Passenger on the Pearl

by Winifred Conkling

  I saw at a glance that the fire of a real enthusiasm lighted her eyes, and the true martyr spirit flamed in her soul. My feelings were those of mingled joy and sadness. Here, I thought, is another enterprise, wild, dangerous, desperate, and impracticable, destined only to bring failure and suffering. . . . To me, the proposition was reckless, almost to the point of madness. In my fancy, I saw this fragile little woman harassed by the law, insulted in the street, a victim of slaveholding malice, and, possibly, beaten down by the mob. . . .

  My argument made no impression upon the heroic spirit before me. Her resolution was taken, and was not to be shaken or changed. . . . I never pass by the Miner Normal School for Colored Girls in this city without a feeling of self-reproach that I could have [tried] to quench the zeal, shake the faith, and quail the courage of the noble woman by whom it was founded, and whose name it bears.

  NINETEEN

  Homecoming

  ON APRIL 5, 1860, three generations of the Edmonson family gathered in the District of Columbia to celebrate the wedding of 25-year-old Emily. Her husband-to-be, 45-year-old Larkin Johnson, was a freed slave, widower, and father of four children: 17-year-old Benjamin, 16-year-old Mary, 13-year-old Martha, and 9-year-old Charles.

  The celebration marked not only Emily’s new status as wife, but also her new role of mother in a ready-made family. After the wedding, she planned to move to her new family’s ten-acre farm in Montgomery County, Maryland, just a few miles away from where she grew up.

  Larkin Johnson had lived in Montgomery County all of his life, so it is very likely that he had known the Edmonson family for years before marrying Emily. He had been freed in 1846 when his owner died. Little is known about Johnson’s early life and his first marriage, except that his first wife, Lucy, died sometime in the 1850s.

  In preparation for the wedding, Emily may have reflected on her past, as well as her future. She may have thought about her mother’s frequent warning:

  Now, girls, don’t you never come to the sorrows that I have. Don’t you never marry till you get your liberty. Don’t you marry to be mothers to children that ain’t your own.

  On this day, both mother and daughter could think about how far they had come: Of Milly and Paul’s children, Emily and her 13 brothers and sisters, all were known to have lived free, except one. Only John, the missing brother, may have remained enslaved at the time of the wedding. After the escape attempt on the Pearl, John was taken to New Orleans and sold from the showroom. There is no definitive evidence that he obtained his freedom, and there is no report that he ever saw his family in Washington again.

  Emily and her family had overcome extraordinary odds. They had devoted their lives to the pursuit of freedom—both for themselves and for other family members—and their efforts paid off. Emily would never know her slave mother’s sorrow: She would not have her babies sold away from her or be forced to raise ransom to buy them back. Emily was free, her husband was free, and every one of her children would be born free. Although they would face the challenges of racism and discrimination that dominated post–Civil War America, Emily and her family would spend every day of their lives in liberty, just as Milly Edmonson had dreamed.

  Elizabeth Edmonson: Free to Marry

  Some time in the 1840s, Elizabeth, the oldest of the Edmonson daughters, fell in love and wanted to marry John Brent. He was a “free dealer,” meaning that his owner gave him permission to perform extra work for wages. His owner took the pay John earned as an employee for the War Department, but John kept the wages he earned working on weekends and evenings as a butler for wealthy Washingtonians. John saved his money and at the age of 25, he paid his owner $600 and bought his freedom.

  Once he was free, John continued to work and save his wages, and a few years later he had saved $800 and purchased his father’s freedom. He fell in love with Elizabeth—Lizzie—but, following her mother’s advice, she refused to marry him until she was free. Brent sawed wood at night to make extra income and after two years, he had enough money to buy Lizzie’s freedom and make her his wife.

  Samuel’s Story

  The story of Samuel Edmonson’s second escape from slavery was recorded by his nephew John Paynter and published in The Journal of Negro History in 1916. The following is a summary of Paynter’s account.

