Description

In the spring of 1848 seventy-six slaves from the nation's capital hid aboard a schooner called the Pearl in an attempt to sail down the Potomac River and up the Chesapeake Bay to freedom in Pennsylvania. When inclement weather forced them to anchor for the night, the fugitive slaves and the ship's crew were captured and returned to Washington. Many of the slaves were sold to the Lower South, and two men sailing the Pearl were tried and sentenced to prison.

Recounting this harrowing tale from the preparations for escape through the participants' trial, Josephine Pacheco provides fresh insight into the lives of enslaved blacks in the District of Columbia, putting a human face on the victims of the interstate slave trade, whose lives have been overshadowed by larger historical events. Pacheco also details the Congressional debates about slavery that resulted from this large-scale escape attempt. She contends that although the incident itself and the trials and Congressional disputes that followed were not directly responsible for bringing an end to the slave trade in the nation's capital, they played a pivotal role in publicizing many of the issues surrounding slavery. Eventually, President Millard Fillmore pardoned the operators of the Pearl.

Praise for The Pearl

"This book gives rare insight into slavery in the nation's capital."
—Black Issues Book Review

"Pacheco's tale is masterfully told....We are in Josephine Pacheco's debt for bringing this neglected story to deserved attention. Clearly the story could become part of a larger synthesis on slave resistance and the coming of the war, a topic that Pacheco's important book foreshadows."
—Civil War History

"An important addition to the growing literature on fugitive slaves and the persons who aided them....By skillfully weaving the story of the ill-fated Pearl into the history and politics of slavery in the nation's capital, Pacheco also provides a revealing vantage point into the larger political debates that swirled in the late 1840s....Pacheco helps restore the movement broadly known as the Underground Railroad to its rightful place in the history of abolitionism and the politics of slavery."
—Journal of American History

"Pacheco offers a compelling narrative of first-rate historical craftsmanship."
—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"Josephine Pacheco has written a superb book that takes us back to Washington, D.C., in 1848. It conveys a tactile sense of how the institution of slavery degraded our nation's capital, how fevered the South's defense of slavery became, how sputtering and fragmented the North's attack on it was, and how the sounds of a splintering nation rent the air. It is just a splendid piece of work."
—Roger Wilkins, George Mason University (author of Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism)

"Pacheco's story of the Pearl is riveting. The rich profiles of the slaves who tried to escape—particularly the members of the Edmondson family—are an especially attractive feature of the book. In its broad sweep and deep engagement with the issues that eventually propelled the nation to Civil War, The Pearl contributes new insights into the antebellum contest over the future of slavery in the nation's capital."
—Joseph P. Reidy, Howard University (author of From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South: Central Georgia, 1800–1880)

Extended Copyright Information

Copyright 2005 Josephine F. Pacheco. All rights reserved. All rights reserved.

Previously published by The University of North Carolina Press.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

Cover illustration by Ed Lindlof.

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About the Author

Josephine F. Pacheco is Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at George Mason University, where she was director of the Center for the Study of Constitutional Rights. She has coauthored, edited, or coedited six previous books, including Three Who Dared: Prudence Crandall, Margaret Douglass, Myrtilla Miner: Champions of Antebellum Black Education.

Learn more about this author.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

In the spring of 1848 watermen Daniel Drayton and Edward Sayres undertook to lead one of the largest slave escape attempts in the United States. The two men planned to use a schooner, the Pearl, to carry seventy-six runaway slaves from Washington, D.C., to freedom in Pennsylvania and points north. ...

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Copyright

Copyright 2005 Josephine F. Pacheco.

All Rights Reserved.

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