{"id":1924,"date":"2022-08-17T21:12:21","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T01:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/?page_id=1924"},"modified":"2023-11-06T08:51:47","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T12:51:47","slug":"reconsidering-the-underground-railroad-in-canada-west-barker","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/regional-essays\/reconsidering-the-underground-railroad-in-canada-west-barker\/","title":{"rendered":"Reconsidering the Underground Railroad in Canada West by Gordon S. Barker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Banner image: <\/strong>Many freedom seekers in search of greater security chose to settle in Canada West, depicted in this 1857 map, where slaveholders had no legal recourse to recapture them (<a href=\"https:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/29532\">House Divided Project<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Download PDF version of this essay (coming soon)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/category\/barker\/\"><strong>See related Timeline entries<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_4705\" style=\"width: 247px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/1859-Canada-Broadside.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4705\" class=\"wp-image-4705 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/1859-Canada-Broadside-237x300.png\" alt=\"1859 Broadside\" width=\"237\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/1859-Canada-Broadside-237x300.png 237w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/1859-Canada-Broadside-768x974.png 768w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/1859-Canada-Broadside.png 776w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 237px) 100vw, 237px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4705\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">1859 anti-slavery broadside from Canada West (<a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Fugitive_Slaves_in_Canada.png\">Library and Archives Canada<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>From the late 1700s until shots rang out in Charleston Harbor before dawn on April 12, 1861, Canada, particularly Ontario, then known as Canada West or Upper Canada, stood as a beacon of freedom to enslaved Blacks.\u00a0 In 1856, abolitionist Benjamin Drew called the area a \u201cRefuge for the Oppressed\u201d and stressed that it had become a destination for thousands who followed the North Star.<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\"><sup>[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 The Anti-Slavery Society of Canada reported that the Underground Railroad fueled the growth of Ontario\u2019s Black population, from about 500 in 1791 to some 30,000 persons in 1852.\u00a0 After Congress enacted the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, free Blacks who feared kidnapping and resented Black Codes adopted by most northern states joined increasing numbers of enslaved persons seeking safety in the northern dominion.\u00a0 The magnitude of this migration, which scholars continue to study and debate, suggests that early Ontario was more than just an Underground Railroad terminus or a scattering of safe houses on a strange landscape where activists sheltered freedom seekers.\u00a0\u00a0 Rather, the Underground Railroad in Canada West represented a remarkable community of Blacks and whites\u2014men and women who exercised agency in myriad ways to advance the cause of freedom.\u00a0 Working together, and with others in the United States and Britain, they established institutions and framed legislation that confirmed Canada as a place of formal freedom, a safe haven for those fleeing slavery and a bastion from where militants could challenge the hateful institution and check its reach above the Mason-Dixon Line. This biracial coalition\u2019s advocacy, determination, transnational relationships, and initiatives ensured that Canada West remained a sanctuary for freedom seekers.\u00a0 These men and women expelled slave catchers and kidnappers; journeyed to the South to rescue enslaved persons; lobbied legislators in Canada and London to protect the freedom of all residents; \u00a0petitioned the Queen and her representatives in the name of higher law; and finally, after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, they mobilized to wage a war of liberation.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The origins of this [Canadian] antislavery community can be traced to the escape, recapture, and resistance of James Somerset, an enslaved Black man whose owner took him to England and then sought to return him to slavery in the Americas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The origins of this antislavery community can be traced to the escape, recapture, and resistance of James Somerset, an enslaved Black man whose owner took him to England and then sought to return him to slavery in the Americas.\u00a0 Somerset\u2019s freedom fight caught the attention of London abolitionists, such as Granville Sharp who brought his case before the Court of the King\u2019s Bench.\u00a0 In 1772, Chief Justice Lord Mansfield ruled that slavery was \u201cso odious\u201d it could not be allowed unless it was sanctioned by positive law.<a href=\"#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\"><sup>[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Finding no statute or judicial precedent supporting slavery in England, Mansfield declared Somerset free and stated that he could not be forcibly returned to slavery, establishing the free-soil principle in England.