  Not long after Samuel Edmonson arrived in New Orleans, he was purchased to serve as a butler in the home of Horace Cammack, a prosperous cotton merchant. When he arrived at Cammack’s home, Samuel immediately became infatuated with an 18-year-old slave named Delia Taylor, who served as a maid to Mrs. Cammack. They courted and eventually married; before long Delia gave birth to a son they named David.

  Samuel and his family thrived until Cammack’s son, Tom, returned from college. Tom disliked Samuel from the first time they met, and he did everything possible to make Samuel’s life miserable. Eventually, the two clashed; Samuel wrote a letter explaining the situation and then he fled. It was not his intention to run away, but he did not feel safe with Tom. When he learned about the situation, Cammack ordered Samuel to return to the house and he sent his son out to live in the country. Samuel returned to the estate and to his family and willingly resumed his duties.

  The following year, Cammack was killed in a violent storm while yachting with friends off the coast of Norway. Tom inherited Samuel and almost immediately decided to get rid of him. Rather than be sold to another family or risk becoming a field slave, Samuel decided to run away.

  Samuel bought a set of forged free papers. Initially, he planned to escape up the Mississippi River, but he worried that that approach would be too dangerous. He went down to the riverfront to study the activity at the wharf and consider other options for escape. Lost in thought, he startled when a stevedore yelled at him to move out of the way. The sudden disruption broke his focus and gave him an idea: He could escape by impersonating a merchant from the West Indies in search of a missing bale of goods. Once he was in the islands, he would be protected by English law and free from slavery.

  Samuel found a ship captain planning to leave that night for Jamaica. It wasn’t a passenger ship, but the captain offered Samuel an extra bunk in the cabin, explaining that if he didn’t mind roughing it, the seaman would be glad to have his company.

  With only a few hours before his departure, Samuel hurried home to say good-bye to his wife and baby. Delia urged him to escape at once; Tom had already sent law enforcement officers out to look for him. Tearfully, Samuel left his wife and young son behind, aware that risking escape was the only way the family could possibly be reunited in the future. He slipped through the shadows and boarded the waiting ship.

  Later that evening the customs officer boarded the ship to inspect the transit papers and found Samuel resting in the upper bunk of the ship’s cabin. Had the officer been alerted to his escape? Was he looking for a runaway slave?

  The captain spread the ship’s papers out on a table in the cabin for inspection.

  “Heigho, I see you have a passenger this trip,” said the customs officer. “Samuel Edmonson, Jamaica, West Indies, thirty years old. General Merchant.”

  “Yes,” said the captain. “Mr. Edmonson asked for passage at the last moment and as he was alone and we had a bunk not in service, I thought I’d take him along. He has a valuable bale of goods astray, probably at Jamaica, and is anxious to return and look it up.”

  “Well, I hope he may find it. Where is he? Let’s have a look at him.”

  “Mr. Edmonson, will you come this way for a moment?” called the captain.

  Samuel had been listening intently to the conversation. Now that he had to present himself, he murmured, “God help me,” and jumped nimbly to the deck.

  “This is my passenger,” said the captain. To Samuel he said, “The customs officer simply wished to see you, Mr. Edmonson.”

  Samuel bowed and forced himself to stand at ease, resting one hand upon the table. He didn’t look away or hold back when the customs officer looked him over,
staring into his face, then reaching for his hands to assess their condition. Samuel let the inspector look at his hands, turning them over to examine his palms for signs of a lifetime of manual labor. Samuel’s clean-cut appearance, callus-free hands, and trimmed fingernails weren’t typical even of household slaves.

  The customs officer shook Samuel’s hand and said: “I hope you may recover your goods.”

  Samuel Edmonson thanked the officer and climbed back into his bunk. He had passed as a free man.

