Paul Jennings wrote the first White House memoir. But he never took credit for one of his most inspiring adventures. Waipipolo scholar Michael Harriott explains why and details the Pearl Schooner's escape.
“It was like Tom Joyner's Cruise. All the black people knew about it. No one in Wipipo had ever heard of it.”
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Michael Harriott: Most of the time, when we think of slave revolts, we think of people grabbing machetes and burning down plantations. And when I think of escape, I think of people fleeing to the Underground Railroad. But that wasn't always the case. That's why we welcome you to Grio Daily. The only podcast that tells the crazy story of robbery, rebellion, and hijacking that led to the largest nonviolent rebellion and escape in U.S. history.
I'm Michael Harriott, a world-renowned Waipi scholar. This is Griot Dairy.
Hello, my name is Michael Harriott. And welcome to our Black History Month series, the real gang of Black history. And Today's Man is one of my favorite stories in black history. It involves a hijacking, it involves one of the people who was enslaved by the founding fathers, it's a totally crazy story. And it starts at the White House with Paul Jennings.
Paul Jennings was enslaved by a man named James Madison. Yes, that James Madison, the architect of the Constitution. When James Madison became President of the United States, he actually brought this child to buy as a playmate for James and Dolley Madison's son. However, when James Madison was elected president, Paul Jennings ultimately became James Madison's bodyman, or body servant. When James Madison died after his inauguration, Dolley Madison sold all of his family's property, including Montpelier and all of his slaves, to another Wipipo. But she held Paul back, essentially hiring him or loaning him out to other people who needed someone who could perform in the same capacity that served James Madison. So Paul Jennings became James Polk's personal servant when he became president in 1844, but Paul seemed to see that Dolley Madison was bankrupt. Ta. So he tried to buy his own. Freedom from her. She would not sell him, so Senator Daniel Webster bought him and gave him his freedom in exchange for compensation for his work.
After becoming free, Jennings began living in the black community of Washington, DC. And he met these guys, right? One was named Daniel Bell and the other was named Paul Edmonson. Daniel and Paul always talked about how Wipipo defrauded them of their freedom. You see, Daniel and his wife were being enslaved by a man named Robert Armistead.
Robert Armistead promised his family that if he died, he would release Daniel, his wife Mary, and all of their 12 children. And he did that when he died and signed release papers for his entire family, but Armistead's wife only had wages coming in from the people he enslaved, so Armistead I didn't want to release it. They had no plantations; she simply employed them and collected their wages. So she contested her will, Mary's will had already been filed, but the rest of her will she contested and she knew she would lose. So all she did was pay slave catchers to capture Belle and sell her to others. However, while Daniel bought his freedom and then arranged to buy his children's freedom, the man who agreed to the contract essentially used the promissory note given to him by Daniel to buy his own freedom and buy it. He claimed to have taken the loan. He ran out of loan money and then died. So the people he took loans from, basically he paid all the freedom payments, but you're now ours and you have to pay us money for your freedom. I felt like it wouldn't happen.
So he was still enslaved. His children were still enslaved. And when I met Paul Jennings, he had just finished paying off his freedom loan, so he was free, but his children were still slaves. Paul Edmondson was in a similar predicament, right? Although he was freed by the will of his owner, his wife and their 13 children were still enslaved. Now he was slowly buying their freedom. He purchased the freedom of his wife and four children. Then all of a sudden the man who owned the family said, “Hey, I'm not going to sell your kids to you anymore.'' They brought in too much money by hiring them to work in rich families. ' '
This meant that all of Edmonson's young children were still enslaved. Mary, 16, and Emily, 13, worked in the homes of wealthy people and handed over all their paychecks to their masters. Their older brother Samuel worked on the docks, where he met Daniel Bell. We must remember here that slave owners rented out their chattels, and in the shipyards, enslaved black people were telling their stories next to freed black people.
It's also important to remember that there were about three black people for every white person in DC at the time. So there was a large abolitionist community, or at least people who didn't believe in slavery. So when Paul Jennings heard these stories, he was like, “Hey, what do we do with that?” So they made a plan.
