surplus enslaved people. They hired out enslaved people or sold them to traders for the Deep South. Many enslaved people worked as servants in homes and hotels of the capital. Men were sometimes hired out as craftsmen, artisans or to work at the ports on the Potomac River. By 1848 four of the older Edmonson sisters had bought their freedom (with the help of husbands and family), but the master had decided against allowing any more of the siblings to do so. Six were hired out for his benefit, including the two youngest sisters. Escape attempt On April 15, 1848, the schooner Pearl docked at a Washington wharf. The Edmonson sisters and four of their brothers joined a large group of enslaved people (a total of 77) in an attempt to escape on the Pearl to freedom in New Jersey. The escape had been planned by two white abolitionists, William L. Chaplin and Gerrit Smith, and two free black men in Washington, including Paul Jennings. Starting as a modest attempt of escape for seven slaves, the effort had been widely communicated and organized within the communities of free black people and enslaved people, changing it to a major and unified effort, without the knowledge of the white organizers or crew. In 1848 free black people outnumbered enslaved people in the District of Columbia by three to one; the community demonstrated it could act in a unified way. Seventy-seven slaves boarded the Pearl, which was to sail down the Potomac River and up the Chesapeake Bay to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, from where they would travel up the Delaware River to freedom in New Jersey, a total of 225 miles. At the time, Emily was 13 years old and Mary was 15 or 16. The Pearl, with the fugitives hidden among boxes, began its way down the Potomac. It was delayed overnight by the shift in tides and then had to wait out rough weather from its anchor down the bay. In Washington the alarm was raised in the morning, as numerous slaveholders found their enslaved people had escaped. Historical accounts conflict and are not clear as to what details were known. Slaveholders put together an armed posse that went downriver on a steamboat. The steamboat caught up with the Pearl at Point Lookout, Maryland, and the posse seized it, towing the ship and its valuable human cargo back to