Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton, for Four Years and Four Months a Prisoner, 1855
Daniel Drayton, author
The Mariners' Museum Research Library and Archives
E450.D76

Not all attempts to escape by water were successful. In April 1848, Edward Sayres and Daniel Drayton of the schoonerPearlsought to smuggle seventy slaves from Washington, D.C., to Frenchtown, New Jersey. Unfavorable sailing wind and the treachery of a black cab driver foiled the plan. Armed officials and vigilantes boarded a steamboat and met thePearl在波托马克河的口。愤怒的citizens of the district blamed the liberal New Era newspaper for inciting the escape attempt. Many of the slaves who attempted to escape on thePearlwere sold "down the river" to the lucrative slave markets of the Deep South. Slave owners in the Upper South often sold troublesome slaves or those convicted of crimes to these markets, where treatment was sometimes brutal and lives were short.