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From Slaves to Subjects:

Forging Freedom in the Canadian Legal System

by

Nina Halty

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, FL

August 2017

Copyright by Nina Halty 2017

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Acknowledgments

I would first like to express my sincere gratitude to the faculty of the History department for providing me consistent support, guidance, and advice throughout the entire thesis writing process. Without Dr. Shannon’s class on American foreign relations

I never would have found my topic, and since that semester Dr. Shannon has always been so helpful and willing to provide research tips, organizational suggestions, and useful feedback. In his class on freedom and unfreedom in early America, Dr. Sharples helped me hone my topic and uncover the questions that truly motivated my research. I am particularly grateful for his willingness to help me wade through my sometimes conflicting thoughts on this subject and find my argument. I also thank Dr. Sharples for his incredibly thorough and thoughtful comments on my writing, which helped me sharpen my prose and always write with the reader in mind. And, of course, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Engle, who first encouraged me to consider writing a thesis and who has provided steady support throughout this entire process and has always encouraged me to focus on the narrative and not get bogged down.

Finally, I wish to thank my parents who have always been patient and supportive throughout the past year. They always provided a listening ear when I needed to vent to someone about the bizarre structure of Canadian archival finding aids. They always provided a pair of extra eyes when I needed help deciphering some muddled handwriting on a nineteenth letter. And they always provided a helping hand when I started questioning my argument or doubting my ability. I am forever indebted to my mom iv especially for driving over four thousand miles with me to visit seven different archives across the continent. I am eternally grateful to her for being willing to spend countless hours in dark reading rooms hunched over hastily written letters, squinting at newspapers on microfilm, and flipping through crumbling scrapbooks. It was an incredible trip that I will never forget. This project would not be possible without her.

v Abstract

Author: Nina Halty

Title: From Slaves to Subjects: Forging Freedom in the Canadian Legal System

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Stephen D. Engle

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 2017

This thesis clarifies recent debates on the problems of territorialized freedom in the Atlantic world by examining several extradition cases involving runaway slaves in

Canada, where southern slaveholders attempted to retrieve their lost property by relabeling fugitive slaves as fugitive criminals. In order to combat these efforts and receive the full protections of British subjecthood, self-emancipated people realized that they needed to prove themselves worthy of this status. To achieve this, black refugees formulated their own language of subjecthood predicated upon economic productivity, social respectability, and political loyalty. By actively working to incorporate themselves into the , Afro- redefined subjecthood from a status largely seen as a passively received birthright to a deliberate choice. Therefore, this thesis demonstrates that ways in which formerly enslaved people laid out their own terms for

vi imperial inclusion and defined the contours of black social and legal belonging in a partially free Atlantic world.

vii From Slaves to Subjects:

Forging Freedom in the Canadian Legal System

Introduction…….....……………………………………………………………………… 1

Chapter One: Confronting the “great apostle of :” Fugitive Slaves

and Anglo-American Diplomacy…………….…………………………………..30

Chapter Two: “I thought we were safe here:” Cultivating Subjecthood in the

British Empire………………………………….………………………………...58

Chapter Three: Back in the “prison house of bondage:” Nelson Hackett and the

Question of Slave Criminality………………………………………………….. 94

Chapter Four: “Can goods and chattels transgress moral law?” The

and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty……………………………………………..121

Chapter Five: “Like an ominous black cloud:” Black Canadian Society and the

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850……………………………………………………..153

Chapter Six: “Not a murderer but a Hero:” The John Anderson

Case……….…………………………………………………………………….188

Conclusion…...…………………………………………………………………………234

viii

Introduction:

James Smith could feel the cool water lap up against his feet and he could hear the dull roar of tumbling water as the rushed by him. He lay face down with his stomach pressed against the river bank and his legs stretched out behind him. As he slowly came back to awareness, James squinted up at the dusky blue sky. It was a crisp

April morning and the sun had not yet climbed above the horizon, but the birds had already started chirping. After a few moments, Smith sat up and wiped the sand off of himself before he began to recount the events of the night before, trying to recall how he landed here. The night before he had been laying in his bed in his Chatham home, fast asleep, when suddenly two pairs of hands seized him and dragged him out of the house.

When the initial feelings of shock wore off, Smith felt a sense of dread in the pit of his stomach. Without any indication from the men, Smith knew that they were slave catchers who had crossed the Canadian border to retrieve him. Smith, a fugitive slave from

Kentucky, had always known that he could be captured at any point, but in the past couple of years he had settled into a false sense of security and began building a new life for himself after he reached Canadian soil.1

After bounding and gagging him, the slave catchers carried him across the

Niagara River. Fortunately, Smith managed to escape his bondage and swim back across

1 For a description of Smith’s attempted kidnapping, see “Petition of the Canadian people of Colour to the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper ,” Ancaster Gazette, June 18, 1828, reprinted in William Renwick Riddell, “Interesting Notes on and Canada with Respect to the Negro,” Journal of Negro History 13, no. 2 (1928): 194-5. 1 the river to safety, but the two kidnappings left an indelible mark on Canada’s black population. Smith’s kidnapping highlighted a fundamental, but often overlooked, reality of the . Despite its evocative name, the Railroad was not an efficient system of connections and switches with reliable stations and trustworthy conductors. Frequently, Southern slave catchers infiltrated its ranks and federal marshals prowled the countryside, checking ships and railway cars for stowaways. Instead of the elaborate railway of popular legend, the Underground Railroad was a loose association of white abolitionists and free blacks who assisted thousands of slaves to freedom through sheer determination, improvisation, and cunning. For self-emancipated people, the road from to freedom was rarely a linear path from South to North. Instead of straight lines, runaway slaves left overlapping paths that formed a rich latticework across the

Atlantic world. Even when runaway slaves did reach Canadian soil, their freedom was not guaranteed and re-enslavement was always a possibility looming on the horizon.2

Previous scholarship on this topic has primarily dealt with the human drama of escape. Highlighting the romantic image of slaves following the North Star, these accounts trace the physical journey of individual slaves as they slipped past the Canadian

2 Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (New : W.W. Norton & Co., 2015), 5-6; For more on the development, and sometimes exaggeration, of the story of the Underground Railroad, see Larry Gara, The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1961) as well as his articles, “Propaganda Uses of the Underground Railway,” Mid-America 34, no. 1 (1952): 155-71; and “The Underground Railway: Legend or Reality?” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 105, no. 1 (1961): 334-39; For more on how the drama of the Underground Railroad was purposefully heightened for abolitionist propaganda see Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1971):178-181, 233-246, 292; Stephen Kantrowitz, More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2012), 180-198; Fergus M. Bordewich, Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc., 2005): 3-8; Daniel O. Sayers, “The Underground Railroad Reconsidered,” The Western Journal of Black Studies 28, no. 3 (2004): 435-443.

2 border.3 While these accounts are certainly worthy of scholarly attention, they do not fully illuminate the role of Canada in this stirring narrative. In these tales, Canada is typically cast as a modern day Canaan, a far off symbol of liberty and safety. Canadian scholars have largely celebrated this image of their nation as a haven from slavery.

Nationalist Canadian historians, like William Canniff, applauded Canada’s honorable record on slavery as evidence of their nation’s progressive character. These authors typically avoided discussions of the geographic and economic reasons that led to slavery’s inevitable demise in Canada and instead claimed that, “The leading principles which guided the settlers of this country were too noble a nature to accept the monstrous system of human bondage as an appendage of the Colony.”4

By reducing Canada to a destination, however, these accounts fail to address the international ramifications of flight. In fleeing Southern plantations for the Promised

Land of Canada, fugitive slaves not only transmuted their resistance into action, they became leading actors in the contentious of slavery in the Atlantic world. For these runaway slaves, entering Canada represented more than crossing a geographic boundary. By passing from one jurisdiction to another, runaways exploited competing slavery laws and exposed contrasting definitions of personal liberty and property rights.

3 Bordewich, Bound for Canaan, 3.

4 William Canniff, History of the Settlement of (: A.H. Hovey & Co., 1872), 570; Even Gerald M. Craig’s incredibly thorough study of Upper Canada only devoted a paragraph to slavery in the colony and instead emphasized Canada’s move toward gradual emancipation. Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784-1841 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963); For more on the brief existence of , see William Renwick Riddell, “The Slave in Canada,” Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 14, no. 2 (1923): 249-78.

3

In doing so, American slaves hardened the border between the and Canada and revealed the precise point at which “sovereignty found expression.”5

After James Smith’s attempted kidnapping, black refugees in Canada realized that not even this geographic boundary could not shield them entirely from Southerner slaveholders’ schemes. Instead, self-emancipated people developed their own strategies to secure their freedom and further their own economic, social, and political interests. To ward off future abductions, Afro-Canadians convened in Ancaster to discuss their prospects in Upper Canada and draw up a petition to the Lieutenant Governor demanding greater protections from the provincial government. In their memorial, these black petitioners declared that even though they were grateful for the protections offered by

“the excellent constitution of the Province,” the two recent kidnappings had demonstrated that legal protections alone could not shield them from the “slave-holding ruffians.”6

The black petitioners then explained that if they could “unite themselves together into a township” they would not only be able to prevent another kidnapping, but would also become “useful to our King and country” because they would be able to transform uncultivated “waste lands” into productive farmland. To make this township a reality, they petitioners suggested that the Lieutenant Governor grant them a slip of land near

Lake Huron on which they could “establish a settlement of Colored people.” Only when they were able to “combine and unite their means and exertions” to establish a thriving

5 Peter Sahlins, Borderlands: The Making of Spain and France in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 93; For more on the historical development of territorial sovereignty, see ibid., 2-4, 250, 275.

6 “Petition of the Canadian people of Colour to the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada,” 194-5.

4 settlement, the black petitioners argued, would they be able to pursue the “moral and religious education” that would bring them further into the fold of English society. Doing so, they claimed, would provide the best means of “preventing the system of kidnapping which is now carried on through his Majesty’s provinces.”7

With this request, these black migrants acknowledged that their physical security was inextricably linked to their ability to become members of Canadian society. For runaway slaves, reaching British soil in the colony of Upper Canada was only one leg of the long path to freedom. After overcoming physical and emotional obstacles in their trek to Canada, these runaways still had to blaze a legal path from slave to subject. For black refugees, acquiring subjecthood was crucial to maintaining their freedom because it guaranteed legal and military protection from the British Empire, the only world power that had the military might to challenge the United States in the Western hemisphere.

With this in mind, self-emancipated people knew that they needed to prove themselves worthy of this status through their everyday actions. Recognizing that the social and legal aspects of subject status were mutually reinforcing, black refugees formulated their own language of subjecthood predicated upon economic productivity, social respectability, and political loyalty. By actively working to incorporate themselves into the British

Empire, then, Afro-Canadians redefined subjecthood from a designation largely seen as a passively received birthright to a deliberate choice based on daily conduct and active participation in civic society.8

7 Ibid., 195.

8 The concept of a “language of subjecthood” draws from Hannah Weiss Muller’s work on French Catholic subjects in Grenada and after the Seven Years’ War. See Hannah Weiss Muller, “Bonds of Belonging: Subjecthood and the British Empire,” Journal of British Studies 53 (2014): 29-58; For an example of works that define subjecthood by “birth and residence” and 5

Kidnapping, however, was just one tactic Southern slaveholders used to retrieve their former slaves. Frustrated by their inability to recapture runaways through sheer physical force after they crossed the Canadian border, Southern slaveholders turned to extradition as a way to retrieve their lost property. By relabeling fugitive slaves as fugitive criminals, these planters found a convenient way to reclaim runaways while operating within formal legal channels. Unlike kidnapping, which left Southern slaveholders vulnerable to conviction under international law, extradition let Southern slaveholders create a borderless jurisdiction where they could extend their power into

Canadian territory. When Southern slaveholders adopted this new legal tool, they gave black refugees’ efforts to become British subjects renewed urgency and forced self- emancipated people to formulate ever more elaborate rhetorical strategies to make their case on the world stage.9

While extradition has always raised important questions about the balance between international governance and national sovereignty, it took on even greater significance when applied to runaway slaves. Because extradition merged domestic and foreign policy, these cases highlighted the Anglo-American divide over slavery and heightened tensions between these two world powers. In each instance, the fate of

American citizenship as “volitional,” see Alan Taylor, “The Late Loyalists: Northern Reflections of the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 1 (2007): 18; Alan Taylor, The Civil : American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 122; James H. Kettner, “The Development of American Citizenship in the Revolutionary Era: The Idea of Volitional Allegiance,” The American Journal of Legal History 18, no. 3 (1974): 208-242.

9 Matthew J. Karp, “‘This Vast Southern Empire:’ The South and the Foreign Policy of Slavery, 1833-1861” (Ph.D diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2013), 1-12; Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America’s Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 181-83; On Southern slaveholders’ embrace of federal power, see Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 6 fugitive slaves in Canada became tied up in the extended rivalry between a young upstart and an established empire. For American slaveholders, in particular, Great Britain represented not only a challenge to their territorial interests on the North American continent but also a major impediment to their aspirations for hemispheric dominance.

And yet, even though fugitive slaves became tangled up in this rivalry, they were not pawns in an elaborate game of diplomatic chess. Instead, runaway slaves tactfully played upon this fraught relationship in order to secure their freedom and consolidate their social gains.10

To achieve this, turned time and time again to the petition, which provided them a forum to distill their language of subjecthood and make themselves legible throughout the British Empire. While petitions initially appear formulaic and routine, it was this traditional framework that gave memorials their political force and potency. In the British Empire, the right to petition the Crown—or in this case the

Crown’s colonial representative, the Lieutenant Governor—had long served as a crucial link between the sovereign and his imperial subjects. While this right was first formally sanctioned in the 1689 Bill of Rights, it became increasingly important in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as Great Britain’s Empire came to include many non-white, non-

British, and non-Protestants subjects.11 When these diverse populations approached their

10 Daniel S. Margolies, Spaces of Law in American Foreign Relations: Extradition and Extraterritoriality in the Borderlands and Beyond, 1877-1898 (Athens, G.A.: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 1-6; Bradley Miller, “Emptying the Den of Thieves: International Fugitives and the Law in /Canada, 1819-1910” (Ph.D. diss., : 2012), 1-22.

11 In particular, the Bill of Rights declared: “It is the right of the subject to petition the King, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitions are illegal.” See, E. N. Williams, ed., The Eighteenth Century Constitution 1688-1815: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 28.

7 monarch or his representatives by drawing up petitions, they were able to imagine themselves as members of “a dispersed community of subjects” where peoples across different nationalities, religions, and races were bound up together under one expansive label.12 As Hannah Weiss Muller has observed, “Everyone from members of the House of Lords, who routinely addressed the reigning monarchs as ‘humble subjects,’ to lowly villagers, who regularly beseeched their sovereign for relief or privileges, wielded it.”13

The petition, therefore, served as a leveling force throughout the British Empire where both “new” and “old” subjects could assert themselves and negotiate the terms of their civic life.14 In Upper Canada, petitioning became so routine that British guidebooks for prospective immigrants to the colony even included printed examples of a standard petition in their appendices so new migrants only needed to fill in the blanks with their own personal information.15 While white Canadians drew up these petitions to ask for personal favors, government jobs, or pardons, black Canadians employed this forum to subvert the Atlantic world’s racial order. Therefore, by appealing to an established and accepted mode of political dissent, black refugees were able to insert themselves into a

12 Hannah Weiss Muller, “Bonds of Belonging: Subjecthood and the British Empire,” Journal of British Studies 53 (2014): 36.

13 Ibid., 30.

14 Mary Sarah Bilder, The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 39; Also see, Ken MacMillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution: Center and Periphery in the English Atlantic World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); H.V. Bowen, “British Conceptions of Global Empire, 1756-1783,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 26, no. 3 (1998): 1-27; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991).

15 For an example, see , A Visit to the Province of Upper Canada in 1819 (Aberdeen: n.p., 1820), lxx.

8 longstanding conversation over the boundaries of black subjecthood in a partially free

Atlantic world.16

Prior to the early modern period, English law did not have a fixed definition of subject status and there was no consistent legal framework that divided subjects and aliens. Instead, members of British society existed along a spectrum of differing levels of rights and privileges that corresponded to individuals’ landholding, taxation, and access to the court. By the seventeenth century, a clearer notion of subjecthood started taking shape with Sir Edward Coke’s influential opinion in Calvin’s Case (1608). In his decision, Coke likened the relationship between subject and sovereign to the bond between parent and child. In this scenario, a subject owed his King the same sort of immutable allegiance that a child owed his parents. In exchange for this obedience, the

King offered his subjects protection from both internal and external enemies. This vision of birthright subjecthood drew from Aristotelian philosophy, which organized the world into feudalistic hierarchies predicated upon established relationships of superiority and inferiority. While the tie between subject and sovereign demanded reciprocal obligations from each party, it did not necessarily confer specific rights or privileges to the subject.

This quasi-medieval ideology, however, became increasingly outdated as new conceptions of society emerged during the Enlightenment. Instead of viewing government as built upon principles of immutable allegiance and obedience, British

16 For more on the Loyalists’ use of the petition, see J. Potter-MacKinnon, While the Women Only Wept: Loyalist Refugee Women (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 98-9.

9 subjects saw themselves as bound to their government in a relationship of political consent.17

With the spread of Great Britain’s territorial empire across the Atlantic world, colonial practices increasingly diverged from Coke’s opinion. As James Kettner has observed, “circumstances in the New World led men to attenuate and modify these concepts of natural allegiance,” and these changes materialized in the colonial naturalization practices.18 Because of the persistent need for labor, colonial authorities could not maintain the restrictive immigration policies practiced in the metropole. In the

New World colonies, gradations between natural-born and “adopted” subjects had to collapse in order to ensure a steady supply of immigrants to fill the chronic labor shortage.19 Therefore, while the distinctions between natural-born and naturalized subjects remained firm in proper, these divisions began to erode in the colonies.

Subjecthood, then, became a uniform status where an individual could quickly claim the privileges of imperial membership if they were willing to pledge allegiance to the monarch and provide a pair of willing hands.20

As colonists began to abandon Coke’s paternal framework in favor of a more uniform notion of subjecthood, a new legal paradigm also began to take root where

17 J. Mervyn Jones, British Nationality: Law and Practice (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1947), 1-4; Also see, John W. Salmond, “Citizenship and Allegiance,” Law Quarterly Review 17, no. 1 (1902): 49-63; For more on the “covenant” between kings and subjects, see Edward Vallance, Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism, and the Political Nation (New York: Boydell Press, 2005), 77-8.

18 James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608-1870 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 9.

19 Ibid., 106.

20 Ibid., 107.

10 property ownership was necessary for political recognition and social inclusion. This reality reflected British North America’s status as a series of colonial settlements, in which “civilized settlers” transformed uncultivated wilderness into “valuable property” for the benefit of the metropole.21 To justify the indigenous expropriation that inevitably resulted from their settlement, Anglo settlers defined civilization according to land use.

Even though the British had previously used a similar Christian-heathen distinction to legitimize their conquest of the “Wild Irish,” it was not until the North American colonization that this dichotomy was mapped on to the landscape.22 perhaps best articulated this ideology in his essay “Of Property” in Chapter V of his Second

Treatise of Government. In it, Locke developed a theory of private property whereby man made a piece of land his own when he “mixed his labour with” it.23 While Locke believed that “God gave the World to Men in Common,” he intended property “to the use of the Industrious and the Rational, (and Labour was to be his Title to it).”24 Therefore, when Locke famously declared that “in the beginning all the world was America,” he implicitly erased the Native peoples living on the North American and disregarded their rights to this land because they had not enclosed and cultivated it. In essence, Locke

21 Aziz Rana, The Two Faces of American Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 34.

22 Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 7.

23 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. MacPherson (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1980), 19; For more on Locke’s connection to North American colonization, see David Armitage, “John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government,” Political Theory 32, no. 1 (2004): 602-27, esp. 603.

24 Ibid., 21, 28. Emphasis in original.

11 presented sedentary agriculture as the basis for political authority and recognition in an

Empire predicated upon settler expansion and indigenous dispossession.25

In a society where property ownership was the gateway to political belonging, conceptions of true independence inevitably took on economic connotations. As long as an individual remained dependent on another for his financial well-being, he was always vulnerable to manipulation. James Harrington succinctly captured this ideology in his seventeenth-century treatise on proper governance when he wrote that, “The man that cannot live upon his own must be a servant; but he that can live upon his own may be a freeman.”26 Only landholders, Harrington posited, would feel tied to the political community and invested in its welfare. Those without property, on the other hand, would act according to the will of their employers as opposed to the common good. Anglo settlers also believed that land ownership would also benefit their society because it

“cultivate[d] the qualities of character that suit citizens to self-government,” such as self- reliance and fiscal responsibility.27 Freedom, then, did not simply signify a lack of

25 Caroline Elkins, “Settler Colonialism: A Concept and Its Uses,” in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century, Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2005), 1-20; James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783- 1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8 (2006): 387-409; Nicolas Canny, “The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America,” William and Mary Quarterly 30, no. 1 (1973): 575-598.

26 James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana and a System of Politics, J. G. A. Pocock, ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 269; Also see, Philip Pettit, : A Theory of Freedom and Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 32-4.

27 Michael Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 169.

12 external coercion, it also entailed deliberate control over one’s financial affairs and active participation in civic life.28

In British North America, however, this internal egalitarianism was dependent upon external subordination and freedom became defined in contrast to the experience of those outside the body politic: African slaves, native peoples, and Catholics. In order to aid quick naturalization, Anglo settlers welcomed other Western European immigrants and offered them entry to the social contract as long as they met certain religious criteria but they rejected Native American, free blacks, or Catholics no matter how sophisticated or self-sufficient. Therefore, while colonial authorities depicted Native tribes, Catholics, and African slaves as perpetual outsiders, they viewed Western European Protestants as sharing a parallel history with similar institutions and principles. This practice exemplified the emancipatory and exclusionary dynamics of British North America’s settler societies, or what Aziz Rana has termed “the two faces of American freedom.”29

Roger B. Taney explicitly called attention to this duality when he ruled against black

28 Rogers Smith, Civil Ideas: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 57.

29 Indeed, Rana posits that the American colonists chose to revolt when they did in order to preserve this social hierarchy at the precise moment in time that British legislators began working to level these distinctions so they could more effectively govern an increasingly diverse and expanding Empire. Rana, The Two Faces of American Freedom, 3-10; Ned Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680-1760 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); For more on the relationship between American slavery and the , see Gerald Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (New York: New York University Press, 2014); For more on the exclusionary aspects of republicanism in America, see Michael Mann, “The Dark Side of Democracy: The Modern Tradition of Ethnic and Racial Cleansing,” New Left Review 235 (1999): 18-45; Also see, George M. Frederickson, “Colonialism and : The United States and South African in Comparative Perspective,” in The Arrogance of Race: Historical Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 220-1; For more on the relationship between settler colonialism, indigenous dispossession, and American democracy, see Adam J. Dahl, “Empire of the People: The Ideology of Democratic Empire in the Antebellum United States,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2014).

13

British sailors in Calder v. Deliesseline. In this infamous decision, Taney denied the very possibility of black subjecthood and claimed that because people of African descent

“came into the dominions of Great Britain not as aliens coming to settle among them . . . but as slaves . . . the privileges there granted to them, are rather favours than rights inherent in British subjects.” Black refugees, then, were never “intended to be included when the British people or British subjects are spoken of” and could never form any part of the body politic.30

When black petitioners asked the Lieutenant Governor for a plot of land to build their own farms, then, they were consciously appealing to this ethos of colonial settlerism. In the process, formerly enslaved people also implicitly called attention to the fundamental linkage between the American and Canadian historical experience. While many historians have characterized Upper Canada as a “counterrevolutionary polity” defined in contrast with the new United States and populated by Loyalists and Britons who had fought against the American rebels, this province still shared the societal structure of a colonial settlement.31 Because of their race and refugee status, though, formerly enslaved people quickly recognized that they needed to decouple subject status from ethnicity or ancestry if they to receive the full privileges of British subjecthood. To do so, black migrants embraced the emancipatory promise of agricultural self-sufficiency

30 Taney quoted in Michael A. Schoeppner, “Status across Borders: Rogery Taney, Black British Subjects, and a Diplomatic Antecedent to the Decision,” Journal of American History 100, no. 1 (2013): 46; Taney would obviously employ a similar argument in the notorious Scott v. Sandford decision. Black Canadians’ campaign to achieve subject status, then, had clear parallels to, and implications for, black Ameriacns’ campaign to achieve full citizenship.

31 Alan Taylor, “The Late Loyalists: Northern Reflections of the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 1 (2007): 2.

14 and middle-class respectability while they rejected the exclusionary aspects of settler society. In the process, Afro-Canadians hoped to make British political theorists’ most noble dreams for the British Empire a reality. In these scenarios, British thinkers envisioned a global empire based on tolerance where each royal subject enjoyed the benefits of English liberty, engaged in a thriving imperial marketplace, and pledged fealty to a benevolent monarch.32

Black Canadians’ efforts to become British subjects through their own self- fashioning and performance, though, cuts against traditional conceptions of subjecthood and citizenship where individuals evolve from subject to citizen, from one who tacitly accepts the law as it is to one who actively participates in its making. This perceived difference was best summarized by Rodney Barker in his work Political Legitimacy and the State: “[W]hilst all citizens are subjects, not all subjects are citizens. . . . [A]s a mere subject she is not participant in the activity of governing, the activity whereby she is subjected. Citizenship contributes another dimension. The citizen engages in politics and by so doing authorizes and influences government.”33 While the assumption that subjecthood demanded meek obedience while citizenship entailed active participation has

32 For some contemporary literature on the rights and liberties of British subjects, see Anonymous, British Liberties; or, the Free-Born Subjects Inhertiance; Containing the Laws that form the Basis of those Liberties, with Observations thereon, also, an Introductory Essay on Political Liberty and a Comprehensive View of the Constitution of Great Britain (London: H. Woodfall and w. Strahan, 1767); Charles Lucas, A Critical Review of the Liberties of British Subjects (London: R. Watkins, 1750); Francis Plowden, An Investigation of the native rights of British Subjects (London: F. Plowden, 1784); Also see, Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989; C. A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780-1830 (London: Longman, 1989), 1-15; Eliga H. Gould, “American Independence and Britain’s Counter-Revolution,” Past and Present, no. 154 (1997): 107-41.

33 Rodney Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State (Oxford: Claredon, 1990), 3.

15 been replicated in a variety of studies, these accounts overlook subjecthood’s flexibility as a legal category in the British Empire. Black Canadians’ efforts to define their own subject status, in particular, belies these simplistic distinctions. Instead, black migrants’ campaign to become subjects highlights subjecthood’s elasticity, which offered numerous advantages to marginalized communities who capitalized on its imprecise nature to make their voices heard at the highest levels of colonial governance.34

Taking advantage of British subjecthood in this way not only let self-emancipated people gain entry to the British Empire, though, it also gave them a chance to demonstrate their ability to live out the values that defined American citizenship in the nineteenth century. They did so by managing robust farms, adhering to Victorian social mores, attending Protestant churches, and participating in local politics. In many ways, black women in Canada emulated the model of the Republican Mother through their resourcefulness, responsibility, and restraint, while black men fulfilled their roles providers and protectors and frequently displayed their masculinity through military service for the Crown. In the process, black Canadian soldiers contradicted Southerners’ claims that men of African descent deserved their enslavement because they were unwilling to fight for their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Thus, by displaying their capacity for active and participatory subjecthood, formerly enslaved

34 For an example of works that define subjecthood by “birth and residence” and American citizenship as “volitional,” see Alan Taylor, “The Late Loyalists: Northern Reflections of the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 1 (2007): 18; Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 122; James H. Kettner, “The Development of American Citizenship in the Revolutionary Era: The Idea of Volitional Allegiance,” The American Journal of Legal History 18, no. 3 (1974): 208-242.

16 people were also able to strike a symbolic blow against chattel slavery and disprove the exclusionary assumptions of American citizenship.35

Achieving subject status, however, was not enough to fully protect Afro-

Canadians from Southern slaveholders completely. After Canadian authorities surrendered a fugitive slave accused of theft in 1842, black Canadians realized that they needed to not only appeal to “British justice” but also invoke notions of legal asylum. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, international law was in the midst of a transitional stage from naturalism to positivism. In naturalism, international society was bound by an unwritten moral code that outlined the responsibilities and obligations civilized states had to abide by. In positivism, on the other hand, states acted according to a system of rules agreed upon through written treaties and formal institutions. By labeling themselves as refugees, then, self-emancipated people strategically employed the language of natural law to contest their surrenders just before it gave way to positivism.

In the process, formerly enslaved people were able to transcends the strictures of positive law and tap into the “rights talk” floating throughout the Atlantic during the age of revolution. 36

35 For more on Southern slaveholders’ use of revolutionary rhetoric to justify human bondage, see François Furstenberg, In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 197-8; For more on the exclusionary aspects of American citizenship, see Judith N. Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).

36 Bradley Miller, “Emptying the Den of Thieves: International Fugitives and the Law in British North America/Canada, 1819-1910” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto: 2012), 62-3; Jenny S. Martinez, The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Lauren Benton and Aaron Slater, “Constituting the Imperial Community: Rights, Common Good, and Authority in Britain’s Atlantic Empire, 1607-1815,” in Pamela Slotte and Mia Halme-Tuomisaari eds., Revisiting the Origins of Human Rights (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 140-62; For more on the development of a “human rights” ideology during the Enlightenment, see Lynn Hunt, Human Rights (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), 33- 4. 17

Protecting refugees had a long history in British jurisprudence and Britons often conflated the right to asylum with the rights and liberties guaranteed by the English constitution. In the nineteenth century, though, this practice took on renewed importance as the British Empire spread across the world. As Caroline Shaw has shown, during this period Britons “powerfully incorporated the provision of relief for persecuted foreigners into their national, and then imperial, raison d’etre.”37 Even more so than other free states like France, Belgium, and Switzerland, Great Britain maintained the one of the most liberal refugee policies in the Western world and frequently offered refugees both public sympathy and economic relief. Britons’ advocacy on behalf of refugees dovetailed with their promotion of for it provided them another opportunity to claim the moral high ground against the slaveholding Republic. Indeed, this value had become so engrained in British culture that in 1852 Foreign Secretary Lord Malmesbury remarked in a conversation with an Austrian ambassador, “We cannot entertain . . . any demand for the expulsion of refugees . . . You must be aware that no government which complied with such demands could exist a month in England.”38 Claiming refugee status, then, provided black migrants another avenue to further integrate themselves into the British

Empire.39

37 Caroline Shaw, Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (New York: Oxford University, 2015), 3.

38 Lord Malmesbury quoted in ibid., 1.

39 For an early discussion of the right of asylum in English law, see Sir Edward Coke, The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England (London: W. Clarke, 1809), 180; Matthew E. Price, Rethinking Asylum: History, Purpose, and Limits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 24-35.

18

By examining these extradition cases within a broader Atlantic context, then, this thesis will show that the legal order fugitives were unhappily enmeshed in was at once local, national, and international. In many ways, the extradition cases in Canada amplified the questions fugitive slave cases raised within the United States. For just as the domestic cases revealed that a nation could not be simultaneously half slave and half free, these international cases forced political leaders to question whether a continent could remain half slave and half free. As a result, this thesis situates the Underground

Railroad in a multi-jurisdictional framework that spans the North American continent and reaches across the Atlantic Ocean. In doing so, it will further investigate the politics of departure and evaluate the means by which transnational migrants have forged alternative visions of national membership. Ultimately, this thesis will show that subjecthood in the nineteenth century was not only a powerful concept within national borders, but also between them.

Sources and Methodology:

While scholars have long acknowledged the relationship between American and

Canadian society, the new borderlands methodology has added depth and texture to this literature. This approach has challenged the traditional unit of historical scholarship, the nation-state, and instead focuses on individuals and ideas who are not territorially bound.40 As Reginald Stuart once wrote, “transnationalism renders problematic the

40 For some examples, please see J.I. Little, Loyalties in Conflict: A Canadian Borderland in War and Rebellion, 1812-1840 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); John J. Bukowczyk et. al., Permeable Border: The Basin as Transnational Region (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2005); Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the People in Between in North American History,” American Historical Review 19 border as a barrier or line that marks sharp differences, despites its political and at times economic significance.”41 While national boundaries still held importance for government officials, these scholars argue that physical borders meant very little to the men and women who lived along them. Understanding the cross-border fluidity of people, ideas, and cultural forms is particularly useful when studying legal ideas. This thesis will examine how legal customs and practices transcended borders as individuals moved through overlapping jurisdictions. A transnational ethos also sheds light on the profound connection between Canadian and American law, which drew from a shared colonial past. Therefore, this thesis builds upon recent scholarship that has emphasized the influence of British heritage on U.S. and Canadian legal values.42

In taking up these themes, this thesis draws from a variety of primary source materials including personal correspondence, colonial dispatches, newspaper articles, legal treatises, mission records, and judicial decisions. At the Library and Archives

Canada I worked most frequently with a range of pre-Confederation papers, which included the Upper Canadian Executive Council fonds, the Upper Canada sundries, and dispatches from the . These records illustrated better than any other the relationship between imperial and colonial authorities in Great Britain and Canada. The

Upper Canada sundires, in particular, provided key pieces of evidence that formed the backbone of this thesis including the petitions drawn up by black Canadians, fugitive

104, no. 3 (1999): 814-41; Sterling Evans, ed. The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests: Essays on Regional History of the Forty-ninth Parallel (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).

41 Reginald C. Stuart, Dispersed Relations: Americans and Canadians in Upper North America (: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 1.

42 For example, see Edward P. Kohn, This People: Canadian-American Relations and the Anglo-Saxon Idea, 1895-1903 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004).

20 slaves, and their allies during the various extradition cases studied. These files also provided the warrants and affidavits from these cases, which offered key insights into the rhetorical tactics Southern slaveholders and American officials used to justify returning fugitive slaves. At the Canadian National Archives, the Buxton Mission and Elgin

Settlement papers also provided anecdotal information on formerly enslaved people’s efforts to rebuild their lives in Canada and fit the ideal of the colonial settler.

At the Archives of , I consulted a range of Canadian newspapers including the Upper Canada Herald, the St. Catherines Journal, and the Niagara Reporter. These papers offered rare glimpses at Canadian perspectives of the extradition cases, white

Canadians’ reactions to the migration of fugitive slaves, and black Canadians’ role in the community. At this archive, I also examined the Cary papers, which provided a wide array of materials written by the prominent female journalist including drafts of her speeches, letters to her husband, and copies of her newspaper The Provincial

Freeman. Along with ’s The Voice of the Fugitive, this newspaper provides invaluable source material on the black refugee community in Canada after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave and the debates that occurred within this community.

In the United States, the most important archives I visited were at Syracuse

University and . In Syracuse, I consulted the collection, which houses voluminous correspondence between Smith and a variety of notable individuals including , Lewis Tappan, and .

These letters allowed me to trace the relationships between anti-slavery advocates and exposed the links between American, Canadian, and British abolitionist groups. Gerrit

Smith’s letters also revealed Syracuse, New York’s importance as a key station along the

21

Underground Railroad and also highlighted how permeable the American-Canadian border was in this region. The most important collection of letters I consulted, however, were Hiram Wilson’s. An Oberlin College graduate and native, Hiram Wilson spent a substantial amount of time with the black refugees in Canada as a missionary and minister. His letters, therefore, provide a rare window into the everyday lives of black

Canadians with unparalleled detail. Many of his letters can also be found in a variety of anti-slavery newspapers including the Liberator, the Anti-Slavery Reporter, and the

Friend of Man. I was also fortunate enough to find a great deal of published primary material on these subjects. The most important of these were printed court decisions and correspondence, which I found in the British and Foreign State Papers, the British

Parliamentary Papers, the American Congressional Serial Set, and the Journal of the

House of Assembly of Upper Canada.

Historiography and Contribution:

This thesis will engage from three distinct, but interrelated fields of historiography: political history, diplomatic history, and legal history. Within these very broad fields, this thesis will focus on historical discussions surrounding a variety of topics including the Underground Railroad, the Southern political elite, and British imperialism.

It will investigate what Daniel Margolies has described as the “spaces of law” in party politics, race relations, and international affairs, which historians often treat without explicitly referencing legal history.43

43Margolies, Spaces of Law, 1.

22

The Underground Railroad:

In the decades following the end of the Civil War, former abolitionists rushed to publish their memoirs in an attempt to not only broadcast their accomplishments, but also to reinforce the nation’s commitment to racial equality. These abolitionists fully embraced the railroad metaphor and even expanded upon it.44 With the publication of his

1898 work The Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom, Wilbur H. Siebert became the undisputed authority on the Underground Railroad. While he admitted that the Railroad was not a formal institution with membership dues or appointed leaders, he still called the system a “great and intricate network” with thousands of Northern agents and hundreds of stations leading to Canada.45 He even included detailed maps that looked remarkably similar to contemporary railroad maps to reinforce this characterization. The over 3,000 agents he listed in his work, though, were almost entirely white men.46

44Julie Roy Jeffrey, Abolitionists Remember: Antislavery Autobiographies and the Unfinished Work of Emancipation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); For a specific example of this phenomenon, see , Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad: Being a Brief History of the Labors of a Lifetime on Behalf of the Slave, With the Stories of Numerous Fugitives who Gained Their Freedom Through His Instrumentality and Many Other Incidents (: Western Tract Society, 1876); For an example of a writer who elaborated upon the railroad metaphor, see Homer U. Johnson, From Dixie to Canada; Romance and Realities of the Underground Railroad (Buffalo: Charles Wells Moulton, 1894), 13; Also see, Marion G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, 1619-1865 (1891; repr., New York: Bergman Publishers, 1967); One notable exception to this trend is ’s The Underground Railroad, which contains a large collection of source material from fugitive slaves who passed through Pennsylvania on their way to freedom. This volume places the fugitive slaves themselves at the center of the narrative. See, William Still, The Underground Railroad (1871 repr., Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company Inc., 1970).

45Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom (New York and London: The Macmillan Company, 1898), 62.

46Ibid., 67-8, 70-75, 120; David W. Blight, “Why the Underground Railroad, and Why Now? A Long View” in David W. Blight ed., Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2004), 233-47; Foner, Gateway to Freedom, 12- 3.

23

More recent accounts have corrected these oversights and have restored African

Americans to their rightful place in this story. In his classic 1961 work, The Liberty Line,

Larry Gara systematically dismantled the mythology of the Railroad. He critiqued

Siebert’s methodology and reasoning, arguing that Siebert gave too much weight to the romantic yarns of the old abolitionists.47 Subsequent historians have rolled back some of

Gara’s more contentious claims, but they generally accepted his assertion that the

Underground Railroad was the nation’s first interracial civil rights movement. Through in-depth local research and detailed biographies, these scholars have shown that the

Railroad’s continued existence in the face of legal and political obstacles was a testament to the self-sacrifice and moral courage of Americans from all hues.48

The story of fugitive slaves once they reached Canada, however, has received considerably less attention. The most comprehensive overview of this topic, Robin

Winks’s The Blacks in Canada, was published in 1971. In the decades since its publication, Canadian scholars have worked tirelessly to fill in the gaps left by that study and write black Canadians into the larger story of Canadian history. In the process, these scholars have also situated the black Canadian experience firmly within the African diaspora.49 Scholarly works on the Canadian extradition controversies, however, have

47Gara, The Liberty Line, vii, 90-5.

48Bordewich, Bound for Canaan, 3. For some works that try to correct this, see John Hope Franklin and Loren Scweininger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, 421-60; Richard J. M. Blackett, Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

49For a small sampling of this recent literature, see Velma Carter, The Black Canadians: Their History and Contributions (Edmonton: Reidmore Books, 1989); Harvey Amani Whitfield, Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860 (Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 2006); , “The Fluid Frontier: Blacks and the River Region – a Focus on Henry Bibb,” Canadian Review of American Studies 30, no. 1 (2000): 129-49; Sharon A. 24 primarily treated these cases in isolation. While these studies provide rich details of each case, the individualized treatment of these events obscures the larger political and legal currents that ran through these narratives.50

The Southern Political Elite:

Previously if historians looked at the role of slave holders in American foreign relations, they focused on Southern slaveholders’ zeal for territorial expansion. Scholars couched these discussions, however, within the larger domestic debates over free and slave soil in the lead up to the Civil War. This tendency reflects what David Potter once labeled “navel-gazing,” a byproduct of the historical fascination with the Civil War, a

“conflict all our own, as American as apple pie.”51 Scholars of Southern intellectual history, however, have started to resist the centripetal force of the Civil War in their studies of Antebellum foreign policy. In the process, they have dismantled the myth of the inward-looking planters. By placing the sectional crisis within a larger Atlantic

Roger Hepburn, “Crossing the Border from Slavery to Freedom: The Building of a Community at Buxton, Upper Canada,” American Nineteenth Century History 3, no. 2 (2002): 25-68; Karolyn Smardz Frost and Veta Smith Tucker, A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River Borderland (Detroit: Wayne State University, 2016).

50 For some examples, see Mackenzie J. Leask, “Jesse Happy, A Fugitive Slave from Kentucky,” Ontario History 54, no. 2 (1962): 87-98; David Murray, “Hands Across the Border: The Abortive Extradition of Solomon Moseby,” Canadian Review of American Studies 30, no. 2 (2000), 187-208; Jason H. Silverman, “Kentucky, Canada, and Extradition: The Jesse Happy Case,” The Filson Club History Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1980), 50-60; Robert C. Reinders, “The John-Anderson Case, 1860-1: A Study in Anglo-Canadian Imperial Relations,” The Canadian Historical Review 56, no. 4 (1975): 393-415; Donald V. Macdougall, “Habeas Corpus, Extradition, and a Fugitive Slave in Canada,” Slavery & Abolition 7, no. 2 (1986): 118-128; R.C. Reinders, “Anglo-Canadian Abolitionism: The John Anderson Case, 1860-1861,” Renaissance and Modern Studies 19, no. 1 (1975): 393-415.

51David Potter, “The Civil War in the History of the Modern World: A Comparative View,” in The South and the Sectional Conflict (Baton Rouge: University Press, 1968), 287.

25 context, these historians have rediscovered the international designs of the Southern master class.52

Before this shift, when Southern slaveholders were incorporated into the conversation of international affairs, they were frequently cast as backwards aristocrats, clinging on to the dying embers of a semi-feudal economic and social system. In these scenarios, Southerners resisted the wave of modernization that swept the world in the form of liberal individualism, industrial capitalism, and federalization.53 More recent scholars, however, have shown that these slaveholders were actually riding the crest of this wave, hoping to direct its flow for their own profit and advancement. Instead of fighting the mad rush to modernity, these historians argue, Southern slaveholders embraced it. They believed that slavery was, in fact, a vital component of the market revolution, not an impediment to it.54 Slavery would serve a necessary social role by providing the structure, control, and stability that allowed for the widespread exploitation of new resources and populaces. Unlike Northern industrialists, the Southern gentility could not imagine the modern world without the institutional bedrock of slavery. Neither

52Karp, “’This Vast Southern Empire,’” 5-10; Brian Schoen, The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

53For some examples of early interpretations of expansionism and slavery, see Charles Ramsdell, “The Natural Limits of Slavery Expansion,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 33, no. 2 (1929): 91-111. For an example of a scholarly portrayal of plantation slavery as a semi-feudal system, see Eugene D. Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South (New York: Pantheon, 1965), 243-74.

54For examples of some more recent scholarship, see William Kauffman Scarborough, Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

26 restless agitators nor conservative reactionaries, the slaveholding elites saw themselves as noble visionaries who, in Eric Hobsbawm’s words, “thought in continents and in oceans.”55

American diplomacy was deeply influenced by these Southerners’ cosmopolitan vision. Slaveholders were, after all, the principle actors in American antebellum politics.

While the Southern intelligentsia supported states’ rights in its legal reasoning, intellectual theory, and political rhetoric, they were more than willing to extend the reach of the federal government in foreign affairs. In his biography of John Randolph, Henry

Adams observed that, “Whenever a question arose of extending or protecting slavery, the slaveholders became friends of centralized power, and used that dangerous weapon with a kind of frenzy.”56 As presidents, statesmen, military officials, cabinet members, and legislators, influential slaveholders built a governmental apparatus designed to advance the cause of slavery within the United States and across the entire Western Hemisphere.

The contradiction between their domestic and foreign policy did not hamper these

Southerners’ enthusiasm for federal expansion, and they exhibited no qualms about extending executive power in the service of their international vision. This thesis follows in line with this new scholarship that argues that Southern slaveholders exerted a

55Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), 57; Immanuel Wallerstein, “American Slavery and the Capitalist World Economy,” in The Capitalist World Economy (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 202-21; Dale W. Tomich, Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2004), 3-45; Gavin Wright, The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1978).

56Henry Adams, John Randolph (: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1882), 273.

