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Sam Scomp rose early. He was a runaway from a slave plantation in New Jersey and had been sleeping rough at different spots in Philadelphia for the last few nights. Probably hungry and surely stiff, Scomp set out toward the docks at the end of Market Street. His plan was to try to earn enough money to buy breakfast by helping ships' crews cart barrels and boxes from their holds into town. Just fifteen years old, Scomp was young and strong, but he did not have his own wagon or wheelbarrow and barely knew anyone. So it must have seemed like a blessing when a mixed-race man walked up to Scomp to offer him work unloading a shipment of "Peaches, Oranges, Water Melons &c" from a small sloop at anchor out by the Navy Yard. The pay was twenty-five cents, and they could use a wagon already waiting for them at the ship.1
Scomp was typically on his guard around strangers, especially white people, but the prospect of easy money for light work for another person of color had disarmed him. Besides, his new employer, who said his name was John Smith, was easygoing and charming, and the pair chatted easily as they walked down Front Street, leaving the city behind them. Anyone who came upon them that morning might have assumed that Scomp and Smith were long-time friends, or cousins, or half-brothers out for some sort of dawn lark. At the Navy Yard, they boarded a little rowboat crewed by a white man about twice Scomp's age. The man, who told him that his name was Joseph Johnson, then rowed his two passengers out to a sloop at anchor in the middle of the river, ushering them down the stairs into the Little John's cabin to "take a drink" before setting to work.2
Scomp had barely made it down the steps when Johnson shoved him to the floor and knotted the boy's hands with rope. When Scomp howled for help, Johnson drew a "large Spanish knife" from his belt, thrust the blade close to the teenager's face and "threatened to cut his throat if he resisted or made a noise." John Smith, the mixed-raced man who had baited Scomp and brought him here, now...