\u00a0 Sharp, William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano and other abolitionists demanded that the free-soil principle be applied to Britain\u2019s American possessions.\u00a0 Responding to an antislavery groundswell in early Ontario ignited by the sale of an enslaved woman named Chloe Cooley, John Graves Simcoe, the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada and a friend of Wilberforce, sought to do just that in 1793.\u00a0 When Peter Martin, a prominent Niagara Black man who along with other bystanders had witnessed Cooley\u2019s desperate resistance as an American slaveholder forced her on a boat, petitioned the province\u2019s Executive Council.\u00a0 Simcoe seized the opportunity to push An Act to Limit Slavery through the colonial legislature despite resistance from several slaveholders on his council.<a href=\"#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref3\"><sup>[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Although the resulting gradual abolition law freed only enslaved children when they reached the age of 25, it also prohibited the importation of enslaved people, thus rescinding King George III\u2019s Imperial Act of 1790 that had been designed to protect Loyalist slaveholders\u2019 rights to human property after they moved to Canada.\u00a0 Simcoe\u2019s act served as the death knell for Canadian slavery, since it effectively freed any slaves arriving from other countries.\u00a0 Soon after it came into effect, court decisions in neighboring Lower Canada, the province of Quebec, rendered slavery untenable there as well.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4690\" style=\"width: 780px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Simcoe.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4690\" class=\"wp-image-4690 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Simcoe.jpeg\" alt=\"Simcoe\" width=\"770\" height=\"1008\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Simcoe.jpeg 770w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Simcoe-229x300.jpeg 229w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Simcoe-768x1005.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 770px) 100vw, 770px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4690\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Canadian emancipator, John Graves Simcoe (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.archives.gov.on.ca\/en\/explore\/online\/simcoe\/big\/7944.aspx\">Archives of Ontario<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>News of the emerging sanctuary in Britain\u2019s northern possession traveled quickly through Black communities in the United States, enhancing Canada\u2019s appeal and sparking the first major wave of African Americans following the North Star across the border.\u00a0 Migration gained momentum after 1807 when Britain banned the transatlantic slave trade, and the Royal Navy began intercepting slaving vessels on the high seas.\u00a0 In 1819, embracing the <em>Somerset<\/em> free-soil principle, Upper Canada\u2019s Chief Justice John Beverley Robinson, responding to American demands to extradite fugitives from slavery, informed Washington that the northern dominion had \u201cadopted the Law of England.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn4\" name=\"_ednref4\"><sup>[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Robinson emphasized that regardless of what had been the status of freedom seekers prior to arriving in Canada, when they set foot on Canadian soil, they were forever free.\u00a0 This extradition refusal, coupled with news of Britain\u2019s recognition of the valor of Black Canadians serving in the War of 1812, including granting them homesteads in Oro Township, further enhanced Canada West\u2019s appeal for Black Americans.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1820s, Ontario\u2019s attractiveness also benefited from a new strand of British abolitionism rooted in both the Bible and the law.\u00a0 In the pamphlet <em>Immediate, Not Gradual Emancipation <\/em>(1824), Elizabeth Heyrick, an outspoken English Quaker and leading abolitionist, declared that slaveholders had no right to interpose themselves between the Creator and His earthly beings, and she branded slavery \u201ca sin to be forsaken immediately.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn5\" name=\"_ednref5\"><sup>[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Writing from London in 1828, Lord Aberdeen staunchly rejected renewed American demands for the extradition of fugitive slaves, telling the United States ambassador to Britain Albert Gallatin that \u201cthe law of Parliament gave freedom to every slave who effected his landing upon British ground.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn6\" name=\"_ednref6\"><sup>[6]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>African Americans reacted\u2014in print and by traveling to Britain\u2019s northern dominion in increasing numbers.\u00a0\u00a0 In <em>The<\/em> <em>Appeal, in Four Articles <\/em>(1830), the radical Black abolitionist David Walker concluded the British were now \u201cthe best friends the coloured people have.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn7\" name=\"_ednref7\"><sup>[7]<\/sup><\/a> With cotton plantations spreading across the American South and Black Laws sweeping the free states, Britain\u2019s northern dominion was even more inviting\u2014particularly as growing numbers of Black residents built vibrant, welcoming communities. After the 1829 Cincinnati race riot, 32 families moved near London, Ontario, to establish an all-Black settlement, which they named Wilberforce.