Escape From Slavery
, Washington was a slave- holding city.But many of its citizens—especially free blacks and white abolitionists — assisted freedom see kers at locations known as stops on the Underground Railroad. The largest attempted slave escape began on the evening of April , . In the gathering dark, men and women slipped aboard the schooner Pe a rl , waiting near this sign. Captain Daniel Drayton had agreed to sail them south on the Potomac and then north to freedom via the Ch e s a pe a ke Bay. But bad we a t h er forced the Pe a rl to anchor just short of the Chesapeake Bay. Meanwhile someone—many later said a jilted suitor of escapee Emily Edmonson—tipped off the slave owners. The Pe a rl was apprehended and its passengers and crew were brought back to the Seventh Street wharf. They were marched in chains to jail near Judiciary Square as mobs jeered.Drayton later wrote,“it seemed as if the time for the lynching had come.”Enraged whites rioted for three days, attacking offices of the National Era, an abolition- ist newspaper they associated with the escape attempt. Unharmed, the enslaved were all sold South. Edmonson’s father raised the money to buy the freedom of Emily and her sister Mary, and the sisters went on to campaign for abolition. Emilyeventually retu rn ed to the DC area, wh ere her descendants still live. Also nearby were the home and chu rch of Anthony Bowen, a free black minister and Pa tent Office clerk. Oral tradition says he met escaping slaves here and helped them on their way north. In Bowen foundedthe nati on’s first YMCA for African Americans in his home on E Street between Ninth and Tenth.
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker