Paul Jennings wrote the first White House memoir; but never took credit for one of his most inspirational adventures. Wypipologist Michael Harriot explains why, and recounts the Great Escape of the Pearl Schooner.
“It was kind of like, like the Tom Joyner cruise. All the Black people knew about it. None of the wypipo had ever heard about it.”
Music courtesy of Transitions Music Corporation
Full Transcript Below
Announcer: You are now listening to theGrio’s Black Podcast Network, Black Culture Amplified. Hey Grio fam, we know you love theGrio Black Podcast Network and wouldn’t want to miss out on any new episodes. So you’ll want to hear this. A recent update by Apple might have paused your podcast feed. This means our new episodes aren’t being downloaded to your phone.
There’s a quick fix. For our Apple listeners, here’s what you do. Open Apple Podcasts and search for theGrio Black Podcast Network or the name of your favorite Griopod. Then, go to our show page and look at the top right corner. If you see a pause button there, simply tap it to continue seeing episodes in your feed.
If you see a download button, go to settings and set it to automatically download episodes. If you see a plus button, tap it to follow the show. There you have it. That’s it. Now you won’t miss out on any new episodes of your favorite shows on theGrio Black Podcast Network.
Michael Harriot: Most of the time, when we think of slave revolts, we think of people grabbing machetes and burning down plantations. And when we think of escapes, we think of, you know, people fleeing to the Underground Railroad. But that’s not always how it happened. That’s why I want to welcome you to theGrio Daily. The only podcast that’ll tell you the crazy story of a heist, a rebellion, and a hijacking that led to the largest nonviolent rebellion and escape attempt in U. S. history.
I’m world famous wypipologist Michael Harriot, and this is theGrio Daily.
Hi, I’m Michael Harriot. And welcome back to our Black History Month series, the real gangsters of Black history. And today man is one of my favorite stories in all of Black history. It involves a hijacking, one of the people enslaved by the founding fathers, man, it’s just a crazy story. And it begins in the White House with Paul Jennings.
Paul Jennings was enslaved by this dude named James Madison. Yeah, that James Madison, the Constitution writing guy. When James Madison became President of the United States, he brought along this kid who he bought actually to serve just like as a playmate for James and Dolly Madison’s son. But Paul Jennings eventually became James Madison’s bodyman, or body servant, when James Madison was elected president. After the presidency, when James Madison died, Dolly Madison sold all the family property, including Montpelier and all of their slaves, to just different wypipo. But she kept Paul to basically hire him out or rent him out to other people who needed someone who could serve in the same capacity he served James Madison. So Paul Jennings became the body servant for James Polk when he became President in 1844, and Paul was like, he could see that Dolly Madison was broke. So he tried to buy his own. freedom from her. She wouldn’t sell him, so Senator Daniel Webster bought him and gave him his freedom in exchange for being paid back in work.
After he was free, Jennings began living in the Black community in Washington, D. C. And he met these dudes, right? One was named Daniel Bell and the other was Paul Edmondson. Daniel and Paul always talked about how they were swindled out of their freedom by wypipo. See, Daniel and his wife had been enslaved by this dude named Robert Armistead.
Robert Armistead promised the family that when he died he was going to set Daniel, his wife, Mary, and all 12 of their children free. And he did it when he died, he signed manumission papers for the whole family, but Armistead’s wife she didn’t want to set him free because all she had was the wages coming in from the people she enslaved. They didn’t have a plantation or anything she just hired them out and collected the wages. So she contested the will and Mary’s manumission had already been filed, but she contested the rest of them and she knew she was going to lose. So what she did is she just paid a slave catcher to catch the Bells and sell them to somebody else. But Daniel arranged to buy his own freedom and then buy his children’s freedom, but the man who agreed to the contract, renigged he basically used a promissory note that Daniel gave him to buy his own freedom and got a loan on it. He spent the money for the loan and then died. So the people he got the loan from was like, yeah, well you belong to us now and you got to pay us for your freedom, even though he had basically made all of his freedom payments.
So he was still enslaved. His children were still enslaved. And when he met Paul Jennings, he had just finished paying off his freedom loans, so he was free, but his children were still enslaved. Paul Edmondson was in a similar predicament, right? He had been set free by his owner’s will, but his wife and their 13 children were still enslaved . Now he was slowly buying their freedom. He had purchased freedom for his wife and four of their children. And then all of a sudden, the man who owned his family said, ‘Hey, I ain’t gonna sell any more of your children to you because they bring in too much money because I hired them out to work in rich people’s homes.’
So all the younger Edmondson kids were still enslaved. 16-year-old Mary and 13-year-old Emily, they worked in rich people’s homes and they gave all their wages to their owner. Their older brother Samuel, he worked at the docks where he met Daniel Bell. Now you gotta remember, because slave owners hired their chattel out, at the shipyards, there were enslaved Black people working next to free Black people all telling their stories.