\u00a0 It soon had substantial livestock, pigs, horses, a grist mill, a sawmill, a school, and two churches.\u00a0 Further, Sir John Colborne, Upper Canada\u2019s new lieutenant governor, began to openly welcome Black residents.\u00a0 In a letter to James C. Brown, a leading Black Ohioan, he stressed the difference between Canada and the United States.\u00a0 \u201cTell the Republicans on your side of the line,\u201d wrote Colborne, \u201cwe do not know men by their colour.\u00a0 If you come to us, you will be entitled to all the privileges of the rest of His Majesty\u2019s subjects.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn8\" name=\"_ednref8\"><sup>[8]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Colborne\u2019s message rang true in 1833 when he refused to extradite Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, two fugitives from Kentucky slavery who were rescued in Detroit and spirited across the river to Windsor.\u00a0 That same year the Imperial Parliament passed the Emancipation Bill abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire, effective August 1, 1834.<\/p>\n<p>British abolition initiated another wave of migration that further strengthened Black communities in Canada.\u00a0 The burgeoning Black population established churches, benevolent societies including 14 chapters of the famous True Band Society, the legendary Canadian Black militia known as the Coloured Corps, as well as schools, farms, and businesses.\u00a0 The increasing number of Blacks fueled Canada West\u2019s antislavery militancy.\u00a0 In 1835, Canadian Blacks pursued slave catchers across the border after they had kidnapped the Stanford family in St. Catharines.\u00a0 The Canadians rescued the Black family in a pitched battle near Buffalo that the African American novelist William Wells Brown dubbed \u201cone of the most fearful fights for freedom.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn9\" name=\"_ednref9\"><sup>[9]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 The militants returned the Stanfords to St. Catharines and demanded authorities indict two Canadians who participated in the kidnapping.\u00a0 In 1837, when a sheriff jailed a freedom seeker named Solomon Moseby for having stolen a Kentucky slaveholder\u2019s horse for an escape to Canada, about two hundred Niagara Black men, supported by their wives and white neighbors, rescued him, signaling to American slaveholders that fugitive slave renditions would not be tolerated north of the border.\u00a0 Later that same year, the case of Jesse Happy, another Kentucky freedom seeker who had also escaped with his owner\u2019s horse but left it at the border so that he would not be charged as a felon, saw British officials confirm their stance on extradition.\u00a0 They responded to American demands for Happy\u2019s extradition by declaring that individuals would only be extradited if they committed acts that were crimes in Canada; the officials noted that flight from slavery was not a crime since slavery was illegal in the northern dominion.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Against this background, <em>The Colored American<\/em> celebrated Canada as \u201csalubrious and fertile as any other country under the sun\u201d and forecast that \u201chundreds of thousands of our brethren\u201d would soon find sanctuary there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Against this background, <em>The Colored American<\/em> celebrated Canada as \u201csalubrious and fertile as any other country under the sun\u201d and forecast that \u201chundreds of thousands of our brethren\u201d would soon find sanctuary there.<a href=\"#_edn10\" name=\"_ednref10\"><sup>[10]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 When in 1841 Britain curtly rejected American extradition demands to return Blacks who revolted on the slave ship <em>Creole<\/em>, murdering crew members and commandeering the vessel to the Bahamas, the newspaper\u2019s prediction seemed sound.\u00a0 London officials indicated that the alleged mutineers and murderers acted only \u201cto obtain their Freedom\u201d and stressed that because British law recognized natural rights to freedom, self-theft represented defense of the right to liberty.\u00a0 When Lord Ashburton met Secretary of State Daniel Webster later in the year to negotiate the agreement that became the Treaty of Washington of 1842, the British cabinet instructed him to \u201crepudiate any proposal to surrender up a person charged with the mere offence of escaping from Slavery.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn11\" name=\"_ednref11\"><sup>[11]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Britain\u2019s diplomatic stance set the stage for additional Black settlements in Canada\u2014Queen\u2019s Bush, the Dawn Settlement that included the manual school known as the British-American Institute, the Refugee Home Society near Windsor, and the Elgin Association in Raleigh Township, the home of the famous Buxton Mission School.\u00a0 Along with Black churches, the Buxton Mission School became central to Black institutional life in the northern dominion, and it produced a generation of remarkable Black Canadian leaders.\u00a0 Renewed African American migration also increased the vibrancy of Black communities in such urban centers as Toronto, Hamilton, and St. Catharines.\u00a0 In 1841, some 12,500 Blacks made Toronto their home.