Biography
Edward Sayres was captain and owner of the schooner Pearl, chartered for the April 1848 mass escape of more than seventy freedom seekers from Washington, DC. Captured with Daniel Drayton, he was convicted, fined, and imprisoned in the Washington jail until pardoned by President Fillmore in 1852.
The Pearl, becalmed on the Potomac, was overtaken at Cornfield Harbor near Point Lookout by the armed steamboat Salem on April 17-18, 1848, and Sayres, Daniel Drayton and the roughly seventy-seven freedom seekers aboard were towed back to Washington past jeering crowds. Convicted of illegally transporting slaves, Sayres was fined $10,060 — a sum he could not pay — and stayed in the Washington jail about four years and four months until President Millard Fillmore, urged by Senator Charles Sumner, pardoned him and Drayton on August 11, 1852.
