Fourteen years before the D.C. Emancipation Act was signed, 77 enslaved people attempted to escape bondage on April 15, 1848, by sailing out of the Potomac River and up the Chesapeake Bay on a schooner called “The Pearl.”
Monday evening the community and church members from Westminster Presbyterian Church in Southwest, D.C. traced the slaves’ steps to commemorate an event, which prompted a revolt that turned the tide against slavery and prompted the Civil War.
On that Saturday night on April 15, 1848, enslaved people who worked for various masters in Southwest left their homes and quarters to board a schooner at the 7th Street SW Wharf on the Potomac River. The boat sailed South on the Potomac and then North into the Chesapeake Bay.
“The boat left from the 7th Street Wharf,” said the Rev. Bryan Hamilton, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church. “We planned to read the names of those who were aboard the ship and pour libations because the ground where we are located is holy ground.”
The getaway was organized by both free Black people and white abolitionists in Washington, D.C. One of the freedmen was Paul Jennings, a former slave of President James Madison, and Paul Edmonson, whose wife and 14 children were still enslaved.
Jennings got help from William Chaplin, a white abolitionist from the District who contacted Philadelphia abolitionist Daniel Drayton, the captain and owner of The Pearl, and pilot Edward Sayres. The effort was financed by Gerrit Smith, a wealthy abolitionist from New York.
The enslaved people made it out of the Potomac but when some slave owners took inventory and realized that 77 slaves were missing and had fled, the hunt began.
Historians say the owners were helped by enslaved people who told them that the 77 had fled by sea. The Pearl, propelled by sails, was spotted on the Chesapeake Bay near Point Lookout, Maryland and caught two days after the escape by an armed posse of 35 men who were traveling in a steam boat called The Salem.
“They tried their best to get to freedom and they almost got away,” said former Ward 1 D.C. Council member Frank Smith, executive director of the African American Civil War Museum. ”Even though they didn’t get away, they set the tone for a new era.”
After the escape, an angry mob of slavery supporters fought against white abolitionists and the entire free Black community, a moment in history known as the Washington Riot.
The mob focused much of its wrath on white physician turned journalist and abolitionist Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the antislavery newspaper The National Era, which also published Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in serial form in 1852.
Two years after the enslaved Washingtonians failed attempt to freedom, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850 and President Abraham Lincoln signed a law that ended the slave trade in the District of Columbia, although it did not abolish slavery in D.C.
Two of the slaves on the boat were sisters Mary and Emily Edmonson. They were purchased and freed with funds raised by Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York.
Audrey Hinton, chair of The Pearl Commemoration, said that the event has been held for the last four years to coincide with D.C. Emancipation Day.
“This is not just D.C. history, this is a piece of American history that most people don’t know about,” Hinton said.”There were two plantations in Southwest, Washington but those who took part in the escape were domestics.”
While Ayo Handy Kendi, founder and director of the African American Holiday Association appreciates the District’s rich Black history, he told The Informer he has mixed feelings about celebrating emancipation as he reflects on the current state of African Americans.
“D.C. is historical because it holds the distinction of being first in terms of when the slaves were freed in 1862. D.C. is also the only jurisdiction in terms of compensation for emancipation in the entire United States,” Handy-Kenti said, “While we say that we are free, we are still the last colony. [We won’t be] free until D.C. gets statehood.”
Wow! So glad, yet sad to learn about this event! Seems every day I learn something new about our country and its people. It’s odd but not unexpected that this event had more of an effect on the politics of the time than was ever noted until recent years.