27 disproportionate influence on nineteenth-century American diplomacy and formed a uniquely “proslavery foreign policy.”57

The British-Canadian Relationship:

While this thesis will deal primarily with American history, understanding the imperial relationship between Britain and Canada is imperative to understanding the relationship between the United States and Canada. Early histories of Canada focused almost exclusively on Canada’s transition from a colony to a nation. This framework cast

Canada’s pre-Confederation past as simply a plodding prelude to the nation’s emerging autonomy. In the past few decades, however, scholars have demonstrated that British imperialism was central to in the nineteenth-century. Nancy Christie, in particular, has argued that the transatlantic relationship between colony and metropole was the driving force behind much of Canadian history.58 Other scholars have expanded upon this notion and have shown that British imperialism deeply influenced gender, class, and race relations in Canada. In these works, the British connection went beyond political institutions and permeated all levels of Canadian society. 59 Understanding this

57Karp, “‘This Vast Southern Empire,’” 11-25; The historian St. George L. Sioussat used this phrase first when he said: “What we may call, however, the external relations, the foreign policy of slavery, has not received the same attention.” St. George L. Sioussat, “Duff Green’s ‘England and the United States’: With an Introductory Study of American Opposition to the Quintiple Treaty of 1841.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, New Series vol. 40 (1931): 214; Kagan, Dangerous Nation, 181-82, 444-45.

58Nancy Christie, “Theorizing a Colonial Past: Canada as a Society of British Settlement,” in Christie, ed., Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institution, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), 3-44.

59See, for instance, Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis, eds., Canada and the British World: Culture, Migration, and Identity (Vancouver: University of Press, 2006); Adele Perry, On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849-1871 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). 28 relationship is particularly important in a nineteenth century context, where Britain played a pivotal role in shaping the rapidly developing system of international law.60

Contribution:

By weaving social, diplomatic, and legal history together into one cohesive narrative, this paper offers a new interpretative framework to investigate the ways geopolitical borders ran through the lives of both freemen and slaves and shaped them in profound ways. With this approach, I seek to locate fugitive slaves at the center of a conversation about black citizenship that spanned republics and empires. In the process, this thesis will show not only how political debates and geopolitical struggles shaped legal practices, but will also demonstrate the ways in which formerly enslaved people creatively harnessed dominant forms to subvert the prevailing racial order for their own advantage. Ultimately, this thesis argues that by fleeing bondage or assisting those who did, fugitive slaves and free blacks challenged prevailing notions of subjecthood, defined the contours of legal asylum, and precipitated the chain of events that eventually led to slavery’s destruction.

60For more on Britain’s role in this new global order, see Duncan Bell, ed., Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780- 1914 (Malden, M.A.: Blackwell Pub., 2004); Miller, “Emptying the Den of Thieves,” 6-12.

29

Chapter One: Confronting the “great apostle of Emancipation:” Fugitive Slaves and Anglo-American Diplomacy

Thornton Blackburn stared down at the river and listened to the water as it lapped up against the boat dock. After a few moments, he glanced up and stared across the glassy water to the other river bank. His eyes traced the curve of Indiana’s green hills as they gently sloped towards the horizon. Although those hills could not be more than a few hundred feet away, they looked like a different world to him. On that side of the river lay Free Soil. Out of the corner of his eye, Thornton could just make out the edges of his wife’s silhouette. The couple stood in silence on the boat dock, too nervous to even look at each other. They were dressed in their finest holiday clothes. Thornton wore his blue broadcloth coat, the only one he owned, and stood in a pair of polished boots while his wife, Ruthie, was draped in a black silk gown.

It was July 3rd, 1831, the day before Independence Day, and the air was thick with humidity. Beads of sweat pooled on Thornton’s forehead, but he barely even noticed. His mind was entirely focused on the papers tucked away in his waist-coat pocket. These were the couple’s forged free papers, which would be their passport on to the ferry and the key to their daring daylight escape. The Versailles slowly emerged from behind the trees as it rounded the river bend. The young couple watched in stiff silence as the ferry, pushing against a strong current, lumbered towards them. After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, the Versailles pulled up in front of them. Thornton turned to his wife and gave her hand a quick squeeze before he stepped on to the

30 gangplank, ready to leave his life in bondage behind him on the Kentucky side of the river.61

Arriving in Cincinnati the following day, the couple continued to press North to

Detroit, Michigan. Nestled along the Detroit river within easy view of the Upper

Canadian shoreline, the city was a vital station along the Underground Railroad. Because of its strategic location, the city had also become home to a thriving black community that included both formerly enslaved people and free who worked as barbers, whitewashers, carpenters, and bricklayers. Not long after they settled in the city, the Blackburns joined their ranks and were able to build a new life for themselves and enjoy the pleasures of married life. The freedom the Blackburns found in Detroit, however, would prove illusory. Two years following their bold escape, the couple would be in chains once more in the Detroit jail after a chance encounter with a former acquaintance from their past lives in Kentucky.

When Detroit’s black community rallied to free the couple by storming the courthouse, the city erupted into a series violent conflagrations that would later be memorialized as the “Blackburn Riots of 1833.” When they reached Upper Canada on the other side of the Detroit river, the couple believed they had finally found freedom. In the time it took them to travel across the river, though, the mayor of Detroit had sent a letter to the Upper Canadian Lieutenant Governor, John Colborne, demanding that the

Blackburns be detained while the Governor of Michigan drew up a formal extradition request. When the Michigan Governor did finally send his request to his Canadian

61 For a description of the runaways, see Louisville Public Advertiser, July 7, 1831; Karolyn Smardz Frost, I’ve Got a Home in the Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007), 6. 31 counterpart, he would ignite a legal battle that pitted Canadian colonial officials,

Northern abolitionists, Southern slaveholders, and British diplomats against each other.62

The Blackburn case, however, was only one incident in a longstanding conflict between Great Britain and the United States over the fate of fugitive slaves in Canada that began at the very outset of the young republic’s founding. Throughout the

Antebellum era, debates and disagreements over runaway slaves’ legal status in British territories punctuated Anglo-American diplomatic relations as Great Britain and the

United States traveled farther along “diverging constitutional paths” regarding slavery.63

When British legislators finally abolished human bondage throughout their colonies in

1833, they set the Empire on a collision course with the only slaveholding society that could check its power in the Western Hemisphere. Southern slaveholders interpreted

Great Britain’s turn towards emancipation as hollow humanitarianism meant to undermine American cotton on the world market.64 To meet this challenge of the “great

Apostle of Emancipation,” Southern statesmen took hold of the reigns of American foreign policy in an effort to protect at home and abroad.65

This diplomatic rivalry provided formerly enslaved people a unique opportunity to pull the levers of the British imperial state for their own benefit. Because of their

62 Frost, I’ve Got a Home in the Glory Land, xii.

63 Schoeppner, “Status across Borders,” 47.

64 Karp, This Vast Southern Empire, 24-5.

65 Southern Patriot, January 27, 1840; Southern slaveholders were so convinced that Great Britain was trying to undermine their economic power that they interpreted the rise of abolitionism in the Northeast as a British conspiracy. For more on this, see William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Volume I: Secessionists at Bay, 1789-1854 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 289-306.

32 ability to move in and out of free and unfree spaces, fugitive slaves became the focal point of this momentous debate precisely because their movement highlighted the

“uneven pace of emancipation in the nineteenth-century Atlantic,” which had created a

“definitional incongruence of citizenship within and between nations.”66 When Southern statesmen demanded that self-emancipated people be returned to the United States to stand trial, they forced their British counterparts to clearly define the legal contours of black subjecthood in the Empire and inadvertently gave formerly enslaved people the ideological fodder they needed to develop a convincing campaign for their own imperial inclusion. Therefore, each time Southern slaveholders demanded that the British diplomats return their lost “property,” they catapulted these runaways to the center of a global conflict over the fate of human bondage in the modern world. By pitting the slaveholding republic and the abolitionist empire against each other, black refugees were able to harness the apparatus of the imperial state to not only cement their position as equal members of the British Empire, but also undermine Southern slaveholders’ efforts to promote human bondage abroad.67

Extradition was just one of the many weapons in Southern slaveholders’ diplomatic arsenal, though. Even before Great Britain passed its 1833 Emancipation Act,

Southern statesmen employed a wide variety of techniques in an attempt to force the

British to bend to their will. They wrote menacing memos, delivered impassioned speeches, and threatened military might in an effort to force British statesmen to either

66 Schoeppner, “Status across Borders,” 48.

67 Arnett G. Lindsay, “Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Great Britain Bearing on the Return of Negro Slaves, 1783-1828,” Journal of Negro History 5, no. 1 (1920): 391- 419.

33 return runaway slaves or provide Southern slavers monetary compensation for their losses. Over the course of decades, this conflict became a defining feature of Anglo-

American relations and began before the new United States took shape when British officials refused to return American slaves who had fought for the Crown.

In many ways, the massive flight of slaves from revolutionary to royal forces struck a symbolic blow against the young republic because it inverted the traditional narrative of the Revolution. In the tens of thousands, enslaved blacks voted with their feet and cast the English as their emancipators before many of Britons ever envisioned themselves in that role.68 Patrick Henry’s own slave, Ralph, gave substance to his master’s cry to “Give me liberty or give me death,” but he did so by fleeing to the British lines at the earliest opportunity, not fighting with the colonists.69 Even America’s most eloquent advocate for freedom, Thomas Jefferson, lost thirty of his own slaves in this

68 The exact number of slaves that fled to the British lines remains a topic of scholarly debate. Herpert Aptheker first estimated that the number could be as high as one hundred thousand. Richard B. Morris speculated that the number of runaway slaves “may have at least equaled the total of white Tories who fled America,” which would place the total at eighty thousand or more. Benjamin Quarles shied away from a specific number, and instead suggested that the number was in “the tens of thousands.” Based on his study of black refugees in , the Canadian historian James W. St. G. Walker came to a similar conclusion and claimed that the total “could be as many as 80,000 to 100,000.” Sylvia R. Frey gave a similar estimate in her book, Water from the Rock. Recent studies, however, have questioned these numbers, and have argued that the number was significantly less and was probably closer to twenty thousand. See, Herbert Aptheker, The American Revolution, 1763-1783 (New York: International Publishers, 1960), 218; Richard B. Morris, The American Revolution Reconsidered (New York: Harper, 1967), 76; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution, 119; James W. St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and , 1783-1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 3; Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 211, n. 22; For a new analysis that puts the figure closer to 20,000 see, Cassandra Pybus, “Jefferson’s Faulty Math: The Question of Slave Defections in the American Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2005): 243-264.

69 Graham Russell Hodges, ed., The Directory: African Americans in Exile after the American Revolution (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996), 196: Also see, Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 3-37.

34 way.70 For these slaves, freedom did not come from words on paper or grand declarations handed down by white Founders. Instead, through bold acts of physical defiance, slaves claimed their freedom through their own “surging, living proclamations.”71 Although

George Washington’s cousin, Lund, denounced Dunmore’s “dreaded proclamation,” he was not surprised when both slaves and indentured servants fled Mt. Vernon at breakneck speeds. “There is not a man of them, but would leave us,” he reported, “if they believ’d they could make there [sic] Escape . . . Liberty is sweet.”72

The symbolic ramifications of slaves’ flight to the British forces, however, could not compare with the financial repercussions. To American slaveholders, every enslaved individual behind British lines represented a substantial monetary loss and a threat to their economic solvency. American slave-owners, therefore, were quite anxious to retrieve their lost property. Before the war came to a close, these slaveholders petitioned

70 In a letter to one of his creditors, Jefferson claimed that the British “confiscation” of his slaves was one of the primary reasons he could not settle his debts. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Alexander McCaul, April 19, 1786, in Julain P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), 9: 388-90.

71 Vincent Harding, There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 235.

72 “Letter from Lund Washington to ,” December 3, 1775, in Philander D. Chase, ed., The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 2, 16 September 1775- 31 December 1775 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987), 477-482; Simon Schama, : Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (New York: Harper Collins, 2006), 8; For more on slaves’ role in the American Revolution, see Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (1961 rprt; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996; Also see, Alan Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); For the symbolic importance of this act, see Peter H. Wood, “‘The Dream Deferred’: Black Freedom Struggles on the Eve of White Independence,” in In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean, and Afro-American History, ed. Gary Y. Okihiro (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986): 173; Also see, Benjamin Quarles, “The Revolutionary War as a Black Declaration of Independence,” in Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds., Slavery and Freedom in the Age of Revolution (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 290.

35

Congress to insist that the final peace treaty with the British specifically include a provision demanding that the Crown return emancipated blacks. These demands were cemented in Article VII of the , which stipulated that: “[H]is Britannic

Majesty shall, with all convenient speed and without causing any Destruction or carrying away any Negroes or other Property of the American inhabitants, withdraw all his

Armies, Garrisons, and Fleets from the said United States.”73 Neither side recognized the deep irony of the article, which cut against the nationalistic propaganda of both adversaries; it contradicted the Americans’ rousing cries for liberty at the same time it discredited Britain’s promises to protect those blacks who had trusted them with their freedom.74

According to John Adams, who took part in the negotiations, the clause was a last minute addition. Henry Laurens, who joined the diplomatic team late in the process, insisted that the clause be inserted on the last day of negotiations. At that point in the negotiating process, the most contentious debates had centered around fishing rights and none of the other three American statesmen had even considered adding a provision concerning fugitive slaves. Adams himself held the entire institution of slavery in complete “abhorrence,” and took pride in the fact that “through [his] whole life . . . [he had] never owned a Negro or any other slave,” even when this choice cost him

73 Hunter Miller, ed. Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, 1776-1863, 8 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931-48), II: 99-100, 155.

74 For more on the fate of some black loyalists who fled to Canada’s maritime provinces, see Evelyn B. Harvey, “The Negro Loyalists,” Nova Scotia Historical Quarterly 1, no. 3 (1971): 181–202. Mary Beth Norton, “The Fate of Some Black Loyalists of the American Revolution,” Journal of Negro History 58, no. 4 (1973): 402–26; John N. Grant, “Black Immigrants into Nova Scotia, 1776– 1815,” Journal of Negro History 58, no. 3 (1973): 253–70.

36 financially.75 , his negotiating partner, had once owned slaves, but now saw the entire institution as a potential threat to the safety and stability of the young

United States. When a South Carolina legislator tried to convince him that slaves should be taxed like livestock, Franklin quipped, “Slaves rather weaken than strengthen the

State, and there is therefore some difference between them and sheep.” He then added with a sidelong glance, “Sheep will never make any insurrections.”76 And while John Jay, the final member of the diplomatic team, did own slaves, he was committed to gradual emancipation and would later work to abolish slavery in New York.77 Despite this collective antipathy towards slavery, none of the American diplomats contested when

Laurens introduced his article. After the treaty was finalized, John Jay admitted that he was surprised the British had agreed to the clause at all.78

This article strained relations between George Washington and Sir Guy Carleton as they negotiated the conditions for peace after the Revolution. When Washington broached the subject concerning the “preservation of [American] property . . . especially the negroes,” Carleton casually replied that many had already departed on a boat headed

75 Adams quoted in John R. Howe, Jr., “John Adams’ Views of Slavery,” Journal of Negro History 49, no. 3 (1964): 202-3; Oscar Reiss, Blacks in Colonia America (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2006), 172; Also see, John Patrick Diggins, John Adams: The American Presidents Series (New York: Times Books, 2003), 146-7.

76 Franklin quoted in Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1850), II: 498.

77 For more on John Jay’s changing attitudes towards slavery, see Walter Stahr, John Jay: Founding Father (New York: Hambledon and London, 2005), 236-9.

78 John Adams, “Journal on the Peace Negotiations,” reprinted in Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Francis Wharton, ed., vol. 6 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889), 90-2.

37 for Canada.79 Washington could barely sputter out a response until he finally snorted:

“Already imbark’d!” Carleton replied that “no interpretation could be put upon the article inconsistent with prior Engagements that bind the National Honor, which must be kept with all colors.” He explained that is was the Crown’s duty to keep “Faith to the Negroes who came into British lines.” 80 Adhering to a narrow interpretation of the Provisional

Agreement, Carleton argued that since the black refugees in British hands were no longer the “Property” of American citizens when the treaty was drafted, they were not covered by Article VII. Washington scoffed at the proposal that was nothing more than semantic sophistry meant to contradict “the Letter and Spirit of the Treaty.”81 Carleton explained that if sending off the slaves “should hereafter be declared an ‘Infraction of the Treaty’ the British Crown would be more than willing to compensate the slaveholders.”82 In fact,

Carleton added, he had already started a register of all of the slaves who had been sent to

Canada, specifying their names, ages, and occupation, as well as the names of their former Masters.83

79 George Washington, “Letters of George Washington Bearing on the Negro,” The Journal of Negro History 2, no. 4 (1917), 416.

80 “Extract from the Substance of a Conference between General Washington and Sir Guy Carleton,” May 6, 1783, reprinted in The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States of America, from the signing of the Definitive Treaty of Peace, 10th September, 1783, to the Adoption of the Constitution, March 4, 1789 (Washington, D.C.: Francis Preston Blair, 1833), 188-192.

81 Fitpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington, XXVI: 409.

82 Quoted in Schama, Rough Crossings, 146.

83 This lists 1,336 men, 914 women, and 750 children who traveled from New York to Nova Scotia between April and November of 1783; See Book of Negroes, 1st Baron Dorchester: Papers, The National Archives, Kew (PRO 30/55/100) 10427. Nova Scotia Archives; Also see Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 471.

38

That night, Washington took to his desk and furiously scribbled a letter to the governor of Virginia. After his conversation with the British Commander, Washington had come to the conclusion that “the slaves who have absconded from their masters will never be restored to them.”84 The American General knew that some of his own slaves might be in New York, but he had resigned himself to the fact that it would be “fruitless” to go searching for them.85 And yet, even though he was convinced that there was “little chance” of recovering those slaves who had already fled to Canada, Washington was determined to keep his promise to Congress and prevent the removal of any more runaways. Despite his best efforts, however, nearly four thousand slaves followed the

British forces in their departure from the new United States, and the British refused to pay compensation.86

This was not entirely a surprise as both the Americans and the British failed to meet many of the provisions outlined in their peace treaty. When the British admonished the American delinquents for their failure to repay British creditors, for instance, Thomas

Jefferson and John Jay replied that the British had been the first to break the treaty by carrying off American slaves. Jefferson even went so far as to say that the financial loss represented in these slaves could explain the Americans’ failures to pay off their British

84 “Letter from Washington to Harrison,” May 6 1783, Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington, XXVI: 401.

85 “Letter from Washington to Parker,” April 28, 1783, Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington, XXVI: 364.

86 Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of Washington, XXVI: 402-09; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 158-81.

39 debts. Negotiations over compensation carried on into the Jefferson administration and would only be compounded the onset of the War of 1812.87

Even though Southern slaveholders never received the compensation they so eagerly desired, the fact that American statesmen pursued these negotiations across several different administrations revealed the disproportionate influence Southern slaveholders had on nineteenth-century American diplomacy.88 As the self-proclaimed standard bearers for human bondage in the Western hemisphere, Southerners firmly believed that the powers of the executive branch would help them safeguard this institution and usher it into the modern era. While the Southern elites supported the concept of small government in their legal reasoning, intellectual theory, and political rhetoric, they were more than willing to extend the reach of the federal government in foreign affairs. As Henry Adams once observed, “Whenever a question arose of extending or protecting slavery, the slaveholders became friends of centralized power, and used that dangerous weapon with a kind of frenzy.”89 In the process, Southern slaveholders exploited the powers of the executive branch to build a governmental

87 Howard Albert Ohline, “Politics and Slavery: The Issue of Slavery in National Politics, 1787-1815” (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri, Columbia, 1969), 265-67; Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic, 92; Charles R. Ritcheson, Aftermath of Revolution: British Policy Toward the United States, 1783-1795 (Dallas: Southern Methodist University, 1969), 70-75, 100, 236; Howard Jones and Donald A. Rakestraw, Prologue to Manifest Destiny, 12-45.

88 Matthew J. Karp, “‘This Vast Southern Empire:’ The South and the Foreign Policy of Slavery, 1833-1861” (Ph.D diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2013), 7. This specific phrase was used by the historian St. George L. Sioussant in calling attention to the lack of scholarship on proslavery diplomacy: “What we may call, however, the external relations, the foreign policy of slavery, has not received the same attention.” See Sioussant, “Duff Green’s ‘England and the United States’: With an Introductory Study of American Opposition to the Quintiple Treaty of 1841,” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, New Series vol 40. (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1931), 214.

89 Henry Adams, John Randolph (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1882): 270-1.

40 apparatus designed to advance the cause of slavery both within and without the United

States’ national borders.90

During America’s “Second War for Independence” in 1812, Southern slaveholders once again found themselves at odds with the British over fugitive slaves who absconded to the Canadian border. Spurred by Vice Admiral Sir Alexander

Cochrane’s proclamation that all slaves who aided the British could become “FREE settlers to the British possessions North America or the West Indies,” this second wave of emancipation touched off another round of heated deliberations between American and

British officials.91 In the immediate aftermath of the Battle of , British

General John Lambert and American General took charge of the negotiations, but the two made little headway. In an effort to appease the fiery General,

Lambert told Jackson that he would try to “use his influence” to persuade freed slaves to return to their masters, but he refused to “use force in compelling their obedience, or permit it to be used with the British lines.” When Jackson balked at this remark, the

British General referenced the Empire’s commitment to human liberty. To force fugitives who had fought for the Crown back into slavery, therefore, would be “totally incompatible with the spirit and constitution of his government.”92 In the Chesapeake and

90 Karp, “‘This Vast Southern Empire,’” 11-25; Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America’s Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage, 2006), 181-82, 444-45; On slaveholders’ embrace of state power, see Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

91 Cochrane quoted Gene Allen Smith, The Slave’s Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812 (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013), 99; John N. Grant, “Black Immigrants into Nova Scotia, 1776-1815,” Journal of Negro History 58, no. 3 (1973): 253-270.

92 Lambert quoted in Matthew Mason, “The Battle of the Slaveholding Liberators: Great Britain, the United States, and Slavery in the Early Nineteenth Century,” The William and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2002): 672. 41

Georgia low country, British Admiral George Cockburn used similarly patriotic rhetoric to defend his refusal to return freedmen to their former masters. In a reference to the eminent jurist William Blackstone, he told the frustrated Americans that “the Spirit of

Liberty is so deeply implanted in our very Soil that a Slave or a Negro the Moment he lands in England, falls under the Protection of the Laws and so far becomes a

Freeman.”93 In this scenario, Cockburn equated British ships and conquered possessions with British soil. If he chose to return the former slaves, then, Cockburn would not only betray the former slaves’ trust, but would also risk Great Britain’s national honor and reputation.94

As soon as these two nations reestablished diplomatic relations in 1815, Secretary of State James Monroe told his new minister to Great Britain, a young John Quincy

Adams, to pursue the issue of fugitive slaves as soon as he reached London. British authorities responded to Adams’s with a tedious grammatical argument that centered on the distinction between public and private property. Adams, who had taken an active part in drafting and signing that treaty, argued that the treaty recognized slaves as private property and so they should be returned immediately. The British Prime Minister, Lord

Liverpool, was taken aback by this assertion. A table or chair may be taken and restored without changing its condition, Liverpool reasoned, but a human being should be subject to different considerations. He was hesitant to return men to bondage after they had tasted freedom. Adams and the Prime Minister agreed that England would pay extraction

93 Cockburn quoted in ibid., 673.

94 Frank A. Cassell, “Slaves of the Chesapeake Bay and the War of 1812,” Journal of Negro History 57, no. 2 (1972): 144-155.

42 money instead of forcing freed blacks to the South, a move that placated slaveholders temporarily.95 It would not be until 1827, though, that finally Britain agreed to pay

$1,204,960 to be divided amongst 1,100 claimants from the two wars.96

While Southerners applauded the small victory that came with financial compensation, they were deeply troubled by the uptick in runaways who fled to British soil across the Canadian border.97 The outraged cries of Southern statesmen became so loud that in 1819 John Quincy Adams was forced to take some diplomatic action. Now

Secretary of State, Adams wrote to the British charge d´affaires for the United States,

Gibbs C. Antrobus, to discuss the matter. “Representations have been received at this

Department,” Adams told Antrobus, “that several Negro slaves ran off last fall from their owners in the State of Tennessee and have taken refuge at Malden in Upper Canada.” He explained that these slaveholders were “anxious to know if any arrangement can be made by which permission could be obtained for them to go to Canada and re-obtain possession of their property.”98 While Adams, as a New Englander, found the peculiar institution morally abhorrent he was duty bound to appeal to the rhetoric of Southern slaveholders in his diplomatic negotiations.

95 Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic, 94-98; Ohline, “Politics and Slavery,” 265-277; Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949): 231-32; For a look at how the London Times covered these events, see Martin Crawford, The Anglo-American Crisis of the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Times and America, 1850-1862 (Athens, G.A.: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 39-74.

96 Lindsay, “Diplomatic Relations between the United States and Great Britain,” 418-9.

97 Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 233; Jason H. Silverman, “The American Fugitive Slave in Canada: Myths and Realities,” Southern Studies 19, no. 3 (1980): 215.

98 Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic, 102; Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 240; William R. Manning, ed. Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States: Canadian Relations, 1784- 1860, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1940-43), I:294.

43

The British diplomat’s response did not satisfy the young American Secretary.

Antrobus told him that the Upper Canadian legislature, “having adopted the Law of

England as the Rule of decision in all questions relative to property and civil rights,” had also adopted its policy regarding fugitive slaves. As if Adams could not already guess, this meant that the fugitive slaves “by their residence in Canada” had become free

“whatever may have been their former condition in this country.” Should any American attempt to “infringe upon this right,” the British diplomat warned, these self-emancipated people would be able to use the full might of the Canadian legal system for their benefit

“and the executive government could in no manner restrain or direct the judges in the exercise of their duty.”99 The implicit threat in this statement was not lost upon the young

Secretary and he did not pursue the matter further.100

Southern slaveholders, however, were not so easily deterred. Three years after

Antrobus delivered his warning to the John Quincy Adams, the General Assembly of

Kentucky sent a petition to the House of Representatives demanding that the federal government revive its negotiations with the British government to return fugitive slaves living in Canada. After detailing the financial hardships American slaveholders endured because of Great Britain’s decision to protect fugitives, the Kentucky slaveholders insinuated that if the Canadians continued “concealing and countenancing” slaves that had escaped from their “lawful owners,” it would lead to “unhappy consequences between the subjects of His said Majesty’s Government and the Citizens of the United

99 Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic, 102-3.

100 William Renwick Riddell, “The Fugitive Slave in Upper Canada,” Journal of Negro History 5, no. 3 (1920): 340-358.

44

States.”101 In the House of Representatives, a member from Kentucky took up the slaveholders’ mantel and applied pressure on Secretary Adams. In a private interview with the British Ambassador, Adams complained about the Kentuckians’ persistence on the issue, but he was also frustrated that the British government would only meet his requests with “official forms” rather than in a matter “perfectly consistent with . . . professions of good will.”102

When Adams assumed the Presidency and appointed Henry Clay as his Secretary of State, the Kentucky statesmen elevated the question of fugitive slaves to a matter of national concern. In 1826, Clay sent instructions to his ambassador in London, Albert

Gallatin, telling him to offer the surrender of British military and naval deserters in exchange for the black refugees, a proposal Clay believed the British would find too attractive to deny. In addition to this offer, the Secretary also provided his ambassador with a litany of arguments to convince the British to accept the arrangement. In this memo, Clay suggested casting the runaways in the worst possible light, and argued that they were “generally the most worthless of their class” by virtue of their fugitive status.

Such parasites, Clay reasoned, would only be a drain on the Empire’s financial resources and would threaten Canada’s social stability. The only reason that Southern slaveholders were so anxious to recover these delinquents, he explained, was to make sure that they did not set an example to other slaves. Returning the fugitives would not only benefit

British society, Clay suggested, but would also “cultivate good neighborhood” between

101 “Fugitive Slaves,” January 24, 1821, Annals of Congress, 16th Cong., 2nd Sess., 941.

102 Adams quoted in Alexander L. Murray, “Canada and the Anglo-American Slavery Movement: A Study in International Philanthropy,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1960), 118.

45 the two countries. If a formal treaty was not possible, though, Clay was willing to settle for a guarantee that the British government would either “afford facilities for the recovery of fugitives from labor” or promise to “interdict the entry of any others in the future.”103

When Gallatin finally raised the subject with his British counterparts, he met resistance on all fronts. At an official conference in September, 1827, the British delegates told the American ambassador that their Government could never surrender a fugitive slave because doing so would “depart from the principle recognized by the

British courts that every man is free who reaches British ground.” In private, however, a

British official admitted the real reason that the British government could not return the runaways: “such was the state of public opinion here on that subject, that no administration could, or would, admit it in a treaty, a stipulation such as was asked for.”104 With this comment, the British officials highlighted the point at which domestic and foreign politics collided and demonstrated how malleable international policy was in the face of changing social contexts, a reality that would continue to frustrate Southern statesmen efforts in their future dealings with the British.

Southern anxiety over runaway slaves in Canada, however, paled in comparison to the fear they experienced after Great Britain passed its Emancipation Act in 1833. This event plunged Southern slaveholders into a paranoid frenzy as they worried over the safety of slavery in the world and reconsidered the shape of Anglo-American relations.

Suddenly, the monarchical Mother country, once the epitome of oppression during the

American revolution, became a champion for human freedom. For American

103 “FUGITIVE SLAVES,” December 27, 1828, Nile’s Weekly Register, 289.

104 Ibid., 290.

46 slaveholders, in particular, Great Britain represented not only a challenge to their territorial interests on the North American continent but also a major impediment to their aspirations for hemispheric dominance. In order to protect their precious institution,

Southern elites took it upon themselves to develop a comprehensive political and ideological to counteract British abolitionism. Just as Southerners’ domestic positive good thesis developed in response to Northern abolitionism, American slaveholders’ sharpened their international commitment to bondage grew out of direct response to

Britain’s anti-slavery foreign policy. In order to meet this challenge, powerful slaveholders within the American government insisted that the state department must recognize the international stakes of the conflict between bound and free labor and must remain committed to protecting human bondage across the globe.105

Initially, Southern slavers believed the project was doomed to fail, convinced as they were that black slaves were biologically unfit for freedom. In an article for the

National Intelligencer a Southern writer argued that the Emancipation Act was “too sudden” and implied “the possession on the part of the negroes of intelligence and habits of reflection” that was not warranted by the facts.106 Another writer for the Georgia

Telegraph speculated that “this wild measure” would actually place formerly enslaved people in “a positively worst position” without the guidance and protection of their masters.107 Others were quick to point out the hypocrisy of this policy, noting that many

105 Karp, “‘This Vast Southern Empire,’” 26; Schoen, The Fragile Fabric of Union, 146-174; Howard Jones and Donald A. Rakestraw, Prologue to Manifest Destiny: Anglo-American Relations in the 1840s (Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 1997), 71-97.

106 National Intelligencer reprinted in the Richmond Enquirer, June 18, 1833.

107 Georgia Telegraph [Macon, Ga.], July 3, 1833; For more on the reaction of the Southern press to British abolition, see Joe B. Wilkins, “Window on Freedom: The South’s Response to the 47

British fortunes had been made on the backs of African slaves. For even after Parliament passed the Emancipation Act, private British firms continued to supply the ships, chains, manacles, insurances, and credit that undergirded the entire institution. Others noted that the British cotton textile industry depended upon slave-grown cotton, whether it was from Cuba, Brazil, or the American South.108

The contrast between British abolitionism and British imperialism only heightened Southern slaveholders’ disdain for, and suspicion of, their former mother country. While Great Britain dismantled its plantation system in the Caribbean, it escalated its imperial activity across the globe—in China, in India, and in Latin America.

Southern newspaper reporters frequently pointed out the hypocrisy of Britain’s humanitarian action to free its slaves while it clutched on to more regions in its imperial grasp. In one article, a writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal even described the “the

Queen of England is the largest slaveholder in the world” because of her government’s overreach in the Pacific, China, India, and Africa.109

Some Southern elites argued that even though British imperialism and abolitionism appeared to work in conflict, these two forces actually worked in tandem.

Some Southern slaveholders even believed that Great Britain’s war against human bondage was actually part of a larger plot to dominate the world cotton market. In their

Emancipation of the Slaves in the British West Indies, 1833-1861,” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 1977), 45-60.

108 Davis, , 178-191; Karp, “‘This Vast Southern Empire,’” 27.

109 The Louisville Courier-Journal, October 16, 1838; For more on American newspaper coverage of British imperialism, see Elizabeth Kelly Gray, “American Attitudes Toward British Imperialism, 1815-1860,” (Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 2002). For more on British foreign policy during this period, see Muriel Chamberlain, Pax Britannica? British Foreign Policy, 1789-1914 (New York: Pearson Education, 1988), 145-161.

48 thinking and their policy making, Southern slaveholders divided the entire world along these economic battle lines and positioned New Orleans and Calcutta as “the two great rival cities” of world affairs.110 One writer for the Georgia Telegraph charged that although British industry was heavily invested in Southern agriculture, Great Britain’s foreign policy was “far from encouraging the growth of American cotton.” Indeed, the

British had “a stupendous interest in the prostration of the Agriculture of the Southern

States—which she is aware cannot be done but by Abolition of Slavery in those

States.”111 The English devised this plot, the writer reasoned, in order to transfer the power of the Cotton Kingdom to their own imperial possessions in India and Egypt. The destruction of American slavery, then, became a “darling object” of British statesmen not because they were committed to human liberty, but because they hoped to promote East

Indian cotton.112

To some Southern elites, British abolitionism was not just an ideological threat to their pro-slavery philosophy, but a direct attack to their physical safety. To many

American slaveholders, West Indian emancipation recalled vivid memories of the , which had frightened both slaveholding and non-slaveholding whites throughout the Atlantic world. Although this uprising in many ways mirrored similar liberation movements in the United States, Latin America, and Europe during the Age of

Revolution, Southern slaveholders singled it out as proof of black barbarity.113 Southern

110 “East Indian Cotton,” Southern Quarterly Review, April, 1842, 446-492.

111 The Georgia Telegraph, August 29, 1835.

112 Ibid., August 13, 1839.

113 Adam Rockenbach, “Pro-Slavery Representations of the Haitian Revolution in the British West Indies, Cuba, and the United States, 1790-1820,” (M.A. Thesis, California State University— 49 newspapers closely followed developments on the island and published the letters and speeches of Saint Dominguan “refugees.”114 In one particularly morbid account, the

Virginia Gazette and General Advertiser described a fateful encounter on a passenger boat the black slaves had captured. It described how the Africans tortured the white women on board by “boring out their eyes with a corkscrew” and forcing their children to watch.115 This “catalog of crimes” confirmed white fears of African slaves in general, and black men in particular.116 With these images still lingering in their minds, Southern slaveholders worried that West Indian emancipation would transform the West Indies into a “places of refuge” for violent Africans.117 They imagined black soldiers crossing the Gulf of Mexico and washing up on their shores, destroying their homes and freeing their slaves.118

Long Beach, 2002), 53-55; Robin Blackburn, “Haiti, Slavery, and the Age of the Democratic Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 4 (2006): 643-44; For more on Haiti’s place during the “age of revolutions,” see R.R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959, 1964); For a discussion of how the Haitian Revolution fits into the in the Atlantic world, see David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006): 157-74.

114 Rockenbach, “Pro-Slavery Representations of the Haitian Revolution,” 58; The term refugee here refers to French slaveholders who fled Haiti for the United States during the uprising.

115 Virginia Gazette and General Advertiser (Williamsburg), December 11, 1802; Alfred N. Hunt, Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 39.

116 Rockenbach, “Pro-Slavery Representations of the Haitian Revolution,” 57-8; Roth, “The Politics of the Page,” 214-5; Donald R. Hickey, “America’s Response to the Slave Revolt in Haiti, 1791-1806,” Journal of the Early American Republic 2, no. 1 (1982): 361-79.

117 John Forsyth, “Address to the People of Georgia,” Aug 29, 1840, reprinted in the Georgia Telegraph, September 22, 1840.

118 For some examples, see William Henry Chase, “Harbor of Pensacola,” Pensacola Gazette, March 21, 1839; John C. Calhoun, “Remarks on the Cumberland Road Bill,” speech in Congressional Globe, Sess. 2, April 1, 1840, 368.

50

Tensions between Southern and British statesmen came to a flashpoint during negotiations over three wrecked American slave ships off the coast of the West Indies: the Comet, in 1831, the Encomium, in 1834, and the , in 1835. In each of these instances, the British authorities residing on the islands freed the slaves on board. These actions infuriated American statesmen and Southern slaveholders alike. American legislators interpreted these incidents as clear violations of U.S. sovereignty, while slaveholders saw these acts as obvious attacks against their personal rights. American officials immediately demanded compensation for the lost slave property. When Andrew

Stevenson became minister to England the current Secretary of State, John Forsyth of

Georgia, told him that the Comet, Encomium, and Enterprise cases were “the most immediately pressing of the matters with which the United States Legation at London is now charged.”119

Although Stevenson worked tirelessly to attract Lord Palmerson’s attention, the

British Secretary of State for foreign affairs, the British government remained silent on this matter for several years. Stevenson, a prominent Virginia lawyer and a fervent supporter of the proslavery brand of foreign policy, quickly grew impatient in his dealings with the British government. On July 29, 1836, he penned a 59-page letter to

Palmerston in which he lectured the foreign secretary and berated him for his ineptitude.

He explained to Palmerston that the slaves in question were considered property under

U.S. law, that the was perfectly legal under American municipal

119 Forsyth to Stevenson quoted in Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic, 105; Barbara Layenette Green, “Slaves, Ships, and Citizenship: Congressional Response to the and the Status of Slaves on the High Seas, 1830-1842,” (M.A. thesis, North Texas State University, 1975), 12-16.

51 law, and that the slaves on the American ships were under U.S. jurisdiction even when they passed through the waters of another nation. Because of these factors, Stevenson argued, the British government could make “no distinction between property in persons and property in things” when human cargo drifted into their harbors. To do so, he explained, would disrupt the delicate balance of American federalism because slave property formed the “basis of representation” in the federal government; it was “infused” into American life and mixed with “all the sources” of federal authority. Any British attempt to apply such a distinction in foreign affairs, then, would not only be a flagrant violation of international law but would also destabilize American governance.120

The British secretary was not moved by these arguments. In January of the next year he replied that the British government would assume some financial responsibility for the slaves on the Comet and the Encomium, but it refused to pay for those slaves on the Enterprise. Because the Enterprise had sailed into Bermuda after Great Britain enacted its Emancipation Act in 1833, he asserted, the owners were “never lawfully in possession of those slaves within the British territory.”121 The diplomatic and legal ramifications of this statement were not lost upon Stevenson. In making this distinction, the British had extended their own domestic policy into an international context.

Stevenson immediately replied that “the principles and doctrines” asserted by the British

Foreign Secretary were deliberately calculated to disrupt “matters of higher and deeper

120 Stevenson to Lord Palmerston, July 1836, reprinted in Senate Documents, 24 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 174: Message from the President of the United States in the compliance with the resolution of the Senate, in relation to the Seizure of Slaves on board the brigs “Encomium” and “Enterprise.” (Serial 298, Washington, 1839).

121 Stevenson to Lord Palmerston, August 6, 1836, reprinted in ibid; Karp, “‘This Vast Southern Empire,’” 39.

52 importance, connected with the national interest and institutions of [the] whole [United

States].” Palmerston’s understanding of West Indian emancipation, Stevenson argued, would not only affirm that slavery within the British dominions was unlawful, but that

“human beings cannot be the subject of property, any where, or to any extent.” Secretary

Forsyth quickly recognized that the decree amounted to an open invitation for American slaves to abscond to British territory in order to attain their freedom. If the British government adhered to such a policy, he reasoned, it “cannot fail to be considered, especially by the sufferers from its influence, as an evidence of a spirit hostile to the repose and security of the United States.”122

It came as no surprise, then, that Southern slaveholders were outraged by the outcome of the Blackburn case. When Stevens Thomson Mason, the Acting Governor of the Michigan Territory, first sent his extradition request to the Canadan Lieutenant-

Governor on the grounds that the Blackburns and their accomplices had incited civic unrest, he assumed that the Canadians would have no choice but return the couple and their fellow conspirators. Mason did not, however, take into account Sir John Colborne’s strong anti-slavery feelings. Even though the Lieutenant-Governor was a Tory with High

Church principles, Colborne was deeply influenced by the wave of reform that swept through the British Parliament in the years leading up to the 1833 Emancipation Act.

Indeed, when African Americans flooded into Upper Canada after the Cincinnati race riots of 1829, Colborne welcomed them with opens arms and boldly declared: “Tell the

122 Forsyth to Stevenson, March 27, 1837, reprinted in Senate Documents, 25 Cong., 3 Sess., No. 216: Message from the President of the United States, in compliance with the Resolution of the Senate, in relation to the seizure and detention of brigs Enterprise, Encomium, and Comet (Serial 340, Washington, 1839) Hereafter referred to as Seizure and Detention.

53

Republicans on your side of the line we Royalists do not know men by their color.

Should you come to us you will be entitled to all the privileges of the rest of His

Majesty’s subjects.”123 Beyond the Lieutenant Governor, the Blackburns also had an ally on the Executive Council, Reverend John Strachan. One of the leading figures in the

Church of England, the only officially recognized denomination in the colony, Strachan was a fierce abolitionist who worked against racial discrimination in Upper Canadian institutions.

Thornton Blackburn himself also played an instrumental role in securing his own freedom. While he sat in jail waiting for the Canadian authorities to decide his fate,

Thornton dictated a petition to the prison chaplain. In so doing, Thornton set a precedent for future fugitives who would use the petition to make their case heard and circumvent bilateral extradition law. Although he did not explicitly appeal for protection as a British subject, Thornton did articulate an early version of that language of subjecthood black

Canadians would refine in the coming decades by emphasizing his middle-class life in

Detroit and his commitment to his wife. In his memorial to the Lieutenant Governor,

Thornton made sure to tell the colonial official that, prior to his imprisonment, he and his wife had lived “peaceably” in Detroit and had earned a reputation for their “respectable character.” He also called attention to his two-year long employment as a stone mason, which demonstrated his responsibility and productivity. Thornton was also careful to highlight the fact that his rescue from the Detroit jail had excited “the general Sympathy of the white Inhabitants of Detroit.” The fugitive slave then closed his memorial with a

123 Benjamin Drew, North-Side View of Slavery. The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Related by Themselves, with an Account of the History and Condition of the Colored Population of Upper Canada (Boston: John P. Jewett and Co., 1856), 244-5.

54 direct appeal to the Sir John Colborne’s patriotism and humbly begged that the

Lieutenant Governor would let the runaways live out the rest of their days “in this Land of Freedom” instead of returning to “Hopeless Slavery” in the United States.124

Thornton’s petition found a receptive audience in the Executive Council

Chambers. Upon examining the documents related to the case, the Council recommended that the Lieutenant Governor reject the Michigan Governor’s request by claiming that the former slave had not committed an extraditable crime. Because slavery was not recognized by Canadian law, they reasoned, Thornton’s imprisonment in the Detroit jail was unlawful and, therefore, he was justified in his escape. The Attorney General, Robert

S. Jameson, approved of this conclusion and expanded upon it by provided several reasons to deny the request. First, the Attorney General claimed that the crimes laid against the two runaways were actually a thin veneer meant to obscure the fact that the two were being hunted for escaping slavery, which could not be considered a crime in

Upper Canada. Second, the Governors had not charged the two runaways with capital offenses, which would be necessary to justify the surrender. But most importantly, the

Attorney General could not countenance returning the two fugitives knowing that even if they did stand trial in Michigan for inciting a riot, and that was by no means a guarantee, they would no condemned to “a state of slavery for life,” which would be a more severe

124 “Petition of Thornton Blackburn,” June 27, 1833, State Submissions to the Executive Council of Upper Canada, RG1/E3, Vol. 73, Reel C-1199, 19, Library and Archives—Canada, , ON (hereafter cited as LAC).

55 sentence than the one the British colonial government would impose for the same offense.125

Southerner slaveholders were outraged by this turn of events. The Attorney

General’s argument fulfilled their worst fears that British abolitionism would bleed into

British diplomacy. Some went even farther and considered it proof of an international plot to destroy their peculiar institution. Southern newspapers from Baltimore to New

Orleans circulated elaborate conspiracy theories where they suggested that the British government was financially supporting free blacks living in Canada, raising an army along America’s Northern border. Some slaveholders declared that the Canadian colonial government’s decision had not only flagrantly disobeyed international law, but would also incite a slave insurrection. Southerners saw themselves hemmed in by an ideologically hostile world and predicted a multi-front attack against their precious institution. For both planters and non-slaveholding whites, defending slavery became a self-validating ritual that quickly spiraled into unfettered paranoia.

