, but Paul was unable to come up with the money to ransom his children. They were out of time.

  Since the family had not been able to come up with any money, Bruin made up his mind: As soon as possible he would send the six Edmonson runaways, along with about 40 other enslaved people, by steamship to Baltimore, where they would catch a second ship to New Orleans.

  What Happened to Judson Diggs?

  In the days that followed the capture of the Pearl, the families of the runaways tried to figure out how the plot had been discovered. No one knows how Judson Diggs’s betrayal was revealed, but members of the black community blamed him for the failed plan. Diggs was one of them—he knew the sting of slavery and the satisfaction of finding freedom—so many considered his act of denying liberty to others to be unforgivable.

  Taking the law into their own hands, a group of young black men sought revenge by pulling Diggs from his carriage, beating him up, and throwing him into a stream that ran along the north side of the old John Wesley Church in Washington, D.C. Diggs survived and fully recovered from his physical injuries. He was considered an outcast—“despised and avoided”—until he died in his late sixties.

  EIGHT

  Baltimore

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED in Baltimore, Emily, Mary, and about a dozen other enslaved people walked from the steamboat landing to 11 Camden Street, a slave pen run by Joseph S. Donovan, a partner of Bruin & Hill. At first, Emily found the slave trader’s unapologetically crass and vulgar language startling, but she did her best not to listen to his profanity or obscene and insulting remarks, especially those targeting the female slaves.

  Emily forced herself to tolerate his rudeness, but when he forbade the women to pray together, she and Mary decided to disobey. They began waking up very early in the morning so that they could meet with four or five other women and worship without interruption. The girls were devout Methodists; their faith defined who they were and they refused to abandon their religion to appease a godless slave trader.

  Other women joined in their prayer circle, including one known as Aunt Rachel, a middle-aged woman with a strong faith who had been sold away from her husband. Emily’s heart ached when she heard Aunt Rachel tell how her poor husband often used to come to the prison and beg the trader to sell her to his owners, who he thought were willing to purchase her, if the price was not too high. The trader repeatedly ran him off the lot with brutal threats and curses.

  Emily longed for her parents and family back in Washington; she understood Aunt Rachel’s sorrow. Most enslaved people knew that sorrow, either from experience or from the threat of losing a loved one. Emily prayed for Aunt Rachel to be reunited with her husband and for their ultimate freedom. That was all she could do, and she would not allow a vicious slave trader to stop her from making her appeal to God.

  Of course, they prayed for their ransom, but this prayer seemed to go unanswered. Emily and her siblings were told to pack their things and prepare to leave for New Orleans. The day before they were to sail out of Baltimore Harbor, they finally received word that a messenger would arrive on the morning train, ready to negotiate with the slave trader for the purchase of the family. All night, Emily dreamed that she was just hours away from freedom. She imagined that the messenger would arrive, cash in hand, ready to take them home to Washington as free women.

  In the morning, Joseph Donovan forced Emily and the others to march down to the wharf. They begged for more time: Their representative was on his way, but his train would not arrive for another hour.

  The slave trader felt he had waited long enough. Apparently unconcerned about the Edmonsons’ plight, he had the crew of the Union continue to get ready for their departure. Once the Edmonsons boarded the ship, a two-masted, square-rigged brig, there was little chance that they would ever return or see their family again.

  LAST-MINUTE NEGOTIATIONS

  Emily waited aboard the Union, unaware that on shore the train from Washington had arrived. William Chaplin, a well-dressed, 52-year-old Harvard-educated abolitionist, arrived at the slave pen as a representative of the Edmonson family. Donovan soon learned that Chaplin had with him only $900, a great deal of money, but not nearly enough to buy all six family members. Chaplin wanted to use the cash—donated by a grandson of John Jacob Astor, a German-American businessman who had made a fortune in the fur trade—as a down payment on all six of the Edmonsons, but the slave trader refused.

  Instead, after some discussion, Donovan said that he would consider selling one of the men, but he refused to sell the girls at any price. Chaplin pressed for a more advantageous arrangement, but ultimately he agreed to buy Richard Edmonson, whose wife and children were said to be suffering without him. Chaplin handed over the $900 in exchange for the paperwork granting Richard his freedom.

  By the time they had finished their business, the inspector of the Port of Baltimore had already checked over the Manifest of Negroes, Mulattos, and Persons of Color. In that document, Mary was listed as 17 and Emily as 15; their ages were increased to make them more desirable to men in the New Orleans market. The Union had pulled away from the wharf. The slave trader refused to call back the ship to allow Richard to disembark. Even though he was a free man, Richard would have to sail to New Orleans, then sail back to Washington to rejoin his family at some future date. When the Union drifted out of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Richard had no idea that he was, in fact, free.

  This manifest is similar to the Manifest of Negroes, Mulattos, and Persons of Color used to document the enslaved people aboard the Union.

  What Happened to the Other Fugitives of the Pearl?

  Hope Slatter, a slave trader from Baltimore, bought most of the fugitives from the Pearl. At sunset on the Friday after the escape, Slatter marched nearly 50 people through the streets of Washington, D.C., to the Baltimore and Ohio railroad depot, where they were to be sent to the southern slave market. The following letter, published in several northern newspapers, provides an eyewitness account of the events that evening:

  Washington, April 22, 1848

  Last evening, as I was passing the railroad depot, I saw a large number of colored people gathered round one of the cars, and from manifestations of grief among some of them, I was induced to draw near and ascertain the cause of it. I found in the car towards which they were so eagerly gazing about fifty color [sic] people, some of whom were nearly as white as myself. … About half of them were females, a few of whom had but a slight tinge of African blood in their veins, and were finely formed and beautiful. The men were ironed together, and the whole group looked sad and dejected. At each end of the car stood two ruffianly-looking personages, with large canes in their hands, and, if their countenances were an index of their hearts, they were the
very impersonation of hardened villainy itself.

  In the middle of the car stood the notorious slave dealer of Baltimore, Slatter, who … had purchased the men and women around him and was taking his departure for Georgia. While observing this old, gray-headed villain—this dealer in the bodies and souls of men—the chaplain of the Senate [Chaplain Henry Slicer] entered the car and took his brother Slatter by the hand, chatted with him for some time and seemed to view the heart-rending scene before him with as little concern as we should look upon cattle.…

  Some of the colored people outside, as well as in the car, were weeping most bitterly. I learned that many families were separated. Wives were there to take leave of their husbands, and husbands of their wives, children of their parents, brothers and sisters shaking hands perhaps for the last time, friends parting with friends, and the tenderest ties of humanity sundered at the single bid of the inhuman slave broker before them. A husband, in the meridian of life, begged to see the partner of his bosom. He protested that she was free—that she had free papers and was torn from him and shut up in the jail. He clambered up to one of the windows of the car to see his wife, and, as she was reaching forward her hand to him, the black-hearted villain, Slatter, ordered him down. He did not obey. The husband and wife, with tears streaming down their cheeks, besought him to let them converse for a moment.

  But no! A monster more hideous, hardened and savage, than the blackest spirit of the pit, knocked them down from the car and ordered him away. The bystanders could hardly restrain themselves from laying violent hands upon the brutes. This is but a faint description of that scene, which took place within a few rods of the capitol, under enactments recognized by Congress. O! what a revolting scene to a feeling heart.