  Samuel sailed on to Jamaica and then traveled without arousing suspicion on a schooner carrying a cargo hold full of wool to Liverpool, England. He took a job with an English merchant and saved his money. Although the details of their emancipation and reunion are unknown, three years after Samuel fled, his wife and young son were freed by Mrs. Cammack and joined him in England. The family then moved to Australia and supported themselves by raising sheep just outside Melbourne. Delia gave birth to three more children, but only two survived.

  The details of their return were not documented, but sometime before 1868, the family returned to Washington, D.C. Samuel Edmonson died in 1907 at age 80.

  Emancipation in the Nation’s Capital

  Enslaved people in Washington, D.C., were freed almost nine months before those in other parts of the country. On April 16, 1862—a date annually recognized in the District as Emancipation Day—President Abraham Lincoln signed a law that immediately freed all slaves living in the nation’s capital. In addition, the bill allowed for slave owners to be compensated for their loss of property. Over a period of months, the Secretary of the Treasury paid nearly one million dollars to 966 slave owners to cover the liberation of 3,100 enslaved people.

  Freedom was extended to millions of additional slaves in the South when President Lincoln signed the executive order known as the Emancipation Proclamation, on January 1, 1863. This act freed the three million slaves living in the ten Southern states that seceded during the Civil War. It also allowed freedmen, as the emancipated slaves were called, to enlist in the Union army.

  But the Emancipation Proclamation did not ensure freedom for all. It did not apply to another one million enslaved people living in the five border states on the Union side, nor did it apply to Tennessee or certain areas of Louisiana and Virginia where Union forces were in control. It was not until the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was adopted on December 16, 1865, that slavery was made illegal throughout the entire United States.

  On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, which freed an estimated 3,000 slaves living in the District of Columbia.

  Death of a Martyr

  Captain Daniel Drayton did not live long enough to see slavery outlawed. After his release from the Washington City Jail, he tried to raise money to live on by writing his memoirs. Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton, written with help from Richard Hildreth, was published in 1854, two years after Drayton’s pardon. It cost 38 cents for a hardcover copy and 25 cents for a paperback. The book sold only modestly.

  Although the details of his life after prison are not well documented, it is known that Drayton never recovered his physical or emotional health. In the five years after his release from jail, Drayton moved restlessly from Philadelphia to Cape May, New Jersey; to Boston; to Staten Island; and finally to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a city with a large black community and a long history with the Underground Railroad.

  On June 24, 1857, Drayton spent an evening with an old friend, a former slave who had attempted escape on the Pearl almost ten years before. Drayton, at that time a widower who had fallen out of touch with the rest of his family, told the man that he had come back to New Bedford to die in a place where he would get a proper funeral. Drayton’s old friend didn’t take him seriously.

  A week later, Drayton checked into the Mansion House Hotel. He skipped dinner and told the front desk clerk that he did not wish to be disturbed. That evening he barricaded the door of his room and swallowed one and a half ounces of laudanum, a liquid form of morphine. Drayton then rolled up his pants legs, placed his feet in a pan of water, and sliced open the arteries in his ankles. When Drayton did not come out of his room the next day, the landlord broke down the door and found him dead.

  Drayton had been correct: New Bedford did give him a celebrated farewell. Led by the mayor and the board of aldermen, the town honored the captain of the Pearl at a well-attended funeral at City Hall. More than half the mourners in attendance were from the New Bedford black community.

  Drayton was buried at a cemetery in New Bedford, where a monument was erected to mark the grave of “Captain Drayton, Commander of the Schooner Pearl.” His obituary in the local paper was titled “Death of a Martyr.”

  Time Line

  Visit AlgonquinYoungReaders.com for a downloadable PDF of this family tree.

  The Edmonsons: A Family Tree

  Paul Edmonson married Amelia (Milly) Culver Edmonson, and they had 14 children:

  SOURCE: John H. Paynter, Fugitives of the Pearl, p. 204

  Sources and Notes

  The following notes provide sources for quoted material. In some cases, the punctuation and spelling have been updated within quotations to reflect current usage, although the word choice remains unchanged.