And this was the plan. They intended to steal a ship and sail to freedom, to New Jersey. Basically, I know New Jersey doesn't feel like freedom to many people, but you have to take what you can get. So the first thing they needed was a boat. And Paul Jennings was like, “Oh, just find an abolitionist.” Because I'm deeply involved in the abolitionist movement. Just find an abolitionist on a boat and go straight to them. ” But Samuel Edmonson and his dad and Daniel Bell said, “Have you met Wipipo? 'It was like, We are already being robbed of our freedom by so-called abolitionists. So, well, brother, we have to have some money, but we've given all of our money to people who are trying to buy freedom for their families. So, as you know, our pockets are a little tight right now. ''Paul Jennings was like, “Hey, guys, if you find someone.'' You get all the money to drive the boat. They discovered two white men, Daniel Drayton and Edward Sayers, aboard the 54-ton schooner. It's not entirely clear if they were the owners, but there's no doubt they knew how to drive the boat. It's not like Megan Stallion and the City Girls drive a boat, but they knew how to drive a schooner.
There, Daniel raised money from white abolitionists and black abolitionists from the black community in Washington, D.C. This was before social media. Therefore, the word of planning and planning did not spread to the world. The black community knew it. In fact, so many black people heard this story and thought, “I want to be on a boat, too.''
It was like Tom Joyner Cruise. All black people knew that. No one in Wipipo had ever heard of it. So, on Saturday night, April 15, 1848, Daniel Bell. Mary Bell and eight of her children, her two grandchildren Mary, Emily, and Samuel Edmonson, as well as the three Edmonson brothers, and 59 enslaved black people sailed to New Jersey on the Pearl Schooner. I headed to Well, what happened was that the wind was against us so we had to stop all night. Now, when they stopped the next Sunday morning, the slaveholders woke up and found that their human chattel was gone. They sounded the alarm, but it just said, “Oh, our stuff is gone.'' They organized a group of 35 armed men to search for the missing slaves. Interestingly, they discovered enslaved fugitives at Point Lookout. This is the exact same spot where Captain John Smith and the first English settlers landed and invaded the country that would later become known as America.
The few white people in Washington, D.C., were so enraged by this daring escape that when they brought the slaves back to the coast, a massive white uprising, known as the Washington Riots, broke out. Owners of enslaved people sold all captured fugitives to slave traders in Louisiana and the Deep South.
The Edmondson family had some connections in New Orleans, so they were able to arrange for Samuel to be purchased by this wealthy cotton farmer, who would enslave him as a butler, while Mary and Emily were enslaved by other He was imprisoned in a slave market with other fugitives. a few days. Most of the escapees ended up being bought slowly by various slave traders, but Mary and Emily commanded the highest amount of money, around $2,250, which equates to $87,840.28 in 2024. But Paul Edmondson didn't give up. He asked everyone he knew to come up with money, and eventually he raised the money. he collected money. And on November 4, 1848, Mary and Emily Edmondson received their emancipation papers.
The sisters attended Oberlin College and became truly famous abolitionists. How did they collect the tuition fees? Well, this famous author was inspired to write this book by the story of the Edmondson sisters. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called “Uncle Tom's Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The ship's pilots were convicted and served four years in prison before being pardoned by President Millard Fillmore in 1852, but for this daring escape, this daring mutiny, and this daring conspiracy, Washington, D.C. Slave trade was outlawed.
Although Samuel Edmondson eventually won his freedom, some of his sisters and many of the Bell family children were not so lucky. And Paul Jennings raised two sons who fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. He helped black soldiers obtain pensions, but did not tell anyone about his involvement in the Pearl incident until years later. Now, Paul Jennings wrote a book, but he didn't put the Pearl incident in it because he wrote it in 1865, when people were still in favor of slavery.
That's why he didn't include it in his book, “Reminiscences of James Madison as a Colored Man.” And that's why the book became a bestseller, and why the man who planned the Great Escape is credited with writing his first White House memoir. And that's also why you need to listen to podcasts. That's why you have to tell your friends about it.
That's why you should download the Grio app. And that's why we always keep black quotes. And today's Negro saying probably dates back to 1848. That's probably when an enslaved person heard about the pearls and said for the first time, “Who's going there?” See you next time on Grio Daily.
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