River Farms to Urban Towers
— Southwest Heritage Trail —
Before the Civil War, Washington was a slave-holding city. But many of its citizens-especially free blacks and abolitionists-assisted freedom seekers at locations known as stops on the Underground Railroad.
The largest attempted slave escape began the evening of April 15, 1848. In the gathering dark, 77 men and women slipped aboard the
Pearl, waiting ½ mile down river from this sign. Captain Daniel Drayton had agreed to sail them down the Potomac and then north to freedom. But bad weather forced the
Pearl to anchor just short of the Chesapeake Bay. Meanwhile someone-many said the jilted suitor of Escapee Emily Edmonston-tipped off the slave owners.
The
Pearl was apprehended and brought back here. Its passengers were marched in chains to jail near Judiciary Square as mobs jeered. Drayton later wrote, "it seems as if the time for the lynching had come." Enraged whites rioted for three days, attacking offices of the
National Era , an abolitionist newspaper. Unharmed, the slaves were all sold South. Edmonson's father raised the money to buy the freedom of Emily and her sister Mary, who went on to work for abolition. Emily eventually returned to the DC area, where her descendants still live.
Also nearby were the home and church of Anthony Bowen, a free black minister and Patent Office clerk. Oral tradition says he met escaping slaves and helped them on their way north. In 1853 Bowen founded the nation's first YMCA for African Americans in his home on E Street between Ninth and Tenth, as well as St. Paul AME Church in 1856.
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Photo captions:]
Photo, upper left: Emily and Mary Edmonson, wearing plaid shawls, appeared at a New York abolitionist convention with Frederick Douglass in 1850. (Madison County {New York} Historical Society)
Photo, lower left: Until 1850, slaves were openly traded here, and sights like this were common. Washington's slaves were emancipated in 1862. "A Slave-Coffle passing the Capitol." (Library of Congress.)
Map and portrait, near center of marker: This map shows how far the
Pearl sailed before it was stopped near Point Lookout. Captain Daniel Drayton,
top, served four years for slave stealing before receiving a presidential pardon. (Library of Congress [route added].)
Portrait, lower center: Anthony Bowen, AME minister, politician, government clerk, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. (Kautz Family Archives, YMCA of the USA.)
Newspaper clipping, center right: A writer for the
National Era describes the angry mob that surrounded his office on Seventh Street, NW:
"DISTURBANCE" Last Saturday night, we learn, some seventy or eighty slaves escaped from this place, in a sloop or schooner, and proceeded down the river. The fact was not discovered till next day, when a steamboat was dispatched in pursuit . The fugitives, together with three white men, who navigated the craft, were caught, brought back, and imprisoned. A great deal of excitement was the result; and the cry soon arose among the crowd that the National Era
was the cause of the mischief. Of course, there is no truth in this-not one particle. But, excited men do not inquire or reason. While we are writing this, at ten o'clock at night, a crowd of men and boys is collected about the office; many stones have been thrown; but the police are striving to do their duty. They may fail; the multitude may over power them; but we hope for the best. We cannot but thing that the sober second thought of the ringleaders in this affair will arouse compunction for this violent assault against the liberty of the press-a liberty in our case which even they dare not say, has been abused.
All we have to say is, we stand by the freedom of the press, whatever the result.Wednesday morning
, 8 o'clock. The mob dispersed last night about 12 o'clock-thanks to the efficient conduct of Captain Goddard and the rest of the police. The rumor that the office of the National Era
was concerned in the escape of the slaves in the Pearl, is utterly groundless-this its originators know, but they are willing to use it to inflame popular feeling against our Press. Whatever we do, we do openly. We cherish an instinctive abhorrence of any movement which would involve us in the necessity of concealment, strategy, or trickery of any kind.
No! No! We understand this outrage. It is aimed at the Freedom of the Press. We own and edit a paper which is as free as the winds of heaven. It bows neither to slavery nor to the mob. We stand upon our rights as a man, and as an American citizen, and will use these rights, in speaking and writing freely upon any subject we please, despite all threats or violence.
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