booktheque

The Pearl

Josephine F. Pacheco · 2005

Where to buy

Amazon’s price changes daily, so the most accurate place to see it is there, at the moment you buy.

View on Amazon

This is an affiliate link: if you buy through it, the site earns a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps us bring quality content and maintain the site. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

About the book

"In the spring of 1848 seventy-six slaves from Washington, D.C., 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 examines the lives of enslaved and free blacks in the District of Columbia as well as Congressional debates over slavery. Pacheco contends that although the Pearl incident and the trials and Congressional disputes that followed were not directly responsible for bringing about 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 two men who had been imprisoned for operating the Pearl."--BOOK JACKET.

First sentence: 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.

Book details

Year
2005
Language
English
Publisher
The University of North Carolina Press
Editions
4
Pages
320
ISBN
9780807829189

Data source: Wikidata

More by Josephine F. Pacheco