You also have to remember that at the time, D. C. had about three Black people for every one white person. So there was a big abolitionist community, or at least people who didn’t believe in the institution of slavery. So when Paul Jennings heard these stories, he was like, hey yo, so what we gonna do? So they came up with a plan, y’all.
And this was the plan. They was gonna steal a ship and sail it to freedom, to New Jersey. Basically, I know New Jersey don’t sound like freedom to a lot of people, but you know, you got to take what you can get. So the first thing they were going to need was a boat. And Paul Jennings was like, ‘Yeah, we can just find the abolitionists. Cause I’m deep in the abolitionist movement. We can just find the abolitionists with a boat and then we straight.’ But Samuel Edmondson, his daddy, and Daniel Bell was like, ‘Man, have you met wypipo? We’ve already been finessed out of our freedom by these so called abolitionists. So nah, bro, we going to have to have some money, but we’ve been giving all of our money to people to try to buy our family’s freedom. So, you know, our pockets kind of tight right now.’ Paul Jennings was like, ‘Hey, yo, if y’all find somebody. to drive the ship, I can get y’all the money’. They found these two white dudes, Daniel Drayton and Edward Sayers, who had this 54-ton schooner. It’s not entirely clear if they were the owners, but they definitely knew how to drive the boat. Not like how Megan Stallion and the City Girls be driving a boat, but they knew how to pilot a schooner.
So Daniel raised some money from some white abolitionists, some Black abolitionists from the Black community in D. C, and this was before social media, so, you know, the plan and the word of the plan didn’t get out, even though the Black community knew about it. In fact, so many Black people heard about it that they were like, I want to get on the boat too.
It was kind of like, like the Tom Joyner cruise. All the Black people knew about it. None of the wypipo had ever heard about it. So on Saturday night, April 15th, 1848, Daniel Bell. Mary Bell, eight of their children, two of their grandchildren, Mary, Emily, and Samuel Edmondson, three more Edmondson brothers, and 59 Black people who were enslaved, boarded the Pearl Schooner headed for New Jersey. Now what happened was, because the wind was against them, they had to stop for the night. Well, when they stopped that next Sunday morning, slave owners woke up and realized that their human chattel was missing. They sounded the alarm, which was just wypipo saying, ‘Oh, our stuff gone.’ And they organized the 35-man armed posse to go look for their missing slaves. Interestingly enough, they found the enslaved escapees at Point Lookout. The exact same spot where Captain John Smith and the first English settlers would land and invade this country they would later call America.
Washington D. C. ‘s small white population was so mad about this daring escape that when they returned the slaves back to the shore, there was a big white riot called the Washington Riot. The owners of the enslaved people sold all of the captured escapees to slave traders from Louisiana and the Deep South.
The Edmondsons had some contacts in New Orleans, and so they managed to arrange for Samuel to be purchased by this rich cotton farmer, and he was enslaved as a butler, Mary and Emily, they were held along with the other escapees at a slave market for days. Most of the escapees were eventually slowly purchased by different enslavers, but Mary and Emily demanded the highest price about $2,250, which is the equivalent of $87,840.28 in 2024. But Paul Edmondson, he wouldn’t give up. And he asked everybody he knew for the money and he eventually raised it. He raised the money. And on November 4th, 1848, Mary Edmondson and Emily Edmondson got their emancipation papers.
The sisters attended Oberlin college and became real famous abolitionists. How did they get their tuition? Well, this famous author had been inspired by the Edmondson sister’s story to write this book. I don’t know if you ever heard of it. It’s called Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The pilots of that boat were convicted and served four years in prison before they were pardoned by president Millard Fillmore in 1852, but because of this daring escape, this daring rebellion, this daring plot, the slave trade was outlawed in Washington, DC.
Samuel Edmondson eventually purchased his freedom, but some of his sisters and many of the Bell children were not as lucky. And Paul Jennings, well he raised two sons who fought for the Union in the Civil War. He helped Black soldiers receive their pensions, but he never told anyone about his involvement in the Pearl incident until years later. Now Paul Jennings did write a book But he didn’t put the stuff about the Pearl incident in it because he wrote it in 1865 when people were still pro-slavery.
That’s why he didn’t put it in his book, “A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison.” And that’s also why it was a bestseller, and that’s why the man who plotted this great escape is also credited with writing the first White House memoir. And that’s also why you got to listen to the podcast. That’s why you got to tell your friends about it.
That’s why you got to download that Grio app. And that’s also why we always leave you with a Black saying. And today’s Black saying probably dates back to 1848 when one enslaved person probably heard about the Pearl and said for the first time, “Who all going to be there?” We’ll see you next time on theGrio Daily.
If you like what you heard, please give us a five-star review. Download theGrio app, subscribe to the show and share it with everyone. You know, please email all questions, suggestions, and compliments to podcasts@thegrio.com