When the monarchical mother country rejected chattel slavery, Southern slaveholders were forced to confront the contradictions of its own institution and had to perform verbal and logical acrobatics to justify its continued existence. This extradition case and the slave exodus it encouraged fell in line with a string of offenses at the opening on the played a critical role in mobilizing Southern thinkers to formulate an “ever-bolder argument” that cast chattel slavery as a “humane and modern

125 Attorney General Robert Simpson Jameson quoted in Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 169; Also see, William Renwick Riddell, “The Slave in Canada,” Journal of Negro History 5, no. 3 (1920): 84.

56 institution.”126 In response, formerly enslaved people and their allies responded to this development by formulating ever more sophisticated rhetorical attacks and legal strategies against the peculiar institution. By placing these fugitive slave cases within a larger framework of competing imperial designs between Great Britain and the South, then, the fate of these runaway slaves gains newfound importance. The Underground

Railroad, then, was not only a domestic concern that consumed state lawmakers and

American political, it was also the arena for a major international contest between two different visions of the modern world.127

126 Edward Rugemer, “The Southern Response to British Abolitionism: The Maturation of Proslavery Apologetics,” The Journal of Southern History 70, no. 2 (2004): 223.

127 Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “Modernizing Southern Slavery: The Proslavery Argument Reinterpreted,” in J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, eds., Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 27-49; David Donald, “The Proslavery Argument Reconsidered,” The Journal of Southern History 37, no. 1 (1971): 3-18; William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965): 82-111. 57

Chapter Two: “I thought we were safe here:” Cultivating Subjecthood in the British Empire

In the shadow of the Niagara court house, a second city had formed. Makeshift tents and beds were scattered across the court house lawn, situated along an informal grid that followed its own logic. The air seemed to hum with expectation. Over three hundred pairs of eyes watched the jailhouse gates, waiting for any sign of movement. Nearly every member of Niagara’s African-Canadian community was in attendance. A group of black women formed a blockade on the bridge approaching the jail, linking arms and singing hymns. Suddenly, the gate doors swung open and a small wagon rolled out, bouncing on the uneven road. Constables in full-dress uniform created a ring around the cart, bayonets in hand. The Deputy Sheriff, on horseback and brandishing a drawn sword, led this somber parade. Hunched over in the wagon was the prisoner, the man the crowd had been waiting for: Solomon Moseby.128

With Moseby’s appearance, the scene erupted in a flurry of activity. Sixty years later, a child eye-witness could still remember the “screaming and the screeching and the firing.” The crowd rushed towards the wagon. The leader of the group, Herbert Holmes, grabbed hold of the reins of the horse while another supporter, Jacob Green, jammed a fence rail through the wagon’s wheel to stop it. In the chaos, Moseby wriggled out of his handcuffs, jumped off the wagon, and lost himself in the swell of the crowd. The Deputy

128Janet Carnochan, “Slave Rescue in Niagara, Sixty Years Ago,” Niagara Historical Society, no. 2 (1897): 48. 58

Sheriff, struggling to maintain his balance atop his horse, yelled “Fire!” and “Charge!”

The sound of gunshots pierced the air. Herbert Holmes fell almost instantly, and Jacob

Green met his death at the end of a bayonet. The crowd scattered, but Moseby was nowhere to be found. He had snaked through the mob, jumped over a rail fence, and disappeared into a corn field. Solomon Moseby, a fugitive slave at risk of being extradited back to Kentucky, spent the following weeks hiding in safe houses, waiting until he could raise enough funds to travel to England.129

Although Moseby ultimately did reach freedom across the Atlantic, Upper

Canada’s black community, a majority former slaves themselves, continued to reel from the entire affair.130 When later asked about the event, Sally Carter, a formerly enslaved woman who participated in the rescue, could not hide her anger. “I thought we were safe here,” she scoffed, “I thought nothing could touch us here, on your British ground.”

Now, however, this “unpolluted soil” was stained with blood. Days after the event, a reporter at the Upper Canada Herald still could not believe that it had even occurred and asked his readers, “Gracious heavens . . . are we in a British colony?” In the span of an afternoon, the Moseby affair threatened Upper Canada’s reputation as a safe haven from slavery and it threw into question the fugitive slave’s place within Canadian society.

Formerly enslaved people realized that neither physical distance nor international borders

129 Carnochan, “Slave Rescue in Niagara,” 51, 57; For another description of this event, see Niagara Reporter, September 14, 1837, Vol. 5, no. 17, N214, Archives of Ontario, Toronto, ON. (hereafter cited as AO).

130 Upper Canada was formed in 1791 and constituted what is now the province of Ontario. , also created in 1791, constitutes present-day Quebec. In 1841, these two would be renamed Canada West and , respectively until 1867, when the Dominion of Canada was created by uniting Ontario, Quebec, , and Nova Scotia under the British North America Act. When I refer to “Canada” in this paper, I am referring to Upper Canada; See William Canniff, History of the Settlement of Upper Canada. (Toronto: A.H. Hovey & Co., 1872).

59 could guarantee their freedom. Instead, their security would depend upon their ability to prove themselves worthy of British subjecthood, and thereby receive the protections that came with this status.131

For runaway slaves, reaching British soil in the colony of Upper Canada was only one leg of a twisting and winding journey to freedom. After overcoming physical and emotional obstacles in their trek to Canada, runaways still had to blaze a legal path from slave to subject. Recognizing that the social and legal aspects of subjecthood were mutually reinforcing, black refugees created a “language of subjecthood” that was predicated upon three interlocking elements: economic productivity, social respectability, and political loyalty.132 By actively working to incorporate themselves into the British

Empire and crafting their subject status, Afro-Canadians redefined subjecthood from a legal designation passively received by birthright to a deliberate choice based on allegiance and civic service.133

131 Sally Carter quoted Anna Brownwell, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (London: Saunders and Otley, 1838), 45; Hiram Wilson, “Letter from Hiram Wilson,” Liberator, July 20, 1838; “The Slave Case,” Upper Canada Herald, September 26, 1837, AO N693.

132 The concept of a “language of subjecthood” draws from Hannah Weiss Muller’s work on French Catholic subjects in Grenada and Quebec after the Seven Years’ War. See Hannah Weiss Muller, “Bonds of Belonging: Subjecthood and the British Empire,” Journal of British Studies 53 (2014): 29-58.

133 Understanding the imperial relationship between Great Britain and Canada is imperative to understanding the methods black refugees employed to become accepted members of Canadian society. Recent historians have demonstrated that British imperialism was central to Canadian identity and deeply influenced the formation of race, gender, and class relations in the colony. For some examples, see Nancy Christie, “Theorizing a Colonial Past: Canada as a Society of British Settlement,” in Nancy Christie, ed., Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institution, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), 3- 44; Phillip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis, eds., Canada and the British World: Culture, Migration, and Identity (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006). 60

Black refugees’ efforts to become British subjects gained newfound urgency during two 1837 extradition cases when Southern slaveholders attempted to retrieve their lost property by relabeling fugitive slaves as fugitive criminals. These extradition cases, though, actually provided formerly enslaved people a unique opportunity to actively expand the meaning of black social and legal belonging in a partially free Atlantic world.

In order to combat Southern slaveholders’ efforts, Afro-Canadians drafted petitions in which they employed their language of subjecthood in an effort to place their own protection on the imperial agenda and ensure their freedom. Canadian and British officials would later adopt this language themselves in their own writings and would find creative ways to circumvent bilateral extradition to accommodate former slaves. In doing so, these authorities would set a strict legal precedent that protected fugitive slaves in

Upper Canada and validated their claims to subject status. Therefore, by appealing to an established and accepted mode of political dissent, Upper Canada’s black community simultaneously subscribed to the hierarchy of colonial order while they subverted its racial order.134

Prior to 1830, black migration to Canada was largely comprised of individual slaves and free black families who established small farms not far from the American-

Canadian border, taking advantage of a milder climate and fertile soils.135 This pattern of movement changed dramatically after 1829, though, when renewed enforcement of

134 By analyzing former American slaves’ claims to British subjecthood, this paper builds upon the work of Hannah Weiss Muller, which has revealed how “new” or “adopted” subjects were “active participants in debates over the very meanings of subjecthood.” Muller, “Bonds of Belonging,” 31-2.

135 Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 144, 155.

61 stringent anti-black legislation in Northern states forced black abolitionists to consider the prospects of an organized settlement in Canada.136 Named after the British abolitionist , this all-black settlement would serve as a powerful weapon against the institution of slavery by disproving racialist theories of black indolence and dependence. William Lloyd Garrison posited that as the town of

Wilberforce increased in “population, intelligence, and power” it would render the

“prolongation of that accursed bloody system more and more insecure” by slowly chipping away at its ideological foundations.137 Black migrants to Canada, therefore, would not be abandoning those still gripped in the throes of American slavery. Instead, they would be engaged in “more practical antislavery work than they were capable of performing in the States.”138

As Americans in Canada, though, these black refugees were keenly aware of their precarious position as political and social outsiders. By clearing small plots of land, constructing humble log homes, and plowing virgin fields, former slaves did not simply begin the hard work of community building; they also initiated a contested process by which they fashioned themselves as industrious, respectable, and loyal British subjects.

While they went about their daily business, black migrants labored under the watchful

136 For more on the rationale for this settlement, see the Constitution of the American Society of the Free Persons of Colour, for Improving Their Condition in the United States, for Purchasing Lands; and for the Establishment of a Settlement in Upper Canada (: J.W. Allen, 1831); Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 73; Carter G. Woodson, “The Negroes of Cincinnati Prior to the Civil War,” The Journal of Negro History, 1 (1916): 21-2.

137 Liberator, November 23, 1833.

138 Frederick Douglass’ Paper, June 30, 1854; Paul Goodman, Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 14-18.

62 gaze of Southern slaveholders, Northern abolitionists, Canadian whites, and British legislators, who waited for them to take a misstep. As black delegates at a convention in

Toronto declared: “Every refugee in Canada is representative of the millions of our brethren who are still held in bondage; and the eye of the civilized world is looking down upon us to see whether we can take care of ourselves or not.”139 Knowing that “their good behavior only” could overcome this prejudice and “make their way tolerable amongst their white brethren,” black migrants “felt it incumbent on them to take heed to their steps.”140

Establishing self-sufficiency was fundamental to this mission for several distinct, but interrelated reasons. First, achieving financial solvency served as a powerful rebuke against the caricature of the lazy slave. This image was a keystone of a paternalistic ideology that asserted the “total incapacity of slaves to take care of themselves in a state of freedom.”141 Former slaves and free blacks, proslavery ideologues warned, could not be trusted with the responsibilities of citizenship and were fundamentally “unfit for self- government of any kind.”142 As long as this stereotype persisted, self-emancipated blacks knew that they would never be able to join white society as full participants.143 While

139 Voice of the Fugitive, October 22, 1851.

140 Benjamin Stanton, “Colored Population in Canada,” The Friend of Man, June 21, 1837, Vol. 2, no. 1.

141 Ibid.

142 Quoted in George M. Frederickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Characters and Destiny, 1817-1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 46; Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).

143 Bruce Dain, A Hideous Monster: American Race Theory in the Early Republic (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 90-1; Cedric J. Robinson, Black Movements in 63 they formed self-directed communities in Upper Canada, black migrants demonstrated that they too were “capable of being operated upon by all the motives which influence the conduct of free men of fairer skin.”144 Afro-Canadians were not only pushing against pro- slavery ideology, though, they were also working towards inclusion in the British

Empire. By emphasizing self-sufficiency, black migrants tapped into a long standing conversation about black belonging in the British Empire that reached back to the eighteenth century. In this discourse, British thinkers imagined a multi-ethnic empire bound together by “a spirit of industry and achievement.” As Christopher Brown has noted, these anti-slavery advocates believed that formerly enslaved people “could serve the empire better” as freemen instead of slaves because they would not only be industrious laborers but would also become eager consumers of British manufactured goods.145

As the fledgling Wilberforce colony took its first uncertain steps into existence, however, anti-slavery activists realized that external funding would be needed to help it grow and prosper. Black abolitionists roamed the English countryside, soliciting funds and giving speeches to anyone who would listen about the plight of the runaway slave.

They spoke of the untapped potential of the young settlement, where self-emancipated black men and women were anxious to “acquire an honest livelihood” and demonstrate

America (New York: Routledge, 1997), 45-59; Robert C. Dick, Black Protest: Issues and Tactics (Westport, C.T.: Greenwood Press, 1974), 41-61, 127-134.

144 “To the Editor of the Times,” Times [London, UK], January 9, 1833.

145 Christopher L. Brown, “Empire without Slaves: British Conceptions of Emancipation in the Age of the American Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 56, no. 2 (1999): 280; Christopher L. Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 209-58; Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 98.

64 their capacity to become responsible subjects.146 Hiram Wilson, a young missionary from

Ohio, made similar appeals to the hearts and minds of American abolitionists. In an impassioned plea in the Friend of Man, he proclaimed that “the fugitives now in Canada have a pressing claim upon the charities of the anti-slavery men of this nation.”

Highlighting the symbolic importance of the Canadian settlement, Wilson spoke in cosmic terms, claiming that “Heaven and earth” would cry out against white abolitionists if they failed to assist the “straitened colonists who have settled in Canada.”147

Many black Canadians held deep reservations about these fundraising campaigns, and they denounced the entire practice as no better than “begging.”148 They bristled at white agents’ efforts in particular, which they believed to be both patronizing and counterproductive. Many former slaves felt “greatly disgraced” by the reliance on white assistance inherent to the begging system, and some even said it had done “more evil” to them than anything else since they had escaped bondage. In an open letter to “the friends of the fugitive in Canada,” George Thompson declared that begging was “a curse instead of a blessing” because it cast self-emancipated people as “poor, starving, naked,” and entirely dependent upon white benevolence.149 This backlash against the begging system

146 “Speech by Nathaniel Paul,” December 2, 1834, in Peter C. Ripley, ed. The Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume 1, The British Isles (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 1: 56; For more on black fund-raising activity in Great Britain, see R.J.M Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983).

147 Hiram Wilson, “Canada Mission,” The Friend of Man, Vol. 5, Number 29, August 30 1837. Emphasis in original.

148 Michael F. Humbree, “The Question of ‘Begging’: Fugitive Slave Relief in Canada, 1830- 1865,” Civil War History 37, no. 4 (1991): 314-27.

149 George Thompson, “To the Friends of the Fugitive in Canada—For All Anti-Slavery and Humanity-Loving Papers,” The Oberlin Evangelist; A Semi-Monthly Periodical, Devoted to the Promotion of Religion, vol. 14 (Oberlin, OH: James M. Fitch, 1852), 115.

65 arose from a collective understanding of the antislavery symbolism of the black experience in Canada. The begging system, therefore, was “anathema” to many black refugees, and they actively avoided all outside assistance for fear that they would give credence to proslavery arguments.150

Instead of having white abolitionist continue “begging over [their] backs,” black

Canadians formed “True Band” societies based upon the principles of self-help and racial solidarity.151 Black True Band societies abstained from white support by providing monetary assistance for recent migrants, lobbying for improved schooling, advocating against religious fractioning, and litigating disputes within the community. Each months members paid a small fee to the society, which provided the True Band with more than enough to “meet all cases of destitution,” and still have a surplus in its treasury.152 These societies blended equal parts communalism and individualism; while they advocated temporary relief for new arrivals, they did not tolerate prolonged welfare. New migrants were expected to find employment as soon as possible, and were placed under extreme social pressure if they did not.153

In order to achieve economic self-sufficiency, many black migrants turned to an agricultural lifestyle. When they first arrived across the border, these migrants marveled

150 Drew, North-Side View of Slavery, 237.

151 Humbree, “The Question of ‘Begging,’” 321.

152 Drew, North-Side View of Slavery, 237.

153 Gallant, “Perspectives on the Motives for the Migration of African-Americans to and from Ontario, Canada,” 400-1; Howard Law, “‘Self-Reliance is the True Road to Independence’: Ideology and the Ex-Slaves in Buxton and Chatham,” in A Nation of Immigrants: Women, Workers, and Communities in Canadian History, 1840s-1960s, eds. Francis Iacovetta, et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 82-101.

66 at the Upper Canadian soil, which was covered with a “black vegetable mould” and promised bounteous harvests.154 And while the Canadian market was considerably smaller than any in the United States, it still offered “a suitable reward” to the enterprising farmer willing to work for it. In such favorable conditions, black farmers would be able to achieve a “degree of independence” that was unattainable in the United

States.155 When first visited the Wilberforce settlement in 1832, he was pleased to find that the black migrants had purchased nearly 2,000 acres of land “200 of which are cleared, and about 60 sown with wheat.”156

By emphasizing agriculture, free blacks and former slaves sought to write themselves into the narrative of the colonial settler, a dominant force in Canadian society.

They knew that Canada was “a country of good farms,” and recognized that the agrarian life held both economic and cultural weight in such a land.157 In the British Empire more broadly, political theorists considered agriculture as one of the “three grand pillars” of imperial success, and those settlers who practiced it were engaged in “the most innocent, most useful, most pleasant, and most honourable employment.”158 While the term

154 Patrick Shirreff, A Tour Through North America; together with a view of the and the United States as adapted for agricultural emigration (Edinburgh, Scotland: Ballantyne and Co., 1835), 178.

155 American Society of the Free Persons of Colour. Constitution of the American Society of the Free Persons of Colour, 10, 11.

156 The Diary of Benjamin Lundy written during his journey through Upper Canada, January, 1832, reprinted in The Genius of Universal Emancipation, March/April/May, 1832.

157 Drew, North-Side View of Slavery, 198.

158Arthur Young, Political Essays concerning the Present State of the British Empire; Particularly respecting I. Natural Advantages and Disadvantages, II. Constitution, III. Agriculture, IV. Manufactures, V. The Colonies, and VI. Commerce (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1772), V: 75.

67 colonial settler could flatten distinctions between different nationalities, it still recognized differences in color.159 At the same time white Europeans were pulled towards Canada so they could take advantage of its fertile soils and lush forests, black slaves were pushed away from the South with “no partiality for either Canadians or their Country.”160 In this context, white migrants from far-flung locales like Scotland, Ireland, and Germany were grouped together as welcomed immigrants. Black Americans, on the other hand, were perpetual foreigners.161

As black migrants became “owners and tillers of the soil” this racial dichotomy began to erode.162 Austin Stewart, a leading figure in the Wilberforce settlement, recognized the symbolic potency of this occupation and advocated that black migrants leave the cities for the country. He claimed that African Americans in the North did themselves a disservice by flocking to urban centers, where they remained dependent upon white clients and white capital. If they instead chose to “retire to the country,” they would be able to achieve true self-sufficiency and would no longer be “dependent on

[their] oppressors.” In this scenario, farming acted as a powerful leveling force in society

159 Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (New York, 2002), 222-3.

160 Chatham Chronicle, April 30, 1850, NJ/FM/521, Reel 2, LAC; For more on the colonial settler narrative and its importance to Canadian society, see J. David Wood, Making Ontario: Agricultural Colonization and Landscape Re-creation Before the Railway (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), esp. 3-8, 23-45.

161 Vron Ware and Les Black, Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Catherine Hall, Civilizing Subjects: Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination, 1830-1867 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Radhika Mohanram, Imperial White: Race, Diaspora, and the British Empire (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).

162 Voice of the Fugitive, February 26, 1851.

68 because the sun would shine and the rain would fall “just as readily for the colored agriculturist as for his pale face neighbor.”163

Black refugees heeded Stewart’s call. John Holmes, a black migrant and former slave, noted that the Afro-Canadians had established “many good farms about

Wilberforce.”164 Another black migrant boasted that he had “fifty acres of land under fence,” and a bountiful orchard with “a good assortment of fruits.”165 A writer for the

Chatham Planet could not help but remark that, on the whole, black migrants proved to be “better farmers than the Irish, and far better than the .”166 In some instances, the racial hierarchy was turned upside down as black farmers became mentors to struggling white farmers. In one of his reports, Hiram Wilson mentioned a “very intelligent, noble minded man” who, after twelve years in freedom, had amassed

“considerable property” and presided over “one of the best farms in the country.” Now white Canadians, who initially were reluctant to lease out land to the black refugee, found him “capable of teaching them the art of husbandry” and solicited his advice regularly.167

As more and more black farms blossomed in the Canadian countryside, a reporter for the

Church began to question the racialized logic behind the settler narrative. “We have

163 Austin Stewart, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman; Embracing a Correspondence of Several Years, While President of Wilberforce Colony, London, Canada West (Rochester, NY: William Alling, 1857), 167.

164 Drew, North-Side View of Slavery, 236.

165 “Narrative John Holmes” (first quotation) and “Narrative of Rev. William Ruth” (second and third quotations), in North-Side View of Slavery, 173, 376.

166 Chatham Planet, November 4, 1857, NJ/FM/1647, Reel 2, LAC.

167 Hiram Wilson, “Colored People in Upper Canada,” Friend of Man, June 28, 1837, Vol. 2, no. 2.

69 already, in Canada, Scot, Irish, French, and German settlements,” the article remarked before asking, “Why may we not have an African settlement?”168

In their quest to become British subjects, black migrants knew that they could not only integrate themselves into the Empire’s economy as productive laborers, they also needed to become “good Christians, good subjects, and enlightened members of the community” through a rigorous education.169 , a former slave and black preacher in Canada, claimed that black refugees viewed education and economic solvency as “the two great means of elevation of our oppressed and degraded race.”170

Here again, black refugees drew from an established conversation on the role of education to integrate an increasingly diverse empire. British political thinkers believed that once white and non-white subjects learned to “talk the same language, read the same books,” and even “profess the same religion” they would become a “united people.” In this way, Britain would not acquire land and power through “the transitory fruits of violence and injustice,” but instead would spread by the “solid and lasting acquisitions of industry and virtue.”171 This ideology gave black refugees much more to gain from education than simple personal benefits. In their eyes, education would serve as the gateway to social respectability and eventually imperial inclusion.

168 Church [Toronto], January 3, 1850, D/249/7/9, vol. 14, LAC; For more on competing visions of Canada’s “racial landscape,” see Ikuko Asaka, “Race Across Empire and Republic: Black Migration to Canada and Racial, National, and Gender Formations in Atlantic Context,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin—Madison, 2010), 140-175.

169 “A Memorial from the Coloured Inhabitants of the Province of Upper Canada,” quoted in Ikuko Asaka, “Race Across Empire and Republic,” 71.

170 Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (Boston: A. D. Phelps, 1849), 70.

171 Morgann quoted in Brown, “Empire without Slaves,” 281.

70

The education available at such schools went beyond reading and arithmetic; young black children would also learn the conventions that informed a respectable middle class life. When Josiah Henson first conceived of the British-American Institute, he imagined that the boys in the school would be taught “the practice of some mechanical arts,” while the young girls would be instructed in “those domestic arts, which are the proper occupation and ornament of their sex.”172 While black migrants worked to destabilize white society’s racial dualism, they accepted many of its principles, adhered to its formalities, and reflected its virtues. As Robin Winks has noted, “the values of the

Negro community experiments were normative ones; the Negroes accepted the free world as it was, or as they saw it to be.”173 Formerly enslaved people readily acknowledged that compliance with prescribed cultural norms would be the “price of the ticket of self- possession” in the British Empire. Therefore, black refugees employed gendered language to articulate their place within Canadian society, and advocated for black belonging in the British Empire through familial reproduction and responsibility.174

Formerly enslaved women were pivotal to this project. No matter what the impetus for their migration was, black women couched their movement in domestic terminology. One black refugee, who referred to herself as Mrs. Christopher Hamilton, said that in Canada she was now her “own mistress” who could “do [her] own thinkings”

172 Josiah Henson, “’s Story of His Life.” An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (Mrs. ’s ‘Uncle Tom’). From 1789 to 1876 (London: “Christian Age” Office, 1876), 124.

173 Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 178.

174 Brown, “Empire without Slaves,” 291.

71 and run her own household.175 Before Fidelia Coburn, a white missionary from Maine, came to teach at the British-American Institute, she worried that “few of those mothers who have escaped from their oppressors” would be equipped to teach their daughters

“those domestic duties calculated to render them comfortable, useful, or happy.”176 But when she arrived in Upper Canada she found that these formerly enslaved women had quickly adapted to their new positions as respectable ladies. One self-emancipated young woman even claimed that should her former masters ever visit her in Canada, she would be a hospitable hostess and let them stay in her house “just to shame them by showing that I had humanity.”177

In the process, these black women cultivated an image of themselves as pioneer wives and mothers, a familiar type in Canadian culture.178 Black women settled into the patterns of agrarian life just as readily as their husbands by harvesting crops, milking cows, and churning butter.179 In a letter to the Provincial Freeman, N.D. Hopewell proudly described her “good freehold farm,” which was “something less than one hundred acres” but still had “a good orchard of first rate fruit trees and shrubbery” and

175 “Narrative of Mrs. Christopher Hamilton,” North-Side View of Slavery, 177.

176 Fidelia Coburn quoted in Linda Brown-Kubisch, The Queen’s Bush Settlement: Black Pioneers, 1839-1865 (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2004), 70.

177 “Narrative of Mary Younger,” in North-Side View of Slavery, 258.

178 For more on the role of the “pioneer woman” in Canadian culture, see Helen M. Buss, “Women and the Garrison Mentality: Pioneer Women Autobiographers and their Relation to the Land,” in Re(Dis)covering Our Foremothers: Nineteenth-Century Canadian Women Writers, ed. Lorraine McMullen (Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press, 1990), 123-136.

179 Peggy Bristow, “‘Whatever You Raise in the Ground You Can Sell It in Chatham’: Black Women in Buxton and Chatham, 1850-65,” in ‘We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up’: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History, ed. Peggy Bristow (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 69-142.

72

“grapes vines of the best quality.” This vision of a robust farm went hand in hand with

Hopewell’s depiction of her blossoming family life. Despite her daily duties on the farm,

Hopewell still found the time to “take care of a family, several of whom are children.”

She portrayed a blissful home life, with a husband who was “one of the best of men” and two small children that were “the sweetest little creatures in the world!”180 Another black mother declared with pride that her infant son was “likely to become a noble British freeman.”181 By fashioning themselves as responsible mothers, black women demonstrated that they too could also serve as agents of empire. The black family, therefore, represented all of the “prospects for the moral, social, pecuniary and political advancement of the colored population in Canada.”182

Self-emancipated men found that adhering to their own prescribed gender roles was just as important for them as it was for black women. In the gendered world of nineteenth-century Anglo-America, claims to masculinity were infused with political significance. The divide between male and female also signified the divide between public and private, citizen and non-citizen.183 As the market revolution swept the industrializing world, it did not simply transform economic relations; it also

180 Provincial Freeman, October 6, 1855, N40, AO.

181 Hiram Wilson, “Colored People in Upper Canada,” Friend of Man, June 28, 1837, Vol. 2, no. 2.

182 Voice of the Fugitive, May 20, 1852.

183 E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 1-10; Also see, E. Anthony Rotundo, “Learning About Manhood: Gender Ideals and the Middle-Class Family in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Manliness and Morality: Middle Class Masculinity in Britain and America, ed. J.A. Mangan and James Walvin (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 36-47; Charles Rosenberg, “Sexuality, Class, and Role in Nineteenth Century America,” in The American Man, ed. Elizabeth Hafkin Pleck and Joseph H. Pleck (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980), 219-257.

73 revolutionized the definition of a gentleman “from one based on birth to one based on wealth and lifestyle.”184 These gendered assumptions cut across political and racial boundaries, and provided black men a platform upon which they could stake their claim to British subjecthood. As Christopher Brown has observed, “admission to society required hewing to the patriarchal ethos” and many British political thinkers viewed proper domestic relations as the “bridge to liberty” for recently liberated men.185 Only the

“state of matrimony and the Government of family,” could properly train these formerly enslaved men “to a fitness of freedom, and to become good Citizens.”186 Self- emancipated men in Canada were more than willing to take up this role, and felt immense gratitude to have the chance to do so.

In contrast to their condition in bondage, black men in Canada were able to fulfill their roles as protectors and providers.187 Canadian black men could “look abroad over fields of their own cultivation” and behold “their cherished hearthstone” where their

“wives and little ones” gathered round.188 Austin Stewart declared that no black man in

Canada worried that his wife and children “may be sold or torn from his embrace, while he is laboring for their support.” He claimed that when these former slaves threw off the chains of bondage they became “a hardy, robust class of men,” whose “strength and

184 Stephen T. Leonard and Joan C. Tronto, “The Genders of Citizenship,” The American Political Science Review 101, no. 1 (2007): 35.

185 Brown, “Empire Without Slaves,” 291.

186 Edmund Burke quoted in ibid.

187 Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: Norton, 1985), 146.

188 Liberator, August 6, 1836.

74 condition” would cause any proslavery advocate to “tremble.” Indeed, Stewart even asserted that should England ever “call for the services of the colored man,” the black

Canadian man would freely defend the British Crown—not because he necessarily felt any “particular preference” for monarchical government, but because the British “had acknowledged his manhood.”189

Austin Stewart was not the only former slave to voice his passionate loyalty to the

Crown. Fugitive slaves recognized that in a growing, multi-ethnic empire, expressions of political loyalty were the surest path to British subjecthood. Once they reached Canadian soil, fugitive slaves were quick to “take hold of any and everything” that would identify them “not as black or colored men, but as British subjects.”190 In the process, Fugitive slaves creatively leveraged Great Britain’s identity as an anti-slavery crusader for their own advantage, heralding the Empire’s notable abolitionist record at the same time they shamed the slaveholding American republic. In so doing, former American slaves embodied Maurice Morgann’s vision of a British Empire “defined by neither ethnicity nor religion—in fact, by nothing more than allegiance.”191

Great Britain had long held a storied place in American slaves’ imagination. One black refugee, A.T. Jones, explained that he knew he would be safe when he reached

Canada “because it was under the protection of the British Government.” Slaves learned

“from hearing the papers read by whites,” that the British Government was firmly

189 Stewart, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, 326-7, 321-2, 324; For more on black masculinity and Canadian refugees, see Afua Ava Pamela Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom’s Cause’: Henry Bibb, Abolitionism, Race, and Black Manhood, 1842-1854,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2000).

190 E. Smith, “Freed Slaves—How They Prosper—Fugitives in Canada,” Liberator, April 6, 1849.

191 Morgan quoted in Brown, “Empire Without Slaves,” 281.

75 opposed to slavery, and that all slaves who reached the Canadian border would instantly become free. Jones even claimed that “ever since my first recollection, the only source that the colored people looked to for deliverance was the British Government.”192 This did not mean that former slaves were ignorant of Great Britain’s slaveholding past, but they were willing to forgive this early sin on the basis of its more recent trailblazing on the path of liberty. When asked to answer for England’s record, fugitive slaves replied,

“but did she not repent herself of the evil she had done, and speedily break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free?” They admitted that even though the English had been instrumental in the for so many years, they had redeemed themselves because “no slave now breathes in England’s atmosphere.”193

Former slaves were even willing to defend Britain’s hierarchical economic and governmental systems. While lambasted Great Britain’s institutional structures for rewarding inherited wealth, promoting elitism, and restricting mass participation, black refugees countered with the observation that these same structures offered black men legal freedom. When Austin Stewart heard American critics describe

England’s “white poor” as “slaves to the aristocracy,” he nearly laughed. “Oppressed they may be,” he remarked, “but they are not sold in the market to the highest bidder, like beasts of burden, as they are in America.” Indeed, formerly enslaved men felt “perfect contentment” with their current political condition, for they now lived under the influence of free and equal laws, “which recognize[d] no distinction of colour.”194

192 “Interview with A.T. Jones,” in Slave Testimony, 432.

193 Stewart, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, 326.

194 “Proceedings of a Meeting of Toronto Blacks,” January 13, 1838, reprinted in Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume 2, Canada, 69. 76

Black refugees also played off of the anti-American sentiment present in both

Canada and Great Britain by turning the narrative of the American Revolution on its head. Instead of fighting against the tyranny of monarchy, black slaves raced to the

Canadian border so they could experience true liberty under the British Crown. Austin

Stewart could not help but point out that runaway slaves were only able to enjoy their rights to “‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’” once they were in the “hands of

England’s Queen.”195 One former slave turned Patrick Henry’s famous phrase inside out when he said that “Slavery is the worst system I have ever seen. Although I have been poor here [in Canada], I can repeat ‘give me liberty, or give me death.’”196 In a true reversal of revolutionary roles, Austin Stewart proclaimed that African Canadian men would fight for the British Crown “with a will not inferior to that which actuated our revolutionary forefathers.”197

Canadian black men even had the opportunity to take part in that most vaunted

American virtue: self-governance. In the Wilberforce colony, for example, black men were able to elect their own township clerk and board of commissioners, whose business it would be “to hold and keep all moneys, books, and papers belonging to the town.”

When Austin Stewart became the township clerk, he quickly realized that was entrusted with the same responsibilities “as though he had been born in Her Britannic Majesty’s dominion, with a face as white as the driven snow.” Stewart even envisioned a day where

195 Stewart, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, 178, 323.

196 “Narrative of Rev. R.S.W. Sorrick,” in North-Side View of Slavery, 119.

197 Stewart, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, 321.

77 the Wilberforce settlement would be able to amass a large enough population that it could send a member to the Upper Canada Parliament “to represent the interest of our colony.”

198 To Austin Stewart, the fact that Canada’s colonial government entrusted black settlers with these rights and privileges proved that the British Empire was more than willing to absorb non-white individuals as equal and valued subjects.

Black refugees’ intense loyalty was not lost upon Upper Canada’s governing officials. When Hiram Wilson sent out a questionnaire to Canadian authorities in 1836 in order to better understand “the conditions and prospects of the colored people in Upper

Canada,” he specifically asked “Are they loyal subjects of the government?” Nearly every official responded affirmatively. Robert Graham Dunlop, a representative from

Huron County, told Wilson that there was not a more “loyal, honest, temperate, and independent class of citizens than the colored people of Upper Canada.”199 Receiver-

General John H. Dunn replied, perhaps with less enthusiasm but no less certainty, that “I believe them to be truly loyal subjects of the government.”200 even said that the fugitives were “so extravagantly loyal” to the British government that they were blind to its abuses and willing to “support those who profit by them.”201 After receiving these letters, Wilson claimed that the African Canadians had become

198 Ibid., 260-1, 270.

199 “Letter from Robert Graham Dunlop to Hiram Wilson,” January 27, 1837, reprinted in “Records Illustrating the Condition of Refugees from Slavery in Upper Canada Before 1860.” Journal of Negro History 13 (April, 1928): 199.

200 “Letter from John H. Dunn to Hiram Wilson,” reprinted in ibid., 201.

201 “Letter from W. L. MacKenzie to Hiram Wilson,” January 30, 1837, reprinted in ibid., 200; Also see, Ged Martin, “British Officials and Their Attitudes to the Negro Community in Canada, 1833-1861,” Ontario History 66 (1974): 82.

78

“proverbial for their good behavior” amongst Upper Canada’s governing officials and needed no other “passport or badge of their loyalty than their complexion.”202

This bond between subject and sovereign would be tested on a balmy August evening in 1837, when slaveholder David Castleman stumbled in to Niagara-on-the-Lake,

Ontario. Castleman, a wealthy horse breeder from Fayette County, Kentucky, arrived intent on retrieving two pieces of property: a horse and a man named Solomon Moseby.

Earlier that year, Moseby had escaped from Castleman’s plantation and headed North on the back of his master’s prized racing horse, which he later sold. Meanwhile, Castleman concocted an innovative plan to retrieve both pieces of lost “property.” Knowing that he would not be able to reclaim the runaway through sheer physical force, Castleman turned to an obscure legal statute passed by the Upper Canada legislature in 1833, the Fugitive

Offenders Act.203 Under this act, fugitive criminals accused of committing a “serious crime” in a foreign country could now be extradited for trial in that country. By stealing his master’s horse, Moseby had inadvertently committed such a crime. Understanding the legal implications of Moseby’s actions, Castleman charged the runaway in absentia with the crime of horse-stealing. The Kentucky court house was more than willing to issue a warrant for the fugitive’s arrest and the state’s governor issued a formal extradition

202 Hiram Wilson, “American Exiles in Upper Canada,” Liberator, September 21, 1838.

203 This act stipulated that the Executive Council could order up any fugitive charged with “Murder, Forgery, Larceny, or other crime which if committed within the Province would have been punishable with death, corporal punishment, the Pillory, whipping or confinement at hard labour.” See, “An Act to Provide for the Apprehending of Fugitive Offenders from Foreign Countries, and Delivering Them Up to Justice,” February 13, 1833, Eleventh Parliament (3 Will. IV, c. 7), in Sir John Colborne, K.C.B., Lieutenant Governor, Statutes of His Majesty’s Province of Upper Canada, Passed in the Third Session of the Eleventh Provincial Parliament of Upper Canada (York: Robert Stanton, 1833), 37-8.

79 request.204 Armed with these legal documents, Castleman traveled to Upper Canada, confident that he would not only reclaim his slave but he would also open a new legal channel for future slaveholders in a similar predicament.205

When Castleman arrived in Upper Canada, he presented the Niagara magistrates with the grand jury indictment and extradition request he had carried in his waistcoat pocket on the long journey from Kentucky.206 As soon as the slave-owner laid out these documents before the magistrates, the wheels of the Upper Canadian legal system began churning in his favor. Within a matter of hours, an arrest warrant for Solomon Moseby was issued and the young runaway soon found himself in a cramped jail cell. The Upper

Canada attorney general, C.A. Hagerman, glanced over the documentation and determined that there was “sufficient proof” to charge the former slave. He forwarded the legal papers to the Lieutenant Governor, Sir , advising him to deliver the runaway to the American authorities.207 After a cursory review of these same

204 As one of the slave states bordering the free northern states, Kentucky was particularly attentive to such cases. In 1850, the Louisville Daily Journal estimated that the state of Kentucky lost $30,000 every year in the form of runaway slaves. See, Louisville Daily Journal, January 24, 1850.

205 Several historians have noted that Castleman most likely acted with this larger plan in mind. See, David Murray, Colonial Justice: Justice, Morality and Crime in the Niagara District, 1791-1849 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 196-216; Alexander Murray, “The Extradition of Fugitive Slaves from Canada: A Re-Evaluation,” Canadian Historical Review 43, no. 4 (1962): 298-314; Roman J. Zorn, “Criminal Extradition Menaces the Canadian Haven for Fugitive Slaves, 1841-1861,” Canadian Historical Review 38, no. 2 (1957): 284-94; For more on African- Canadian history in the Niagara region, see Nancy Butler and Michael Power, Slavery and Freedom in Niagara (Niagara, ON: The Niagara Historical Society, 1993).

206 “Complaint of David Castleman, Fayette, KY, to Daniel McDougal, High Constable, Niagara District,” September 2, 1837, State Submissions to the Executive Council of Upper Canada, RG1/E3, Vol. 49, Reel C-1196, 222, LAC.

207 “Letter from C.A. Hagerman to Sir Francis Bond Head,” September 6, 1837, State Submissions to the Executive Council of Upper Canada, RG1/E3, Vol. 49, 217, Reel C-1196, LAC.

80 documents, the Executive Council agreed with this assessment and encouraged the Bond

Head to sign the extradition order as soon as possible.208

While Upper Canadian authorities viewed this case as a routine extradition request, Niagara’s black community recognized its broader implications. If Moseby could be returned for his alleged crime, nearly every fugitive slave living in Canada could be threatened. Many of these former slaves had committed similar crimes in the heat of their escapes, and even if they were innocent, slaveholders could easily manufacture false charges against them and find a receptive audience in Southern courts. With this in mind,

Herbert Holmes, a local black preacher and educator, put out a call across the peninsula to the African-Canadian community so they could rally to the runaway’s defense and pay his legal fees.209 Within a matter of days, nearly 300 black Canadians flocked to the court house. Some found housing in local taverns or black homes, but many more kept watchful vigils outside of the jail. While Niagara’s white citizens did not camp out with their black compatriots, they still aided the cause by “sending provisions” and signing on to petitions that black Canadians drew up.210

In these petitions, black Canadians found a powerful instrument to articulate their language of subjecthood. While black refugees had already drawn up petitions to ask for material benefits like farmland or schools from the provincial government, they had not

208 “Report on the Requisition & Documents for the Surrender of Solomon Moseby, a Fugitive from the State of Kentucky charged with Horse-Stealing,” September 7, 1837, State Submissions to the Executive Council of Upper Canada, RG1/E3, Vol. 49, 218, Reel C-1196, LAC.

209 William Renwick Riddell, “The Slave in Upper Canada,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 14, no. 2 (1923): 263.

210 Hiram Wilson, “Steamboat Victory between Buffalo and the Falls,” Philanthropist, October 24, 1837.

81 yet used this device to influence the judicial process. In so doing, they not only promoted their own vision of a black British self, but also undermined Southern slavery’s ideological f By using the “transatlantic state apparatus of the British Empire” for their own ends, self-emancipated people became active players in the fraught geopolitics of

Atlantic slavery.211 Therefore, through these memorials, African Canadians simultaneously subscribed to British hierarchy of colonial order while they subverted the

Atlantic world’s racial order.212

Before they could integrate themselves into the Empire, though, black Canadians needed to humanize the accused slave and prove that he was a responsible member of society. Describing the former slave as “our poor Coloured Brother,” they told a story of grim disappointment and cruel irony. After Moseby had finally acquired that freedom in

Canada “for which he had long and ardently languished” in slavery he now found himself bound again, confined in a jail cell even though he had crossed “the line of demarcation” between slavery and freedom. They argued that Moseby could “neither morally nor legally” be guilty of such a charge because, as a slave, he was not a “free agent.” 213

Solomon Moseby’s lawyer, Alexander Stewart, echoed these claims and worked tirelessly to fit his client into the mold of the responsible subject. He adopted the black

211 Van Gosse, “‘As a Nation, the English Are Our Friends’: The Emergence of African American Politics in the British Atlantic World, 1772-1861,” American Historical Review 113, no. 4 (2008): 1005.

212 For more on the role of such petitions in pre-Confederation Canada, see Carol Wilton, Popular Politics and Political Culture in Upper Canada, 1800-1850 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 50.

213 “Petition of the Undersigned Persons of Colour, Residents of the Town and Township of Niagara,” September 2, 1837, State Submissions to the Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, RG1/E3, Vol. 49, 226-9, Reel C-1196, LAC.

82

Canadians’ rhetoric of imperial belonging. He emphasized that in the short time Moseby had resided in Upper Canada the runaway had already earned a reputation for “sobriety, honesty and industry.”214

These petitioners and lawyers could not simply vindicate Solomon Moseby, however, they also needed to prove that David Castleman was the true criminal in this case. In their memorial, the black petitioners argued that Castleman’s extradition request was nothing more than a “fraudulent artifice” that the slaveholder after only after he failed to forcibly extract him from the “place of his refuge in Upper Canada.” To prove their point, the petitioners informed the Lieutenant Governor of their attempt to pay the

Kentucky planter $1000, a sum that would cover his legal fees and travel expenses, as well as the original value of the stolen horse. When the slaveholder refused, he betrayed his true intentions.215 Alexander Stewart, concurred with this assessment and described the horse-stealing charge against his client as “a pretext too preposterous to merit refutation.” Instead, Stewart claimed that the case was part of a larger plot on the part of

American slaveholders who had become “seriously alarmed” by the outflow of runaway slaves from the United States to Canada.216

Despite these efforts to recast these characters and rewrite this script, Upper

Canada’s black community knew that their mission would fail if they could not incorporate this story into the larger narrative of British abolitionism. Throughout their

214 “Letter from Alexander Stewart to John Joseph,” September 5, 1837, State Submissions to the Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, RG1/E3, Vol. 49, 219, Reel C-1196, LAC.

215 “Petition of the Inhabitants of the Town of Niagara,” State Submissions to the Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, September 2, 1837, 229.

216 “Letter from Alexander Stewart to John Joseph,” September 5, 1837, 219-20.

83 petitions, they referred to Upper Canada as a “refuge” because the “constitutional laws of

Great Britain” shielded the fugitive slaves living there. They reminded the colonial officers that the fugitives in question became freemen the moment they stepped on

British soil, and therefore deserved the “protection of the British Laws in Canada to retain that Freedom."217 In so doing, Canada’s black community harkened back to an elaborate mythology of “English liberty,” where Englishmen considered themselves as not only free but “unenslaveable” by virtue of their status as British subjects.218 They believed that this distinctive liberty permeated the very air they breathed and was, in the words of William Blackstone, “rooted even in our own soil.”219 By explicitly appealing to this popular tradition in their petitions, African Canadians situated themselves within an already established discourse that equated subjecthood and freedom.220

In order to further align themselves with the British Empire, black petitioners portrayed the extradition case as a breach of British sovereignty, in which the Queen’s subjects were “pursued and surrendered like wild beasts of the field, by foreigners.”221

While they praised English constitutionalism, they derided the slaveholder’s use of

217 “Petition of the Undersigned Persons of Colour, Residents of the Town and Township of Niagara,” State Submissions to the Executive Council Office of the Province of Upper Canada, 226-8.

218 Michael J. Guasco, “Encounters, Identities, and Human Bondage: The Foundations of Racial Slavery in the Anglo-Atlantic World” (Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 2000), 8-9.

219 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765), 123.

220 T.K. Hunter, “Geographies of Liberty: A Brief Look at Two Cases,” in Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Stauffer eds., Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism (New York: The New Press, 2006), 41-58; David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 475-504.

221 “A Memorial from the Coloured Inhabitants of the Province of Upper Canada,” quoted in Ikuko Asaka, “Race across Empire and Republic,” 70.

84 extradition, which they saw as imposing the “Laws of a Foreign Country” upon British subjects. If David Castleman succeeded in his efforts to retrieve Moseby, slaveholders from across the would flood the region, indictments in hand, so they could “repossess themselves of Slaves who have once gained a sanctuary of

Freedom within the British dominions.” Therefore, if England capitulated to the

Southerners’ demands, they posited, they would institute a precedent “whereby no runaway slave will either now or henceforth by safe in a British colony.”222

By highlighting Canada’s position as a sanctuary, however, these black petitioners also highlighted that element of this case that troubled Canadian authorities the most.

Failing to return this fugitive chafed against the Great Britain’s heralded tradition of a

“color-blind judicial system,” and therefore placed two fundamental aspects of British identity in contention.223 Although the Lieutenant Governor was proud that Upper

Canada was known as a “land of liberty” he could not countenance making it “an Asylum for the guilty of any colour.” While British law gave Moseby “as much freedom as belongs to British subjects” it did not give him any special privileges because of his color. Thus, because the runaway slave “had been proved to have been guilty of a recent felony,” he had to answer for his crime. Bond Head could not “conscientiously refuse to deliver him” to American authorities “on account of his colour.”224 Hiram Wilson bemoaned this turn of events and said he was sorry to see that the Upper Canadian

222 “Petition of the Undersigned Persons of Colour, Residents of the Town and Township of Niagara,” State Submissions to the Executive Council of Upper Canada, 227-8.

223 J. Russel Snapp quoted in Brown, “Empire without Slaves,” 284.

224 St. Catherines Journal, September 28, 1837, Vol. 2, no. 28, AO N77.

85 officials “made no distinction between the offense of a slave in taking his master’s horse, and that of a freeman, in appropriating to his selfish purpose a like amount of property belonging to his neighbor.”225

This announcement agitated the people of Niagara “like the troubled sea,” and citizens of “every age, sex and color” cried out against the verdict.226 Herbert Holmes and

Sally Carter, another prominent leader in the African-Canadian community, gave the alarm to their “comrades on the Niagara frontier” to join them at the jail to orchestrate a rescue.227 While these black protesters were prepared to “lose their lives rather than see their comrade taken by force across the lines,” they made sure to emphasize that did not intend to “commit any violence against the English law.”228 Neither the black community nor Upper Canada’s governing officials could foretell the “bloody struggle” that would ensue just outside the Niagara court house gates.229

In the aftermath of the riot, debate raged in Upper Canada’s newspapers. A reporter for the St. Catharines Journal derided the African-Canadians’ actions as nothing more than “mobocracy” and claimed that they had flagrantly violated “the laws and ordinances of the country which affords an asylum for the oppressed of their race.”230 A

225 Hiram Wilson, “FROM CANADA,” The Friend of Man, November 22, 1837.

226 Ibid.

227 William Kirby, Annals of Niagara (Welland, ON: Tribune Press, 1896), 232.

228 Anna Brownell Jameswon, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (London: Saunders and Otley, 1838), 2: 45.

229 Hiram Wilson, “Steamboat Victory between Buffalo and the Falls,” Philanthropist, October 24, 1837.

230 St. Catharines Journal, vol. 2, no. 27, September 21, 1837, N77, AO.

86 writer at the Niagara Reporter portrayed a much different scene and claimed that

African-Canadians had acted with “Christian fortitude” and, in the midst of the violence, black women in the crowd had called out “‘don’t hurt the poor soldiers!’”231 Even

American newspapers weighed in on the affair, calling it one of “the most atrocious cases of pro-slavery violence on record” that would surely show “our British friends” the corrupting influence slavery could have “even on British soil.”232

David Castleman did not make the long trip to Upper Canada for Solomon

Moseby only, though. He was also searching for Jesse Happy, another fugitive slave from

Kentucky formerly owned by Thomas Hickey. While Hickey accused Jesse Happy of the same crime leveled against Moseby, the circumstances surrounding his case were remarkably different. Happy had escaped his bondage nearly four years earlier, and when he left his former master’s horse at the American-Canadian border he made arrangements for it to be returned to the Kentucky slaveholder. Thomas Hickey, who later reclaimed the horse, let two years pass before he pressed for an indictment against the fugitive from the Grand Jury of Fayette County, Kentucky.233

After the political upheaval wrought by the Moseby affair, Upper Canada’s governing officials gave Jesse Happy’s case much more consideration. When the

Attorney General first looked over the evidence against Happy he noted the long delay between the indictment and the actual crime. In his report to the Executive Council he

231 Niagara Reporter, Vol. 5, no. 27, September 14, N214, AO. Emphasis in original.

232 “The Canada Murder,” Philanthropist, October 24, 1837; Also see, “Fugitive Slave— Arrest—Rescue—Loss of Life,” Genius of Universal Emancipation, October 1837, Vol. 1, no. 2.

233 For a copy of the Grand Jury Indictment, see “Commonwealth v. Happy,” State Submissions to the Executive Council of Upper Canada, RG1/E3/H32, Vol. 35, 221, Reel C-1193, LAC. 87 added a pointed post-script that read, “It also appears that the Indictment found by the

Grand Jury of the State of Kentucky is certified on the 1st of June 1835 and that the offense appears to have been committed on the 18th of May 1833.” He felt uneasy about the possible consequences of the case and could not help but note that “if delivered up”

Jesse Happy would not only “be subject to punishment for the felony charged against him” but would also “be returned to Slavery.”234 The Executive Council agreed, noting that Jesse Happy would almost certainly be subject to a “double penalty” if they decided

“to give him up to his former owner.”235 Hesitant to decide the case without further instruction, the Council forwarded the matter to the Lieutenant Governor for guidance on the matter.

Just as they had for Solomon Moseby, Upper Canada’s black community rallied to Jesse Happy’s defense and again turned to the petition as their major vehicle of dissent.

The memorials written for Happy, however, were substantially more elaborate and emphasized the runaway slave’s personal qualities. Their memorial against Jesse Happy’s imprisonment began with a brief description of the fugitive’s biography, in which they followed the twist and turns of his life as a slave in Virginia. Starting at “the age of

Eleven Years,” when Happy was first sold to a new owner, the petitioners recounted a life of dislocation and disruption as he was bought, sold, and passed around by white owners until he eventually landed in Kentucky. They then recast his alleged crime as a

234 “Letter from the C.A. Hagerman to the Executive Council of Upper Canada,” September 26, 1837, State Submissions to the Executive Council of Upper Canada, RG1/E3/H32, Vol. 35, 212, Reel C-1193, LAC. Emphasis in original.

235 “Report of the Executive Council,” September 9, 1837, State Submissions to the Executive Council of Upper Canada, RG1/E3/H32, Vol. 35, 213, Reel C-1193, LAC.

88 daring act of self-emancipation. Instead of stealing his master’s horse, they declared that the “horse, Bridle, & Saddle, were thereby loaned to him” so Happy could visit his daughter on a neighboring plantation. They then highlighted how, after making his escape, Happy left specific directions that the horse, bridle, and saddle may be returned to

“the hands of their rightful owner.”

With this simple anecdote, black petitioners achieved several different objectives.

In one respect, the story proved that Happy had not acted with malicious intent, which would be key to proving his innocence. But more importantly, it revealed that Happy was a caring father who could not act upon even the most basic parental instincts without consulting his master. By relating this simple anecdote, black Canadians leveled a damning charge against the entire institution of slavery, which forcefully separated relatives, disrupted the traditional patterns of family life, and denied black men the right to fulfill their roles as patriarchs.236 In so doing, these petitioners also implicitly called attention to their own adherence to normative domestic relations in Canada and their commitment to stable family units.

These petitions succeeded in making the Lieutenant Governor take pause as he reviewed the evidence against Happy. He enclosed these petitions in a letter to the

Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Glenelg, believing that they conclusively showed why he needed “specific instructions” from “Her Majesty’s government.” On the one hand, Lieutenant Governor argued that “a black man ought not to expect, because our laws grant him personal freedom” that he could also “claim from them emancipation

236 “The Memorial of Jesse Happy,” September 26, 1837, State Submissions to the Executive Council of Upper Canada, RG1/E3/H32, Vol. 35, 205-6, Reel C-1193, LAC; For more on the centrality of such gendered rhetoric to abolitionism more broadly, see Kristin Hoganson, “Garrisonian Abolitionists and the Rhetoric of Gender, 1850-1860,” American Quarterly 45, no. 4 (1993): 558-595. 89 from trial” for a crime which “British-born subjects would be held responsible.” On the other, Bond Head felt personally divided by the case, and could not separate the crime from the circumstances. He conceived of Happy’s case as a “vicious struggle between two guilty parties, of which the slave-owner is not only the aggressor, but the blackest criminal of the two.” Conventional legal arguments could not apply to such a case that pitted a “dealer in human flesh versus the stealer of horse-flesh.” He even adopted the black petitioners’ rhetoric of English liberty, arguing that until these fugitives reached

“British soil” they had lived in a “moral darkness” and that they could not “be held responsible for conduct prior to their existence” as free men. Because Happy would no doubt be returned to his former master instead of standing trial, Bond Head argued that the Canadian government would be justified in refusing such extradition requests until

“the republican authorities” separated the “trial from such unjust punishment.”237

When Lord Glenelg received this report, he almost immediately forwarded it to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston. Even as he did so, though, the Secretary of State made his own position on the case clear and said that “the punishments to which Slaves are liable by law in the United States” went against Great Britain’s own “principles of jurisprudence” and were “disproportioned to the crime.”238 Lord Palmerston agreed and related the case to the Law Officers Sir John Campbell and Sir Robert Mousey Rolfe.

While the Law Officers generally believed that “no Distinction should . . . be made between the demands for Slaves or for Freemen,” they still ordered that Happy be

237 “Letter from Sir Francis Bond Head to Lord Glenelg,” October 8, 1837, Governor General’s Office: Letterbooks of Despatches to the Colonial Office, Upper Canada, to the Secretary of State, 1837-1839, RG7/G12, Vol. 28, 1146-7, Reel H-1103, LAC.

238 Lord Glenelg quoted in Silverman, “The Jesse Happy Case,” 57-8.

90 released. Nothing the scant evidence laid against Happy as well as his clear intention to eventually return the stolen horse, the Law Officers believed that the Canadian authorities would be perfectly justified in their decision to refuse extradition. In order to reconcile the legal and moral ambiguities of such cases, the Law Offices of the Crown stipulated that all evidence used in extradition cases concerning fugitive slaves “must be evidence taken in Canada, upon which (if False) the Parties making it may be indicted for

Perjury.”239 This ruling would become the standard for all future cases and managed to carefully balance English freedom and English justice.

While both fugitives eventually found freedom, these two cases jolted Upper

Canada’s black community and inspired them to seek out greater protections under the

British government. Soon after the dust from the trials had settled, these African

Canadians drew up a memorial addressed to the Queen. Positioning themselves as “Her

Majesty’s coloured subjects” they described the daring Moseby rescue, where black

Canadian were willing to put their lives on the line “rather than behold their brother surrendered up to the merciless ferocity of his former master.” Even though many of the black refugees were born on American soil, they insisted that they should be “regarded and considered as naturalized subjects of Great Britain.”240 More importantly, they argued that instead of waiting a “seven years’ term” to become British subjects, naturalization should “in their case” come the moment when they crossed the border into

Canada. Hiram Wilson was confident that these black petitioners’ requests would meet

239 Law Officers quoted in ibid., 58.

240 “A Memorial from the Coloured Inhabitants of the Province of Upper Canada,” quoted in Ikuko Asaka, “Race across Empire and Republic,” 70.

91 with success because of “their known loyalty and usefulness as a people” to the British

Empire.241

In response to black petitioners’ claims for greater legal protections, the Law

Officers of the Crown argued that “Her Majesty has no power to advance, nor to grant to one class of Her Subjects privileges or immunities not enjoyed by others.” While this reply did not offer any substantial legal recourse, it was a small victory in symbolic ways.

By claiming that the Queen could not “grant to one class of Her Subjects privileges or immunities not enjoyed by others,” these London officials implicitly recognized and validated black refugees’ claims to subject status.242 In 1842, Lord Palmerston would take concrete steps to specifically protect former slaves by removing horse-stealing and robbery from the list of extraditable crimes that would eventually be incorporated into the

Webster-Ashburton Treaty.243

These petitions, then, offer a new vantage point on the various institutional tools self-emancipated employed to protect their freedom and consolidate their social gains. In these memorials, black refugees were able to distill that language of subjecthood they had spent so many years developing through their every day acts of industry and respectability. Through a variety of discursive forums, this language eventually percolated to even the highest levels of colonial governance. Formerly enslaved people astutely fashioned a free black British self in order to secure their own physical protection

241 Hiram Wilson, “American Exiles in Upper Canada,” September 21, 1838, Liberator.

242 “Letter from the Marquess of Normanby to George Arthur,” August 2, 1839, quoted in Ikuko Asaka, “Race across Empire and Republic,” 74.

243 Allen P. Stouffer, The Light of Nature and the Law of God: Antislavery in Ontario, 1833- 1877 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 62.

92 and insinuate themselves into the Empire.244 Through their efforts, black refugees revealed that the relationship between subject and sovereign was not static, but instead was a constant process of negotiation. By appealing to notions of justice that transcended the ethos of international comity, black migrants in Canada played a pivotal role in defining the contours of refugee status and clarifying the meaning of legal asylum. In the process, these black migrants became active participants in the geopolitics that determined the “distribution of rights, belonging, and citizenship” in a partially free

Atlantic world.245

244 Muller, “Bonds of Belonging,” 58.

245 Eldie L. Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 6. 93

Chapter Three: Back in the “prison house of bondage:” Nelson Hackett and the Question of Slave Criminality

The grasses came up to Nelson Hackett’s waist. He waded through them, his feet fumbling to find solid ground among the . In the muted moonlight, he could just barely make out the shape of things, the shaggy silhouette of pines, the sloped roof of an abandoned barn. Cutting a path through the field, the runaway felt a strange mixture of exhaustion and attention and his limbs seemed to move without his really knowing it.

Suddenly, the grasses gave way and he stumbled into a clearing, tripping over his own feet. When he finally pulled his head off the ground, he saw a small light on the horizon, winking at him in the darkness. He squinted at it, waiting for his eyes to adjust. As the edges of the farm house came into focus, the fugitive realized it was the flickering glow of candle sitting on a window sill. He scrambled to his feet, shuffled across the field, and began knocking on the door. The door cracked open, and a single eye stared out at him.

After a few uncertain moments, the door slowly creaked open. The runaway felt a wave of relief, and the air rushed out of him in a sigh. This elation evaporated, though, when the man behind the door suddenly asked, “You’re Nelson Hackett, aren’t you?” Nelson’s heart dropped to his stomach. He had been found out.246

246 For a full retelling of this event, see “Nelson Hacket: His Escape, Capture, and Re- Capture,” The Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines’ Friend, Series I, Volume 1-3 (1840-42, rprt.; London: Kraus Reprint, 1969), 2: 116.

94

A few hours later Nelson Hackett, a fugitive slave from Arkansas, was once again in irons, shackled to the railing of a steamboat bound for St. Louis. Hackett’s flight through the Illinois prairie, however, was his second failed escape attempt. He had already tasted freedom once in Canada for a blissful week before being extradited for stealing a fur coat and a gold watch in the midst of his escape from his master’s plantation. This second attempt came on the route back to Arkansas, where he was to stand trial for his alleged crime. When the caravan escorting him stopped at an Illinois farmhouse for the night

Hackett took his chances and jumped from the window of the second-floor bedroom he had been locked in, convinced that the fall from the window could not be worse than a life spent in bondage. While he managed to evade authorities for several days, Hackett’s could never foretell that he would be captured by an unassuming farmer in the dead of night.

Now slumped against the steamboat railing, Nelson Hackett could not know that his name had become a rallying cry amongst abolitionist circles that would echo across the Atlantic and ring out in the halls of the British Parliament. For American abolitionists,

Hackett’s re-enslavement via extradition epitomized the ways in which Southern slaveholders had coopted the mechanisms of American state power for their own ends.

For Canadian and British politicians, the Hackett case raised questions of colonial governance and global law enforcement while it exposed a widening ideological gap between an avidly abolitionist metropole and an increasingly ambivalent periphery. For runaway slaves in Canada, the story of Hackett’s flight, capture, escape, and re-capture

95 was a bleak reminder of their precarious position along edges between freedom and slavery.247

After successfully warding off two extradition requests in 1837, many black refugees had become confident of their position in Canadian society and were convinced that the British Empire would protect them against any future requests. Even though many still recognized that the threat of extradition still loomed above them, thousands of runaways continued to stream past the American-Canadian border. By 1840, nearly

12,000 former slaves had taken up residence in Canada and Northern abolitionists estimated that “escapes from the house of bondage . . . are now a thousand a year.”248 At the same time, the Cotton Kingdom was expanding at a dizzying rate, eating up more and more tracts of land as it spread across the North American continent. Demand for slave labor spiked and the price for individual slaves rose in tandem. Anxious to protect their financial investments and emboldened by abolitionists’ efforts to assist “the dog and rifle- hunted slave to Canada,” Southern slaveholders scrambled to safeguard their “valuable chattels” and defy anti-slavery activists.249 Therefore, even after Solomon Moseby and

Jesse Happy evaded re-enslavement, Southern slaveholders returned to extradition once

247 Peoria Register, May 27, 1842; Liberator, June 17, 1842.

248 Gerrit Smith, Address of the Peterboro State Convention to the Slaves and Its Vindication (Cazenovia, N.Y.: R. L. Myrick, 1842), 9.

249 Smith, Address of the Peterboro State Convention to the Slaves and Its Vindication, 10; In a letter to John Scoble, Lewis Tappan noted that Smith’s Peterboro Address had “greatly excited” pro- slavery advocates throughout the nation. “Letter from Lewis Tappan to John Scoble,” July 23, 1842, reprinted in A. H. Able and F. J. Klingberg, eds., A Sidelight on Anglo-American Relations, Furnished by the Correspondence of Lewis Tappan and Others with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (Lancaster, P.A.: Lancaster Press, 1927), 100.

96 more, enticed by the possibility to not only recover their lost property but also provoke

British and American abolitionists.250

The Nelson Hackett case achieved both of these ends for Hackett’s master,

Alfred Wallace, not only successfully recovered his slave, but also managed to enrage anti-slavery advocates on both sides of the Atlantic. While many abolitionists recognized that kidnappers and slave catchers continued to “haunt the frontiers” along the American-

Canadian borderland, they still idealized Canada as a sanctuary where the runaway slave could “stand on free soil and breath free air by the side of the British lion.”251 Nelson

Hackett, however, had not been stolen by a kidnapper in the dead of night. Instead,

Canadian authorities had surrendered the runaway of their own volition after careful review and deliberation. While many anti-slavery advocates continued to hold the

Canadian officials in high esteem, the Nelson Hackett case demonstrated that “even

British functionaries” could “give the influence of their office in favour of the slaveholder.”252 Charles H. Stewart, a Detroit attorney who reviewed Hackett’s case when he was detained in Michigan, believed that the runaway’s surrender represented an

“invaluable” gift to those slaveholders hoping to “exhibit their power as over-reaching

250 Roman J. Zorn, “An Arkansas Fugitive Slave and Its International Repercussions,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 16, no. 2 (1957): 140; Bryan Prince, “The Illusion of Safety: Attempts to Extradite Fugitive Slaves from Canada,” in Karolyn Smardz Frost and Veta Smith Tucker, eds., A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River Borderland (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016); For more on the territorial and economic growth of the Cotton Kingdom during the 1830s and 40s, see Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 179-218; Joshua D. Rothman, “The Contours of Cotton Capitalism: Speculation, Slavery, and Economic Panic in Mississippi, 1832-1841,” in Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, eds., Slavery’s Capitalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 122-145.

251 Colored American, November 14, 1840.

252 The Anti-Slavery Reporter, February 8, 1843.

97 even British protection.”253 When some tried to brush away the affair as “nothing more than the recovery of a fugitive,” anti-slavery activists cried out that the case was far from routine and in fact threatened all runaways in Canada. Hackett was not a criminal, they argued, but a martyr, brought down by a potent combination of “power, skill, [and] wealth.”254

Even as they railed against the Canadian authorities and accused them of conspiring with Southern slaveholders, many anti-slavery activists could not shake the they themselves were partially to blame for Hackett’s surrender. After watching two similar extradition requests fail only three years before, many abolitionists had settled into complacency, convinced that Great Britain’s laws would shield runaways once they reached the Canadian border. In a visceral way, the case illuminated to white abolitionists the inherent insecurity of black life on the North American continent and forced these activists to accept that no territory was safe from the ’s grasp. While possible re-enslavement remained a fact of life for self-emancipated people within the United

States, white abolitionists remained convinced that Canada, as one of the “Queen’s dominions,” remained a dependable refuge for fugitive slaves and many chose to expend their financial and political resources on freeing those still in bondage instead of protecting those in Canada.255 The dramatic turn of events in the Hackett case, however, challenged abolitionists’ narrative of runaways’ flight as a linear progression from

253 “Letter from Charles H. Stuart to Lewis Tappan,” August 9, 1842, reprinted in Anti- Slavery Standard, September 1, 1842.

254 “Nelson Hackett.” Signal of Liberty, June 27, 1842 [first quotation]; “Case of Nelson Hacket,” Emancipator and Free American, September 15, 1842 [second and third quotations].

255Hiram Wilson, “American Exiles in Upper Canada,” Liberator, September 21, 1838.

98 slavery to freedom, and it called for renewed vigilance “on the part of every friend of justice and humanity.”256

For black Canadians, Hackett’s surrender punctured the atmosphere of self- confidence that had settled over them after serving the Crown in the Upper Canadian

Rebellion only two years earlier. In this conflict, black soldiers sacrificed themselves and demonstrated a willingness “to moisten the soil of their asylum with their choicest blood” instead of letting “the American flag cross the line.” 257 Both Canada’s civil and military authorities recognized this sacrifice and acknowledged that without these black soldiers their government “might have been overturned.”258 After they had successfully repelled these rebellious forces, black Canadians felt assured that they had definitively cemented their place as valued subjects within the empire. The Hackett case, however, shed light on the limits of British subjecthood as a form of protection from Southerners’ designs. While black Canadians continued to look toward the British empire for “protection and support” and held out hope that “British power and British feeling” might finally convince

American authorities to abandon slavery, the Hackett case revealed those instances where neither imperial power nor anti-slavery sentiment could triumph.

Hackett’s recapture at that Illinois farm on that balmy summer night highlighted abolitionists’ ambivalence towards slave crime. When anti-slavery activists learned that the man behind the door was a self-described abolitionist, they refused to believe it,

256 J.F. Johnson, Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, called by the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery, and Held in London from Tuesday, June 13th, to Tuesday, June 20th, 1843 (London: John Snow, Paternoster-Row, 1843), 323-4.

257 Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, 314.

258 Ibid., 304 99 certain that no sincere anti-slavery man would willingly return a fugitive to his master’s clutches. They demanded that the reporter for the Peoria Register divulge the captor’s name and declared that whoever he was, he should “be ashamed” of himself for delivering up a “poor, panting fugitive” into the hands a slaveholder. While many were quick to deride the farmer, certain that he had only given up the fugitive in order to collect the $200 reward, the Illinois farmer claimed that he had returned Hackett to prove that abolitionists activists were not “men to connive at the escape of a criminal from merited punishment.” 259

Even though the action the Illinois farmer took to make this point scandalized many abolitionists, many of them could sympathize with his motives and had themselves been complicit in Hackett’s return for this same reason. By stealing several superfluous items in the midst of his escape, Hackett confirmed slaveholders’ charges of criminality, and presented anti-slavery activists with a moral dilemma. Although they hoped to protect all runaways at risk of being re-enslaved, they could not countenance defending a thief. For when Hackett wasted away in a Detroit jail, black abolitionists there declined to assist him legally, convinced that they would be seen as “protectors of crime” if they did so, and therefore would have jeopardized their entire campaign to build sympathy for the plight of the runaway.260

Nelson Hackett, unlike Solomon Moseby or Jesse Happy, had not simply stolen a horse when he escaped from his master’s plantation. Before fleeing atop his master’s

259 “Nelson Hacket and the Four Western New-Yorkers,” Liberators, July 1, 1842.

260 “Case of Nelson Hackett,” Emancipator and Free American, September 15, 1842; Also see, Ripley, ed., “Annual Report of the Colored Vigilant Committee of Detroit,” 400.

100 finest race horse, Hackett also snatched a gold watch, slipped on a fine beaver overcoat, and grabbed an additional saddle. Initially, these items aided Hackett in his flight. Well- mounted and “genteely clad,” Hackett moved through the Northern states with ease, telling questioning passers-by that he was a free man who resided in some township just a few miles ahead.261 But after his arrest, these same items would come to haunt Hackett and would become the locus of the debates surrounding his case. The gold watch, in particular, loomed large in these discussions. By stealing an object so obviously superfluous, so needlessly extravagant, Hackett easily fell into the role of the petty thief, thereby confirming his master’s characterization of him as a “Negro dandy.”262 In the eyes of anti-slavery activists, Hackett no longer fit into the mold of the noble and long suffering runaway who could be lionized in pamphlets and memorialized in speeches.

Instead of the bereaved fugitive slave, hounded by rapacious slave catchers, Hackett became the fugitive criminal, rightfully indicted by a grand jury.

The Hackett case, though, represented only one incident in a string of legal controversies that challenged the abolitionist movement in the early 1840s. Within a two- year period, abolitionists had to not only contend with the Hackett surrender but also with the Creole mutiny, a controversial uprising. These two instances forced anti- slavery activists to develop a comprehensive ideology that could simultaneously condone slaves’ criminality while it condemned slave masters’ immorality. In both cases, the slave’s “double character” both within and without the category of human was on full

261 Peoria Register, May 27, 1842.

262 “Deposition of Nelson Hacket,” September 7, 1841, in “Correspondence Relative to the Surrender of Nelson Hacket to the Authorities of Arkansas,” , Parliamentary Papers, 1842, II: 7.

101 display. Acknowledging this paradox forced both anti-slavery and pro-slavery advocates to confront the logical contradictions that undergirded their own rhetorical stances and moral arguments. When slaveholders accused their chattel of a crime, they inadvertently recognized enslaved people’s humanity, but they did so in order to reduce them to a form of property. Conversely, when abolitionists proclaimed that slaves could not be considered moral agents while in bondage, they denied the accused slave that very same humanity they hoped to protect and vindicate.263

Beyond these rhetorical challenges, these cases also clarified the boundaries of slavery, both geographic and ontological. Slave criminality confounded the very vocabulary of Anglo-American jurisprudence and demanded that American and British jurists reinterpret the foundations of international comity, the contours of legal asylum, and the true meaning of malicious intent. For abolitionists, these cases served as catalysts for the development of their “higher law” doctrine, which allowed anti-slavery lawyers to appeal to a moral code that transcended the law of man and even the law of nations.

Armed with this ideology, abolitionist lawyers pivoted from their previous judicial strategy, which hinged on loopholes and technicalities, to a more aggressive posture that challenged the ethical, legal, and philosophical foundations of the peculiar institution.

Therefore, enslaved people themselves became active players in the evolution of the

“higher law” doctrine from “an abstract inspiration to an unapologetic legal defense” on the world stage.264

263 For more on the Creole slave ship uprising, see Edward Dr. Jervey and C. Habold Huber, “The Creole Affair,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 65, 3 (1980), 196-211. 264 Steven Lubet, Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 8.

102

I.

When Jehu Jones first arrived in Canada in 1839, he could not help but be dazzled by it all. Almost immediately after he stepped foot in the colony and breathed in “the sweet zephyrs of British land,” Jones was swept up in the fanfare, and the pride of an

Emancipation day celebration.265 He watched as regiments paraded through the streets in full uniform with their “plaid garters” and ornamented jackets.266 He was spellbound by the soaring rhetoric of the toasts and speeches as crowds cheered on, and drank to, her

Britannic Majesty, the Royal Family, and the British nation. He met the Mayor of

Toronto who received him in the “most cordial and friendly manner,” with a broad smile and a firm handshake. And that night, in his hotel room, he slept under the watchful gaze of a British flag, “beautifully unfurled, in token of protection of the oppressed.”267

But amidst the pomp and pageantry, Jones remained transfixed by one regiment in particular: the Coloured Volunteers. Formed during the 1837 , when firebrand reformist William Lyon Mackenzie briefly plunged the province into chaos, the soldiers of the Coloured Company had earned acclaim and recognition throughout Canada for their bravery, usefulness, and “acknowledged loyalty to the

British Crown.”268 This corps had even received the “special approbation of the

Legislative Council,” who formally recognized the black troops for their “fidelity and

265 “Letter from Jehu Jones to Charles B. Ray,” August 8, 1839, reprinted in C. Peter Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers, Volume 2, Canada, 1830-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 77.

266 Ibid., 78.

267 Ibid., 76-7.

268 “Jehu Jones to Charles B. Ray,” Black Abolitionist Papers, 78.

103 valour.”269 British officers agreed that the black community were “in every instance loyal to the British throne,” and now held posts of responsibility and trust that were “denied to most others.”270

In his biography of William Lyon Mackenzie, described the

Upper Canada Rebellion as one of Canada’s “mistakes,” a product of naïveté, idealism, and hubris. As foolhardy as it was at the time, though, the uprising was one of those mistakes by which “a nation’s history is illuminated and given meaning.”271 While historians, insulated by the decades and looking through the frosty glass of hindsight, can look at Mackenzie’s rebellion as nothing more than a political curiosity, black Canadians at the time interpreted it as an existential threat to their personal safety and security.

When dissension and disunion first threatened to swallow Upper Canada whole, black refugees were among the first to take up arms. In the early days of the rebellion, a writer for the Chatham Western Herald reported that “enfranchised coloured people, all enlisted as one man, resolved to repel any aggression directed against them,” and were determined to “defend to the last” their property and their families.272 These black troops proved to be “the most reliable fortress of national strength on the Canadian frontier”

269 Reverend C. E. Lester, Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, 304.

270 Ibid., 314; “Jehu Jones to Charles B. Ray,” Black Abolitionist Papers, 77; For more on the Coloured Company, see Fred Landon, “Canadian Negroes and the Rebellion of 1837,” Journal of Negro History 7, no. 1 (1922): 377-9.

271 William Kolbourn, The Firebrand: William Lyon Mackenzie and the Rebellion in Upper Canada (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2008), 270.

272 Western Herald and Farmer’s Magazine, January 3, 1838, NJ/FM/1365, LAC.

104 precisely because they believed that the United States meant to “destroy the only asylum for African freedom in North America.” 273

This did not surprise William Lyon Mackenzie. The Canadian reformer had long acknowledged that formerly enslaved people in Canada were so “extravagantly loyal” to the British government precisely because they had an “unfounded fear of a union with the

United States.”274 This comment epitomized Mackenzie’s conflicted relationship with

Canada’s black community. Himself an ardent abolitionist, Mackenzie shared the black refugees’ antipathy toward Southern slavery, which he suspected would eventually lead to the downfall of the young republic.275 Mackenzie lamented the fact that white

Americans in both the North and South treated their “ebony brethren” as a “degraded caste,” but he believed it was possible to decouple American slavery from American republicanism.276 As much as he detested chattel slavery, though, Mackenzie decided to

273 J.W. Longuen, The Rev. J.W. Loguen, As a Slave and as a Freeman, A Narrative of Real Life (Syracuse, N.Y.: J.G.K. Truair & Co., 1859), 344.

274 “Letter from W. L. Mackenzie to Hiram Wilson,” January 30, 1837, reprinted in “Records Illustrating the Condition of Refugees from Slavery in Upper Canada Before 1860.” Journal of Negro History 13 (April, 1928): 200.

275 For more on Mackenzie’s anti-slavery beliefs and his views of the United States, see “Letter from C.H. Graham to W.L. Mackenzie,” March 8, 1838, F-37, MS-516, Reel 3, Mackenzie- Lindsey Family Fonds, Archives of Ontario (hereafter referred to as AO); Also see, “Letter from Dr. James Hunter to W.L. Mackenzie,” September 2, 1839, F-37, MS-516, Reel 5, AO; For more on the politics surrounding the rebellion, see Bryan Palmer, “Popular Radicalism and the Theatrics of Rebellion: The Hybrid Discourse of Dissent in Upper Canada in the 1830s,” in Nancy Christie, ed., Transatlantic Subjects: Ideas, Institutions, and Social Experience in Post-Revolutionary British North America (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2008), 403-38.

276 Margaret Fairley, ed., The Selected Writings of William Lyon Mackenzie, 1824-1837 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 173.

105 overlook this stain on the nation’s record because he considered Great Britain to be the

“greater criminal.”277

Canada’s black refugees, however, were unwilling to extend this same clemency to the slaveholding republic. When Mackenzie and his rebel soldiers launched an attack on the government forces, black Canadians flocked to the Royal army “in wagon loads” and rushed to the border “to die in defence of their glorious constitution.”278 Whether or not the black refugees felt any such attachment to the British constitution, it was clear that they were willing to lay their lives on the line to defend “that government which had treated them like human beings.”279 Harriet Martineau, a British abolitionist who traveled through Canada not long after the uprising, believed that the black soldiers’ enthusiasm was not necessarily an outpouring of love for the British Crown, but an outgrowth of their dread at “the barest mention of annexation of Canada to the United States.”280 Black participation in fight against the rebellion, therefore, was not necessarily an endorsement of the oligarchic politics Bond Head presided over, but instead a concerted effort to enhance and protect their own independence.

277 “Letter from James Mackenzie to W.L. Mackenzie,” August 25, 1839, F-37, MS-516, Reel 5, AO.

278 Sir Francis Bond Head, Bart., K.C.H., “Speech to the Honorable Gentleman of the Legislative Assembly, and Gentlemen of the House of Assembly,” Journal of the House of Assembly of Upper Canada, Session 1837-8 (Toronto: Jos. H. Lawrence, 1838), 450.

279 British Colonist, February 8, 1838.

280 Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, Volume I (London: Saunders and Otley, 1838), 244, 251; Also see, Gerald Horne, Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight in the U.S. before Emancipation (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 105-120.

106

No matter their motivation, though, black soldiers proved to be instrumental in quelling the uprising. They guarded the Canadian border, patrolled canals, and watched over American prisoners of war. By the end of the conflict, five all-black companies had been authorized, with two new ones formed but never deployed. Throughout the conflict, the black soldiers gained a reputation amongst Canadian officers and civilians for being

“extremely orderly and obedient.” For white Americans, these black soldiers served as a dark omen of “what may be expected from the swelling thousands of colored fugitives collecting there” should the United States ever declare war on Great Britain.281

Within a matter of months, the rebellion sputtered to its final conclusion, ending with a whimper instead of a bang. The massive popular uprising Mackenzie envisioned never materialized. Instead, Mackenzie spent weeks marooned on a tiny island in the middle of the Niagara river, shivering and starving, until he finally escaped to Buffalo,

New York. Once the embers of battle cooled, Upper Canadians quickly returned to the familiar rhythms of civilian life. Many of the white militia units dissolved as quickly as they had formed, despite government appeals to their patriotism and pocketbooks to remain in uniform. The “Coloured Corps,” however, felt no such urgency to disband. Sir

George Arthur, the Lieutenant-Governor who replaced Sir Francis Bond Head, was impressed by the black troops’ dependability and believed that they would be “highly serviceable” along the frontier to “prevent desertion” among the white regiments.282 In

281 Lieutenant James Thomas, “Report on Cayuga Road,” in Sessional Papers of Upper Canada (Toronto: Queen’s Printer, 1840), 118-120 [first quotation]; Longuen, The Rev. J.W. Loguen, As a Slave and as a Freeman, A Narrative of Real Life, 344-5 [second quotation]; Also see War Office Fonds, MG-13, WO-13, vol. 3692, Reel B-3172; Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 151; Also see Earnest Green, “Upper Canada’s Black Defenders,” Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records 27, no. 1 (1931): 366-372.

282 Sir George Arthur quoted in Steven Pitt, To Stand and Fight Together: and the Coloured Corps of Upper Canada (Toronto: Dundrum Press, 2008), 112. 107

Chatham, black Canadians continued to train and drill even after their local government could no longer pay them and one colonial Colonel noted with surprised that amateur black soldiers continued to drill “of their own accord” even though there was “no authority for it.”283

When many white Americans first learned that the British had enlisted black soldiers in their militias they were shocked. “What a comment upon the British government!” One writer for the Detroit Free Press exclaimed, “Black soldiers to keep an intelligent people in awe!”284 Black Americans were similarly surprised by the sight of black troops along the Canadian border and they worried that the sight might feed white paranoia and bolster long held fears of the vengeful black soldier. In Buffalo, black residents quickly distinguished themselves from the black Canadian soldiers and declared that it was an “injustice to implicate us on their account!”285 Detroit’s free blacks followed suit and emphasized that they would “obey the commands of the city authorities” and resist any attempts to disturb the peace, no matter whether those attempts were made “by people of our own color or whites.”286 When speaking of the Coloured

Corps, black Americans stressed that “Our interests are not identified with theirs” and they were as “strongly attached to this government” as any white American citizen.287

283 Chester quoted in ibid.

284 Detroit Free Press, November 5, 1839.

285 Emancipator, March 15, 1838.

286 Detroit Daily Advertiser, January 1, 1838.

287 Emancipator, March 15, 1839.

108

In many ways, then, the Mackenzie Rebellion hardened the American-Canadian border, and highlighted those moments when national identity trumped racial solidarity.

For at the same time black Americans were declaring their “loyal attachment” to the

United States, black Canadians were using their service to further align themselves with

British Empire.288 Referring to themselves as the “Colored English,” two black

Canadians established a newspaper in Toronto, entitled The British American Journal of

Liberty, that would cater to Upper Canada’s growing black population. In the prospectus for this paper, the editors proclaimed that their reporting would be devoted to the welfare of their “colored fellow-subjects” who embraced and adhered to all of “the customs prevalent in their adopted country.” They went to to claim that, because the black community had so recently proven their readiness to “fight the battles of that just and free

Monarchy,” the paper’s editors believed that Her Majesty would surely grant them “equal participation in all civil rights and immunities.”289

These claims mirrored similar requests made by a group of black Canadians in

Ancaster who drew up another memorial addressing “her Most Gracious Majesty the

Queen.” After recently demonstrating their fealty and commitment to the Crown during the rebellion and with the memory of the Solomon rescue still fresh in their minds, these black Canadians demanded that the British government consider all fugitive slaves residing the province as “political refugees” which would remove “all possibility” of their being surrendered to the American authorities. They considered it an “undoubted fact” that any crime committed by a fugitive slave was in service of securing his own

288 Colored American, June 23, 1838.

289 For the full prospectus, see Emancipator, June 13, 1839.

109

“personal and political liberty,” and so he should not be considered common criminal.290

As a sign of gratitude for their military service, these black Canadians proposed that the

British government amend its extradition policy “in the most formal manner” so that any accused fugitive slave would be tried by a jury “within the British territory, PREVIOUS to delivery.” While this measure would surely “awaken the angry fear of the slave republic,” it would cement Great Britain’s reputation as an anti-slavery crusader.291

Throughout their petition, black Canadians played off the anti-American sentiment in the British Empire, which had been recently inflamed by U.S. support of the

Mackenzie rebels. Appealing to Britons’ pride in their own color-blind judicial system, the black petitioners pointed out that this measure was necessary because “a coloured man’s oath” in the United States was “not good in law against that of a white man” no matter what the extenuating circumstances were.292 This was not only true in the South, but also in the Northern states where “existing hatred” had seeped into the legal system.293 The petitioners flattered their British audience, telling them they would be shocked by the “wicked, unchristian, anti-British feeling” that persisted in the North.

Beyond this specific request, the black petitioners also demanded that they be guaranteed

“all the privileges of natural born subjects,” which would not only give offence to the

“‘tender mercies’ of American feelings” but also elevate the “honour and dignity of the

290 “The Coloured Population of Upper Canada,” Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, 307.

291 Ibid., 308. Emphasis in original.

292 Ibid.

293 Ibid., 309.

110

British Crown.” Convinced that their military service had garnered them respect and recognition throughout the Empire, the black petitioners were confident that Britain would remain “true to herself” and would “protect the coloured men” just as they had protected her in her recent time of need. 294

In this climate of breezy self-confidence and self-assurance, Nelson Hackett’s surrender was a thunder cloud that tumbled across the horizon and cast a dark shadow over Canada’s racial landscape. It was an episode marked by physical violence and political intrigue that would implicate a rotating cast of characters including Canadian officials, British diplomats, and American slaveholders. By turning the conventional narrative of slave flight on its head, this case precipitated a confrontation between abolitionists and the Slave Power in the international court of public opinion that would challenge received notions of free will, slave criminality, and global law enforcement.

Before Nelson Hackett became an international sensation, however, he was just another black refugee trying to make a new life for himself across the Canadian border.

When his master finally caught up to him, Hackett was living in a black settlement, trying to blend into the crowds. He had been staring down at a half-bitten apple when he felt the first hit. Pain exploded at the back of his head and bright purple dots burst across his vision. His knees gave way in an instance, his legs folded underneath him, his elbows locked as he caught himself on the ground. The palms of his hands stung from the impact, but he hardly noticed as another blow rained down on him. He scuttled across the ground, limbs flailing in a desperate crawl. He refused to look back over his shoulder, knowing who he would see if he did. The initial wave of confusion had now washed away, and he

294 Ibid., 307.

111 now only felt a sharp pang of recognition. He felt two pairs of hands grab hold of his shoulders, wrenching him backward, flipping him over. Hackett laid on his back, blinking up at the sun. A dark shadow crossed his field of vision, blocking out the bright light.

When Nelson’s eyes finally adjusted, he was staring up at his master’s face, which was contorted by anger and grim satisfaction.

Nelson Hackett had only been free for a week. After a harrowing two-month journey, the runaway slipped across the Detroit border in early September, 1841, and found refuge in a black settlement near the town of Sandwich. For most of his journey he traveled at night, taking refuge in the woods, subsisting off of roots and berries. When he reached free territory in the Northern states, he finally traveled by daylight, procuring food and provisions from free blacks and sympathetic whites. As he hop-scotched across the Northern states, Hackett could not know that his master, Alfred Wallace, was never far behind him, following his trail across the continent. Wallace reached Canadian soil only a few days after his former slave, ready to reclaim the fugitive through whatever means available to him.295

Almost immediately upon arrival, the Arkansas slaveholder headed straight to the nearest court house and filed an affidavit outlining the thefts committed by the escaped slave. To reinforce his credibility, the slaveholder relayed the stolen items to the officials in painstaking detail, describing the brand on the mare’s shoulder, the fabric of the overcoat, and the design of the gold watch that Nelson had taken with him.296 The next

295 Peoria Register, May 27, 1842; Zorn, “An Arkansas Fugitive Slave Incident,” 142.

296 “Deposition of Alfred Wallace,” September 16, 1841 reprinted in “Copies of a Despatch from the Governor-General of Canada to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, of the 20th of January last, relative to the Surrender of Nelson Hackett, a Person of Colour, on the Demand of the Authorities 112 morning, with a county sheriff by his side, Wallace prowled the streets of the black settlement near Sandwich after receiving a tip that his former slave was hiding out there.

When Wallace finally spotted the black refugee after weeks of pursuit, he rushed towards the fugitive and, propelled by anger, began beating him “with the butt of a whip, and a large stick.”297 Dazed by pain and confusion, the runaway offered up the stolen watch just as the sheriff snapped hand-cuffs on to his wrist. By that afternoon, Hackett sat curled up in a tiny jail cell, his head still throbbing from the pain.

Even though Alfred Wallace had successfully found and detained his former slave, the Canadian authorities refused to return Hackett until the slaveholder procured a formal extradition request from a U.S. Governor. Instead of traveling back to Arkansas,

Wallace and his confidant hopped over the border into Michigan to appeal to the

Governor there, James Wright Gordon. After briefly reviewing Wallace’s case, Gordon concluded that the runaway was obviously “guilty of the crime of larceny” and he agreed to write up the request.298 The Canadian authorities, however, were not satisfied with this arrangement and claimed that the extradition request could only come from the governor of the state where the crime had been committed.299 Frustrated but determined, Wallace returned to Arkansas. He received a grand jury indictment with ease, and within four days

of the United States, as a Fugitive from Justice,” Parliamentary Papers (London: House of Commons, 1842), II: Appendix S, 2.

297 “The Petition of Nelson Hackett, a Man of Colour, now confined in the Gaol of the Western District,” Parliamentary Papers, II: Appendix S, 7.