\u00a0 By mid-century, Canadian Black communities were benefiting from truly outstanding leadership\u2014men and women with energy, vision, a wide range of skills, good relationships with antislavery Canadian whites, and ties to transnational antislavery networks in Britain, Europe, and America, including Underground Railroad operatives in such urban centers as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Syracuse, Rochester, Sandusky, Ripley, Cincinnati, Oberlin, Detroit, and Chicago. These Canadian leaders collaborated with the likes of Lewis Hayden, Theodore Parker, Stephen Foster, and Abby Kelley in Massachusetts, Thomas Garrett and William Still in the mid-Atlantic states, David Ruggles, Samuel May, and Frederick Douglass in New York, George DeBaptiste in Michigan, John Anthony Copeland, John Rankin, and Levi Coffin in Ohio, Elijah Anderson in Indiana, and the famous Underground Railroad activist known as Charley in Chicago, Illinois.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4695\" style=\"width: 260px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/04\/HD_shaddMAc.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4695\" class=\"wp-image-4695 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/04\/HD_shaddMAc.jpg\" alt=\"Shadd\" width=\"250\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4695\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mary Ann Shadd, &#8220;one of Canada&#8217;s greatest Black teachers and editors&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/12522\">House Divided Project<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Some Canadian leaders, such as Harriet Tubman and Madison Washington of the <em>Creole<\/em> revolt, had escaped slavery and risked everything returning from Canada to the South to rescue enslaved family members and friends.\u00a0 Tubman established the Salem Chapel of the St. Catharines British Methodist Episcopal Church as a refuge for hundreds fleeing slavery.\u00a0 Other notable Canadian Blacks who had endured slavery included Alexander Hemsley, Josiah Henson, Anthony Burns, Jermain Wesley Loguen, Henry Bibb, and Samuel Ringgold Ward.\u00a0 They too provided leadership, worked tirelessly in their adopted communities, and became instrumental in the transnational antislavery movement.\u00a0 Some stirred audiences as they spoke on both sides of the Canada-United States border; others advocated in print.\u00a0 During his exile to Canada after the 1851 Jerry Rescue in Syracuse, Jermain Loguen penned his famous antislavery letter to New York governor Washington Hunt.\u00a0 In his final years, Anthony Burns (who had once been captured in Boston in 1854) ministered to a St. Catharines Zion Baptist congregation that included many formerly enslaved persons.\u00a0 He also revealed his radical abolitionism when he wrote to <em>The Liberator<\/em> declaring that if kidnappers tried to re-enslave him, he would enforce Patrick Henry\u2019s motto \u201cLiberty or Death.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn12\" name=\"_ednref12\"><sup>[12]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Henry Bibb promoted the Canadian Canaan in his newspaper <em>The Voice of the Fugitive<\/em>.<a href=\"#_edn13\" name=\"_ednref13\"><sup>[13]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Samuel Ringgold Ward collaborated with the legendary Canadian Black editor Mary Ann Shadd, making <em>The Provincial Freeman<\/em> a mouthpiece for Blacks on both sides of the border.<a href=\"#_edn14\" name=\"_ednref14\"><sup>[14]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Shadd, still regarded today as one of Canada\u2019s greatest Black teachers and editors, relentlessly rallied antislavery militants, voicing powerful opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and US Supreme Court chief justice Roger Taney\u2019s majority opinion in the Dred Scott case in 1857.\u00a0\u00a0 Shadd employed Osborne P. Anderson, the Black Canadian who survived the 1859 Harpers Ferry Raid.\u00a0 She had likely introduced him to John Brown in Chatham, Ontario and later edited Anderson\u2019s account of the attack on the federal arsenal. She became one of the most effective recruiting officers for the Union Army during the American Civil War.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4706\" style=\"width: 1150px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Salem-Chapel-e1687106405647.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4706\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4706\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Salem-Chapel-e1687106405647.jpeg\" alt=\"Salem Chapel\" width=\"1140\" height=\"620\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Salem-Chapel-e1687106405647.jpeg 1140w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Salem-Chapel-e1687106405647-300x163.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Salem-Chapel-e1687106405647-1024x557.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Salem-Chapel-e1687106405647-768x418.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Salem-Chapel-e1687106405647-900x489.jpeg 900w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1140px) 100vw, 1140px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4706\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Salem Chapel in St. Catherine&#8217;s, Harriet Tubman&#8217;s church (<a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Salem_Chapel.jpg\">Wikipedia<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Some Canadian Black community leaders had been born free in America but moved across the border seeking safety from kidnappers or refuge from Black Laws.