Pearl incident
The Pearl Incident was the largest recorded escape attempt by slaves in the United States. On April 15, 1848, seventy-six slaves attempted to escape Washington D.C.
People involved
Washington DC allowed the ownership and trading of slaves. One of the people who despised slavery and was desperate for money was Daniel Drayton. He was offered money to transport slaves to freedom. "He encountered Edward Sayres," the pilot of "the Pearl."[1] Once payment was shown, he agreed to participate and prepared to set sail. “In the darkness of the night seventy-six colored men, women, and children found their way to the schooner."[2] On Saturday, April 15, their freedom was at hand thanks to Drayton, Sayres and English, the cook.[1]
Escape attempt and capture
The plan consisted of sailing down the Potomac River, then up Chesapeake Bay to freedom. However, the wind prevented the schooner from going up the bay so they anchored for the night.[1] Their delay gave the slave owners time to realize their slaves were missing and send out a search party.[1] Daniel Drayton effectively explains the logistics of their capture. “A Mr. Dodge, of Georgetown, a wealthy old gentleman, originally from New England, missed three or four slaves from his family, and a small steamboat, of which he was the proprietor, was readily obtained. Thirty-five men, including a son or two of old Dodge, and several of those whose slaves were missing, volunteered to man her; and they set out about Sunday noon.”[3] The boat, the Salem, found the Pearl on Monday morning and took the slaves and men back to Washington DC.[1]
Traitor
Many questions have arisen as to how the armed men knew to sail down river to find the Pearl. Author John H. Paynter describes the traitor very effectively. “Judson Diggs, one of their own people, a man who in all reason might have been expected to sympathize with their effort, took upon himself the role of Judas."[4]
Aftermath in DC
A public outcry erupted, and the mob searched for people to blame. One such man was Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, the publisher of the anti-slavery newspaper, the National Era, who the slave owners suspected of aiding in the Pearl incident. A mob of slave owners almost destroyed the newspaper building.[5] Once the mob dissipated, the slave owners debated how to punish their slaves. They sold all “the seventy-six blacks (men, women, and children) to Georgia and Louisiana agents.”[6]
Trial
Drayton, Sayres, and English were put on trial, with Horace Mann as their main lawyer. Author Richard C. Rohrs and Daniel Drayton successfully explain the court process. The trials commenced the following July, where both Drayton and Sayres were charged. English was released, and after appeals were filed and charges were reduced, Drayton and Sayres were convicted and went to jail due to their inability to pay their fines. After four years in jail, Senator Charles Sumner sent a letter to President Fillmore, asking him to pardon the men. The President agreed to the pardon in 1852.[6][3]
Impact
The event pushed Congress to include, in the Compromise of 1850, “the end of slave traffic, though not of slavery, in the District of Columbia.”[6]
The failed attempt was part of the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.[7]
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e Josephine F. Pacheco, The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 53, 55-58.
- ^ Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital: From its Foundation through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic Act, 2: 1815-1878 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916), 385.
- ^ a b Daniel Drayton, Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months, A Prisoner (For Charity’s Sake) in Washington Jail, (Boston, MA: B. Marsh, 1853; reproduced in Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog, 2003), 13, 29-53, <http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=42157> [2 February 2007].
- ^ John H. Paynter, “The Fugitives of the Pearl (excerpt),” The Journal of Negro History, 1 (July 1916), 4, Reproduced by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc., Howard University, HU ArchivesNet, WorldCom, (2000), <http://www.huarchivesnet.howard.edu/0008huarnet/paynter1.htm> [23 January 2007].
- ^ Constance Mc Laughlin Green, Washington: Village and Capital, 1800-1878, 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 176.
- ^ a b c David L. Lewis, District of Columbia: A Bicentennial History, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976), 54-56.
- ^ Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co, 1852; reprint edition, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), 491.
External links
- Simmons, Deborah, "The Pearl incident," The Washington Times, 8 January 2004
- Daniel Drayton, Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton: For Four Years and Four Months, A Prisoner (For Charity’s Sake) in Washington Jail
- John H.Paynter, “The Fugitives of the Pearl (excerpt)”
- Rohrs, Richard C., "Antislavery politics and the Pearl incident"