  Epigraph

  “No man can tell the intense agony . . .” Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, ch. 19, “The Run-Away Plot.” New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855, p. 284.

  Chapter 1: A Mother’s Sorrow

  “I loved Paul very much . . .” Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story Is Founded Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work. Boston: John P. Jewett & Co., 1853; replica: Elibron Classics; elibron.com, Adamant Media Corporation, p. 156.

  “Well, Paul and me, we was married,” Stowe, p. 156.

  “I had mostly sewing . . .” Stowe, p. 156.

  “I never seen a white man . . .” Stowe, p. 156.

  “Now, girls, don’t you never come . . .” Stowe, p. 157.

  Chapter 2: Escape: April 15, 1848

  “What will Mother think?” Stowe, p. 158.

  “At that time, I had regarded . . .” Daniel Drayton, Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton, for Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner (for Charity’s Sake) in Washington Jail. Boston: B. Marsh, 1853 (e-book release December 8, 2003, Project Gutenberg; gutenberg.net; e-book #10401-8), p. 8.

  “I no longer considered myself . . .” Drayton, p. 6.

  Chapter 3: Against the Tide

  “Be good children . . .” John H. Paynter, “The Fugitives of the Pearl,” The Journal of Negro History 1, no. 3, July 1916. Reproduced by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc., Howard University, HU ArchivesNet, WorldCom (2000), huarchivesnet.howard.edu/0008huarnet/paynter1.htm> [May 22, 2010]; p. 2.

  Chapter 5: Capture

  “Do yourselves no harm . . .” Stowe, p. 159.

  Chapter 6: Back to Washington

  “Aren’t you ashamed . . .” Paynter, “Fugitives,” p. 6.

  “Damn the law!” Drayton, p. 15.

  “Lynch them!” Drayton, p. 15.

  “This community is satisfied . . .” Drayton, p. 19.

  “Let me say to you . . .” Drayton, p. 19.

  “We advise you to be out of the way!” Drayton, p. 21.

  “I cannot surrender my rights!” Drayton, p. 21.

  “Down with the Era!” Drayton, p. 21.

  “fearful acts of lawless and irresponsible violence.” Keith Melder, City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of Washington, District of Columbia. Washington, D.C.: Intac, Inc., 2001, p. 126.

  Chapter 7: Sold

  “Have I not the same . . .” Stanley Harrold, Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003, p. 132.

  “God bless you, sirs . . .” Ha
rrold, p. 132.

  “despised and avoided,” Paynter, “Fugitives,” end notes.

  Chapter 8: Baltimore

  “Last evening, as I was passing . . .” Drayton, p. 24.

  Chapter 9: New Orleans

  “Stop crying or I’ll give you . . .” Stowe, p. 161.

  “no room for the snuffles . . .” John H. Paynter, The Fugitives of the Pearl. Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publishers, 1930, p. 7.

  Chapter 11: $2,250: The Price of Freedom

  “Oh, my children . . .” Stowe, p. 163.

  “Alexandria, Va., Sept. 5, 1848 . . .” Stowe, p. 163.

  “I have often been utterly astonished . . .” Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845, ch. 2, p. 3.

  Chapter 12: Ransomed

  “When Henry is sent to me . . .” Lyman Abbott and S. B. Halliday, Henry Ward Beecher: A Sketch of His Career with analyses of his power as a preacher lecturer, orator and journalist, and incidents and reminiscences of his life. American Publishing Co., 1887; quinnipiac.edu/other/abl/etext/beecher/beechercomplete.html, p. 134.

  “I had from childhood a thickness of speech . . .” Abbott, p. 135.

  “The father! Do goods and chattel . . .” Abbott, p. 147.

  “I thank you for that noise!” Abbott, p. 147.

  “popping about like a box . . .” Abbott, p. 147.