298 “J. Wright Gordon, Acting Governor of Michigan, to Lord Sydenham, Governor General of British North America,” September 18, 1841, Parliamentary Papers, II: Appendix S, 2.

299 “William H. Draper, Attorney General, to T.W.C. Murdoch, Chief Secretary,” September 29, 1841, Parliamentary Papers, II: Appendix S, 5.

113 the Governor of Arkansas sent a formal extradition request to the Canadian authorities.300

When the Provincial Executive Committee received this request, they had to admit that there was “sufficient evidence of the criminality of the said Nelson Hackett.” With this in mind, the Executive Committee recommended that the Governor General surrender the fugitive to the American authorities so that he might be “dealt with according to the law.”301

While these judicial proceedings plodded along, Hackett languished in the

Sandwich jail where he would remain for five months. Desperate to escape the cell’s narrow confines, Nelson drew up a petition of his own in an attempt to sway the

Canadian authorities. In many ways, Hackett’s memorial mirrored those black Canadians wrote for Solomon Moseby and Jesse Happy. He echoed the language of British liberty and claimed that he had traveled to Canada because he knew that the “humanity of the

British law made him a free man as he touched the shores of that country.” The fugitive slave painted his former master as a devious imposter, bending international law for his own personal gain. The Arkansas slaveholder had not traveled all the way to Canada to pursue justice, Hackett claimed, but in fact came “for the purpose of being enabled to take your petitioner back to Arkansas with him.” Instead of divulging the details of his crime, Hackett tried to explain away his confession on the night he was cross-examined and argued that he only admitted to theft because he was “in such a state as to be unconscious of what he said” due to the blows he had suffered. Whether or not he was

300 “A.D. Yell, Governor of Arkansas, to Sit Richard Jackson, Administrator of the Government of the Province of Canada,” November 30, 1841, Parliamentary Papers, II: Appendix S, 5.

301 “Report of a Committee of the Executive Council,” Parliamentary Papers, II: Appendix S, 8. 114 guilty of the crime, Hackett claimed, once in Arkansas he would be “tortured in a manner that to hang him would be mercy.”302 By returning him to the hands of his former master,

Hackett implied, the Canadian magistrates would not be enacting justice; instead, they would be committing a grave injustice themselves and would betray the British Empire’s commitment to human freedom.

Even though Hackett’s impassioned claims resembled those black petitioners made in their memorials for Moseby and Happy, his own petition differed in one crucial aspect: it was the lonely plea of a single individual instead of the collective outcry of an entire community. In the Moseby and Happy cases, Canada’s black population rallied to the fugitives’ defense and their memorials positioned the runaways within a larger narrative of British abolitionism. While Hackett continued to wither away in the

Sandwich jail, on the other hand, the local black community remained eerily silent. This silence was so apparent that Hiram Wilson could not help but mention that “the coloured ” had been unusually “quiet” about the case in his monthly letter to

The Anti-Slavery Reporter.303

In some respects, black Canadians’ silence was the natural result of obfuscation and manipulation on the part of the colonial authorities. Anxious to avoid the political upheaval that accompanied the Solomon Moseby rescue, Canadian officials purposely diverted attention away from the case and, in some instances, deliberately spread misinformation. After black Canadians made several inquiries into Hackett’s condition

302 “The Petition of Nelson Hackett, a Man of Colour, now confined in the Gaol of the Western District,” Parliamentary Papers, II: Appendix S, 7.

303 Hiram Wilson, “The Case of Nelson Hacket,” The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, Volume 4: 1843 (London: Tyler & Reed, 1843): 2.

115 and the status of the court proceedings, they were told “time after time” that “he had been set at liberty” even though “no one had seen him.”304 Unable to find any information on the case, one resident turned to the Western Herald in exasperation, and sent a letter to the editor with a litany of questions regarding “this mysterious affair.”305 Eventually, the case faded from the minds of many, and slowly sunk into obscurity.

Secretive judicial machinations alone could not explain the black community’s silence completely, though. Hiram Wilson believed this ambivalence reflected a tendency widespread amongst the black refugees and reinforced by the Happy case to “confide in the protection of the Government wisely administered.” Believing they had solidified their position as valued subjects through their military service in the Mackenzie rebellion, many black migrants were convinced that the British Government would come to their aid and thwart slaveholders’ efforts. While Wilson readily acknowledged the black soldiers’ heroism and understood the rationale behind this line of thinking, he believed that the black refugees were far more complacent “than a proper regard to their security and welfare would justify.”306

Beyond their implicit faith in the British judicial system, black Canadians’ also felt a deep ambivalence towards Hackett himself. Even though many black refugees sympathized with Hackett’s plight, they struggled to account for his theft and worried that his crime might implicate their entire community. For even as black migrants found

304 “Annual Report of the Colored Vigilant Committee of Detroit,”in Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers, 399.

305 “To the Editor of the Western Herald,” Western Herald and Farmer’s Magazine, January 14, 1842, NJ/FM/1365, LAC.

306 Wilson, “The Case of Nelson Hacket,” The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, 2.

116 refuge and solace in Canada, they were dogged by the stereotype of the delinquent

African. As they moved through life in their newfound home, black refugees were constantly forced to bat away the assumption that they were “addicted to all manner of vice and immorality.”307

When white Canadians protested new black settlements, they couched their arguments in terms of black criminality. “Look at your prisons and penitentiary,” they cried out, “and behold the fearful preponderance of their black over white inmates in proportion to the population of each.”308 These stereotypes became so prevalent that

Hiram Wilson felt compelled to traveled to these very same prisons, where he uncovered a much different story. At one prison, he counted only five black inmates amidst hundreds of white convicts. “Reader! Look at that!” He exclaimed, “Five out of ten thousand fugitives from American slavery have got into a British penitentiary.” And yet, even after Wilson disproved these stereotypes, black refugees worried that protesting

Hackett’s arrest might provide fodder for anti-black propaganda and fuel rumors that the black community condoned crime.

Because of these concerns, there was no vigil for Nelson Hackett. No barricade formed around the Sandwich jail house. No petitions were drawn up to plead his case.

Over time, his name fell away from the headlines. His name would not reappear until

February 8th, 1842. That night, under the cover of darkness, Hackett was bound, gagged,

307 Hiram Wilson, “Coloured Population in Canada,” The Friend of Man, vol 2, no. 1, June 21, 1837.

308 Sally Carter quoted in Peggy Bristow, “‘Whatever you can raise in the ground you can sell it in Chatham’: Black Women in Buxton and Chatham 1850-1865,” in We’re Rooted Here and the Can’t Pull Us Up, Bristow, ed., (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 78.

117 and ferried across the Detroit river in a row boat. On the other side of the river, a small team of Michigan state officers waited, watching the small vessel as it slowly approached them. Hunched over in the boat, flanked by two Canadian officers, Nelson shivered as he watched large chunks of ice float past him. As soon as he reached the American shoreline, the Michigan policemen grabbed hold of him, eager to seize the fugitive before an unruly crowd could spirit him away. By the end of the night, Hackett was once again confined to a tiny jail cell, but now he was trapped in the Detroit city prison.309

Despite the American and Canadian authorities’ efforts to keep the transfer hidden from public view, free blacks in Detroit had kept a “vigilant eye” on the affair and news of it spread throughout the city. Within a matter of days, the Colored Vigilant

Committee launched a campaign on the fugitive’s behalf and tapped attorney Charles H.

Stewart, the president of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society, to be his legal counsel.310

After reviewing the documents related to Hackett’s case and consulting with the Colored

Vigilant Committee, Stewart concluded that even though the fugitive was “illegally in custody” he deemed it “improper” to interfere in the proceedings. By defending Hackett, the lawyer posited, he ran the risk of squandering the American abolitionist movement’s precious moral capital for the sake of a convicted felon. “To fight this contest,” Stewart explained, “would but have weakened us for those that await us on the broad platform of man’s inalienable rights." The American abolitionist movement, he reasoned, had only just begun to turn public opinion in favor of the fugitive slave, and while it pained him to

309 Western Herald and Farmer’s Magazine, January 30, 1842, NJ/FM/1365, LAC.

310 “Annual Report of the Colored Vigilant Committee of Detroit,” January 10, 1843, Ripley, ed. The Black Abolitionist Papers, 3: 399.

118 say it, he could not countenance sacrificing that progress in order to save a single, flawed individual. Thus, while it made Stewart shutter to think of it, he let the authorities return the fugitive to the South where he would no doubt be at the mercy of “an incensed master, an infuriated overseer, and the vindictive passion of a slavocracy.”311

For the rest of the winter, then, Hackett remained in solitary confinement, his hopes for legal redress dashed by Stewart’s pronouncement. That spring, once the snow had finally melted and the ice thawed, Hackett embarked on his long journey back to

Arkansas, shackled by leg irons and thrown into the back of a stagecoach. It was along this journey that Hackett made his second escape after the caravan was forced to make an overnight stop in Princeton, Illinois. Because this area was “notorious for Underground

Railroad activity,” Hackett’s guards lodged him in an upstairs room and kept watch just outside his door. Despite these precautionary measures, Hackett still managed to break free and evade his pursuers for two full days, wandering through grasslands and forests, until that fateful encounter at the farmhouse.

News of Hackett’s surrender slowly spread across the continent through snatched snippets of speculation and clips of correspondence. Some claimed that Hackett had escaped once again and finally found freedom, but many brushed away this theory, thinking it too improbable. “If any of our friends can give information of his being in a place of security,” a reporter for the Emancipator implored, “we should be happy to hear of the welfare of a MAN, in whom the spirit of liberty seems to be so indomitable.”312

311 Emancipator and Free American, September 15, 1842.

312 Ibid., January 19, 1843.

119

Others heard that Hackett had once again been ensnared in slavery’s suffocating grasp and would never again break free from the “prison house of bondage.”313 Newspapers throughout the South covered the story as a victory for slaveholders and a check on Great

Britain’s abolitionist foreign policy, but few gave details on the slave’s final fate.314

Eventually, after contacting a Senator from the state of Arkansas, a writer for The

Canada Temperance Advocate conclusively reported that instead of receiving a fair trial for his crime Hackett had been publicly whipped in the Fayetteville town square as a warning to other potential runaways before his master sold him to a plantation owner in

Texas.315

Nelson Hackett would never taste freedom again. Even after his sale to the

Southwest, though, he did not fade into obscurity. Instead, the Arkansas fugitive lived on in the historical record as a rallying cry for anti-slavery activists who saw his case as an affront to natural justice. In anti-slavery pamphlets, speeches, and articles, Hackett’s name became shorthand for Southern abuses of power both within and without America’s borders. The Hackett case, more so than any other previous extradition case before it, revealed to these abolitionists that the legal order fugitive slaves were unhappily enmeshed in was at once local, national, and international, and that the reach of the Slave

Power extended across empires and republics. The humanitarian network that rose up to

313 Liberator, June 17, 1842; “Letter from Joshua Leavitt to John Scoble,” December 27, 1842, reprinted in Abel and Klingberg, eds., A Sidelight on Anglo-American Relations, 108-9.

314 For an example of some Southern newspapers that reported on the Hackett case, see The Southern Patriot [Charleston, S.C.], May 5th, 1842; Macon Weekly Telegraph [Macon, G.A.], May 10th, 1842.

315 “Nelson Hackett,” The Canada Temperance Advocate [Montreal], January 16, 1843, vol. 8, no. 18; Emancipator and Free American, January 19, 1843. 120 resist this power, however, was just as extensive. In the decades leading up to Hackett’s surrender, these activists had built up an an anti-slavery infrastructure, supported by an elaborate scaffolding of correspondence and conventions, that bridged oceans and borders. Hackett’s surrender revived sympathy for black refugees amongst these anti- slavery activists throughout the British Isles and guaranteed that the “condition of the coloured class of Upper Canada” would once again become a key item on the abolitionist agenda.316

316 “Letter from John Scoble to Thomas Rolph,” quoted in Asaka, “Race Across Empire and Republic,” 86. 121

Chapter Four: “Can goods and chattels transgress moral law?” The Creole Case and the Webster- Ashburton Treaty

With his head bent over, his hands raw, and his eyes caked in dust, Nelson

Hackett plowed a dry field in West Texas. As he tried to scrape life out of the cracked earth, Hackett could not know that since his re-enslavement he had become a martyr in the eyes of many abolitionists or that his case had become an international cause célébre.

News of his surrender shot through abolitionist circles like an electric current, jolting a complacent community into renewed vigilance. Formerly enslaved people in Canada, whose security white abolitionists once took for granted, were suddenly “seized with terror” by the prospect that they might be next.317 Protecting this beleaguered populace, then, became a unifying mission as anti-slavery activists both within and without Canada rallied to its defense. The case was even more shocking for it happened at that precise moment when formerly enslaved people in Canada had “never felt more secure, under the protection of British law.”318 While Hackett’s actual imprisonment in the Sandwich jail had elicited little comment, news of his re-enslavement created a “great sensation” throughout the province and seemed to awaken Canada’s black community from its

317 Thomas Clarkson, Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, 176.

318 Hiram Wilson, “Fugitive Slaves in Upper Canada: Sixth Annual Report of the Canada Mission,” The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, Volume 4: 1843, 33.

122 slumber and revived their campaign to cement their subject status in the British

Empire.319

In response to the shock of Hackett’s surrender, black Canadians developed a new representational strategy in order to circumvent bilateral extradition law and frustrate

Southern slaveholders’ efforts to reclaim them. Recognizing that British subjecthood alone could not protect them from Southern slaveholders’ extradition requests, Afro-

Canadians shifted tactics and instead emphasized their status as political refugees. In so doing, self-emancipated people tapped into the humanitarian discourse floating throughout the Atlantic world during the nineteenth century and found a way to overcome the limits of subjecthood as a legal protection. By fashioning themselves as refugees not unlike political revolutionaries or dissidents, formerly enslaved people were able to place themselves outside of the traditional confines of international law while also giving abolitionists moral cover to advocate for them on the world stage even when they were convicted of crimes. In the process, black Canadians creatively leveraged the machinery of the transatlantic abolitionist movement as a conduit between them and the imperial state.

In order to begin this campaign, Canada’s “colored inhabitants” once again turned to the petition in their time of need. Instead of sending their memorial to Canada’s

Governor-General, however, the petitioners leap frogged the colonial hierarchy, hoping that the name of Nelson Hackett might “reach royal ears.” They entrusted their memorial with Sir Allen McNab, a Canadian legislator who had fought alongside black troops during the Mackenzie Rebellion. To persuade McNab to lay their humble address at the

319 Thomas Clarkson, Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention, 176. 123

“foot of the throne of our most gracious and Sovereign the Queen,” the petitioners called attention to the efforts of the Coloured Corps during the Mackenzie

Rebellion and the black community’s unwavering loyalty during the uprising. The petitioners told McNab that after black Canadian soldiers had “marched with confidence under your command in times of danger” they felt confident that he would, in turn, deliver their memorial to the Queen. McNab agreed to carry the petition on his next trip to England and reassured the black community that they would “at all times find me ready to advocate your cause, and maintain your rights against ‘the injustice of the slave claimers,’ and any who may seek to oppress you.” 320

When abolitionists in the United States heard of the black community’s arrangement with McNab, they could not help but be impressed. “Only think of it,” they mused, “The chattels of slavocracy, who once trembled at their whip-cracking masters, addressing the Queen of England! Prodigious!” They firmly believed that the petition would spark a thorough investigation of the Hackett affair in the British courts and that the slave catchers who had dragged the fugitive back to bondage would be punished for their misdeeds. “Read that, ye who hunted down Nelson Hackett,” they warned, pointing to the petition, “The British government pledges a FULL MEASURE OF JUSTICE.”321

Detroit’s Colored Vigilant Committee followed the black Canadians’ lead. Even though this same committee had previously decided not to pursue Hackett’s case for fear they might “bring a reproach upon the cause of emancipation,” they felt compelled to publish

320 “The Case of Nelson Hackett,” Emancipator and Free American, October 6, 1842. Emphasis in original.

321 Ibid.

124 the affair to the world, and thereby “set a ball in motion that would roll in the British

House of Commons.”322 The committee released a scathing indictment of the Governor-

General, who they believed had abused his power and betrayed the black community’s trust. In order to prevent such “nefarious proceedings” from occurring in the future, the

Vigilant Committee demanded that the Canadian authorities not only release the names of all who had been involved in the surrender but also publish all of the documents related to the case.323

The Detroit Colored Vigilant Committee found a receptive audience amongst anti-slavery politicians in Canada. William Dunlop, a Canadian legislator known for his fiery personality and anti-slavery sympathies, moved to have all of the correspondence related to Hackett laid before the House Assembly, claiming he felt “rather suspicious” that the Governor-General had mishandled the case.324 To justify this motion, Dunlop argued that Hackett’s case was not simply the case of one man “but of thousands” of men and women across Canada, for the fate of every fugitive slave was implicated in the nefarious proceedings. Not only this, but the case also had repercussions beyond

Canada’s borders for it involved a “great question of international law.”325 Dunlop argued that whether or not the fugitive was guilty was beside the point for the Governor

322 “Annual Report of the Colored Vigilant Committee of Detroit,” in Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers, 400.

323 “Michigan,” Philanthropist, April 20, 1842.

324 Elizabeth Nish, ed., Debates of the Legislative Assembly of United Canada, 1841-1867, Volume II: 1842 (Québec: Presses de L’Ecole des Hautes Études Commerciales, 1971), 178; Also see, Emancipator and Free American, January 19, 1843.

325 Ibid., 361.

125 of Arkansas did not have the authority to demand Hackett and the Governor-General did not have the authority to return him. “The Governor of Arkansas is nobody, and the

Governor of Canada is nobody, on this question,” he declared.326 Instead, the matter should have been handled directly by the British government and the federal government of the United States. By returning the fugitive, Dunlop argued, the Governor-General only further encouraged that “set of men” who made their livelihood “by stealing free blacks from our side.”327

Denis-Benjamin Viger, another legislator from Lower Canada, concurred with this assessment and believed that the case was of the “greatest importance” not only for the province of Canada, but also for the empire as a whole. Even though Hackett was a

“foreigner” instead of a subject, Vigor asserted, he was still “under the protection of the

British Empire,” and therefore deserved the privileges that came with that status, the most important of these being a fair trial.328 If such proceedings had occurred under a despotic government, Vigor mused, he would not have been surprised. But the fact that such a case took place under “a liberal government” like England was “astonishing.” When other members of the legislature balked at this statement or tried to dismiss the whole debate, Viger responded that the matter must be investigated for it embraced monumental

“questions of public law, international law” and even “the relations of a dependent colony to the parent state.”329

326 Ibid., 362.

327 Ibid.

328 Ibid.

329 Nish, ed., Debates of the Legislative Assembly of United Canada, 362.

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The most pressing question Hackett’s case raised, though, was whether or not a slave could be held accountable for a crime committed while in bondage. And if an enslaved person could be convicted for such conduct, it still remained unclear whether or not the Canadian government should return him to that country “where he is accounted

[as] a chattel.”330 In this way, Hackett’s surrender, more so than any other extradition case, exposed Canadian lawmakers to the “double character” of the slave, straddling the divide between person and property. In their arguments, many of these legislators adopted black Canadians’ legal reasoning that a slave could not be a free agent. William

Boulton, a newly elected lawyer from York, claimed he could not countenance holding a slave responsible for crimes committed where he were “deprived of all moral instruction and all right of voluntary action.”331 To bolster his claims, Boulton cited John Quincy

Adams’s argument before the Supreme Court during the Amistad case and asked his fellow lawmakers: “Can goods and chattels transgress moral law?”332 Highlighting the ethical contradictions wrapped up in this query, he pointed out that in many Southern states it was illegal to teach a slave to read, so it was morally untenable for the Canadian

330 Ibid., 363.

331 Ibid.

332 Ibid; For more on the Amistad case, see Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, 407-10; Howard Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997; Iyunolu Folayan Osagie, The Amistad Revolt: Memory, Slavery, and the Politics of Identity in the United States and Sierra Leone (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2000); For Adams’s argument, see John Quincy Adams, Argument of John Quincy Adams before the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of the United States, Appellants vs. Cinque, and Others, Africans, Captured in the Schooner Amistad, by Lieut. Gedney, Delivered on the 24th of February and 1st of March, 1841. (New York: S. W. Benedict, 1841); For more on John Quincy Adams’s involvement in the Amistad case, see David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason, eds., John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery: Selections from the Diary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); 233, 242-44, 246, 248-54, 259.

127 government to hold these slaves accountable “for what they are not permitted to know.”333

As Canadian legislators continued to debate the legal and moral implications of the case, American abolitionists adopted a more alarmist stance regarding Hackett’s surrender. While many of these same activists had held Nelson Hackett out at arm’s length during his imprisonment, they embraced him fully after his re-enslavement.

Instead of a petty criminal, they considered him a “victim of conspiracy” and believed his surrender was the product of a “concerted effort” between the Canadian officials and the

Southern slaveholder. Some speculated that only a considerable sum of money could have persuaded the Governor-General to take a course of action that departed “so very far from his duty, and the law of the British empire.” In order to dispel these rumors, the

Americans demanded that the Governor-General should “disclose the representations made to him” and “bring to light the amount of fees paid to [the] subordinate officers” involved in the “dark plot.” Until he did so, they warned, the Governor-General risked tarnishing Great Britain’s record as an anti-slavery crusader and threatened to sever the unique tie between the Canadian government and the thousands of self-emancipated people who had “sought an asylum in Her Britannic Majesty’s dominions.”334

The Canadian Governor, Sir , bristled at these charges. In his defense, Bagot claimed that there was “no doubt” that Nelson Hackett was guilty of the crime leveled against him and that the all of the stolen items had been found on his person. Not only this, but there was no way these articles could have been taken “solely

333 Nish, ed., Debates of the Legislative Assembly of United Canada, 363.

334 “Case of Nelson Hackett,” Emancipator and Free American, September 15, 1842.

128 to assist him in escaping from slavery.” Therefore, he concluded, there was considerable evidence that the slave had acted with “felonious intent” and deserved to punished. He reiterated the same argument Sir Francis Bond Head employed when that Governor considered returning Solomon Moseby to his master in Kentucky. Just as Bond Head had declared that he would not turn the province of Canada into an “Asylum for the guilty of colour,” Bagot refused to set a precedent whereby any fugitive slave would be secure no matter what his personal background or criminal history may be.335 By protecting such criminals, he warned, Canada would have become a “an asylum for the worst characters, provided only they had been slaves before arriving here.” Doing so would not only have been repugnant to the “common sense of justice of the civilized world” but also would have driven his province into disputes “of the most inconvenient nature” with its

Southern neighbor.336 As the first Governor-General to take charge of the province after the chaos of the Mackenzie rebellion, maintaining friendly relations with the United

States remained one of Bagot’s top priorities.337

American abolitionists, however, were not satisfied by these arguments. In a letter to the to the secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, John Scoble,

Lewis Tappan lamented that if only the Canadian Governor had read Gerrit Smith’s

“Address of the Peterboro State Convention to the Slave” he surely would have not

335 St. Catharines Journal, Vol 2, no. 28, September 28, 1837, N77, AO.

336 “Copy of a Despatch from the Right Honourable Sir Charles Bagot, G.C.B. to Lord Stanley,” Januray 20, 1842, Parliamentary Papers, II: Appendix S, 1.

337 In fact, when Sir Charles Bagot was first appointed to Governor-General he had been explicitly instructed to concentrate on restoring and maintaining friendly relations with the United States. See, I. H. Rose, ed., Cambridge History of the British Empire (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1930), VI: 316.

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“given up Nelson” so easily.338 This speech, nominally directed at the enslaved population but actually addressing the abolitionist community more broadly, put forth the radical notion that slavery was a perpetual “state of war” and that slaves must take all possible measures to resist it.339 In such a state of conflict, he insisted that any theft committed by a slave in the heat of escape should be encouraged, not condemned, by abolitionists. To justify this statement, Smith contended that slaveholders were “pirates” and that the laws such pirates enacted “whether upon land or sea” were not legitimate.340

While he moderated this statement with the qualifier that slaves should only take those things they deemed “absolutely essential” to their escapes, his speech ignited heated debates throughout the nation amongst both pro- and anti-slavery advocates.341

Proslavery activists condemned Smith’s rationale as “unscriptural and abominable” and they pointed to his endorsement of slave theft as conclusive proof that abolitionists were irresponsible fanatics.342 The address worried politically minded abolitionists, who hoped to court a non-abolitionist electorate. Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the Philanthropist and leader of the Ohio Liberty Party, was so baffled and dismayed by the address that he

338 “Letter from Lewis Tappan to John Scoble,” July 23, 1842, reprinted in Abel and Klingberg, eds., A Sidelight on Anglo-American Relations, 100.

339 Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, 417.

340 Ibid., 159.

341 “Address of the Peterboro State Convention to the Slaves,” reprinted in Stanley Harrold, ed., The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slaves (Lexington, K.Y.: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 158.

342 Rev. J. Blanchard and N. L. Rice, A Debate on Slavery: Held in The City of Cincinnati, on the First, Second, Third, and Sixth Days of October, 1845, upon the question: is slave-holding in itself sinful, and the relation between Master and Slave, a sinful relationship? (Cincinnati: WM. H. Moore & Co., Publishers, 1846), 286.

130 refused to “keep silent” about it. In an impassioned editorial, Bailey wrote that the speech left him “utterly at a loss” and he could not fathom “what good can be accomplished by it.” He feared that the address might alienate potential voters and would undoubtedly

“irritate the [white] people of the Southern States, and tend to close up still more strongly the avenues to conviction in their minds.”343

Even though the anti-slavery community remained divided over the question of slave theft, they embraced Hackett’s cause and set out to ensure that no other fugitive would meet his fate. In May of 1842, the American Anti-Slavery Society appealed to their colleagues across the Atlantic to investigate the case and “preclude the possibility of such another mistake.”344 A month later, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery agreed to pursue the matter, and resolved to expose the “extraordinary conduct” of the Canadian

Governor to Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary and persuade the Parliament to review the official proceedings related to the case.345

These efforts were complemented by those made by black Canadians themselves who had already enlisted Thomas Rolph as their emissary to the British and Foreign Anti-

Slavery Society and their liaison to the British government. Rolph, a white surgeon from

England, had become the refugees’ chief emissary to the metropole and he periodically flooded the Colonial Office with letters and memorials sent on their behalf. In these dispatches, Rolph implored the imperial government to grant legal immunity to all

343 Philanthropist, February 9, April 6, 1842.

344 “Proceedings of the American Anti-Slavery Society at Its Ninth Anniversary, May 10-11, 1842,” in Liberator, May 27, 1842; Anti-Slavery Standard, September 1, 1842.

345 “Minute Book,” Executive Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, I, 543, cited in Abel and Klingberg, eds., A Sidelight on Anglo-American Relations, 99, fn. 69.

131 fugitive slaves who set foot on British soil.346 Eventually, these appeals chipped away at the British officials’ resolve and they agreed to investigate the matter. Rolph’s efforts, therefore, were instrumental in ensuring that Nelson Hackett’s case would a prominent topic of debate across the Atlantic and remained “on the minds of Governors, Ministers, and Parliaments.”347

As these political machinations churned, conflict was brewing in the Caribbean.

On October 31, the American brig Creole left Hampton Roads, Virginia, bound for New

Orleans with a cargo of 135 slaves. Just one week into the voyage, nineteen of the slaves on board rose up against and seized control of the ship, demanding that the white crew members steer the ship towards . After the white crew told the rebels that sailing to Africa was not feasible, the former slaves forced the crew to pilot it into Nassau harbor in . When they arrived, British colonial authorities freed most of the slaves on board immediately and, after consulting with London, released the nineteen mutineers a few months later. This uprising highlighted the “geo-political literacy” of the mutineers who fully understood the diplomatic implications of their act and exacerbated the already strained Anglo-American relationship.348

346 For more on Rolph, see William S. Shepperson, British Emigration to North America: Projects and Opinions in the Early Victorian Period (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957), 40-6.

347 Signal of Liberty, June 27, 1842; For debates on the Nelson Hackett case within the House of Commons, see “House of Commons,” The Times [London], June, 28, 1842, 2.

348 Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, 412-3; Walter Johnson, “White Lies: Human Property and Domestic Slavery Aboard the Slave Ship Creole,” Atlantic Studies 5, no. 1 (2008): 237-56; Phillip Troutman, “Grapevine in the : African American Geo-Political Literacy and the 1841 Creole Slave Revolt,” in Walter Johnson, ed., The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 203-33.

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Southern newspapers from New Orleans to Baltimore denounced the “inhuman proceedings of the British authorities,” and their “repeated invasions of our national rights.” The Mississippi state legislature passed a resolution demanding compensation for

Creole slave owners. A reporter for the New-Orleans Advertiser believed that the Creole affair was “the cap-sheaf of the British aggression upon American rights” that threatened to overturn “at one blow” any “amicable and commercial” between Great Britain and the

United States.349 To Southern politicians, the Creole represented the dangers of Great

Britain’s “toxic combination of anti-slavery dogma and imperialist muscle-flexing.” 350

South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, one of Great Britain’s most vocal critics, foretold an Anglo-American war if the imperial power refused to abandon “its dangerously unhinged abolitionist crusade.”351

As Southerners railed against British hypocrisy, abolitionists across the Atlantic cheered on the “hero mutineers” of the Creole.352 The eruption of Southern outrage over the Creole case only further endeared the slave ship rebels to American abolitionists who

349 New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, December 3, 1841; Senate Documents, 27., 2 Sess., No. 278: Resolutions of the Legislature of Mississippi, on the subject of the right of search, and the case of the brig Creole, Series 398, Washington, 1842.

350 Karp, Vast Southern Empire, 54; Arthur T. Downey, The Creole Affair: The that Led the U.S. and Great Britain to the Brink of War (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014); 17-71.

351 John C. Calhoun, speech in the Senate, March 30, 1840 quoted in Karp, “‘This Vast Southern Empire,’” 48; For more on John C. Calhoun’s policies toward Great Britain, see Bruno Gujer, “Free Trade and Slavery: Calhoun’s Defense of Southern Interests Against British Interference, 1811-1848,” (Ph. D. diss., University of Zurich, 1971), 112-3.

352 Southern Patriot, January 27, 1840; “The Hero Mutineers,” Liberator, January 7, 1842; Also see, John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002): 113, 150-1, 187, 226.

133 they claimed had only acted upon their “natural right to liberty.”353 Even the moral suasionist William Lloyd Garrison endorsed the shipboard mutineers’ actions and lionized the architect of the uprising, . Joshua R. Giddings, a Whig

Congressman from Ohio, went so far as to call the rebellious slaves the “moral superiors” of the slave traders and he became their greatest advocate in the U.S. Congress.354 In response to Southern slaveholders’ demands for British compensation, Giddings presented his now famous Creole resolutions. These resolutions not only provided justification for the British authorities’ decision to free the slaves but also defended the slaves’ inherent right to rebel.355

These resolutions became a piece of a larger abolitionist project in which anti- slavery activists invoked the law of nations to undermine slavery’s legal foundations.

Defending the Creole rebels and protesting Southerners’ demands for compensation served as a springboard for anti-slavery activists, who used the vocabulary of international law in a rhetorical assault that struck at the heart of the peculiar institution.

William Jay, son of the first chief justice of the United States and a prominent New York judge, argued that because the “anomalous institution of slavery” so clearly went against

353 Giddings quoted in Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, 416; Also see, James Brewer Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical Politics (: Case Western University Press, 1970), 32-78.

354 George Washington Julian, The Life of Joshua R. Giddings (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company, 1892), 118-120, 122, 384.

355 Stanley Harrold, “Romanticizing Slave Revolt: Madison Washington, the Creole Mutiny, and Abolitionist Celebration of Violent Means,” in John R. McKivigan and Stanley Harrold, eds., Antislavery Violence: Sectional, Racial, and Cultural Conflict in Antebellum America (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 89-107; Frederick Douglass, : A Cultural and Critical Edition, eds., Robert S. Levine, John Stauffer, and John R. McKivigan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 104-107.

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“universal Justice” it could not be subject to international comity.356 Jay argued that the

English authorities had not acted out of line when they freed the Creole rebels but instead had acted according to natural law, which always favored liberty over suppression.

Therefore, when the slaves on board the Creole resisted their enslavement through violent means they were not committing a crime, but instead were “vindicating their natural freedom.”357 This was particularly true on the high seas, he posited, for the

“untamed Sea” disdained the “puny grasp of earthly despots” and disregarded human systems of bondage no matter how “well-guarded” they may be at home.358 The Creole case also offered abolitionists a unique opportunity to interrogate those terms—such as consent, agency, will, and intent—that were foundational to the “lexicon of liberal jurisprudence.”359 In this way, by situating American slavery within the law of civilized nations, abolitionist gained a new weapon in their rhetorical arsenal as they began to use the language of international law to supplement their moral critiques of the peculiar institution.360

356 William Jay, The Creole Case, and Mr. Webster’s dispatch: with the Comments of the N. Y. American (New York, Office of the New-York America, 1842), 14; For more on the concept of comity, see Joel R. Paul, “Comity in International Law,” Harvard International Law Journal 32, no. 1 (1991): 20-21.

357 Ibid., 30.

358 Ibid., 20-1.

359 Wong, Neither Fugitive nor Free, 9; For an example of this phenomenon, see William Jay’s discussion of “positive consent” and “implied consent” in Jay, The Creole Case, 21.

360 For more on how abolitionists employed this strategy in a domestic context, see James Oakes, “The Political Significance of Slave Resistance,” History Workshop, no. 22, Special American Institute (1986): 89-107.

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Perhaps the most sophisticated treatment of the Creole case came from William

Ellery Channing, one of the nation’s leading intellectuals and theologians, who wrote a pamphlet on the uprising. Channing’s decision to write this tract was not only motivated by a desire to defend the rebels but also a desire to denounce the influence of the “Slave

Power” within the American federal government. Channing particularly rejected

Southern politicians’ assumption that because slavery was in the United States’ “national interest” the executive branch should “spread a shield over American slavery abroad as well as at home.”361 To reinforce his opposition, Channing borrowed from the works of

William Blackstone and argued that the British authorities in Nassau had acted according to the natural law of freedom, which trumped municipal or state law. Channing also tapped into the rhetoric of the Somerset decision but instead of claiming that the Creole rebels had fundamentally changed their status once they stepped on British soil,

Channing argued that the British authorities had simply recognized the slaves’ inherent humanity “which they had worn from the day of their birth.”362

In the second part of his pamphlet, Channing linked this issue to the question of fugitive slaves in the United States and used the language of natural law to defend

Northerners’ efforts to protect runaways and prevent kidnappings. Instead of aligning itself with the “hideous traffic” of African slaves, he declared, the United States government should instead make the promotion of human liberty its highest priority,

361 William Ellery Channing, The Duty of the Free States, or Remarks Suggested by the Case of the Creole, 2 vols. (Boston: William Crosby & Company, 1842), I: 8, 29.

362 Channing, The Duty of the Free States, 24.

136 particularly in its “intercourse with foreign nations.”363 Such arguments would become a keystone of the “higher law” ideology abolitionist lawyers and politicians would employ for decades to come. Eventually, this same ideology would form the bedrock for the

“freedom national” philosophy that undergirded the Republican Party’s political platform.364

British and Canadian lawmakers quickly recognized the connection between the

Creole case and fugitive slaves in Canada. James Stephen, the Colonial Undersecretary, could not help but point out this “singular coincidence” and felt that the unusual circumstances demanded a swift response from the British government. While Stephen accepted that Upper Canada’s Foreign Offenders Act justified the colonial magistrate’s decision to return Hackett, he also believed that Hackett’s surrender had directly contradicted Great Britain’s stance in the Creole case. This was largely because the

Foreign Offenders Act, which Canadian legislators drew up with the intention of forming a contract between free nations, did not take into account the fact that “a Slave will undoubtedly be subjected to penalties, and to a form of trial altogether repugnant, to the maxims of our own Law and the feelings of our Country.”365 Thus, even though Stephen understood the Canadian act permitted such a surrender, it by no means required the

Governor-General to do so. G. W. Hope, another member of the Colonial Office, agreed

363 William E. Channing, D. D., The Works of William E. Channing, D.D. (4th ed.; Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1845), VI: 367, 295. Emphasis in original.

364 Levine, Stauffer, and McKivigan, “Introduction” in The Heroic Slave: A Cultural and Critical Edition, xvi; James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), 22-5; Also see, Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, 416.

365 “Endorsements on Letter from Sir Charles Bagot to James Stephen,” January 20, 1842, Despatches from the Colonial Office, CO-42, Vol. 488, Reel C-156, 374.

137 with Stephen’s assessment and noted that the traditional framework of reciprocity could not exist when a fugitive slave would be “almost inevitably tried by a different process from that used in the case of free persons” once he was sent back to the United States.366

As the Hackett and Creole dramas played out in newspapers articles and abolitionist pamphlets, diplomats from the American State Department and the British

Foreign Office were already hard at work drawing up a treaty. Although Lord Stanley ultimately supported the Governor-General’s decision to return Hackett, he knew that

British government needed to develop a streamlined policy for future cases. He hoped that the convergence of the Hackett and Creole cases would induce the American government to enter into negotiations on an extradition policy and come to a common understanding on the “delicate subject of Fugitive Slaves.”367 In order to achieve this,

Stanley capitalized upon another unique coincidence: the Upper Canada Rebellion. Even though Mackenzie was unable to spark a popular uprising, the geopolitical squabbles surrounding his revolt did highlight the need for greater Anglo-American cooperation along the Northeastern border. Initially, when Lord Ashburton set out to draw up a treaty with Secretary of State , he did so with the intention to solidify this boundary, negotiate the bilateral enforcement of the slave trade ban, and determine the terms of usage for the Great Lakes. Lord Stanley, however, sent Ashburton a memorandum instructing him to include a clause to settle the extradition question.

Stanley ordered that while the treaty could not protect a fugitive “charged with a heinious

366 G. W. Hope quoted in Alexander L. Murray, “The Extradition of Fugitive Slaves from Canada: A Re-evaluation,” The Canadian Historical Review 43, no. 4 (1962): 305.

367 “Endorsements on Letter from Sir Charles Bagot to James Stephen,” January 20, 1842, Despatches from the Colonial Office, CO-42, Vol. 488, Reel C-156, 374-75.

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[sic] offense” just because the accused was a slave, it should be drafted with the intention to protect runaways “charged with the mere offence of escaping from Slavery.”368

Therefore, when compiling a list of extraditable offenses, Stanley instructed Ashburton to always consider whether or not a specific crime could be connected with a slave’s “desire of freedom.”369

With these instructions in hand, Ashburton carefully drew up a treaty designed to please the American diplomats while still adhering to his own government’s anti-slavery position. When crafting the extradition article, he kept these two competing interests in mind, and carefully chose extraditable crimes that could not potentially threaten fugitive slaves. Initially, he was prepared to include “the mutinous running away of ships” as one of the extraditable crimes in an attempt to appease Southern politicians still reeling from the fall out of the Creole affair.370 Without this provision, he reasoned, the American government would not even consider an extradition clause and the entire treaty might be jeopardized. Ashburton’s superiors, however, did not agree. Foreign Secretary Aberdeen argued that no British jurist would include the “attempt of slaves to recover their freedom” within the category of “mutiny and revolt,” and Lord Stanley argued that

Parliament would never agree to such a provision. Ashburton, therefore, quickly abandoned this resolution, even though he believed it was the main “inducement of the

368 “Memorandum from Lord Stanley to Lord Ashburton,” February 23, 1842, Despatches from the Colonial Office, CO-42, Vol. 488, Reel C-156, 376.

369 Ibid., 378.

370 “Letter from Lord Ashburton to Foreign Secretary Aberdeen,” quoted in Murray, “The Extradition of Fugitive Slaves from Canada,” 306.

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[American] Government here to treat on this matter at all.”371 By the end of the negotiations, the British and American diplomats had clipped the list extraditable offenses to a few crimes both governments could agree upon: murder, arson, forgery, , assault, and robbery.372

News of this agreement only served to further incite an already inflamed abolitionist coalition. Before Lord Ashburton could board his ship back to England, members of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society accosted him and requested a personal audience with him. Anxious that the article might used “to the injury of fugitive slave escapes into Canada” the Executive Committee sat down with the British envoy, eager to gain reassurance that the treaty would not become a tool for the Slave

Power. In their meeting with the diplomat, the abolitionists gave him a detailed retelling of the Nelson Hackett case. They argued that if such nefarious proceedings could occur

“without any treaty stipulation,” there was no telling what Southern slaveholders might do with a formal agreement, especially when one considered how slaveholders notoriously “allege crimes against fugitive slaves, as one expedient for their reclamation.”373

371 Ibid., 306-7.

372 For the full text of Article X: “It is agreed that the United States and Her Britannic Majesty shall, upon mutual requisition by them, or their ministers, officers, or authorities, respectively made, deliver up to justice all person who, being charged with the crime of murder, or assault with intent to commit murder, or piracy, or arson, or robbery, or forgery, or the utterance of forged paper, shall seek an asylum, or shall be found within the territories of the other; provided that this shall only be done upon such evidence of criminality as, according to the laws of the place where the fugitive or person so charged shall be found, would justify his apprehension and commitment for trial, if the crime or offence had there been committed, etc.” Charles W. Eliot, ed., American Historical Documents, 1000- 1904: with Introductions and Notes (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910), 4:307.

373 Lewis Tappan, “Interview with Lord Ashburton,” The Weekly Globe, containing Political Discussions, Documentary Proofs, &c. for 1842 (Washington, D.C.: Globe Office, 1842), 654. 140

Lord Ashburton told the abolitionists that he understood their concerns, but he believed that there was no need to worry. After launching into a brief description of the articles’ terms, he explained that he had specifically removed mutiny and desertion from the list of extraditable crimes precisely because he hoped to protect former slaves. While he could not speak to the particulars of the Hackett case, Ashburton was confident that no other runaway would meet his fate as long as he only took that which was necessary for his escape. “Had he [Hackett] only taken the horse” Lord Ashburton told them, “he would not, probably, have been surrendered; for you know the horse was necessary for his escape.” As he spoke, the British diplomat slipped a side long glance at Gerrit Smith, who sat near him, which revealed that Ashburton knew about “the advice of that gentleman to fugitive slaves” in his Peterboro Address, and he clearly did not approve of

Smith’s stance condoning slave theft. Despite this brief moment of tension, Ashburton reassured all in attendance that “great care” had been taken to “protect the innocent” and ensure that the “inferior magistrates” in Canada would not be able to surrender another fugitive slave. Should they try, he explained, the “friends of the slave in England” would intervene to make sure that “no wrong practice took place” under Article X.374

Ashburton’s conciliatory words initially placated the American abolitionists, including Lewis Tappan who was certain that they would also “quiet the fears of the twelve thousand colored inhabitants of Canada.”375 British anti-slavery activists, however, were not so easily pacified. When Thomas Clarkson, a leading British abolitionist, first read the extradition article, he was relieved to see that the crime of

374 Ibid.

375 Ibid.

141 running away had not been included as an extraditable offense, but he was disappointed to find that robbery remained on the list. Because of this addition, Clarkson posited, the treaty would be “most disastrous” for the fugitive slave population in Canada, for nearly every slave who escaped from his master was guilty of some minor theft. He predicted that slave owners, who had already been “encouraged” by Nelson Hackett’s surrender, would almost immediately begin to “pester our government in Canada with thousands of applications” for extradition if the treaty was ratified.376

The safety and security of the runaway slave in Canada, therefore, hinged on the colonial magistrates’ definition of robbery. It remained to be seen whether or not future

Canadian officials would take the unique extenuating circumstances of slave flight into account when they handed down their rulings, or if they would instead regard fugitive slaves as they would any other petty criminal. Recognizing that the Canadian officials in charge of these cases would most likely be unwilling or unable to peel back the layers of nuance baked into such cases, Clarkson suggested that all formerly enslaved people should be exempt from the treaty’s conditions. If the British authorities refused to go this far, he proposed several protective measures that would “frustrate the designs” of slave hunters including that accused slaves be provided counsel, that Southern slaveholders be required to provide satisfactory evidence, and that the fugitive slave should be given every opportunity “to tell his own tale.”377

376 Thomas Clarkson, “Ashburton Treaty: The Tenth Article,” The British and Foreign Anti- Slavery Reporter, Volume 1: 1840 (1843, rpnt.; London: Kraus Reprint, 1969), 175.

