In 1848, thirteen-year-old Emily Edmonson, five of her siblings, and seventy other enslaved people boarded the Pearl undercover one night in Washington, D.C., hoping to sail north to freedom. From Edmonson’s journey as an enslaved person to becoming a teacher at a school for African American young women, Winifred Conkling illuminates the daily lives of enslaved people, the often-changing laws affecting them, and the high cost of a failed escape.