\u00a0 They too became key operatives in transnational antislavery networks and assisted freedom seekers arriving in Canada West.\u00a0 The Rev. William M. Mitchell served a Baptist congregation in Toronto while maintaining ties with Underground Railroad activists in the Ohio country where he had lived; he also collaborated with William Still in Philadelphia.\u00a0 The Rev. William Troy moved to the Canadian side of the Detroit River, where he established Windsor\u2019s First Baptist Church.\u00a0 He welcomed freedom seekers into his congregation, helped them settle on Canadian soil, and later published many of their narratives.<a href=\"#_edn15\" name=\"_ednref15\"><sup>[15]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Some Canadian Black community leaders had been born free in America but moved across the border seeking safety from kidnappers or refuge from Black Laws.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Black community leaders joined forces with such antislavery whites as the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada president Michael Willis, <em>Globe and Mail<\/em> newspaper publisher George Brown, noted politician William Hamilton Merritt, the Lane Seminary rebel and educator Hiram Wilson, Elgin Association founder Reverend William King, the Belleville botanist Dr. Alexander Ross who led rescue missions to the American South, and Laura Haviland, who, after moving to Michigan, guided hundreds of freedom-seekers to her native Ontario.\u00a0 As they challenged slavery south of the border, together they also sought to halt race prejudice in Canada West.<\/p>\n<p>From the outbreak of the American Civil War until Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, members of the biracial coalition that represented the Underground Railroad in Canada West turned their gaze southward.\u00a0\u00a0 After January 1, 1863, they rallied for the Union in what the outstanding Black Canadian doctor Anderson Ruffin Abbott so aptly called \u201ca war for humanity.\u201d<a href=\"#_edn16\" name=\"_ednref16\"><sup>[16]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Some 2,500 Black Canadians put their lives on the line in the struggle, including Canada West\u2019s distinguished Black doctors schooled at Buxton and Toronto\u2014Alexander Thomas Augusta, John H. Rapier, Jerome Riley, Martin Delany, and Anderson Ruffin Abbott.\u00a0 They joined Harriet Tubman, Mary Ann Shadd, William Troy, and other remarkable Blacks, taking much-needed resources, skills, determination, courage, and vision southward to support the United States and later meet the challenges of Reconstruction.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4686\" style=\"width: 848px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-9.25.23-AM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4686\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4686\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-9.25.23-AM.png\" alt=\"Refugee settlers\" width=\"838\" height=\"1022\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-9.25.23-AM.png 838w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-9.25.23-AM-246x300.png 246w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-18-at-9.25.23-AM-768x937.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4686\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Black Canadians who had been refugees from American slavery, gathering in Windsor, Ontario (formerly Canada West) during the 1890s (From Wilbur Siebert, The Underground Railroad (1898), p. 190)<\/p><\/div>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><strong>Further Reading<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Barker, Gordon S. <em>Fugitive Slaves and the Unfinished American Revolution, Eight Cases, 1848-1856<\/em>. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishers, 2013.<\/li>\n<li>Brown-Kubisch, Linda. <em>The Queen\u2019s Bush Settlement: Black Pioneers, 1839-1865<\/em>. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2004.<\/li>\n<li>Smardz Frost, Karolyn. <em>I\u2019ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad<\/em>. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.<\/li>\n<li>Smardz Frost, Karolyn and Veta Smith Tucker, eds. <em>A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River Borderland<\/em>. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016.<\/li>\n<li>Mackey, Frank. <em>Done with Slavery: The Black Fact in Montreal 1760-1840<\/em>. Montreal: McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press, 2010.<\/li>\n<li>Damian Alan Pargas, <em>Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800-1860 <\/em>(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.<\/li>\n<li>Reid, Richard . <em>African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War<\/em>. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014.<\/li>\n<li>Robbins, Arlie C. <em>Legacy to Buxton<\/em>. North Buxton, Ontario: A. C. Robbins, 2013.<\/li>\n<li>Winks, Robin W. <em>The Blacks in Canada: A History<\/em>. Montreal: McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press, 1997.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><strong>Citations<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref1\" name=\"_edn1\"><sup>[1]<\/sup><\/a> Benjamin Drew, <em>The North-Side View of Slavery. The Refugee <\/em>(Boston: John P. Jewett, 1856), 39.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref2\" name=\"_edn2\"><sup>[2]<\/sup><\/a> https:\/\/www.