377 Ibid.

142

In Clarkson’s mind, British abolitionism and legalism were bound up together, tethered by an underlying concern for the natural rights of all human beings. Including these additional provisions, Clarkson claimed, would not be contradicting Great Britain’s commitment to a color-blind judicial system. In fact, these measures were predicated on the “soundest principles of law” and would ensure that justice was met. These precautions would work to counterbalance the disproportional punishments meted out to returned fugitive slaves. In the South, Clarkson informed the British authorities, fugitive slaves convicted of petty theft might be tortured, starved, or even put to death. The

British government, he asserted, had a duty to prevent such an abuse of justice and protect fugitive slaves from meeting this fate. Before it ratified the treaty, Clarkson called on the Parliament to either exclude former slaves from it, or “do away [with] the tenth article altogether.”378

If the British legislators modified the treaty in this way, Clarkson argued, they would strengthen the Empire on several different fronts. In one respect, these legislators would bring the colonial periphery in line with the abolitionist metropole, and would cement Britain’s reputation as the Great Emancipator. More importantly, though, they would be protecting a vulnerable population of respectable subjects who had repeatedly proven their worth to the Empire. To demonstrate black refugees’ value to the Empire,

Clarkson included “a very short history” of the black population in Canada, hoping to show that black Canadians were a useful addition of resourceful subjects to the British

Empire.379 In this brief overview, Clarkson adopted the terms of black Canadians’

378 Ibid.

379 Ibid.

143 language of subjecthood and emphasized their productivity, respectability, and loyalty.

After overcoming a harrowing journey to reach their “asylum of liberty,” he explained, black refugees had successfully “built huts or cottages, cultivated the land, erected places of worship, and established schools.”380 Since their arrival in Canada, he went on, these black migrants had also gained the “esteem of their neighbors” through their sobriety and honesty.381 Black refugees had even proven to be unusually loyal to the British Crown in spite of the “disaffection which prevails in Canada.” From this statement, it was clear that

Clarkson was referring to black troops’ recent service in the Mackezie Rebellion, where black migrants had demonstrated that they would “go through fire and water” to serve the

Empire. In his assessment, Clarkson echoed Maurice Morgann’s vision of an empire united by both allegiance and consumption. He pointed out that black migrants had already become eager consumers of British goods, but they would consume them to an even greater extent as they increased in number “by fresh fugitives and fresh births.”

With all of these factors in mind, Clarkson was confident that Lord Ashburton would fulfill his duty to this loyal “little colony” and would shield them from slaveholders’ designs. In a final note meant to both shame and inspire the statesman, he recalled the

Mansfield declaration from the Somerset case and finished his address with the phrase

“fiat justitia, ruat cœlum.”382

380 Ibid., 175-6.

381 Ibid., 176.

382 Ibid; This translates to “Let justice be done, though the Heavens may fall.” See Wise, Though the Heavens May Fall, 34; Justin Buckley Dyer, Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 37-74; Also see, Wiecek, “Somerset: Lord Mansfield and the Legitimacy of Slavery in the Anglo-American World,” 103-4.

144

Other British abolitionists followed Clarkson’s lead, their cries of outrage swelling to a chorus that would be heard in the halls of Parliament. Charles Stuart denounced the tenth article as “our pledge to the United States that we will be slavecatchers for her benefit.”383 The Executive Committee of the British and Foreign

Anti-Slavery Society agreed with this conclusion and argued that there was no way to protect former slaves without “excepting the fugitive slave altogether from its operation.”

Because Southern slaveholders were propelled by a “double motive” to not only retrieve lost property but also to deter future runaways, they would go to great lengths to “hide their frauds under the cover of law” by manufacturing charges and fabricating evidence.384 This sentiment reverberated throughout the British isles, and twenty-four abolitionists groups from Bath to Bristol sent petitions to the House of Parliament.385 In these memorials, anti-slavery activists pointed to Hackett’s surrender and subsequent re- enslavement as conclusive proof that Great Britain could not enter into such a treaty with a nation that “makes one law for a white man and another for a black man.”386 They also placed the plight of fugitive slaves in Canada within the greater story of British abolitionism and declared that ratifying the treaty would betray the efforts of those

383 Stuart quoted in Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 173.

384 The Anti-Slavery Reporter, July 12, 1843.

385 Petitions were sent to the Parliament from Plymouth, Bath, Glouchester, Bristol, Worchester, Preseton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool, Colchester, Hitchin, Southampton, Norwich, Ross, Hereford, Neath, Woolbridge, Exeter, Aberdeen, Belfast, as well as the Hibernian and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Societies. See Murray, “The Extradition of Fugitive Slaves,” 310; Anti-Slavery Reporter, March 22, 1843.

386 “The Humble Petition of the Committee of the Bath Anti-Slavery Society,” in Appendix of the Reports of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Public Petitions, Session 1843, Parliamentary Papers, 117.

145

Britons who “sacrificed twenty millions to free their country from the crime of slavery.”

They could only hope that their Parliament would now remember that sacrifice and would maintain the “sacred integrity of the British soil.”387

These petitions successfully sparked debate in both Houses of Parliament. On the floor of the House of Commons, British legislators picked over the terms of the treaty, sparring over their implications and ramifications. One legislator, Mr. V. Smith, took up the abolitionists’ mantel and argued that the treaty should “exclude fugitive slaves altogether.”388 Doing so would not be an affront to English color-blind justice, he argued, but instead was the only way to ensure such justice was protected. For even if an accused slave was acquitted of an alleged crime, he would still be subject to “all the vindictive feelings of [his] owner,” who would undoubtedly “wreak vengeance on him.”389 Another legislator, William Macaulay, agreed and said that the British government should scrap the whole article until the United States abolished human bondage. Any good scheme of extradition, he posited, could only exist between two contracting states who shared “a general assimilation of laws, morals and feelings.”390 If such a treaty could be drawn up between Great Britain and the Northern states of America, Macaulay offered, then he would gladly support it, but the “unfortunate relations between master and slave” in the

387 “The Humble Petition of the Liverpool Anti-Slavery Committee,” in ibid., 256; Thomas Clarkson employed similar rhetoric in his letter to the Earl of Aberdeen, the Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He claimed that it was one of Great Britain’s “chief glories” that the moment a slave touched British soil “he was free, and became entitled to protection for his life, liberty and his property.” See, “Letter from Thomas Clarkson to the Earl of Aberdeen, on the Extradition Clause of the Treaty,” reprinted in Abel and Klingberg, eds., A Sidelight on Anglo-American Relations, 122.

388 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Volume 71, August 11, 1843, 561.

389 Ibid., 564.

390 Ibid., 569.

146

South formed an unbridgeable moral chasm between the two nations. As long as it continued to embrace chattel slavery, he asserted, the United States existed apart from the community of civilized nations, and therefore could not be treated with the same courtesy.391 By placing the United States outside of this community, Macaulay employed the same rhetorical techniques abolitionists had deployed in their defense of the Creole slaves, where the language of international law became a vehicle of dissent. Sir Benjamin

Hawes crystallized these sentiments when he speculated that the treaty would invariably lead to “an encroachment on the principle to which England owed so much of her glory—the principle that a slave, the moment he touched her soil, became a free man.”

To prevent such an outcome, he proposed a motion that would effectively exclude all former slaves from the treaty’s operation.392

Not all political leaders agreed with these critiques. The British Attorney General,

Sir Frederick Pollock, believed that providing a blanket exemption for fugitive slaves would become an open invitation to criminals and thieves. Such a “plain declaration” of clemency would not only threaten the Canadian population, he warned, but would also besmirch the “character of the British nation.”393 Pollock batted away the question of whether or not a fugitive slave would receive a fair trial once returned to the United

States. It was not the British government’s responsibility to oversee the judicial system in other nations nor take responsibility for the outcome of those proceedings; it was only the

391 Ibid., 569-70.

392 Ibid., 580-585.

393 Ibid., 566.

147 government’s duty to deliver up a criminal “whether the man had been a slave or not.”394

In the House of Lords, Aberdeen took a similar approach and burrowed in strictly legalistic arguments and reassured any nervous legislators that the prediction that fugitive slaves would be wantonly given up to the Americans was simply an “unfounded notion.”

Not only was a fugitive slave guilty of no crime when he escaped from a state of bondage, but he was also “entitled to the sympathy and encouragement of all those who were animated by Christian feelings.”395 Lord Stanley supported the Attorney General and, in an argument that recalled Sir Francis Bond Head in the Moseby case, claimed that the treaty gave the fugitive slave that same rights as any other British subject in the

Empire. Ultimately, this line of reasoning triumphed, and Hawes’s motion was defeated by 59 votes to 25. 396

At first glance, it seemed that the abolitionists’ campaign had failed. The treaty passed largely unchanged, the motion to exempt fugitive slaves left without a pulse on the Parliament floor. Historian Alexander L. Murray, in his discussion of the treaty ratification process, brushed off the abolitionists’ efforts to revise Article X as “irrelevant and merely coincidental” and characterized the concessions British officials made to their appeals as “very slight.397 Murray argued that the outlines of the article largely followed the contours of the Law Officers’ ruling in the Jesse Happy case, where the motivation behind a theft was the deciding factor, not the fugitive’s status as a former slave. This

394 Ibid.

395 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, Volume 70, June 30, 1843, 473.

396 Ibid., 578.

397 Murray, “The Extradition of Fugitive Slaves from Canada,” 312 n.60.

148 conclusion, however, overlooks several important modifications made to the tenth article.

Under the Webster-Ashburton treaty, only the federal government of the United States could make an extradition request, a measure intended to curtail requests from Southern governors. Not only this, but under the weight of abolitionist pressure, the British

Colonial Office sent detailed instructions about proper extradition procedure to their provincial governors in both Canada and the Bahamas to prevent additional blusters. A major component of these instructions included a requirement that colonial governors send all depositions in support of extradition requests to the imperial authorities in

London.398 Abolitionists throughout the Atlantic breathed a sigh of relief, convinced that they had successfully beat back Southern aggression and had “restored the security of the

12,000 ex-slaves living in Canada.”399

While these measures may initially seem like nothing more than minor bureaucratic tweaks to an existing policy, they served as firewalls against future requests and saved countless fugitive slaves from meeting Nelson Hackett’s fate. The impact of these changes was not lost upon Southern politicians who quickly realized how these bureaucratic hurdles would frustrate slaveholders’ requests. Abel Upshur, Secretary of

State and Virginia statesmen, told the British authorities that their position on slave crime was “somewhat extraordinary” in its contradictions, and he sneered that his own government would never “sanction such a construction.” This was particularly true when it came to slave theft, where the British government refused to distinguish between “the

398 “Copy of a Despatch from Lord Stanley to the Governors of Her Majesty’s Colonial Possessions,” November 21, 1843, House of Commons Sessional Papers, Volume 36, Doc. 64.

399 “Thomas Clarkson to Joseph Sturge,” May 14, 1844, in British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, May 29, 1844.

149 intention and the motive of the act.”400 He pointed out that English law did not take into account the “ulterior object [a thief] hopes to accomplish” when he committed his crime; it only asked “did he mean to steal?”401 Missouri Senator Thomas Benton quickly recognized the legal loopholes embedded in the treaty and complained that in Canada

“abolitionism is the policy of the government, the voice of the law, and the spirit of the people.”402 His voice became one of the loudest in a chorus of Southern dissent, as slaveholders railed against Great Britain’s flagrantly anti-slavery foreign policy.

These Southerners’ critiques were not unfounded. In the years between 1847 and

1861, British and Canadian officials refused to surrender a fugitive slave on five separate occasions. But the abolitionist campaign against the tenth article achieved much more than a narrow legal ruling; it also marked a fundamental shift in abolitionist rhetorical strategies. The collision of the Hackett surrender and the Creole case provided anti- slavery activists a unique opportunity to prosecute the peculiar institution in the international court of public opinion. Against this backdrop, anti-slavery advocates were able to shine an even brighter spotlight on the cracks in slavery’s legal foundations and expose slaveholders’ bloated importance within the federal government. By highlighting

Southerners’ command of the state department, then, American abolitionists uncovered a successful rhetorical attack against the Slave Power that could sway even the most

400 “Dispatch from Mr. Upshur to Mr. Everett,” August 8, 1843, reprinted in “Correspondence in relation to the tenth article of the treaty of Washington, providing for the reciprocal surrender of fugitive criminals,” Sessional Documents, 28th Congress, 1st Session, Document 135, 4. Emphasis in original.

401 Congressional Globe, 28th Congress, 1st Session, March 5, 1844, 343-4, 246-52.

402 Benton quoted in Murray, “The Extradition of Fugitive Slaves,” 309-10.

150 skeptical Northern voter. This technique would gain even greater currency only a few years later when U.S. soldiers marched into Mexican territory for Southern slaveholders’ benefit.403

The Hackett and Creole cases, and the debates they inspired, did more than clarify the geographic boundaries of the abolitionist coalition. They also shed light on a broader shift within the abolitionist community, as more and more anti-slavery advocates began questioning the ideological foundations of their own movement. Through their emphatic embrace of Hackett and the Creole rebels, abolitionists also embraced a fundamentally new tactic in their crusade against human bondage. When they chose to campaign on behalf of a petty thief and a group of shipboard mutineers, anti-slavery activists also chose to head into uncharted territory that diverged from the well trodden path of moral suasion. By describing slave criminals as the “moral superiors” of those slaveholders who held them in bondage, abolitionists demonstrated the ways in which slavery inverted the moral calculus that undergirded Anglo-American legal principles.404

The Hackett and Creole controversies planted the seeds of abolitionists’ “higher law” ideology, as these advocates transformed their moral critiques into a fully formed legal philosophy. During the fugitive slave crisis of the 1850s, this ideology would force courts to stretch and reinterpret, and in some cases nullify, legal statutes in favor of freedom and against slavery.

And yet, even though many abolitionists heralded the campaign to modify Article

X as “striking evidence” of the “superiority of calm and deliberate reason, over that of

403 Murray, “Canada and the Anglo-American Slavery Movement,” 197, 531-2, 535, 539.

404 Giddings quoted in Sinha, The Slave’s Cause, 415. 151 hatred and inflamed passion,” the Hackett affair underscored the inherent insecurity of black belonging on the North American continent and highlighted the limitations of subjecthood as a blanket protection for black refugees.405 While British laws liberated the runaway slave from the chains of bondage, they could not emancipate him from trial “for which even British born subjects would be held responsible.”406 Great Britain’s colorblind judicial system, which once pulled black refugees fleeing legal discrimination, now threatened to push them back into enslavement. For some black Canadians, the

Hackett surrender had forever severed the tie between subject and sovereign. Unwilling to continue living in constant fear, nearly 150 black migrants chose to emigrate to the

West Indies, citing the Canadian government’s “utmost readiness” to surrender “one of our brethren” to the Slave Power as their primary motivation for leaving. While these black emigrants remained within the British Empire, they believed that they would only enjoy “the extensive field for [their] advancement and improvement” once they lived among “men with the same complexion as [themselves].”407

Even as these disillusioned refugees boarded ships headed to the Caribbean, many more Canadians were reassured by British abolitionists’ efforts to reform the Webster-

Ashburton Treaty in their favor. Thus, in a strange twist of fate, the extradition of an

American slave served to draw black Canadians further into the British imperial community. As John Scoble noted, Hackett’s return and the fight to modify Article X that

405 “Annual Report of the Colored Vigilant Committee of Detroit,”in Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers, 399.

406 “Letter from Sir Francis Bond Head to Lord Glenelg,” October 8, 1837, reprinted in Sir Francis B. Head, A Narrative (London: John Murray, 1839), 201.

407 “Colored Population,” Patriot [London], September 30, 1842. 152 followed it had sparked a “deep and renewed interest” in those black migrants who had

“sought refuge from oppression” in the Canadian colony.408 This revitalized interest materialized in the pages of the BFASS’s annual reports, where the plight of Canada’s refugees figured prominently. Not only did the Society devote a considerable portion of its annual report to covering the extradition controversy, but it also placed this coverage in the “Home Operations” section, as opposed to the “Foreign Operations” section, which dealt with the plight of non-British subjects such as American or Brazilian slaves. In the society’s next annual report, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty fell under the heading of

“Fugitive Slaves within the British Dominions,” alongside reports on the condition of emancipated blacks in the West Indies, the abolition of slavery in British East India, and

U.S. black seamen laws that threatened “the rights and liberties of British subjects.”409 In this way, the fight to protect fugitive slaves from the threat of extradition became a piece of a larger struggle to protect the rights and liberties of British subjects’ worldwide, and black refugees became firmly situated within the British imperial community. During the extradition crisis, the machinery of this anti-slavery community would become a conduit between black refugees in Canada and British legislators in Parliament and provided black Canadians the institutional tools needed to make direct appeals to imperial authorities.

408 Ibid.

409 The Fourth Annual Report of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, throughout the world, presented to the general meeting held in Exeter Hall, on Friday 21st, 1843 (London: Printed for the Society, 1843), 18-28; The Fifth Annual Report of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, through the world, presented to the general meeting held in Exeter Hall, on Friday, May 17th, 1844 (London: Printed for the Society, 1844), 26. 153

Chapter Five: “Like an ominous black cloud:” Black Canadian Society and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Wilson Benson had never known a man to refuse molasses. But when he offered a spoonful of the sweet syrup to the stowaway with the white beard and dark skin, the man shook his head violently and eyed the spoon with suspicion and disgust. For the man, a runaway slave named Sambo, the dark syrup was the product of physical violence and mental abuse, the very embodiment of the life he was so desperately fleeing. He understood the hours of toil that produced the spoonful of sap and could never eat the stuff without those memories souring the taste. Wilson and the runaway slave were tucked away in a storage closet, squeezed in between heads of cabbage and bags of potatoes meant for the journey across Lake Ontario. As they bantered, two American slave catchers paced back and forth along the boat deck, squinting down at the floorboards and eyeing the cabin doors. When the Captain of the ship first discovered the runaway and his accomplice, he threatened to turn the ship around, worried that his crew would be implicated in the fugitive’s escape. But then, there was a moment of silence.

The Captain stared back at the receding shoreline, watching the edges of New York fade from view. He then glanced up at the ship’s rigging, and exhaled, “Blow, breezes, blow!”410

410 Wilson Benson, Life and Adventures of Wilson Benson, Written by Himself (Toronto: Hunter, Rose, & Co. Printers, 1876), 35. 154

At the time, Wilson Benson, an Irish immigrant who had only spent a few months in

Canada, could not fully understand the implications of his act. In assisting a fugitive slave, Benson and the Captain suddenly became conductors in the Underground Railroad, and inserted themselves into a conflict that spanned the North American continent and reached across the Atlantic Ocean. When the Rose of Milton finally landed in Toronto, the two men kept watch as Sambo scuttled off the boat and melted into the crowd lined up along the harbor. Even months after their brief encounter, Sambo would still come up to Benson whenever they met on the street and thank the young man for helping him finally reach “deliverance” on Canadian soil.411

The Canada that Sambo encountered when he landed on the other side of the lake in 1852, however, was a land transformed. With each day that passed after the Fugitive

Slave Act came into law, hundreds and thousands of black refugees trekked northward

“leaving behind them all the little they [had] acquired since they escaped slavery.” In

December of 1850, Hiram Wilson reported that no less than three thousand black migrants had crossed the Canadian border since September and that if it had not been for the rising abolitionist sentiment in the North there “would have been thousands more.”

Every Sunday he watched as throngs of recent refugees filed into his church and he could only imagine that what a similar phenomenon was occurring across Southern Ontario. 412

Henry Bibb, a former slave who had recently migrated to Canada himself, published frequent reports on the number of fugitives arriving at Sandwich across the Detroit River and cheerfully commented that the Underground Railroad was obviously “doing good

411 Ibid.

412 Liberator, December 13, 1850.

155 business.”413 The exodus was so noticeable that a writer for the Liberator in Pittsburgh could keep a running tally of the daily departures. “Nearly all the waiters in the hotels have fled to Canada,” he reported, “Sunday 30 fled; on Monday 40; on Tuesday 50; on

Wednesday 30 and up to this time the number that has left will not fall short of 300. They went in large bodies, armed with pistols and bowie knives, determined to die rather than be capture.”414 These fugitives traveled in railroad cars and steam ships, on foot and on horseback, convinced that the new law had pushed the Mason-Dixon line to the

American-Canadian border.

Even as they began constructing new lives for themselves under the “mild and benignant sway of Queen Victoria’s scepter,” black refugees continued to feel like they straddled two worlds while never truly belonging to either.415 Beyond the daily exigencies that inevitably come with forced departure, black émigrés were also forced to grapple with questions of national allegiance, political persuasion, and racial identity.

Unwilling to completely sever all ties to the United States, many of these new migrants continued to view themselves as American expatriates, driven to British lands by fear of re-enslavement or kidnapping. While they were grateful to the British Crown for their legal freedom, American exiles remained torn between their racial and national selves

413 Voice of the Fugitive, April 22, 1852.

414 Liberator, October 4, 1850; Also see, Fred Landon, “The Negro Migration to Canada after the Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act,” The Journal of Negro History 5, no. 1 (1920): 23-36.

415 “Petition from American Exiles in Canada,” Voice of the Fugitive, February 26, 1851.

156 and experienced the tortured self-awareness W.E.B. Du Bois would later characterize as

“double consciousness.”416

In Canada, these internal struggles also took place in public forums as free black and fugitive slave émigrés confronted realities of exile. In newspaper columns and public speeches, black refugees openly wrangled with the promises and problems that came with

Canadian emigration. While these debates had long characterized the black Canadian experience, they were amplified in the 1850s when a chorus of new voices joined the discussion. In particular, after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Canada became an outpost for prominent black leaders like Henry Bibb, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Samuel

Ringgold Ward, and Martin Delany, whose conflicting visions for black Canadian identity often threatened to fracture a fragile community.417

Even though many black migrants refused to abandon their claims to American citizenship, many more wholeheartedly embraced their new identity as British nationals and strove to incorporate themselves into the Empire. To demonstrate their commitment to their newfound home, these recent arrivals adopted many of the rhetorical and representational strategies that African Canadians had developed over the decades.

During this period, that language of subjecthood black migrants had first developed in the

1830s gained renewed vitality as new migrants expanded its vocabulary and refined its

416 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk; Essays and Sketches (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903), 202; Also see, Dickson D. Bruce Jr., “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness,” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 64, no. 2 (1992): 299-309; Frank M. Kirkland, “On Du Bois’s Notion of Double Consciousness,” Philosophy Compass 8, no. 2 (2013): 137-148; Also see, George Elliot Clarke, “Must All Blackness Be American?: Locating Canada in Borden’s ‘Tightrope Time,’ or Nationalizing Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 28 (1996): 56-71.

417 Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787-1863 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975). 157 ideology. While these recent refugees still couched their claims to British subjecthood in terms of economic productivity, social respectability, and political loyalty, they also deployed them as attacks against the racial oppression that gripped their lives and enslaved their families.

Although black Canadians’ appeals for imperial inclusion had always challenged racialized hierarchies, these campaigns gained newfound sophistication as experienced black abolitionists from the United States began spearheading them. One of the great ironies of the Fugitive Slave Law was that it drove both fledgling and seasoned anti- slavery activists out of the United States and into Canada, thus fostering the creation of a new site of resistance beyond the American government’s reach. These new emigrants were not only former slaves who sought employment as farmhands and dock workers, they were also hoteliers and restaurant owners, writers and waiters, barbers and haberdashers. Unlike runaways, who came with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, these were men and women with investment capital in their pockets and institutional knowledge. As Karolyn Smardz has noted, these were men and women who were “organizers of anti-slavery leagues, debating and literary societies, fraternal and benevolent associations, educational institutions, and fugitive slave relief and employment agencies.”418

This organizational expertise would become vital to carrying out an effective counteroffensive against the rising Slave Power.419 In a letter to Henry Bibb, James

418 Karolyn Smardz Frost, “Communities of Resistance: African Canadians and African Americans in Antebellum Toronto,” Ontario History 99, no. 1 (2007): 58.

419 Ibid., 52-4.

158

Theodore Holly proposed that Canada had become the “central authority” of the anti- slavery movement and it was the “duty of the whole free colored population of the United

States” to support the refugees settling there. He wholeheartedly endorsed emigration to the British colony over any other colonizationist schemes that sent black refugees to

Africa, the West Indies, or Haiti. Canada’s equal laws and greater economic opportunities ensured that fugitive slaves and free blacks would be able to free themselves from “the drudging employment of menials” and “lay the foundation of their own future greatness,” while the colony’s position on the North American colony meant that black migrants could continue to engage in meaningful anti-slavery work. Only a short distance North instead of an ocean away, Canada provided the ideal home base for an active abolitionist coalition. Holly cheerfully suggested that black migrants should “swarm in a ceaseless tide to Canada West, and hang like an ominous black cloud” over the United States.420

Under the protection of the British flag, these black leaders would use their organizational expertise to build upon the anti-slavery foundation African Canadians had first laid in the 1830s and 40s.

Therefore, even though Canada had long served a symbolic role in the fight against human bondage, it now played a pivotal, practical part in this battle. As black refugees established newspapers, conventions, churches, relief societies, and abolitionist organizations they mounted a series of rhetorical, legal, and political attacks against

420 “Letter from James Theodore Holly to Henry Bibb,” May 1851, in Peter C. Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume 2, Canada (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 138-9.

159

Southern slavery.421 Through these organizations, recent arrivals channeled and elaborated upon black Canadians’ language of subjecthood and furthered their mission to establish themselves as valuable members of the imperial community who contributed

“their energy and industry to the wealth of their adopted country.”422

Even though the American Anti-Slavery Society claimed that white Canadians welcomed these new migrants “with remarkable kindness,” not all Anglo-Canadians cheered on the mass influx of refugees.423 For instance, an editor for the Toronto Colonist nervously reported that fugitives were filing across at a pace that was “rather too fast for the good of the Province.”424 While white Canadians abhorred slavery, this did not necessarily mean that they believed fugitive slaves were “a desirable class of immigrants in Canada, especially when they come in large numbers.”425 To discourage additional migrants, some white Canadians suggested that the provincial legislature enact a poll tax on “American Negroes immigrating to this Province,” introduce legal measures that would prohibit any “amalgamation,” and reconsider whether or not it be “politic to allow

421 Asaka, “Race Across Empire and Republic,” 159; Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 178-80; William H. Pease and Jane Pease, Black Utopia: Negro Communal Experiments in America (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963).

422 Provincial Freeman, March 18, 1853, N40, AO; Jane Rhodes, “The Contestation over National Identity: Nineteenth-Century Black Americans in Canada,” Canadian Review of American Studies 30, no. 2 (2000): 175. .

423 Annual Report of the American Anti-Slavery Society for 1851 (New York: American Anti- Slavery Society, 1851), 31.

424 The Colonist [Toronto], April 27, 1855.

425 Ibid.; Also see Donald G. Simpson, “Blacks in Ontario from Earliest Times to 1870,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Western Ontario, 1971), 466-7.

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[black refugees] the right of suffrage.”426 While these same individuals considered it their duty as British subjects to condemn the institution of slavery, they simultaneously argued that this same “patriotism” led them to “proclaim against having our country overrun by blacks, many of whom are woefully depraved by their former mode of life.”427

Anti-black sentiment did not begin with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, though. While racial prejudice had long been a latent presence in Canadian society, it erupted in 1849 when white settlers in the Western District learned of about William

King’s plans to erect a black settlement in their neighborhood. William King, an Irish- born minister in the Presbyterian Church who had manumitted slaves he had inherited, hoped to establish the settlement so he could “improve the social and moral condition” of the “coloured population of Canada” after they had suffered under “the debasing influence exerted by Slavery on their character.”428 King believed that the settlement would encourage former slaves to achieve a self-sufficient lifestyles as farmers and

“owners of the soil,” “improve their religious condition,” and eventually “educate their children.” Once they did so, King believed, they would be able to make claims to British subjecthood and “protect their rights and secure their interests” in Canada.429 While

426 Chatham Chronicle, October 16, 1849, NJ/FM/521, LAC.

427 The Colonist quoted in [Toronto], September 25, 1851 Reel N-12928, LAC.

428 Constitution of the Elgin Association, Buxton Mission and Elgin Settlement Papers, Reel C-2223, 636, LAC (first two quotations); The Ecclesiastical and Missionary Record for the Presbyterian Church of Canada 5, no. 3 (January, 1849), 5 (third quotation); For more general information on the Elgin association, see Sharon A. Roger Hepburn, Crossing the Border: A Free Black Community in Canada (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 41-58; For more on William King, see Annie S. Jameson, William King, Friend and Champion of Slaves (Toronto: Missions in Evangelicalism, 1925); Victor Ulman, Look to the North Star: A Life of William King (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).

429 Constitution of the Elgin Association, C-2223, 636, LAC. 161 initially devised by a white minister, the founding principles of the Elgin settlement clearly followed the blueprint black Canadians had sketched out for two decades because it put forth economic self-reliance, social respectability, and political loyalty as the surest path to British subject status.

Despite these benign intentions, the founders of the Elgin settlement met strong resistance from white Canadians who believed that this land should be set aside for the

“thousands of countrymen of our own colour.”430 Led by Edwin Larwill, three hundred discontented citizens from “Chatham and its vicinity” met at the Royal Exchange Hotel on August 18, 1849 to discuss how they might prevent “the partial colonizing of colored people in the settled township of this District.”431 To voice their dissent, they drew up a petition addressed to the Governor-General and their “Fellow Subjects,” in which they described the Elgin settlement as a “colony of Vicious Blacks” that would pose a danger to “every Interest of Society.”432

The petitioners justified their opposition to the settlement on several different grounds. The first of these relied on racialized notions of natural law. The white

Canadians claimed that the “fast increasing emigration, and settlement amongst us of the

African race” defied the natural order of the races. Arguing that Nature had “divided the

430 Chatham Chronicle, February 5, 1850, NJ/FM/521, LAC; Also see, William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, “Opposition to the Founding of the Elgin Settlement,” Canadian Historical Review 38, no. 1 (1957): 202-18; Fred Landon, “The Buxton Settlement in Canada,” Journal of Negro History 4, no. 1 (1918): 360-67.

431 Chatham Chronicle, August 21, 1849, NJ/FM/521, LAC.

432 “Memorial of the Inhabitants of Raleigh Township and Vicinity,” William King Papers, MG-24, J-14, 515-19, LAC.

162 same great family [of the human race] into distinct species for good and wise purpose,” it was their duty to “follow her dictates, and obey her Laws.” The Elgin settlement, in their eyes, clearly violated this careful balance between the races for its “avowed object” was to “encourage settlement in old and well established communities, of a race of people which is destined by nature to be distinct and separate from us.” They feared the settlement would invariably bring about the great evil of amalgamation, which was a

“necessary and hideous attendant” of such integrationist projects.433 In a similar vein, the editors of the Chatham Western Planet employed climatic terminology to argue that the recent refugees should not consider Canada their “permanent home” because “Nature, in a discriminating mood, fitted the colored man to inhabit those regions of the sun, which to the Caucasian race are fatal.” This did not mean that black refugees should be ousted from the Queen’s dominions, but black refugees should instead turn their gaze towards the West Indies, where they would be better suited both “constitutionally and physically.”434

White Canadians did not only make abstract arguments, however, they also associated fugitive slaves with specific characteristics that would make them dangerous members of an agricultural settler community. In direct contrast to the industrious white settlers, the petitioners contended, former slaves came to the colony “enshrouded in ignorance, vicious, and indolent.”435 The fact that these black refugees had escaped from

433 Chatham Chronicle, August 21, 1849; British Colonist, August 31, 1849.

434 Western Planet [Chatham], October 11, 1854; Also see, Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada (New York: Routledge, 1999), 30-33.

435 Chatham Chronicle, February 5, 1850, NJ/FM/521, LAC.

163 their former plantations only confirmed these white Canadians’ negative impressions.

Fugitive slaves, they believed, were “the very worst specimens of that neglected race” and were most likely also “fugitives from justice.” Even if they did not commit crimes before arriving in Canada, however, these runaways would be unable to adapt to life in a free society. After growing up in a state of “bondage and servility,” the petitioners reasoned, former slaves would be “totally ignorant” of the political and social responsibilities expected of them as British subjects.436

Edwin Larwill and his fellow petitioners did not see any contradiction between their anti-black dogma and their position as subjects in an abolitionist empire.

Throughout their remarks, Larwill and the petitioners were sure to emphasize that their opposition to the settlement of black refugees “had nothing to do with our desire to see slavery abolished.” But the premise of racial equality was “purely an English idea . . . intended for an English atmosphere alone,” and could not exist in a colony like Canada.

With this statement, these petitioners revealed they ways in which British abolitionism and British imperialism came into conflict as colonial subjects struggled to accept metropolitan policy. Even though they were “well aware” that blacks enjoyed full legal and political equality “in other parts of our British dominions,” these white petitioners could never “tolerate such conduct” in their own colony.437

At the same time these white settlers lionized the British Parliament for “forever banish[ing] Slavery from the Empire,” they declared that this same body had never intended “that any portion of the inhabitants of her widespread realm should suffer

436 Ibid.,, August 21, 1849, NJ/FM/521, LAC.; British Colonist, August 31, 1849.

437 Chatham Chronicle, February 5, 1850, NJ/FM/521, LAC.

164 wrong” by “filling up our District with a race of people, upon whom we cannot look without a feeling of repulsion.”438 To them, the British Empire was not a worldwide community of equally valued members, but a hierarchical society divided into racially distinct zones. Larwill claimed that the notion of complete racial equality was a

“metropolitan fantasy” dreamt up by English abolitionists who had never experienced a true “collision with the Negro.” Had these same anti-slavery advocates believed that the city of London would be “inundated with West Indians” after emancipation, Larwill posited, they would have reconsidered their campaign.

Above all, though, the petitioners framed their critiques as a struggle between white subjects and black foreigners. Their address declare that it would be

“unconstitutionally impolitic and unjust” for the government to sell large portions of public land “in settled parts in this province, to foreigners.” This outrage was only heightened by the fact that these foreigners were also members of “a different branch of the human family.”439 Blackness, in their eyes, automatically disqualified new refugees from ever achieving British subjecthood in a settler colony. To cement this characterization by way of contrast, the petitioners presented themselves as “the respectable, intelligent, and industrious yeomanry of the Western District” at the same time they suggested that the provincial legislature pass a bill that would curtail the immigration of “all foreign Negroes.”440 Several townships across the Western District

438 Ibid.

439 Chatham Chronicle, August 21, 1849, NJ/FM/521, LAC; Also, British Colonist, August 31, 1849. Emphasis in original.

440 Chatham Chronicle, October 16, 1849, NJ/FM/521, LAC; British Colonist, December 24, 1849.

165 followed Raleigh’s lead and submitted petitions against the Elgin Association. Some suggested that black refugees be barred from “certain civil and political rights,” while others demanded that the new migrants be excluded entirely.441

Confronted with these discriminatory attacks, black refugees sprung into action.

In response to white settlers’ efforts to “place us in a separate and distinct classification,” the black community returned to that set of established rhetorical tactics they had relied upon for decades. Playing off Canadians’ anti-Americanism, black refugees claimed that white petitioners’ arguments reeked of Southern slavocracy and their designs to exclude black refugees as analogous to the “tyrannical proposition of the slave-holding Governor

Smith of Virginia, to force the from the slave State.” As they had for years, black migrants appealed to nationalistic sentiment, and decried the white petitioners’ proposals as affronts to “all the rights guaranteed to us by that glorious instrument—the British constitution—in common with all her Majesty’s law abiding subjects.” They were certain that that the proposals would never receive “any countenance or support” from “her Majesty’s loyal subjects who are possessed of true

British principles, and who love British connections.”442

Ironically, the Elgin settlement ultimately benefitted from the white petitioners’ campaign. The clash between white and black settlers led to a flurry of press attention as

Canadian and American newspapers followed the proceedings. Rumors floated across the

441 Journal of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, from the 14th day of May to the 10th day of August, both days inclusive, and in the thirteenth and fourteenth years of the reign of Our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria, being the 3rd Session of the 3rd Provincial (1850), xvii, 77, 220, LAC.

442 British Colonist, September 18, 1849.

166 headlines that King had charted a vessel in order to bring black refugees into the

Canadian colony by the shipload.443 These fantastical accounts, however, only served to heighten the settlement’s publicity and widen it reach. Abolitionists on both sides of the border were eager to send funds to prop up the fledgling settlement and black refugees flooded to the region to take part in its founding. In the end, despite the white petitioners’ wishes, the Governor-General refused to disavow King or his experiment and Elgin blossomed into one of the most successful black settlements in the colony.

White backlash only intensified after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. As he had in the fight against the Elgin settlement, Larwill once again led the charge against black immigration. In 1851, he and a cohort of white settlers drew up another petition demanding that the Canadian legislature reconsider enacting “certain measure for discouraging Negro Immigration into this Province.”444 Edwin Larwill’s voice was amplified by white Canadians’ worried reports across the colony. In an article originally published in the Montreal Commerical Advertiser but reprinted throughout the province, white Canadians listed black refugees’ undesirable traits by calling them “lazy, vicious, uneducated, and commonly criminal.” Such misfits, the reporter suggested, could never become valuable members of a colony populated by “honest, industrious, hard-working,

God-fearing countrymen.”445

443 Roger Hepburn, Crossing the Border, 58.

444 Journal of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, from the 20th of May to the 30th day of August, both days inclusive, and in the thirteenth and forty first years of the reign of Our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria, being the 4th session of the 3rd Provincial Parliament of Canada, 1851, p. 82, LAC.

445 Western Planet [Chatham], October 11, 1854.

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Black refugees were keenly aware of this prejudice against them. Henry Bibb, a former slave and prominent anti-slavery activist, considered this “color-phobia” an

“obnoxious and fatal disease” that was destined to “make havoc among the ignorant and vicious” if not cured. A vocal advocate for black emigration to Canada, Bibb did not believe that such prejudice was a natural outgrowth of Canadian hostility, but came from

“old Capt. Slavery” who was “striving to get a foot-old in Canada where many of the objects of his prey have settled under the protection of Her Majesty’s law.” It grabbed hold of “the very dregs of society” and made them “shudder” at the very idea of black refugees and “negro settlement.” In spite of this resistance, though, Bibb firmly believed that anti-slavery activism and education was “the very best remedy for it.”446

Samuel Ringgold Ward had a similar diagonosis for this prejudice. Although not a fugitive slave Ward still considered himself a refugee from American injustice. After participating in the , Ward was forced to leave his home in New York state and found safety in Canada.447 While Ward felt indebted to the Canadians for providing him safe haven, he could not pretend that the colony was “free from Negrophobia.” After describing an embarrassing encounter where he was denied a cabin on a Canadian ship

“sailing upon British, with a British subject for a captain,” Ward felt that the English boast of freedom from “social negrophobia” was as hollow as the “Yankee boast of democracy.” In spite of this, Ward remained hopeful that black refugees could overcome anti-black prejudice and make Canada their home. He laid out a systematic plan for racial

446 Henry Bibb, “Color-Phobia in Canada,” Voice of the Fugitive, May 21, 1851.

447 For more on Ward’s role in the Jerry Rescue, see Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada, & England (London: John Snow, 1855), 33.

168 uplift that closely followed the model black migrants had developed decades earlier with its interlocking elements of economic self-sufficiency, social respectability, and political loyalty. Ward, however, recognized that black Canadians could not simply act out these principles; they would also then need to carry out a relentless public campaign where they would broadcast their achievements through “the press and the tongue, in church and at the polls.”448

In order to cure Canada of the dreadful disease of prejudice, Ward and Bibb allied with Josiah Henson, another prominent black refugee who had established himself in

Canada several decades earlier. In September of 1851, they called for an anti-slavery convention that would unite black abolitionist from across the continent. At this meeting, black advocates drew a series of resolutions that closely followed the representational strategies black refugees had fashioned over the course of decades. Just as Austin Stewart had in the 1830s, Henry Bibb and Samuel Ringgold Ward suggested that black migrants

“abandon menial employments” and head out for the countryside to become “owners and tillers of the soil.” They even echoed his gendered rhetoric and declared that “every man” should seriously consider “becoming the owner of his homestead” and the primary provider of his household.449 If black men ever hoped to “command respect” in Canada, they proclaimed, they would have to “chop down the forest and countenance tilling the soil.”450 In so doing, black men in Canada would be committing a revolutionary act and

448 Samuel Ringgold Ward, “For the Voice of the Fugitive,” Voice of the Fugitive, November 5, 1851; Also see, Samuel Ringgold Ward, “On Canadian Color-Phobia,” Voice of the Fugitive, November 4, 1852.

449 “Call for a North American Convention,” Voice of the Fugitive, September 10, 1851.

450 “Temperance in Canada,” Voice of the Fugitive, January 15, 1851.

169 engaging in an international battle against human bondage. The convention attendees believed that by elevating themselves and throwing off the “dead weights” of dependence, black Canadian men would “strike the first blow” against slavery and prejudice.451

To achieve this lofty goal, these black leaders established a benevolent association aptly titled the Refugee Home Society. Originally formed in Detroit, the Refugee Home

Society later merged with the Canadian Fugitive Union Society, epitomizing the transnational networks black migrants forged across the American-Canadian border in the years following the Fugitive Slave Act’s passage.452 The Society’s founders aimed to purchase 50,000 acres of land in Canada, divide this land into small plots, and distribute these plots amongst the recent refugees. The Society would then encourage these new arrivals to engage in “agricultural pursuits,” which they believed were “the most certain road to independence and self-elevation.” Its architects firmly believed that this program would transform “homeless refugees from Southern slavery” into upstanding Canadian homesteaders.453

In order to promote their organization and justify its existence, the leaders of the

Refugee Home Society couched their project in the terminology of colonial settlerhood.

The Society, they contended, would not only provide black migrants with a safe and inviting community, it would also become a productive colony within the British Empire.

The leaders pointed to the “large and almost unlimited tracts of uninhabited and heavily

451 “Fugitive Slaves in Canada West,” Voice of the Fugitive, January 1, 1851.

452 Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 205.

453 “Fugitive Slaves in Canada West,” Voice of the Fugitive, January 1, 1851.

170 timbered land,” which the government considered “almost a nuisance.” Black migrants, however, would compel the “tall forest to bow in subjection” and would make the wilderness “‘bud and blossom like the rose.’” They would construct roads, build schools, erect churches, and pay taxes “freely every year for the support of the Government.” By taming this “howling wilderness,” therefore, black settlers would be providing a service to Canadian society and the British Empire that could not be matched by comparable

“Irish settlements, Dutch settlements, or French settlements.”454

While agricultural pursuits had long been a pillar of the black Canadian community, the Refugee Home Society expanded the scope of this enterprise as part of a hemispheric campaign against slavery. Recent American emigrants envisioned black

Canadian farmers as members of a “great agricultural league” that would bind free blacks and former slaves from the Northernmost reaches of Canada, the windy plains of the

United States, and balmy tropics of the West Indies into one cohesive economic unit.455

Henry Bibb, who spearheaded this effort, firmly believed that this coalition would bring down American slavery by striking at its foundation: economic profit.456

To achieve this, free blacks throughout the Western hemisphere would need to develop an economic alliance, predicated upon free labor, that could successfully compete with the Southern slave economy. “The remedy for slavery,” he believed, was

“in the hands of the colored population of North America and the British West Indian

454 “Prejudice Against Color in Canada,” Voice of the Fugitive, February 26, 1851.

455 “North American League Address,” Voice of the Fugitive, November 13, 1851.

456 Roger W. Hite, “Voice of a Fugitive: Henry Bibb and Ante-Bellum Black Separatism,” Journal of Black Studies 4, no. 3 (1974): 277.

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Colonies.” Bibb envisioned a reciprocal relationship between black commercial enterprises throughout the Atlantic where black Canadians farmers would produce “the flour, pork, &.c., now consumed in Jamaica,” in return for “free labor cotton, sugar, rice,

&.c., produced by colored men in Jamaica.” Eventually, he hoped, black people throughout the hemisphere would establish a chain of “free-labor stores” that would allow black farmers to compete with Southern products. By bringing free-labor cotton, sugar, and rice “into competition” with slave-grown products, this league would slowly eat away at slavery’s profits and undermine its reason for existence.457

The Refugee Home Society, however, was not solely intended to create robust agriculturists. It would also turn American exiles into “good, peaceable, loyal subjects” of the British Crown. A central component of this effort included promoting the “cause of

Temperance,” and only those who swore not to “sell or use intoxicating drinks,” could become a member of the society.458 The temperance movement served several purposes for black Canadians. From a purely pragmatic perspective, temperance freed up funds that could be used to ensure economic solvency. Adopting temperance also served as a powerful symbolic critique against Southern slaveholders, who black Canadians claimed drank and gambled with reckless abandon.459 But more importantly, as Afua Cooper has noted, “allegiance to temperance signified middle class respectability and good moral

457 Voice of the Fugitive, December 3, 1851; Also see, Voice of the Fugitive, December 17, and November 19, 1851.

458 “Fugitive Slaves in Canada West,” Voice of the Fugitive, January 1, 1851; For more on the Refugee Home Society, see Peter Carlesimo, “The Refugee Home Society: Its Origins, Operations, and Results,” (M.A. thesis, University of Windsor, 1973).

459 “Temperance in Canada,” Voice of the Fugitive, January 15, 1851.