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/pathways\/blackhistory\/rights\/docs\/state_trials.htm<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref3\" name=\"_edn3\"><sup>[3]<\/sup><\/a> <em>An Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Servitude<\/em>, Statutes of Upper Canada Cap. 7, 33 George III, 1793.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref4\" name=\"_edn4\"><sup>[4]<\/sup><\/a> William Renwick Riddell, \u201cThe Fugitive Slave in Upper Canada,\u201d <em>Journal of Negro History<\/em> 5, no. 3 (July 1920): 344.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref5\" name=\"_edn5\"><sup>[5]<\/sup><\/a> Elizabeth Heyrick, <em>Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition<\/em> (orig. pub. 1824; Philadelphia: Philadelphia A.S. Society, 1837), 3.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref6\" name=\"_edn6\"><sup>[6]<\/sup><\/a> Samuel Gridley Howe, <em>The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West. Report to the Freedmen&#8217;s Inquiry Commission<\/em> (Boston: Wright &amp; Potters, printers, 1864), 14. See also <em>Niles\u2019 Register<\/em>, (December 27, 1828), 290.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref7\" name=\"_edn7\"><sup>[7]<\/sup><\/a> David Walker, <em>Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly to Those of the United States <\/em>(Boston: David Walker, 1830), 47.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref8\" name=\"_edn8\"><sup>[8]<\/sup><\/a> Quoted in Gary E. French, <em>Men of Colour: An Historical Account of the Black Settlement on Wilberforce Street in Oro Township, Simcoe County, Ontario, 1819-1949<\/em> (Orillia, Ontario: Dyment-Stubley Printers, 1978), 21.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref9\" name=\"_edn9\"><sup>[9]<\/sup><\/a> <em>St. Catharines\u2019 British American Journal<\/em>, July 23, 1835.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref10\" name=\"_edn10\"><sup>[10]<\/sup><\/a> <em>Colored American<\/em>, January 22, 1839.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref11\" name=\"_edn11\"><sup>[11]<\/sup><\/a> Alexander L. Murray, \u201cThe Extradition of Fugitive Slaves from Canada: A Re-evaluation,\u201d <em>Canadian Historical Review<\/em> 43 (1962), 304-306.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref12\" name=\"_edn12\"><sup>[12]<\/sup><\/a> <em>The Liberator<\/em>, August 13, 1858.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref13\" name=\"_edn13\"><sup>[13]<\/sup><\/a> Henry Bibb, ed., <em>Voice of the Fugitive<\/em> (Sandwich, Canada West: Henry Bibb, 1851-1852).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref14\" name=\"_edn14\"><sup>[14]<\/sup><\/a> Mary Ann Shadd and Samuel Ringgold Ward, eds., <em>The Provincial Freeman<\/em> (Windsor, Toronto, Chatham, 1853-1857).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref15\" name=\"_edn15\"><sup>[15]<\/sup><\/a> William Troy, <em>Hair-Breadth Escapes from Slavery to Freedom<\/em> (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref16\" name=\"_edn16\"><sup>[16]<\/sup><\/a> Anderson Ruffin Abbott Papers, Anderson Ruffin Abbott Collection, Toronto Reference Library; See also <em>Richard Reid, African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War <\/em>(Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014), 207.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><strong>Author Profile<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/10\/Gordon-Barker.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-2324\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/10\/Gordon-Barker-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"BARKER\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/10\/Gordon-Barker-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/files\/2022\/10\/Gordon-Barker.jpeg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>GORDON S. BARKER<\/strong>is a full professor of history at Bishop\u2019s University in Sherbrooke , Quebec, Canada, where he specializes in African American, Revolutionary America, and Civil War Era history. He received undergraduate degrees in Economics and History from McGill University and his MA and PhD from the College of William and Mary. His works have appeared in leading scholarly journals such as the\u00a0<em>Virginia Magazine of History and Biography<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0<em>American Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties.\u00a0<\/em>He has authored two major books called\u00a0<em>Fugitive Slaves and the Unfinished American Revolution: Eight Cases, 1848-1856\u00a0<\/em>(McFarland, 2013) and\u00a0<em>The Imperfect Revolution: Anthony Burns and the Landscape of Race in Antebellum America<\/em>\u00a0(The Kent State University Press, 2010) as well as several book chapters in edited volumes.<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Banner image: Many freedom seekers in search of greater security chose to settle in Canada West, depicted in this 1857 map, where slaveholders had no legal recourse to recapture them (House Divided Project) &nbsp; Download PDF version of this essay (coming soon) See related Timeline entries From the late 1700s until shots rang out in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3344,"parent":1609,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-1924","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1924"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1925,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1924\/revisions\/1925"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}