172 character.”460 When white Canadians’ cried out that all formerly enslaved people were

“too ignorant and too brutally trained to make good citizens,” black refugees could pointing to their commitment to the temperance movement as a clear refutation of these claims.461 The temperance movement not only provided black Canadians moral capital, but also unified a disparate community through a shared experience and common cause.462

Beyond temperance societies, recent refugees also formed a variety of organizations meant to promote social uplift, moral instruction, and community building.

These ranged from the Young Men’s Excelsior Debating Club, the Toronto Literary

Association, the Provincial Union Association, the Provincial Association for the

Education and Elevation of Colored People, and the Provincial Freeman Association

(which supported the newspaper of the same name).463 When Benjamin Drew first visited the black community in Toronto, he found much to “gratify the philanthropist” and

“afford encouragement to the friends of emancipation everywhere.” He was particularly pleased to find that black refugees had established a lyceum where they held weekly

460 Cooper, “Doing Battle in Freedom’s Cause,” 288; Jan Noel, Canada Dry: Temperance Crusades before Confederation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 8-9, 12-16, 40, 150; Also see, Donald George Simpson, Under the North Star: Black Communities in Upper Canada Before Confederation (1867) (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2005), 267.

461 The Colonist reprinted in The Provincial Freeman, May 5, 1855.

462 Lorene Bridgen, “On Their Own Terms: Temperance in Southern Ontario’s Black Community (1830-1860),” Ontario History 101, no. 1 (2009): 64-82.

463 Ripley, ed. Black Abolitionist Papers, Volume 2, Canada, 378-9n; 485n; Jonathan William Walton, “Blacks in Buxton and Chatham, Ontario, 1830-1890: Did the 49th Parallel Make a Difference?” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1979), 63-321-27; Daniel G. Hill, “Negroes in Toronto: A Sociological Study of a Minority Group,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1960), 20-2.

173 debates and read original essays.464 Samuel Gridley Howe was similarly pleased when he visited Canada for the first time and saw that black migrants “earn a living, and gather property; they marry and respect women; they build churches and send their children to schools; they improve in manner and morals.” This was not because fugitives the were

“picked men” whose escape provided “proof of their superiority,” he made sure to add, but simply because they were “free men.”465

In order to showcase these achievements to the wider world, black Canadians believed it was essential to establish a network of black newspapers. Black migrants recognized that the printing press was a crucial “vehicle of thought” and “ruler of opinions” in Canada as much as it was in the United States. And because their “warfare” against racial discrimination would have to take place in the “field of thought,” black refugees considered an independent black press an essential weapon in their arsenal.466

As Jason Silverman has noted, the printing press “provided refugee blacks with a source of news, identity, and strength.”467

The black printing press in Canada was largely the product of two individuals.

The first was Henry Bibb, a young black abolitionist who cut his teeth as a Liberty Party partisan and established The Voice of the Fugitive on January 1st of 1851. Bibb, who had been a regular contributor to the the Signal of Liberty, the Emancipator, the Anti-Slavery

464 Drew, North-Side View of Slavery, 94-5.

465 Samuel Gridley Howe, The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West, A Report to the Free Men Inquiry Commission (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1864; reprt., New York: Arno Press, 1968), 102. 466 “Fugitive Slaves in Canada West,” Voice of the Fugitive, January 1, 1851.

467 Jason H. Silverman, “’We Shall Be Heard!’: The Development of the Fugitive Slave Press in Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 65, no. 1 (19841): 54.

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Bugle, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, and the National Anti-Slavery Standard, came to

Canada with a wealth of journalistic experience, and firmly believed that black refugees needed a printing press “independent of those who have always oppressed us.” Such a newspaper would allow black Canadians to “hang our banners on the outer wall,” so that all who passed could read about “why we struggle, and what we struggle for.”468

Henry Bibb in many ways embodied the transnational subjectivities many border- crossing African Americans experienced. Born in Oldham County, Kentucky to a slave woman and a white man, Bibb’s childhood and adolescence were punctuated by episodes of grief and loss. His brothers were sold away from him at a young age and he witnessed the death of his first child. After several failed attempts to run away, Bibb finally escaped his enslavement in 1841. When he arrived in Detroit a year later, Bibb quickly became an active player in the anti-slavery movement. He quickly gained recognition as an orator and became involved in both the Free Soil and Liberty parties.469 By 1849, he had risen the ranks as an abolitionist lecturer and had published his own autobiography. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Henry Bibb and his new wife Mary fled to Canada and resolved to “do battle in freedom’s cause” from across the border.470 Even after he settled in Ontario, Bibb continued to cross back into the United States to escort runaways across the Detroit River. In both his ideology and his actions, Bibb remained committed to a

468 “Fugitive Slaves in Canada West,” Voice of the Fugitive, January 1, 1851.

469 Theodore C. Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (New York: Russell & Russell, 1897).

470 Henry Bibb quoted in Afua Ava Pamela Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom’s Cause’: Henry Bibb, Abolitionism, Race Uplift, and Black Manhood, 1842-1854,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2000), 3.

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Pan-American and Pan-African vision and he always viewed the fight against human bondage as an international crusade.471

Bibb’s paper, The Voice of the Fugitive, also exemplified a transnational ethos. It was initially funded by a network of American and British abolitionists, the most prominent of these being Gerrit Smith, and it published letters from correspondents in far flung locales across North America and Europe.472 The Voice included articles from

Martin Delany in Pittsburgh, J.T. Fisher in Toronto, Charles Langston in Columbus,

Ohio, and Luis Matlack in New York. Across the Atlantic, Henry H. Garnet, Josiah

Henson, and James Pennington circulated the paper throughout the British Isles.473 While the newspaper’s editors were especially concerned with eradicating slavery on “American slavery,” they were also committed to “the immediate and unconditional abolition of chattel slavery every where.” Even though Henry Bibb intended to use the paper as a

“mouth piece for the refugees in Canada,” he also hoped the paper would serve as a forum to “speak out our sentiments as freemen upon all subjects within our sphere.” He published articles on “proslavery American policies,” the “arrival and condition of fugitive slaves,” the temperance movement, and educational reform.474

471 Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom’s Cause,’” 303; Also see, Fred Landon, “The Fugitive Slave Law and the Detroit River Frontier, 1850-61,” Detroit Historical Society Bulletin 7, no. 2 (1950): 5-9.

472 For more on the VOTF’s early fundraising efforts, see “Letter from Mary Bibb to Gerrit Smith,” November 8, 1850, Box 3, Gerrit Smith Collection, Syracuse University Archives.

473 Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom’s Cause,’” 304; 16.

474 Voice of the Fugitive, January 1, 1851.

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On a more fundamental level, though, the Voice of the Fugitive served as a space for recent refugees to fashion their own black British self. As Isaac Henson wrote in a letter to Bibb, the Voice would act as “a mighty trumpet” that would “reach across that

Atlantic Ocean” so the British may hear the appeals of “those refugees who have nobly pledged their all to the support of the Government.”475 These sentiments were reflected in the Voice’s logo. At the top of the newspaper was the crest of the British Crown, which included a lion and a unicorn accompanying a shield. On the shield read the Latin motto that translated to: “He is the Freeman whom the truth makes free, and all are Slaves beside.”476 The editors envisioned that in both its articles and presentation the newspaper would become “a manifestation of gratitude to the government of Great Britain,” which had so nobly protected their liberty “whenever and wherever” they “stepped upon her soil.”477 They encouraged all formerly enslaved people still living in the United States to emigrate to Canada “where the soil is untainted with human slavery” and where the fugitive was protected by “one of the most powerful governments on the globe.” As many black refugees had before them, the correspondents for the Voice appealed to

British constitutionalism and thanked Heaven for “the laws of Great Britain,” which allowed them to participate in “all the rights and privileges which other men enjoy.”478

475 Isaac J. Henson quoted in Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom’s Cause,’” 343; Isaac Henson, the son of Josiah Henson, lived in London for 15 years, attended college there, and was later ordained as a Wesleyan minister. Josiah Henson, An Autobiography of the Reverend Josiah Henson (1881; reprt., Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), 143.

476 See Voice of the Fugitive, September 21, 1851; Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom’s Cause,’” 303-4.

477 “Call for a North American Convention,” Voice of the Fugitive, September 10, 1851.

478 “An Address to the Colored Inhabitants of North America,” Voice of the Fugitive, October 22, 1851.

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Henry Bibb missed no opportunity to critique the “American despots,” who tyrannical held “the three millions and a half of our enslaved countrymen” in bondage, while he praised the British Government, which now protected thousands of “self-emancipated ones” on the “Queen’s soil.”479 Conscious of the paper’s role in forging a black British self, Bibb later changed the newspaper’s name to the Voice of the Fugitive and Canadian

Independent, a cosmetic change that reflected the internal journey many black refugees’ took from American exile to British subject.480

Henry Bibb was not the only black refugee who used the press as a forum to articulate black imperial belonging. Mary Ann Shadd used her own publication, The

Provincial Freeman, to forge a black Canadian identity founded upon an integrationist platform.481 Born in Wilmington, Deleware in 1823, the first of thirteen children in an activist family and educated by Quakers, Shadd had long been familiar with the anti- slavery movement and she brought this experience with her to Ontario. While some black abolitionists opposed Canadian, Mary Ann Shadd fully supported it because she the

Fugitive Slave Act had put “every Northern colored man” at risk of being sent South.

This “concert of measures,” she believed, so perilously affected black liberty in the

479 Voice of the Fugitive, July 30, 1851.

480 See for examples, Voice of the Fugitive, December 16, 1852.

481 Jonathan Silverman, “Mary Ann Shadd and the Search of Equality,” in Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Leon Litwack and August Meir (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988); and Jim Bearden and Linda Jean Butler, Shadd: The Life and Times of Mary Shadd Cary (Toronto: NC Press, 1977), 160-1.

178

Northern states that Canadian emigration was no longer a point of debate but instead a practical necessity.482

While Shadd also established an integrated school in Windsor, Ontario, she is best known for her involvement in the publication of the The Provincial Freeman, a newspaper that promoted Shadd’s integrationist and emigrationist views. In its first regular issue, the paper’s prospectus belied its pro-British bias. In addition to railing against the peculiar institution and advocating temperance, the editors remarked, the paper would also express “emphatic condemnation” of any actions “having for their object . . . the subversion of the principles of the British constitution, or the British rule in the Provinces.”483 Shadd believed that black refugees should “let American books, teaching, proslavery republican preaching, negro-hating institutions, Yankee old clothes and new, and Yankee habits alone” in the United States. In their stead, black settlers should receive a “good British education” that would entail “thorough instruction to the young by means of British school books, by British teachers at heart.”484

Because of its colonial relationship, Shadd presented Canada as an extension of

Great Britain where black refugees could enjoy “British freedom and an abundance of it,” including “equal political rights.”485 It was precisely this colonial connection, Shadd

482 Mary Ann Shadd Cary, A Plea for Emigration or Notes of Canada West in Its Moral Social, and Political Aspect: Suggestions Respecting Mexico, W. Indies and Vancouver’s Island, For the Information of Colored Emigrants (Detroit: George W. Pattison, 1852), 44, 11.

483 The Provincial Freeman, July 22, 1854, N40, AO; Wink, The Blacks in Canada, 395-6; Shirley J. Yee, “Finding a Place: Mary Ann Shadd Cary and the Dilemmas of Black Migration to Canada, 1850-1870,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 18, no. 3 (1997): 6.

484 Provincial Freeman, April 25, 1857, N40, AO.

485 Provincial Freeman, April 18, 1857; Mary Ann Shadd, “Obstacles to the Progress of Colored Canadians,” 1859 draft, Series F, Reel MS-483, AO. 179 believed, that made Canada such an attractive option for black emigrants. While promoting Canadian emigration, Shadd betrayed her own Eurocentric bias and argued that black refugees would only be able to maintain to their cultural and economic values in British North America. In Canada, she declared, there would not be “hostile tribes to annoy the settler or destroy at will towns and villages with their inhabitants,” as there would be in “Africa, Mexico, or .” Once black refugees insinuated themselves into Canadian society and assumed “the responsibilit[ies] of British freemen,” she proclaimed, the “strong arm of British power” would always protect their political rights and would ensure their standard of living.486

Not all black abolitionists shared Shadd’s enthusiasm for Canadian emigration.

Martin Delany, who Paul Gilroy later referred to as the “progenitor of black nationalism,” held strong reservations about the British colony.487 Even though he himself had moved to Chatham with his family, Delany never viewed Canada as anything more than a temporary resting place for blacks before they settled in more hospitable locales.

Convinced that black migrants would never achieve full equality in a white dominated country, Delany instead looked towards Africa, where he hoped to establish an independent black nation.488 agreed with Delany’s assessment.

After visiting spending several months traveling throughout the Canadian countryside,

Brown concluded, “The more I see of Canada, the more I am convinced of the

486 Shadd, A Plea for Emigration, 44.

487 Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 20.

488 Nell Irving Painter, “Martin R. Delany: Elitism and Black Nationalism,” in Leon Litwack and August Meier, eds., Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 158-9.

180 deeprooted hatred of the Negro here.”489 He remarked that even though Canada “had so long been eulogized as the only spot in North America where the Southern bondsman could stand a freeman,” the colony frequently failed to live up to its storied reputation.490

If black refugees found success in their newfound home, it was in spite of Canadian prejudice, not because of Canadian benevolence.

Shadd refused to believe that anti-black bias was a native outgrowth of the “true”

Canadian character. Instead, it was “an intruder on earth, having come up from hell, by

WAY OF THE UNITED STATES.” While she admitted that she had witnessed several racist episodes during her time in Canada, she characterized these instances as “cases of

Yankee prejudice” that could not be “indigenous to the soil” in a British Colony.491 Even with “all this evident aping of American pro-slavery customs,” though, Mary Ann Shadd still clung to her original assertion that “Canada is better for colored men than the United

States.”492 She firmly believed that once black refugees became “British at heart,” though, such prejudice would evaporate as white Canadians recognized black migrants as their compatriots.493

Her co-editor, Samuel Ringgold Ward, agreed. In his mind, the Freeman would play a pivotal role in raising black refugees “to the proud position of the blacks in other

489 William Wells Brown, “The Colored People of Canada,” in Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume 2, Canada, 465-6.

490 Ibid., 467.

491 Mary Ann Shadd Cary quoted in Yee, “Finding a Place: Mary Ann Shadd Cary and the Dilemmas of Black Migration to Canada, 1850-1870,” 10.

492 Provincial Freeman, June 18, 1859, N40, AO.

493 Mary Ann Shadd Cary, “Obstacles to the Progress of Colored Canadians,” Provincial Freeman, January 31, 1857.

181 parts of our glorious empire.”494 By promoting Victorian social mores and British customs, the paper would help forge a “British Negro”—a free, staid, prosperous, well- educated and socially integrated black British subject who would take advantage of “the impartial freedom” he enjoyed in Canada by engaging in “independent, self-sustaining” labors.495 To facilitate this transformation, Ward and Shadd used the Freeman as a vehicle for British acculturation. They called attention Queen’s birthday, published poems in her honor, and displayed the British seal above its masthead.496 Ward imagined that the paper would also provide a running commentary on British politics, “tak[ing] note of what is done in Parliament, and elsewhere, and making free comments thereon, wielding what of influence it may have, on the side of the great principles of British

Progress, as the editor shall understand them.”497 By actively participating in and commenting upon British politics, black Canadians would demonstrate that they were “as

British and as loyal as any subjects of the Canadian population.”498

Most importantly, however, was the editors’ persistent promotion of First of

August celebrations, which marked the anniversary of Britain’s abolition of slavery throughout the empire. Organized by local black leaders, these annual festivals became spaces for fugitive slaves, free blacks, and their white anti-slavery allies to gather, express their gratitude to the Queen, and mobilize against slavery. These August First

494 Frederick Douglass’ Paper, March 18, 1853.

495 Provincial Freeman, April 27, 1854 [first quotation], March 24, 1853 [second quotation].

496 For example, see “The Queen’s Birth-Day,” Provincial Freeman, May 31, 1856, N40, AO. 497 Provincial Freeman, March 24, 1853, N40, AO.

498 British Banner, May 11, 1853, supplement, p. 318.

182 celebrations provided a distinct service for each of these populations. Black Canadians, as long-time residents of the province, used the processions as an opportunity to affirm and reaffirm their loyal attachment to the British Crown and display their longstanding commitment to British values. For recent runaways, the celebrations allowed formerly enslaved people to rejoice in their newfound freedom and situate their own self-liberation within a larger narrative of British abolitionism. For white anti-slavery activists these rites provided yet another forum to articulate their vision for international emancipation.499

At these commemorations, black Canadians dressed in “their neatest and their best” and enthusiastically participated in parades “with banners, badges, and batons.”500

Beyond these visual displays, black refugees also showcased their loyalty to the Crown through their rhetoric with addresses to the Queen. On these occasions, black orators channeled the collective voice of “Coloured Inhabitants of Canada” and expressed their immense gratitude to the the British monarch, telling her that their hearts were “wholly your Majesty’s,” and that “if the time should ever come when your Majesty might need our aid” they would always be “at your service.” To those that questioned their allegiance to the British Crown, black speakers replied that every former slave could still remember

499 Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie, Rites of August First: in the Black Atlantic World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), 156-8; For more on First of August celebrations, see: W. Caleb McDaniel, “The Fourth and the First: Abolitionist Holidays, Respectability, and Radical Interracial Reform,” American Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2005): 129-151; Mitch Kachun, Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African America Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 54-81; William B. Gravely, “The Dialectic of Double-Consciousness in Black American Freedom Celebrations, 1808-1863,” Journal of Negro History 67, no. 1 (1982): 303-5; John R. McKivigan and Jason Silverman, “Monarchial Liberty and Republican Slavery: West Indian Emancipation Celebrations in and Canada West,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 10, no. 1 (1986): 7-18.

500 Frederick Douglass’ Paper, August 11, 1854.

183 the day he stepped foot in the Queen’s “mighty dominions” and experienced freedom for the first time. Could it be then conceived, they asked, that when asked to defend that same “hallowed soil” that memory “would not fire his brain,” and “gratitude nerve his arm?”501

In this way, formerly enslaved people turned white Canadians’ critiques on their head. While white Canadians like Edwin Larwill claimed that fugitive slaves could never feel true fealty to the Crown, black migrants exploited their refugee status to further insinuate themselves into the empire. Instead of being proof that formerly enslaved

Americans could never become full members of Britain’s imperial community, self- emancipated people demonstrated it was precisely because of, not in spite of, their flight from slavery that black migrants became “ultra-loyalists” who prepared under all circumstances to “render any services which the Government may demand.”502 For those who owed their freedom to British laws and British protection, they claimed, loyalty could never be “an empty name, or devotion be a dream!”503

At these events, black Canadians also creatively leveraged their refugee status to request greater funding for education and legal action to prevent segregated schooling. In their August First speeches, self-emancipated people reminded the Queen that, for many of them, the “invigorating food of education was jealously withheld from [them]” at the same time “brutalizing cup of Slavery” was forced upon them. While many former slaves

501 “Address to the Queen, Presented by George Dupon Wells at the Government Grounds,” August 1, 1854, I reprinted in Provincial Freeman, August 5, 1854.

502 British Banner, May 11, 1853, supplement, p. 318.

503 “Address to the Queen,” in Provincial Freeman, August 5, 1854.

184 managed to climb out of the “moral stupor” that such an upbringing almost invariably caused, many more still required further teaching to finally cure themselves.504 Black refugees flocked to the school houses as soon as they arrived in Canada, convinced that education was “one of the most important measures connected with the destiny of [their] race.” Indeed, one black migrant claimed that “few who were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the intense desire which the people of my race showed for education.”505 Black migrants even organized a committee entirely devoted to encourage recent refugees to send their children to schools “whereby they may obtain a fortune that none can take away from them.”506

This quest, however, was complicated by the Common School Act of 1850.

Initially intended to protect parochial education in the province, white Canadians used this law to give legal sanction to segregated schooling in Canada West.507 For while the act was designed to authorize separate schools for specific religious dominations, it also provided a clause that could be applied to establish separate schools for the province’s black population.508 In , for example, black children were refused entry to the local school for the sole reason “that they differed in Colour from the great body of

504 Ibid.

505Minutes and Proceedings of the General Convention of the Colored Inhabitants of Canada, Held by Adjournments in Amherstburgh, C.W. (Windsor: Bibb & Holly, 1853), 19.

506 Minutes and Proceedings of the General Convention of the Colored Inhabitants of Canada, 19.

507 Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 362-89; Jason H. Silverman and Donna J. Gillie, “‘The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties’: Education and the Fugitive Slave in Canada,” Ontario History 74, no. 1 (1982): 95-112.

508 Silverman, Unwelcome Guests, 134.

185 other pupils.”509 When they appealed to , the superintendent of education, though, he claimed that the black migrants had “the same right, of access, for their children to the Common School as the Parents of any other children.” Ryerson, who had drawn up the act with the hope that it would ensure access to education for Canada

West’s black community, considered it a “deplorable calamity” that his law was now being used to enforce segregation, but he felt powerless to help them. He could only suggest that the black Canadians prosecute for damages from the public school trustees.510 Because of the financial strain and complicated litigation involved in pursuing this option, however, the black residents of Simcoe declined to follow Ryerson’s suggestion and the black children of Simcoe received no education at all.511

Dennis Hill, a black farmer from Kent County, was the first to mount a legal challenge against Canada’s segregated schooling. Instead of sending his son to an all- black school several miles away, Hill had applied to send his child to a nearby white school. The white trustees, however, refused his application and told the black landowner that it was presumptuous of him to assume that his son could “go to school among White

Children.” Hill bristled at this comment and protested that the idea that he could be

“debarr’d from my Rights of school privilege for no other crime than that my skin is a few shades darker than some of my neighbors.” Beyond this abstract objection, Hill also

509 “Petition from the Coloured Inhabitants of Simcoe, Canada West,” December 12, 1851, Education Department Papers, Incoming Correspondence (hereafter referred to as Egerton Ryerson Papers), AO.

510 “Letter from Egerton Ryerson to the Coloured Inhabitatns of Simcoe County,” December 17, 1851, Egerton Ryerson Papers, AO.

511 Silverman, Unwelcome Guests, 134; Robin Winks, “Negro School Segregation in Ontario and Nova Scotia,” Canadian Historical Review 50, no. 1 (1969): 171-3.

186 leveraged his economic value in the community and pointed out that he was “the largest

Tax payer” in the school district and owned over three hundred acres of land. It was particularly galling to see that these same trustees had invited white children from outside the township even though their parents “put together do pay but a little more taxes than I do.”512 Ryerson agreed and acknowledged that it was “mean beyond expression” for the white trustees to simultaneously “levy and receive taxes” from the black farmer while they denied his son admission to the local school.513

Unlike Simcoe’s black residents, Hill heeded Egerton’s advice and prosecuted the white board of trustees. His case eventually reached the Court of the Queen’s Bench in

Canada West and caused a sensation throughout the province. His case, known as Hill v.

School Trustees of Camden and Zone, became a landmark decision which ruled that where separate schools for black residents existed, black Canadians must attend those rather than any nearby white schools. To explain this ruling, Robinson claimed that “the separate schools for coloured people were authorized . . . out of deference to the prejudices of the white population.” Robinson even admitted that it could hardly be supposed that the legislature authorized the Common School Act “under the idea that it would be more beneficial or agreeable to the coloured people,” but he believed it was only a temporary expedient to be used until the local white population could overcome

512 “Letter from Dennis Hill to Egerton Ryerson,” November 22, 1850, and November 22, 1852, Dawn Mills, Canada, Egerton Ryerson Papers, AO.

513 “Letter from Egerton Ryerson to Dennis Hill,” November 30, 1852, Egerton Ryerson Papers, AO; Harriet Chatters, “Negro Education in Kent County, Ontario, up to 1890,” (M.A. thesis, Howard University, 1956), 1-2, 26-8, 56-61.

187 their prejudice and ignorance.514 In another case two years later, Washington v. Trustees of Charlotteville, the black plaintiff successfully gained admission to a white school for his children, but it was a “Pyrrhic victory,” for he lost his farm in the process to pay his legal fees.515 Many black refugees viewed separate schooling as an outright betrayal of

British principles and refused to believe that white Canadians would use “government money” to support “a prejudice of one class of Her Majesty’s subject against another?”516

In many ways, the fight over segregated schools epitomized the often strained relationship between white Canadians and black refugees. While many white Canadians relished in any opportunity to shame Americans for their backwards and barbaric racial policies, white Canadians themselves could not hide their own ambivalence towards their new black neighbors. Although anti-black bias had long simmered beneath the surface of everyday Canadian life, it came to a roiling boil after the passage of the Fugitive Slave

Act. Once considered a dependable safe haven for black Americans, the Canadian countryside now became a contested racial landscape, where two competing visions of imperial belonging collided. John Anderson’s extradition case would fix the world’s spotlight upon this contested process, thereby illuminating the fissures between Canada’s reputation and its reality and highlighting the gap between legal and social equality.

514 “Dennis Hill v. the School Trustees of Camden and Zone,” in Report of Cases Decided in the Court of Queen’s Bench, Volume XI (Toronto: Henry Rowsell, 1854), 578.

515 Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 369; Barrington Walker, Race on Trial: Black Defendants in Ontario’s Criminal Courts, 1858-1958 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 37; Francis G. Carter, ed., Judicial Decisions on Denominational Schools (Toronto: Ontario Separate School Trustees’ Association, 1962), 151-2.

516 “Letter from A.R. Green, Thomas Jones, and Clayton Harris to Egerton Ryerson,” Egerton Ryerson Papers, AO. 188

Chapter Six: “Not a murderer but a Hero:” The John Anderson Case

Jack Anderson could still hear his pursuers behind him. He could hear the crunch of footsteps on fallen leaves and the sharp snap of broken twigs bent back in on themselves. Propelled forward by a surge of panic, Anderson hurdled over old logs, clambered over boulders, and splashed through streams. His breath came in short pants, his heartbeat struggling to keep up with the frantic rhythm. Dry leaves slid out from under his feet but he managed to keep his balance as he charged headfirst through the brush. A shout rang out behind him and the runaway quickened his pace, his legs moving without his really knowing how. He spotted a fence along the horizon, cutting a sharp line through the dense forest, and he braced himself for the climb over it. Eyes fixed on the ragged fence posts, he launched off his left foot and swung his arms out in front of him. He felt a brief moment of weightlessness before, suddenly, he slammed back to the ground.

Crushed under the weight of another body, the air rushed out of him. The man on top of Anderson let out a confused grunt. When he regained his breath, the runaway pushed the man off of him and scrambled to his feet. The two men stared at each other, waiting for the other to make some move. Anderson fumbled in his pocket until he found the small knife waiting there. He turned it over in his hand, pointing the small blade down against his thigh, never taking his eyes off the white planter across from him. The planter lunged at the runaway, raising a large stick over his head, ready to strike. Without

189 thinking, Anderson’s arm shot up, the blade finding flesh. The planter cried out and turned away, but he tripped over himself, his foot caught on a vine. Just as he fell, his two slaves emerged from the brush, finally catching up to the runaway. They watched with blank expressions as their master struggled to free himself from the vines. Fueled by a strange mix of fear and rage, Anderson struck the planter once more before scaling over the fence and disappearing into a thicket of bushes.

That night, even though he knew that gangs of vigilantes would be on his trail,

Anderson did not head North. Instead, he retraced his path back to Fayette, hugging the tree line, waiting for darkness to fall. When the sun finally set, Anderson slipped into his wife’s cabin. Before saying anything else, Anderson told her of the stabbing, the words tumbling out of him. As he related his story, Maria’s eyes widened and the smile fell from her lips. She insisted that he leave immediately and said that word had already gotten around that “some old slaveholder [had] been struck by a Negro with a knife.”517 If he was caught now, Anderson faced a slow, public, and merciless death. She threw a couple of shirts at him and pressed some coins into his hand, demanding he head for

Canada. Jack promised that he would come back for her and, after a final farewell, raced out of the cabin and back into the woods.

He would never see Maria again.518

News of the violent encounter between the planter and the runaway spread like wildfire throughout the county, igniting an entire community in shock and outrage. Two

517 Harper Twelvetrees, ed., The Story of the Life of John Anderson, the Fugitive Slave (London: William Tweedie, 1863), 16-7.

518 For a complete retelling of this account, see Patrick Brode, The Odyssey of John Anderson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 10-14.

190 weeks later the injured slave owner, Seneca Diggs, died in his bed from his wounds, his family hovering over him. The countryside hummed with the low buzz of speculation, and a fog of suspicion hung over the landscape. Free blacks darted from plantation to plantation, spreading news of the stabbing to the local slaves. As rumors crystallized into fact, Howard County’s white residents flocked to the Fayette court house to devise a plan to suppress any further insubordination amongst the local slaves. Each township appointed a vigilance committee “whose duty it [was] to observe the conduct of persons suspected of intermeddling with the slave population.”519 A “large party of gentleman,” anxious to avenge Seneca Diggs’s death and lured by the sizable bounty placed on

Anderson’s head, set out on the runaway’s trail.520

Meanwhile, Anderson set out on his arduous journey northward. Keenly aware that vigilantes and bounty hunters would be following him, he traveled by night and ate his food raw for fear a fire might give him away.521 The entire state of Missouri seemed to be searching for him. Local newspapers reported any sightings and speculated on his possible whereabouts.522 Anderson only narrowly escaped several close encounters by hiding in corn fields and abandoned barns.523 Even after he crossed the Illinois state line, he never felt completely safe. He rarely slept and his clothes became so ragged that

519 Glasgow Times, October 27, 1853.

520 Glasgow Times, October 6, 1853.

521 Twelvetrees, ed., The Story of the Life of John Anderson, 17-8.

522 Glasgow Times, October 13, 1853.

523 Twelvetrees, ed., The Story of the Life of John Anderson, 18.

191

“children [came] running to the doors to stare at him.”524 It was only when he stepped on

Canadian soil, now “beneath the British flag,” that Anderson finally felt free.525

As he settled down in his new home, Jack Anderson came to embody the image of the respectable black British subject. He started working for the Great Western Railway company laying ties for the rails, saving his earnings to buy new clothing and enroll himself in a school for fugitive slaves. After hearing that a Missouri bounty hunter had followed his trail all the way to the Canada, he changed his name to John and traveled to

Chatham, fifty miles away from the border. He traveled throughout the province, performing a series of odd jobs until he eventually learned the trade of mason and plasterer.526 Within a year he had earned enough to buy a small home in Caledonia, a sleepy town along the Grand River, and seemed ready to fade into obscurity. He gained a reputation as a circumspect, hard-working young man who many described as “rather stout” but undoubtedly “respectable looking.”527 Indeed, his neighbors considered him

“just about the last person we should have accused of murder.”528

And yet, John Anderson was accused of murder. In 1860, seven years after that fateful encounter with Seneca Diggs, this quiet man became embroiled in what newspapers reporters would describe as “one of the greatest subjects that has every come before a British Court” and one of the great “causes célébres of the present era.” These

524 Ibid., 19-20.

525 Ibid., 21.

526 Twelvetrees, ed., The Story of the Life of John Anderson, 21-2.

527 Grand River Sachem, April 11, 1860, NJ/FM/1131, LAC.

528 Ibid. 192 remarks were not journalistic bluster for later historians would describe Anderson’s case as “the last and most publicized fugitive slave case” of the Antebellum era.529 It was a case that would expose white Canadians’ increasing ambivalence towards their black compatriots, reveal the elaborate connections between British, American, and Canadian anti-slavery societies, and cast an oblique light on Anglo-American diplomatic relations.

It was a case that would force white Canadians to question their position within the

British imperial structure and their place on the North American continent. It was a case that would bend legal theory and stretch abolitionists’ morals as these activists suddenly found themselves defending a known killer. Ultimately, though, it was a case that would test black Canadians’ relationship to the metropole and would represent the culmination of their efforts to insinuate themselves into the Empire.530

Anderson’s unlikely story began at the base of a towering maple tree, where the former slave fastened a tin bucket against the tree trunk. He counted the drops of clear maple sap as they rolled off his spick, listening to the soft pattering of sap hitting metal as more and more droplets tumbled to the bottom of the bucket. After a few moments,

Anderson hooked a lid to the top of the bucket and began scanning the woods, looking for the next tree to tap. A strong gust ripped through the forest, the trees creaking and groaning as they swayed with the wind, their branches shuttering and shivering. The blast of cold air cut across his face and he squinted his eyes shut reflexively. The gust snatched his hat off his head, throwing it a few feet ahead of him. Anderson stomped through the

529 Quebec Chronicle quote in the Morning Post [London], January 8, 1861; Murray, “Canada and the Anglo-American Anti-Slavery Movement,” 539.

530 Robert C. Reinders, “The John Anderson Case, 1860-1: A Study in Anglo-Canadian Imperial Relations,” Canadian Historical Review 56, no. 4 (1975): 393. 193 snow, racing to catch his hat before the wind could carry it off again. After a few clumsy steps, Anderson lunged forward, diving after the hat. He landed with a thud, his face buried in the snow, his legs splayed out behind him, but he finally caught the hat. He held it up triumphantly before lumbering to his feet and fastening the cap on his head.531 When

Anderson finally looked up, two men stood before him, their arms crossed as they watched him. Anderson recognized one of the men almost instantly, the smirk on his lips unmistakable. It was Wynne, his old friend, another runaway slave. The two fugitives had spent long nights at the local pub, sharing memories over drinks, swapping tales of their unlikely escapes. Wynne was the only one who knew about the darkest chapter of

Anderson’s past, the only one Anderson had trusted with his secret over a late night drink. Now, that trust had come to haunt him.

After a petty spat between the two, Wynne had charged up to the Onandaga courthouse in a fit of anger and revealed Anderson’s identity to the local magistrate,

William Mathews. He also divulged Anderson’s secret that he was wanted for stabbing a slaveholder in Missouri.532 Matthews acted quickly, assigning a local sheriff to follow

Wynne into the woods and track down the Missouri fugitive. Soon after the arrest,

Mathews began interrogating his prisoner. Anderson made no attempt to evade or deny the accusation and recounted the story in a flat tone. He told Mathews of his escape from the Burrows plantation where he was “pursued by several men, one of whom (whose name he does not know) came up with him and attempted to take him.” Afraid that he

531 William Teatero, John Anderson: Fugitive Slave (Toronto: Brown and Martin, 1986); Brode, Odyssey of John Anderson, 22.

532 Twelvetrees, ed., The Story of the Life of John Anderson, 24. 194 would be “severely punished” if caught, Anderson admitted to stabbing the man with his pocket knife, but he never heard till his arrest that “the party had died.”533

When James A. Gunning, a Detroit detective, heard of Anderson’s arrest he immediately latched on to the case, knowing that Missouri had issued a thousand-dollar reward for the fugitive. He sent a letter to the Diggs family, explaining that Seneca’s killer had finally been found. The family, at first skeptical of the detective’s claim, was slow to act. Eventually, after a protracted correspondence via telegram, the family contacted officials in Washington to ask that extradition proceedings be initiated and sent an agent to represent them in Canada. When the agent reached the courthouse weeks later, though, he found that he was too late; Magistrate Mathews, nervous about detaining Anderson for any longer, had released the former slave only hours earlier.534

While Anderson had been in custody, news of his case had started trickling out from the Brantford courthouse. George Brown, the abolitionist editor of the Globe and

Mail, began publishing weekly columns on the fugitive’s ordeal in an effort to ensure that

“every care will be taken that he [Anderson] is not delivered to the United States authorities for such a crime.”535 A writer for The Hamilton Times charged that magistrate

Mathews had subjected his prisoner to inhumane treatment for nearly two months by keeping the fugitive in irons at all times and not letting any of his friends visit him.536

533 Brantford Expositor, April 6, 1860, NJ/FM/2127, LAC.

534 Hamilton Daily Spectator, December 5, 1860.

535 Globe and Mail [Toronto], April 6, 1860, Reel N-12928, LAC.

536 The Hamilton Times quoted in the Globe and Mail [Toronto], November 14, 1860, Reel N- 12928, LAC.

195

Some even sneered that the magistrate was acting “the part of the kidnapper for the

Missouri slave-catchers.”537 As soon as Samuel B. Freeman, an experienced attorney and a founding member of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, heard of the case he intervened on the fugitive’s behalf and threatened the magistrate with unlawful arrest.538

Samuel Freeman wasn’t the only abolitionist who rushed to the fugitive’s defense.

John Scoble visited the Brantford courthouse almost immediately after he read about the case. As Secretary of the British Foreign and Anti-Slavery Society, Scoble had long played an active role in Canada’s anti-slavery community. It was Scoble who had first called the Society’s attention to Article X of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, and he spearheaded the Society’s campaign to exclude fugitive slaves from this article by collecting petitions, organizing meetings, and lobbying British legislators. It was Scoble who extracted a promise from the British government to interpret the treaty as narrowly as possible and insist on full proof of crime, not just a grand jury indictment. And it was in a letter to Scoble that Lord Ashburton firmly declared that Article X “was no more designed to touch the fugitive slave than affect the case of deserter, or parties tried with high treason.”539 Even after the Webster-Ashburton Treaty was ratified in 1842, Scoble continued advocating for fugitive slaves. Immediately following passage of the Fugitive

Slave Act he drew up a petition to Lord Palmerston, urging the Secretary of State to

537 Globe and Mail [Toronto], November 29, 1860, Reel N-12928, LAC.

538 Paul Finkelman, “International Extradition and Fugitive Slave Cases: The John Anderson Case,” Brooklyn Journal of International Law 18, no. 765 (1992): 767; R. C. Reinders, “Anglo- Canadian Abolitionism: The John Anderson Case, 1860-1861,” Renaissance and Modern Studies 19, no. 1 (1975): 72.

539 Anne Heloise Abel and Frank J. Klingberg, “The Tappan Papers: A Side-Light on Anglo- American Relations, 1839-1861,” Journal of Negro History 12, no. 1 (1927): 240-1; Murray, “Canada and the Anglo-American Anti-Slavery Movement,” 185, 311-3. 196 reaffirm his commitment to protect the fugitive slave and remain hyper vigilant in any extradition case that involved a runaway. Given Scoble’s background, then, it came as no surprise that he took an immediate and intense interest in Anderson’s plight, and he made it his personal mission to not only free Anderson from his current imprisonment but also ensure that the Governor General would refuse to sign any extradition warrant.540

As soon as he was released, Anderson headed straight for a settlement with a large and thriving black population in Norfolk County. James Gunning, however, was not ready to abandon the prospect of a thousand-dollar reward. To hunt down the fugitive, he joined forces with another Detroit detective and a local Indian tracker. After a month spent scouring the Canadian countryside, the trio eventually found Anderson twenty miles south of the Brantford jail, hiding out in an all-black neighborhood in Simcoe.

Anderson did not go quietly, though, and only succumbed to arrest after a scuffle with the local police and a failed escape attempt.541

Back in Brantford, the Michigan detective, James A. Gunning, was working tirelessly to earn his thousand-dollar reward. When he visited the Brantford courthouse for a second time, he came with a Missouri witness in tow and a deposition in hand.

Magistrates Matthews was thoroughly convinced and concluded that there was enough evidence now to prove that Anderson had “willfully, maliciously, and feloniously

540 David M. Turley, “‘Free Air’ and Fugitive Slaves: British Abolitionists Versus Government Over American Fugitives, 1834-61,” in Christine Bolt and Seymour Drescher, eds., Anti- Slavery, Religion, and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1980), 163-172; Robert C. Reinders, “The John Anderson Case, 1860-1: A Study in Anglo-Canadian Imperial Relations,” The Canadian Historical Review 56, no. 4 (1975): 395-6.Frank Yeigh, “Famous Canadian Trials, VIII—Anderson, The Fugitive Slave,” Canadian Magazine 45, no. 1 (1915): 397- 401; Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 54-6.

541 Detroit Daily Advertiser, September 14, 1860; Brode, The Odyssey of John Anderson, 25. 197 stab[bed] and kill[ed] one Seneca T.P. Diggs.”542 Determined to deal with Anderson in his own court, Matthews sent the Brant County attorney to Simcoe to recover the fugitive. He also sent along a cadre of police officers to accompany the attorney, convinced that “was good reason to fear a rescue.”543 This statement was not simply paranoid bluster. In the days after Anderson’s second arrest, a group of black Canadians had gathered around the courthouse, a sight that recalled images of the crowd that freed

Solomon Moseby decades earlier. Simcoe’s black community, many of them recent refugees, immediately recognized the symbolic weight of Anderson’s case. A reporter for the Norfolk Messenger could sense the nervous energy in the air around the courthouse and wrote that “the colored people in town have apparently thought there was no chance for justice anywhere else,” and they refused to let him be returned to the

United States voluntarily.544 The morning the police transferred Anderson back to the

Brantford jail, a line of black residents followed close behind, making sure there were no detours to the American border. Even after Anderson arrived safely at the Brantford jail, many of these black protesters chose to camp outside the courthouse and keep watchful vigil.545

542 “Warrant of Commitment Issued by a Magistrate under the Ashburton Treaty,” in Re. John Anderson, reprinted in Reports of Cases Decided in the Court of Common Pleas of Upper Canada; From Hilary Term, 24, to Michaelmas Term, 25 Victoria, Volume XI (Toronto: Henry Roswell, 1862), 9.

543 Hamilton Daily Spectator, December 5, 1860.

544 Norfolk Messenger quoted in London [Ontario] Free Press, October 5, 1860.

545 Canada’s black community had reason to be suspicious of the Canadian police. Throughout the 1850s, American law officers had on multiple occasions paid Canadian police officers to return fugitive slaves without the benefit of legal proceedings. In the most famous case involving a slave named Louis Snow, the Hamilton Chief of Police was tried and convicted for kidnapping the runaway. For more on this case, see Toronto Leader, February 7, 1859; Brode, The Odyssey of John Anderson, 25. 198

With Anderson once again behind bars, Matthews seemed more determined than ever to ensure the fugitive would be returned to the American authorities. Watching the crowd of black Canadians assembled on the courthouse lawn grow larger with each passing day, Matthews ordered that the runaway be kept in handcuffs and under constant surveillance. As if to prove Anderson’s deviant nature, the magistrate suggested that the runaways was involved in an unresolved knifing incident that took place several years earlier and had “stabbed a negro in a drunken brawl.”546 In Matthews mind, Anderson was not only a petty criminal, but a dangerous rebel intent on exploiting Britain’s legal system to bring down the entire institution of slavery. The magistrate alleged (without offering proof) that Anderson had written to his fellow slaves in Missouri, urging them to revolt and “murder their masters right and left, and come off to Canada, where they would be quite safe.” The abolitionist agitation surrounding Anderson’s case only seemed to further embolden Matthews, and he charged that the anti-slavery activists were bent on plying a dangerous murderer “from the hands of justice, thereby cheating the gallows of its prey and setting him free to extend his Bowie-knife practice to Canada instead of

Southern slaveholders.”547

The Attorney General’s intentions, however, were less clear. John A. Macdonald, an energetic young lawyer from Kingston with political ambitions, had reasons to play both sides of the Anderson case. On the one hand, he was more than happy to appease fiery Reform party members who wished to see the Canadian government protect

Anderson from Southern slaveholders. On the other, Macdonald feared embroiling

546 Globe and Mail [Toronto], November 13, 1860, Reel N-12928, LAC.

547 Hamilton Daily Spectator, December 14, 1860. 199 himself in an international quagmire for the sake of a runaway. Carefully balancing atop this political tightrope, Macdonald told Anderson’s lawyer, Samuel B. Freeman, that he was open to “any or all questions in this case” and he agreed to provide public funds for

Anderson’s defense.548 Macdonald could not himself free the fugitive, though, because he had come to the conclusion that Anderson had, in fact, committed murder. Under such circumstances, he told the fugitive’s lawyer, “all I can do is to give you every assistance in testing the question before the Courts or a Judge by Habeas Corpus.”549

Freeman followed this advice and applied for a writ of habeas corpus before the

Court of Queen’s Bench in Toronto.550 The case opened a few days later before Chief

Justice Sir John Beverly Robinson, Justice Archibald McLean, and Robert Easton Burns.

The hearing began with the testimony of William C. Baker, a carpenter who had known both Anderson and Diggs back in Missouri. Baker had visited Diggs twice while he was on his deathbed and had listened to the planter recount the entire story of his scuffle with the runaway. Surprisingly, Baker could only recall “one cut in [Diggs’s] right side,” and never mentioned the second knife wound. Freeman and the other members of Anderson’s defense, however, did not exploit this omission, and Baker went on to provide a lengthy description of Diggs’s final days. In an effort to further undermine the runaway’s

548 “Letter from John A. Macdonald to Samuel B. Freeman,” October 11, 1860, in Sessional Papers, Fourth Session of the Sixth Parliament of the Province of Canada, Volume 4 (Quebec: Hunter, Rose, & Co., 1861), 268; For more on Macdonald, see Donald Creighton, John A. Macdonald: The Young Politician (Toronto: Macmillan, 1952), 297.

549 “Letter from John A. Macdonald to Samuel B. Freeman,” October 18, 1860, in Sessional Papers, Volume 4, 269.

550 Writ reprinted in Re. John Anderson, 9. 200 credibility, the carpenter also told the Canadian officials that Anderson had earned a

“public reputation” in Howard County for insubordination and “being a thief.”551

Perhaps the most compelling testimony, however, came from Seneca Diggs’s son,

Benjamin, who had witnessed the entire killing when he was just eight years old. His testimony, however, could hardly be trusted. When he watched the fatal encounter between Anderson and his father, Benjamin was a young boy and could only vaguely recall what the fugitive looked like. To Benjamin, the killer had long loomed large in his mind, but he was a vague and shadowy figure. The only detail he could clearly remember was the killers’ knife, the “long dirk knife,” which still glinted in his memory.552 When he first saw Anderson, Benjamin admitted that the fugitive was “about the colour and size of the man” but he wasn’t able to decisively name him the killer.553

The deposition Gunning submitted provided much more conclusive evidence. It came from the only individual who could positively identify the killer and accurately describe the course of events leading to the stabbing: Phil, Seneca Diggs’s slave. Phil had long been acquainted with John Anderson (whom he still referred to by his old name,

Jack) and his wife Maria. They had crossed paths several times in Howard County and

Phil had watched as Anderson was sold from master to master. Years later, Phil could still recall the events leading up to the stabbing vividly. Phil remembered when his master first encountered Anderson in the woods and asked the slave for his pass. Instead of a pass, Anderson made an emotional appeal to the planter, telling him that he was on

551 “Testimony of W.C. Baker,” in ibid., 14.

552 “Benjamin Diggs’s Testimony,” in ibid., 15.

553 Ibid., 16. 201 his way to visit his wife one last time before the two would be separated. Diggs was not moved and told the runaway that he “could not let him go on that way without a pass.”

The two walked towards Diggs’s plantation in tense silence until “just before we got to the house, the negro broke and ran.” At that moment, Seneca demanded that his slaves chase after the fugitive, telling them they could keep the reward if they caught him. After recounting all of the details of the lengthy pursuit, Phil then added with little flourish, “At last master met the negro, and I saw him cut master twice with a knife.”554

While this deposition initially appeared to definitively prove Anderson’s guilt, the circumstances surrounding its creation remained problematic. The fact that Phil’s testimony had to be related via a document instead of in person highlighted the fact that

Phil himself could not travel to Canada to testify against Anderson. If he had done so, the slave would have been free the moment he stepped foot on Canadian soil. This not only meant that Anderson’s lawyer, Freeman, could not cross examine the slave, it also threw the contents of the whole deposition into question. It was plausible that Phil was forced to give this testimony under duress or that he was paid to name Anderson as the killer.

Despite these reservations, Phil’s deposition became the pivotal piece of evidence in this case for it provided the only reliable account of the stabbing and identified Anderson as the killer.

Instead of picking apart and exposing the inaccuracies and inadequacies embedded in both of these accounts, Anderson’s defense team borrowed from abolitionist rhetoric and couched their arguments in the terms of international law. The narrow vocabulary of criminal justice, they contended, could not accurately describe the true

554 “Deposition of Phil, a slave, the property of Frances A. Diggs, widow of Seneca T. P. Diggs,” in ibid., 19. 202 conflict at the center of this case. The encounter between Anderson and Diggs was not simply a scuffle between two individuals, it was a contest between two divergent moral philosophies. Freeman argued that when Anderson stabbed Diggs, he had not committed murder, but instead had protected his God-given right to liberty and had used necessary force to repel an “unlawful invasion” of that liberty.555 Anderson’s act could not be murder, then, because he had only acted “from an anxiety for liberty!” 556

To justify this claim, Freeman situated Anderson’s case within a lineage of prominent slave cases which were instrumental in cultivating and fostering anti-slavery legal thought. He first referenced the Somerset case, where Lord Mansfield said “That slavery was so odious that nothing could be sufficient to support it but positive enactment.”557 Freeman used this statement to demonstrate that, as a domestic institution, the slave law of Missouri could not have force in Canada. The lawyer then drew a direct link between John Anderson’s plight and the Creole case in which the highest British court declared that “as the law of England did not acknowledge slavery” any a slave made to attain his freedom “would not be considered the crime it would be held by the law of America.”558 Drawing upon abolitionist rhetoric, Freeman argued that the

555 S.B. Freeman in ibid., 20.

556 S.B. Freeman in ibid., 37; For more on the history of natural law and natural rights, see Michael P. Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton University Press, 1994), 1- 25; Knud Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Enlightment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Morton J. Horwitz, “Natural Law and Natural Rights,” in Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns, eds., Legal Rights: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 39-52; Stephen Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property: From Grotius to Hume (Oxford: Calrendon Press, 1991.

557 Lord Mansfield quoted by Freeman in Re. John Anderson, 39.

558 Lord Palmerston quoted by Freeman in Re. John Anderson, 37.

203 institution of slavery had placed the United States outside the community of civilized nations and that the Canadian courts could not be expected to carry out America’s “unjust laws.” The fact the U.S. law recognized slavery made it fundamentally dissimilar “in spirit” with British law.559 Routine extradition procedures, therefore, could not apply to such an extraordinary case.

In addition to these technical legal arguments, Freeman argument ultimately rested on emotional and patriotic appeals. He claimed that he himself had taken a “deep interest” in the fugitive’s case because he believed that “to fight not to be a slave” was an inherently “noble” act.560 Freeman’s decision to defend Anderson extended beyond reflexive sympathy, though. It was also his duty as a British subject. For Freeman, protecting Anderson from the Southern slaveholders’ rapacious grasp was the only responsible course he could take, and fell in line with “the policy of the British government in reference to slavery” for decades.561 The fight to free Anderson, he posited, was one battle in a larger war between American slavery and British freedom.

One only had to look at the British government’s expenditures “in the million of dollars” towards emancipation, its effort to “suppress the traffic on the sea,” and its diplomatic efforts to curtail slavery’s spread, to see that “she never could have intended to aid the master” in a case such as this.562

559 S.B. Freeman in Re. John Anderson, 38.

560 Ibid., 40.

561 Ibid., 34.

562 Ibid.

204

To present his own side, Anderson related the full drama and tragedy of his story in a petition addressed to the Governor General, , which Freeman read in the courtroom. Like the black petitioners who protested Jesse Happy’s imprisonment, Anderson couched his escape in domestic terminology. He told the

Governor that he only considered running away after he learned that his master intended to send him to a plantation “thirty miles distant” from his wife. Unwilling to be parted from her, Anderson visited Maria the night before he planned to run away and “consulted with her as to his intentions.” Initially, Maria feared that Anderson would be caught, but she eventually “concurred with him in his views.” Although she herself had to remain on the plantation to take care of their eight-month-old child, she held on to “an ultimate hope” that they both would someday flee the plantation and meet together again in freedom.563

Anderson then employed the language of natural law to defend his actions.

Because natural law had endowed him with “a right to his freedom,” Anderson had not committed a crime when he stabbed Diggs, but instead had “lawfully” used the means available to him “to obtain his liberty.” After briefly referencing Phil’s deposition,

Anderson recounted the encounter from his point of view, detailing how when he first collided with Diggs his pursuers were “at his heels with clubs.” Trapped between Diggs and his slaves, Anderson turned to violence as a last resort. He could not recollect whether he had struck the planter once or twice, all he remembered was that he did

“whatever sudden impulse bid.”564 This last note was crucial, for it proved that Anderson

563 “Letter from John Anderson to Edmund Walker Head, His Excellency the Governor- General of Canada,” in Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume 2, 432.

564 Ibid. 205 had not acted maliciously, but instead had acted instinctually in a desperate fight for his freedom. As proof of his respectability and good behavior since that day, Anderson pointed to his life in Caledonia, where he had lived peaceably as a mason. As a final note,

Anderson appealed to the Governor’s sense of patriotism and hoped that the Governor would recognize that “British law” entitled him to his freedom and would protect him from extradition.565

Chief Justice Robinson set the date for Judgment Day on Thursday, November

29th, and adjourned the court. On the morning of the 29th, a large crowd of local residents, with “white and black being mingled together in most admirable confusion,” assembled at the courthouse to hear the decision.566 From his perch on the second floor of Osgoode

Hall, Justice Robinson stared down at them with suspicion. He had been the Chief Justice in the Solomon Moseby case and had witness that fugitive’s rescue. With his forehead pressed to the window, Robinson squinted down at the protesters grouped on the lawn, the sight of them bringing back memories from that fitful day in Niagara. He could still remember the rush of people as they swarmed around the cart holding the prisoner. He could still hear the frenzied roar of a thousand shouts made at once, punctuated by the thunder-clap of gunshots.567

To prevent another uprising, the Chief of Police ordered that any officers on the night shift remain on duty and position themselves around the courthouse. At the last

565 Ibid., 433.

566 Toronto Leader, November 30, 1860.

567 For a description of the Solomon Moseby rescue, see Niagara Reporter, September 14, 1837, Vol. 5, no. 17, N214, AO.

206 moment, Robinson announced that he would withdraw the decision and schedule it for another day nearly a month later, claiming that he and his fellow Justices needed more time to deliberate. This announcement unleashed a flood of rumors as the prospect of

Anderson’s surrender shifted from an unlikely prospect to an all too real possibility. The editor of the Toronto Globe and Mail, a fiery abolitionist who had long railed against the conservative Chief Justice, became convinced that the Robinson intended to send

Anderson back to Missouri where he would “be burnt alive” as a “terror to all others who may be panting for the liberty that Jones (an alias of Anderson’s) so bravely won and thought he could maintain.”568 Robinson’s plan to deflect attention away from the case by delaying the decision seemed to backfire and one reporter noted that “the fate of

Anderson” became the “general topic of conversation” throughout the province. Not only this, but the fugitive had garnered so much public sympathy that the reporter predicted there would be “a burst of indignation as was never before heard in Canada” if he was returned.569

The case had not only captured the public’s imagination in Canada West, though.

Across the border, Americans eagerly read reports of the legal drama. The New York

Times even sent a correspondent to sit in on the courtroom proceedings convinced that the case’s outcome would have a profound impact “upon international law, and even as to the relations between Great Britain and the United States.”570 In Detroit, one newspaper

568 Globe and Mail [Toronto], November 30, 1860, Reel N-12928, LAC.

569 December 10 and December 3, 1860 in ibid.

570 New York Times, November 29, 1860; For another example see, Maine Farmer, December 27, 1860, vol. 29, no. 2.

207 reporter noted that the case had struck fear in the hearts of the local black community, for

“if this case is decided in favor of the claimants, it will virtually break up the underground railroad, and make Canada no longer a resort for runaways.”571 America’s most prominent abolitionists came to a similar conclusion. In a letter to the Globe and

Mail, Lewis Tappan claimed that the outcome of the case had a direct influence on the anti-slavery movement in the United States for after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act

Canada was “emphatically now the principal asylum of the oppressed.”572 Gerrit Smith even traveled across the border to visit Anderson in his jail cell and become one of the runaway’s most vocal advocates. He publicly wondered how the abolitionist movement would go on if Anderson was returned and “the glorious British law” was “thrust aside for slave law, and this by British hands?”573

Southern newspapers watched the case just as closely although their readers had little sympathy for the fugitive slave. One reporter for a Tennessee newspaper quickly recognized that the case had important implications for all of those “who lose their negroes” to the Underground Railroad, and so he made sure to keep his readership abreast of the Canadian court’s proceedings.574 Southerners balked at the thought that

Northern abolitionists were cheering on Anderson’s release. A reporter for the Baltimore

American refused to believe that anyone could want a murderer to walk free. “We trust

571 Detroit Daily Advertiser, December 25, 1860.

572 Globe and Mail [Toronto], January 9, 1861, Reel N-12928, LAC.

573 The Anti-Slavery Reporter, Volume 9, Third Series (London: British and Foreign Anti- Slavery Society, 1861), 95.

574 Memphis Daily Appeal, January 30, 1861.

208 that the people of Northern New York and Michigan are not so thoroughly blind to all sense of justice,” he remarked, “as to pay any heed to this most infamous suggestion.”

Some of the Southern reporting even took on a threatening tone, and the Baltimore

American reporter suggested that Anderson’s release could be a causus belli. “When such deeds go unpunished,” he wrote, “who will say that the people of the South have no cause of complaint.”575

Judgment day came on December 15th. In the weeks since the original decision date, Osgoode Hall had been transformed into a barricade. Twenty policemen, armed with muskets and fixed bayonets, were positioned along the courthouse’s iron-wrought gates, their faces expressionless as they stared out over the crowd. A company of the

Royal Canadian Rifles was stationed just down the street, ready to march down to the

Hall in case additional assistance was needed. To many observers, the sight recalled memories of the days when Osgoode Hall was used as a military barracks during the

1837 uprising. Inside, the great hall thrummed with nervous energy. Black men and women lined the walls, leaned over the railings surrounding the rotunda, and squeezed for space along the stairwell. Even though the local sheriff had initially mandated that only lawyers be allowed in the courtroom, a number of Anderson’s friends had managed to slip past the officers. A muffled murmur filled the room as the spectators whispered anxiously to each other.576 Many in attendance were “fugitives from the house of

575 Baltimore American, December 3, 1860.

576 J. E. Farewell, “The Anderson Case,” in The Canadian Law Times, Volume 32, ed., Charles Elliott (Toronto: Carswell & Co., 1912), 260.

209 bondage,” and if Anderson were surrendered, they knew that they too “might be dragged back to the toils of slavery from which they had escaped.”577

A hush fell over the crowd the moment the door opened. Two guards emerged, pulling their prisoner behind them. Anderson, bearing a look of “mildness and intelligence,” stared down at his hands as he shuffled into the courtroom and filed into the prisoner’s dock.578 He briefly lifted his chin to scan the crowd for familiar faces before he turned to the judges, a sigh escaping his lips. A hundred pairs of eyes fixed onto Chief

Justice Robinson. The Justice shuffled his papers, flipping through them absentmindedly as if he had not notice the crowd before him. Finally, he cleared his throat and began reading out his decision. As if to cut through the tension, the Chief Justice began with a lengthy and meticulous review of the case in which he enumerated each piece of evidence and reviewed each argument. Even though Robinson acknowledged the obvious defects in the warrant and thought that Freeman had argued the fugitive’s case “with much zeal and ability,” he ultimately concluded that Anderson had, in fact, committed a crime that was recognized by Canadian law.579 Abolitionists’ appeals to “higher notions of law” had no place in his courtroom, Robinson declared, for he believed that judges “are not at liberty to act upon considerations of policy, or even of compassions, where a duty is prescribed.”580

577 Twelvetrees, ed., The Story of the Life of John Anderson, 35-6.

578 Ibid.

579 “In the Matter of John Anderson, Committed under the Extradition Treaty with the United States,” Report of Cases Decided in the Court of Queen’s Bench, Volume 20 (Toronto: Carswell & Co., 1879), 163.

580 Ibid., 174.

210

Justice Archibald McLean, a fervent abolitionist, could not so easily detach the legal and the emotional underpinnings of the case. To him, Diggs was no innocent victim, but instead had acted for the “unholy purpose of riveting [Anderson’s] chains more securely,” and so Anderson was justified in using “any degree of necessary force” to prevent his recapture. While notions of higher law could not sway Chief Justice Robison, they still governed McLean’s legal philosophy. He refused to recognize Missouri’s slave laws because they were “passed by the strong” for the purpose of “enslaving and tyrannizing over the weak.” As a judge charged with administering the laws of a British province, McLean went on, he could never feel compelled to recognize any law meant to

“convert into chattels a very large number of the human race.” Therefore, no matter what the Webster-Ashburton Treaty stipulated, McLean believed that “on every ground”

Anderson should be discharged.581

As McLean delivered this addressed, his audience nodded in approval. The moment he finished speaking, the crowd erupted in cheers and began stamping their feet.

Anderson, who had done his best to maintain a stoic expression, could not help but break out in a relieved grin. This brief moment of euphoria, however, was quickly punctured by the next Justice’s remarks. Robert Burns provided a relatively brief, but incisive decision.

He considered the defense’s argument that Anderson acted in self-defense “a fallacy.”

Although Anderson was free the moment he set foot on Canadian soil, it did not follow that he should also be free from “the charges of murder, piracy, or arson,” even if these acts were committed in order to obtain freedom. He made clear that he himself had not come to any conclusion as to whether or not Anderson was guilty or innocent of the

581 Ibid., 188. 211 crime, but he had come to the conclusion that there was enough evidence to put Anderson on trial. No matter how much he deplored the institution of slavery, Burns explained, he could not let these “private feelings” interfere with his judgment on a matter of international importance.582 Therefore, by a vote of two to one, the court remanded

Anderson back to “the custody of the keeper of the gaol . . . until a warrant shall issue upon the requisition of the proper authorities of the United States of America, or of the state of Missouri.”583

The crowd sat in stunned silence. Anderson slumped in his chair as a wave of realization washed over him. He his chin tucked into the collar of his shirt as he blinked away tears. Freeman, caught between anger, embarrassment, and dread, glanced over at his client before telling the Justices he would appeal to the Court of Error and Appeal. As

Anderson was ushered out of the courtroom, the crowd began to shout “Three Cheers for

Judge McLean” at the top of their lungs in an effort to shame the other two Justices. A group of police officers escorted Anderson across the courthouse lawn towards the cab, cutting through the mass of people that rushed up to watch him go. Many were convinced that this would be the last time they would see the mild-mannered mason and they stared at him as he trudged by them.584

582 Ibid., 190.

583 Ibid., 192-3; For more on Robert Burns, see Christopher Moore, The Court of Appeal for Ontario: Definining the Right of Appeal in Canada, 1792-2013 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 19.

584 Globe and Mail [Toronto], April 6, 1860, Reel N-12928, LAC; December 17, 1860; Brode, The Odyssey of John Anderson, 62.

212

In the days following the decision, news of the case consumed the Canadian newspapers. Justice McLean, the sole dissenting vote, suddenly found himself catapulted to fame as he received effusive praise from anti-slavery advocates and black refugees who described him as a “free-loving” and “freedom-giving” hero.585 At the same time they held up McLean as a folk hero, abolitionists derided Robinson and Burns and called their decision “a disgrace to the British Bench” that was more reminiscent of Roger B.

Taney than Lord Mansfield.586 The sharpest critiques, however, came from George

Brown’s Globe, which had taken up the mantel as the premiere anti-slavery and anti- government paper in the province. In a scathing editorial on the decision, Brown questioned how a judge “nurtured upon English law” could arrive at such a conclusion.

Anderson, Brown insisted, belonged to “that great class of political refugees, and as such he is protected by the shield of the common practice of civilized nations.” If Anderson was given up, the editor warned, then “no fugitive slave in Canada is safe on our soil.”587

Black refugees were all too aware of the dangers this case posed to their own security and they knew that only their own intervention could prevent Anderson’s return to Missouri. Within a matter of days, William H. Harris, a prominent black leader in

Toronto, organized a meeting that brought together black Canadians, white abolitionists, and local politicians at St. Lawrence Hall. The Mayor, , opened the meeting with a rousing speech in which he praised the abolitionists’ efforts and boldly compared

585 Chatham Planet, December 19, 1860, NJ/FM/1647, Reel 2, LAC.

586 Perth Courier, January 11, 1861.

587 Globe and Mail [Toronto], December 22, 1860, Reel N-12928, LAC; For more on George Brown, see Alexander Mackenzie, The Life and Speeches of Hon. George Brown (Toronto: The Globe Printing Company, 1882), esp. 53; J.M.S. Careless, Brown of the Globe, Volume One: Voice of Upper Canada, 1818-1859 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1996). 213

Anderson to George Washington and the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi. He told those in attendance that their work to free Anderson would not only have profound implications for Canada West, but would also be felt “throughout the length and breadth of the British Empire.” The next speaker, a Scottish-born professor, wholeheartedly agreed with these claims and considered the case a turning point in Great Britain’s crusade against slavery. “The Empire as a whole looks down upon us now,” he reminded them, “to see how we shall fulfill that sacred promise that is committed to us.” Reverend

Alexander Topp, a prominent member of the Canadian Presbyterian Church, had a darker vision of the case. Anderson’s surrender represented an existential threat to “that liberty which Britons had so long enjoyed” and, if gone unchallenged, would “destroy the security” that black refugees “now happily enjoyed within our territory.”588

With nothing less than the fate of black belonging in Canada on the line, the attendees once again turned to the memorial to voice their dissent. Long considered an

“indisputable right of even the meanest subject,” the petition provided recently arrived

American exiles an opportunity to partake in a cherished British political tradition and participate in the long-standing conversation between subject and sovereign.589 In this petition, in particular, addressed to the Governor General, in many ways mirrored those first drawn up to protest Solomon Moseby and Jesse Happy’s imprisonment by providing recent refugees a forum to articulate their language of subjecthood to make themselves

588 “The Extradition Case! Great Meeting in the Saint Lawrence Hall. The Rights of the Slave,” Globe and Mail [Toronto], December 20, 1860, Reel N-12928, LAC; For more on Topp, see H.M. Parsons, Biographical Sketches and Review: First Presbyterian Church in Toronto and Knox Church, 1820-1890 (Toronto: Oxford Press: Timms & Co., 1890).

589 David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 86.

214 legible within the British Empire. Just as black Canadians had decades earlier, they emphasized their position as “industrious residents” who contributed to the Empire as productive and responsible subjects.590 These recent emigrants, however, did not simply reiterate those claims first made in the 1830s. Instead, they refined this language to fit their own unique position within the Empire, address the specific demands of the

Webster-Ashburton Treaty, and account for the rapidly shifting political conditions in the

United States.591

With this newly refined language of subjecthood, recent black émigrés yoked

Great Britain’s entire imperial project to its abolitionist crusade. Referring to themselves as not only residents of Canada West but also “inhabitants of this free British province” who were “warmly attached to the British Constitution,” black emigrants presented Great

Britain’s anti-slavery ideology as fundamental to the its moral authority in the Atlantic

World. In their memorial, black petitioners’ references to “British notions of freedom” were not hollow rhetorical flourishes but political statements that struck at the heart of the empire’s reason for being.592 To these petitioners, the British Empire was not just an economic network tenuously tethered by trade, it was also a moral community bound up by a shared set of ideals. Only this common value system, they posited, could effectively

590 Petition reprinted in “The Extradition Case! Great Meeting in the Saint Lawrence Hall. The Rights of the Slave,” Globe and Mail [Toronto], December 20, 1860, Reel N-12928, LAC.

591 Herman L. Bennett, “The Subject in the Plot: National Boundaries and the ‘History’ of the Black Atlantic,” African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2000): 101-124; For more on the legacy of petitions in English political culture, see Elizabeth Read Foster, “Petitions and the Petition of Right,” Journal of British Studies 14 (1974): 21-45; Mark Knights, “Participation and Representation Before Democracy: Petitions and Addresses in Premodern Britain,” in Ian Shapiro, ed., Political Representation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Hannah Weiss Muller, “From Requête to Petition: Petitioning the Monarch Between Empires,” The Historical Journal (2016): 1-28.

592 Globe and Mail [Toronto], December 20, 1860, Reel N-12928, LAC.

215 unite such a multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-lingual coalition. Anti-slavery activism, then, served a crucial function within the Empire as the psychological balm that mollified British anxieties surrounding “the ethics of economic exchange, the politics of equal rights or racial differences, and the purposes of Imperial power.”593 By becoming an abolitionist crusader, the British Empire was able to justify its own imperial expansion by doing good “not merely while, but through, extending its influence over the Atlantic world.”594

Anderson’s extradition, therefore, was not simply a colonial concern in Canada, but an existential threat to the Empire more broadly. To underscore the case’s profound significance, these petitioners argued that Anderson’s surrender would tarnish Great

Britain’s reputation “as one who whose soil cannot be polluted with slavery,” thereby undermining “the influence of British laws” throughout the world.595 The petitioners refused to believe that a “rash” and “improper act” made by a “local authority in Canada” should jeopardize the Empire’s commitment to black freedom throughout the Atlantic world, and they saw the judges’ ruling as distinctly out of sync with “the spirit of our laws.”596 In order to strengthen their claims, the petitioners placed Anderson’s case within Great Britain’s anti-slavery legal tradition by pointing to a host of “decisions in

593 Andrew Porter, “Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery, and Humanitarianism, in Porter, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 3: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 198.

594 Gosse, “‘As a Nation, the English Are Our Friends,’” 1025.

595 Ibid.

596 Ibid. Emphasis added.

216 analogous cases” that supported their “liberal interpretation” of the Webster-Ashburton

Treaty.

The memorialists also drew upon abolitionists’ higher law rhetoric to bolster their claims and raise the stakes of the case. To them, nothing less than the “sacred interests of just liberty” were on the line. Such a case, then, could not be decided “by mere technicalities,” but instead deserved a “large and humane construction of the clauses of the Treaty” that accounted for the natural rights of man. By aligning international law with natural law, the petitioners also hoped to demonstrate that Anderson had not committed an extraditable offense. While he had committed murder under Missouri’s slave code, Anderson had not violated natural law for he had acted according to the

“dictates of eternal justice.” The petitioners, therefore, were confident that the Governor

General’s “British-like spirit” would prevail and he would release the fugitive instead of offering him up to the Southern slaveholders.597

It was only inevitable that a case with such profound implications for Great

Britain’s international reputation would spark controversy in the metropole. Public opinion was almost entirely critical of the Canadian court’s “monstrous opinion” and many could not believe that the Canadian judges would interpret the case according to

Missouri’s slave laws instead of the “enlightened and humane principles of English freedom.”598 Many completely overlooked the legal technicalities of the case, and instead considered the case a stark choice between two moral philosophies. This viewpoint was

597 Ibid.

598 Punch, January 12, 1861 (first quotation) and London Post quoted in the Globe and Mail [Toronto], January 22, 1861, Reel N-12928, LAC. (second quotation).

217 best captured by an editorial in the London Dial which declared that even if “every law in the Canadian Statute Book, and the British Statute Book to boot” required Anderson’s surrender “the authoritative voice of the British people” would rise above “all written law” and forbid the deed.599

Emotions ran particularly high amongst Britain’s abolitionists, who eagerly latched on to the case as a way to revitalize their movement. The case first came to their attention through Thomas Henning, the Secretary of the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society, who wrote to his counterpart in the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Louis

Chamerovzow. In his letter to the British secretary, Henning emphasized that the decision in no way reflected popular sentiment in Canada: “The cry here is throughout the land,

Anderson is not a murderer but a Hero and he must not be given up.”600 The members of the BFASS were more than willing to make sure that this never came to pass. In the decades since the 1833 Emancipation Act, Great Britain’s anti-slavery activism had largely migrated from the center to the margins of British political culture. While many of these advocates continued to rail against human bondage in Latin America and the

United States, the Anderson case provided these abolitionists a rare opportunity to fight slavery on their own soil once more.601

The Society mobilized quickly. Within a matter of days, the Society formed a committee devoted to the case and sent a petition protesting Anderson’s extradition to the

Duke of Newcastle, the colonial secretary. Instead of dwelling upon the finer details of

599 Dial [London], January 4, 1861.

600 Thomas Henning quoted in Reinders, “The John Anderson Case,” 399.

601 Brode, The Odyssey of John Anderson, 67-70. 218 the case, the committee implored the secretary to consider the political and moral ramifications that would come with Anderson’s surrender. This “painful case” would decide far more than the fate of one man; it would also determine the safety of Canada’s entire black refugee population –“some forty thousand in number”—in addition to the unknown numbers of their “unhappy kindred” in bondage who still might seek refuge there. The committee actively appealed to the Duke’s sense of patriotic duty and reminded him that returning Anderson would betray Great Britain’s proud abolitionist record and would be actively “antagonistic to the great principle of liberty recognized as the basis of the Act of Emancipation.” By preventing Anderson’s extradition, therefore, the colonial secretary would not only “save a fellow-creature from a fate horrible to contemplate” he would also preserve “those personal rights guaranteed by the British

Constitution to every man, whatever his colour.”602

Chamerovzow also contacted over 250 anti-slavery societies and associations in the British Isles, suggesting they memorialize the Colonial Secretary. Not long after, the colonial secretary’s office was flooded with petitions from Scotland, Ireland, and

England. A majority of these petitions were signed by over 100 individuals, many of whom were leading figures in their professions or government officials. As more and more petitions poured into his office, the Duke decided that he could not sit by idly.

Recognizing that the case was of “the gravest possible importance” the Duke heeded the abolitionists’ demands and sent a dispatch to the Canadian Governor General, instructing

602 “Memorial Respecting John Anderson,” reprinted in The Anti-Slavery Reporter, Series 3, Volume 9 (London: British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1861), 36.

219 him not to issue an extradition warrant until the government in London had time to review the case.603

Chamerovzow was not content with just sending petitions and writing articles to protest Anderson’s imprisonment, though. After consulting with some of his “friends in the legal profession,” the BFASS secretary decided to obtain a writ of habeas corpus in an English court as a “check upon any arbitrary or precipitate proceedings in Canada against Anderson.”604 Chamerovzow received legal assistance from Gordon Allen, a local barrister, and Edwin James, a would-be actor who had recently become one of

Parliament’s most colorful members. To finance the legal fees this campaign would inevitably cost, the BFASS established a “John Anderson Defence Fund.”605 The BFASS supported this course of action hoping it would cement, for once and for all, the “great principle” that “no slave will ever be surrendered who has once touched British soil.” The

Society also delighted to have the opportunity to send a message to the “Government of the Dis-United States” that the British government would not be its .606

On January 15, 1861, Chamerovzow and his legal team applied for a writ of habeas corpus before the Court of Queen’s Bench at Westminster. Even though it had been an unseasonably cold day, the court benches were stuffed with curious onlookers

603 “Letter from the Duke of Newcastle to the Officer administering the ,” January 9, 1861, in “Correspondence Respecting the Case of the Fugitive Slave, Anderson,” in British Parliamentary Papers, United States of America: Correspondence and Other Papers Relating to Fugitive Criminals and the Slave Trade, 1842-90, Volume 46 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1861), 3.

604 Chamerovzow quoted in Reinders, “The John Anderson Case,” 403.

605 Reinders, “Anglo-Canadian Abolitionism,” 82.

606 “The Case of Anderson,” The Anti-Slavery Reporter, Series 3, Volume 9, 39.

220 and sympathetic supporters. Edwin James looked out over the crowd, the sight recalling memories from his days at the Theatre Royal in Bath. With characteristic theatricality,

James approached the judges’ bench and began reading off Chamerovzow’s affidavit in support of the application. In it, Chamerovzow argued that Anderson, “a British subject,” had been “illegally detained in prison” despite being guilty of “no crime cognizable by the law of England.”607 Establishing Anderson’s subject status was critical to James’s argument and justified his claim that the Crown still possessed the right to issue writs in

Canada. “It is the Queen’s writ,” he reasoned, “it is her prerogative, as it has been called to ascertain whether any of her subjects are rightly imprisoned.”608 Although no English court had issued such a writ to Canada before, James found several similar cases in other parts of the British Empire including the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, and Ireland.

While James admitted that Canada enjoyed a greater measure of autonomy than these locales, it was still a possession of the British Crown, and so a writ issued by an English court would have “concurrent jurisdiction” with the courts in Canada.609

At first the English court was initially uncertain as to whether or not its writ would be obeyed in Canada. The Chief Justice expressed fear that Canadian officials would balk at such a measure and would treat the writ with “disobedience and contempt.”

The attorney was surprised by this comment and replied, “Your lordship will not assume that.” The Chief Justice continued down this line of reasoning, though, and expounded

607 Edwin James in “Ex. Parte Anderson,” reprinted in Message from the President of the United States, in compliance with the Resolution of the Senate, information relative to the extradition of one Anderson, a man of color, Senate Documents, 36 Cong., 2nd Sess., No. 11 (1861): 11.

608 Ibid., 13.

609 Ibid., 15.

221 upon his fear that the Canadian people would “think that this is an interference with the independence of the colonial judicature,” and his court risked the embarrassment of attempting to enforce a decision “which we have no means of enforcing.” James provided a simple solution to this problem and stated that as a British subject, the sheriff of

Toronto would enforce any writ issued from an English court. When the Chief Justice pressed him, James reiterated his point and declared, “If it is a British possession, and he is a British subject, there cannot be a question on earth.”610

This argument assuaged the Justices’ fears and after a brief twenty minutes of

“anxious deliberation” the court at Westminster issued the writ.611 While Chief Justice

Cockburn admitted that this decision might be considered “inconsistent with that higher degree of colonial independence, both legislative and judicial, which happily exist in modern time,” he believed that it was unavoidable. Even though the Chief Justice could point to precedents that would justify this action, he believed that ultimately this case rested upon the firm foundations of natural law and was necessary for the “protection of the liberty of the subject.” They rationalized their decision to break the norms of colonial autonomy by claiming that it was the Court’s duty to issue a writ of habeas corpus wherever “a subject of the Crown is illegally imprisoned and taken into custody.”612 The crowd in attendance, sharing none of the Chief Justice’s misgivings, erupted in applause.613

610 Ibid., 41.

611 Ibid., 43.

612 Ibid., 44. Emphasis added.

613 Brode, The Odyssey of John Anderson, 75.

222

Reaction to the court decision in the British press was largely favorable and self- satisfied.614 To many, the writ redeemed the Empire’s honor, which had been threatened by the Canadian court’s action, and demonstrated to the world that Great Britain was so committed to anti-slavery it would rather “go to war” than return a fugitive slave to the

South.615 Occasionally, English pleasure at the issuance of the writ teetered towards condescension of the Canadian colonists. According to one reporter, the writ had finally brought the provincial periphery in line with the metropole and had thrown over

“freedom in the Colonies that great shield which has long been its defence in Great

Britain.”616 Another sighed in relief that the English courts had intervened just in time to provide “a salutary check to the frequent tyranny of the local courts of our colonies and dependencies.”617 Any misgivings over the imperial implications of this act were lost upon a public whose sympathies were clearly in line with the fugitive.

The case rejuvenated Great Britain’s abolitionist movement and infused its members with an energy they had not experienced since the Emancipation Act passed in

1833. Donations flooded into the BFASS’s coffers to support the fugitive and many hoped that Anderson would be brought over the Atlantic for a speaking tour.618 The

Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery was so inspired by the outcome

614 For some examples, see North British Daily Mail, January 18, 1861; Leicester Chronicle, January 19, 1861; Morning Star, January 16, 1861.

615 The Times [London], January 16, 1861.

616 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, January 19, 1861.

617 London Standard, January 17, 1861.

618 Globe and Mail [Toronto], February 13, 1861, Reel N-12928, LAC.

223 that they sent a letter to John Anderson himself congratulating him on his newly won freedom. While these abolitionists greatly lamented the circumstances that necessitated the writ, they were heartened to see that “when the people of this free country lift up their voice in a righteous cause” they could still bring about significant change.619 Throughout the British Isles, anti-slavery activists rejoiced in the fact that Anderson could now return to his life as a respectable subject and continue pursuing “an honest employment” under

“the broad aegis of British liberty.”620

Reactions to the writ in Canada were decidedly more mixed as many viewed the writ as an act of imperial overreach. Even those sympathetic to Anderon’s plight did not believe that the court at Westminster had any jurisdiction over the matter. The editor of the Upper Canada Law Journal denounced the English writ as being “opposed to every principle of legislative independence, judicial independence, and of self-government.” He viewed the motion as a sentimental decision made on the basis of a “cry of sympathy for an escaped slave” instead of a logical analysis of the case itself. In the process, the

English Court of Queen’s Bench had not only been “disrespectful of our colonial judiciary” but had also been “hostile to our ideas of self-reliance.” It was the sort of action that reminded Canadians “of well-nigh forgotten acts of colonial misrule” and, if repeated, might make them “restive in the future.”621

619 “Letter from William P. Paton to John Anderson,” January 17, 1861, in Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume 2, Canada, 434.

620 “To the Editor of the Times,” The Times [London], January 21, 1861.

621 “The English Writ of Habeas Corpus,” Upper Canada Law Journal and Municipal and Local Courts Gazette, Vol. 6 (March 1861): 53-9.

224

Recognizing the explosive potential of the writ, Freeman decided to settle the matter within the Canadian court system. “I think,” he told the Attorney General, “we should try and dispose of this question without the interference of the Courts in England unsolicited. If I am unsuccessful this time, I think, I will then apply directly to the Queen in Council.”622 Freeman chose to use the loose structure of the Canadian court system to his advantage and took the case to the Toronto Court of Common Pleas. By turning to the

Court of Common Pleas, Anderson’s lawyers were able to raise arguments they had not brought before the Queen’s Bench. Before this court, Freeman and his legal team shied away from moral appeals and offered a far narrower argument. Instead of expounding upon abolitionist theories of higher law, Anderson’s attorneys focused on legal technicalities and argued that their client was in jail on an insufficient warrant of commitment. Freeman pointed to the specific wording of the warrant, which stated that

Anderson had “willfully, maliciously, and feloniously stab and kill” Diggs.623 This charge, however, was not sufficient for a murder charge in Canada. Because this wording might include a lesser crime, such as manslaughter, Freeman argued that Anderson could not be extradited under the Webster-Ashburton treaty. The government’s attorney offered a weak case in response and even admitted that he had “no desire unduly to press the case against the prisoner.”624

622 Samuel B. Freeman quoted in Reinders, “The John Anderson Case,” 410.

623 “Warrant of Commitment Issued by a Magistrate under the Ashburton Treaty,” in Re. John Anderson, 9.

624 R. A. Harrison in ibid., 51.

225

The editor of the Globe could not believe that this case, which had trafficked in grand notions of freedom and justice, would end with “all the hair-splitting arguments of lawyers and all the bamboozling questions and puzzling cases of judges.” Instead of using soaring rhetoric to free the accused slave, the editor went on, Anderson’s s defense had resorted to a “mass of legal and technical verbiage” that few observers without a law degree could understand.625 While the argument lacked the poetry many anti-slavery activists craved, it succeeded in its main objective: freeing Anderson. The Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas was more than happy to accept Freeman’s line or reasoning and embraced the opportunity to close the case. He agreed that the charge laid against Anderson was, in fact, “an insufficient statement in an indictment for murder in any of our Courts” and so the fugitive should be freed at once.626 This decision, in effect, voided the English writ, thereby narrowly averting a crisis in colonial governance. Draper did not completely overlook the moral ramifications of the case, though, and he could not stomach the prospect that a British government would surrender a fugitive who, “as his sole means of obtaining liberty,” had “shed the blood of the merciless task-master who held him in bondage.”627

Anderson, sitting at the front of the courtroom, listened to the Justice’s ruling with his head bowed and his hands in his lap. He could hardly follow Draper’s verdict, with all the talk of warrants and writs, and when the Justice finally finished Anderson didn’t know whether to cheer or despair. When Sheriff Jarvis told Anderson he was now free to

625 Globe and Mail [Toronto], February 12, 1861, Reel N-12928, LAC.

626 Chief Justice Draper, in ibid., 53.

627 Chief Justice Draper in ibid., 60.

226 go, the former slave looked at him wide-eyed, not sure if he had heard him correctly.

After a reassuring nod from the Sheriff, Anderson rose to his feet and stammered out a

“Thank you, gentlemen – thank you, lordships.”628 Still dazed by the decision,

Anderson’s lawyer led him out of the courtroom and through the main exit of Osgoode

Hall where he was greeted by an ebullient crowd. The entire city of Toronto was covered by a thin blanket of snow. John Scoble, ecstatic that his campaign to save the fugitive had succeeded, called for a sleigh to take Anderson on a tour around the city in what was nothing less than a “triumphal parade.”629

Anderson’s triumphant tour did not end with a jaunt around the city center, though. While some assumed that Anderson would fade from the public eye and he would be “transmogrified into a plain, common negro again,” his moment in the spotlight did not end with his release.630 A month after Chief Justice Draper read out his decision,

Anderson was invited to give a speech at the Queen Street Baptist Church in Toronto.

During his address, Anderson frequently flattered his audience’s sense of moral superiority and referenced notions of British liberty. He told them stories of how, as he sat in prison awaiting his fate, he had nightmares that a great “Eagle would carry him off,” but then, at the last moment, “the Lion of England” protected him. Now, after watching how the power of a well-organized abolitionist campaign, he no longer had fear

“of the Eagle getting him.”631 A wave of applause rippled through the crowd at this last

628 Globe and Mail [Toronto], February 12, 1861, Reel N-12928, LAC.

629 Brode, The Odyssey of John Anderson, 99.

630 Hamilton Weekly Spectator, February 18, 1861.

631 Ibid., March 7, 1861.

227 comment, and the attendees eagerly offered up donations to pay the former slave’s legal fees and help him rebuild his life. Gerrit Smith, who had kept a watchful eye on the case, made the largest contribution at thirty dollars.632

Despite these generous contributions, Anderson’s fate as a free man remained an open question. Some believed that he should remain in Canada, and the Anti-Slavery

Society even secured a grant of 100 acres of land for the fugitive so he might follow the lead of other black refugees and become a farmer.633 Anderson, however, preferred to leave the province and felt “a strong inclination to visit England.” Intimately familiar with the “perseverance and implacability of his enemies” in the South, Anderson believed that he had to leave the North American continent. Only in England, he reasoned, would he be able to “enjoy his liberty without the fear of persecution.”634Anderson’s lawyer, knowing that his client might be rearrested at any moment, agreed with the runaway’s assessment.635 British abolitionists were more than willing to meet Anderson’s demand.

In the spring of 1861, a group of ministers from the newly former London Emancipation

Society invited him England and offered to pay for his passage across the Atlantic.636

632 Ibid; For more on Gerrit Smith’s involvement in, and attention to, the case, see “Letter from John Scoble to Gerrit Smith,” January 4, 1861, Box 32, Gerrit Smith Collection; Also see, Gerrit Smith, “Speech on Behalf of Anderson, the Alleged Murderer,” January 15, 1861, reprinted in Sermons and Speeches of Gerrit Smith (New York: Ross & Tousey, 1861), 136-159.

633 Reinders, “Anglo-Canadian Abolitionism,” 91.

634 Twelvetrees, ed., The Story of the Life of John Anderson, 85.

635 “Letter from Samuel B. Freeman to Gerrit Smith,” February 18, 1861, Box 18, Gerrit Smith Collection, Syracuse University.

636 Reinders, “Anglo-Canadian Abolitionism,” 91.

228

As soon as Anderson reached England, he was swept up in an extensive lecture tour that would take him to every corner of the British Isles. His first stop was at Exeter

Hall in London on July 2nd, 1861. An enthusiastic audience of nearly six thousand anti- slavery Britons packed into the venue, anxious to see the famous fugitive in the flesh. On the platform at the front of the hall sat members of the John Anderson Committee, who had dutifully raised funds for the fugitive while he was in prison. The committee members shared the stage with two other black refugees: Thomas M. Kinnard, a black abolitionist from Canada, and William Craft, whose own escape from slavery years earlier had catapulted him to fame in England. Anderson leaned on the Reverend Harper

Twelvetrees, the chairman of the meeting, as he walked to the podium. When

Twelvetrees introduced the former slave as “Citizen Anderson,” the crowd burst into applause. The Reverend continued over the cheering and clapping and, turning to look over at the fugitive, welcoming him to England where he could finally enjoy all of the

“rights, privileges and immunities” of British subjecthood. He then handed Anderson a small glass bottle filled with English soil, which was labeled “John Anderson’s

Certificate of Freedom.”637

The crowd laughed at this gesture before rising to their feet to give forth “long and prolonged cheers, coupled with waving of hats and handkerchiefs.”638 When the cheering finally subsided, Anderson approached the podium and, after a moment’s hesitation, began speaking. He first thanked the crowd for their efforts while he was in prison and gave “all credit to Great Britain” for his freedom. After a brief description of

637 Twelvetrees, ed., The Story of the Life of John Anderson, 113.

638 Ibid., 113.

229 his life in slavery and his time in Canada, he turned his attention back to the audience in front of them. Throughout his speech, Anderson positioned himself as a fellow subject bound to his audience through a shared love of liberty. Referring to the British abolitionists as his “Brothers and sisters” he led the crowd in three cheers for “Her

Gracious Majesty the Queen.”639 Anderson’s candid speech and obvious sincerity won over the audience and he resumed his seat amid deafening applause.640

In the time between July 2nd and the close of September, Anderson would attend

24 events in schools, churches, and meeting halls across southeastern England. At each of these meetings, Anderson recited the story of his life and escape from slavery, addressing each crowd in a “modest but frank manner” and expressed “how grateful he was for the kindness of the English people and how happy he felt to be among them.”641 By the end of his tour, the John Anderson Committee had raised enough funds to send the former slave to the British Training Institution in Corby, Northamptonshire, where he learned how to read “with little assistance” and solve basic arithmetic.642 While in the small hamlet, Anderson earned a reputation for his calm demeanor and personal integrity. The rector claimed that during the time the fugitive had lived among them, Anderson had conducted himself “in a highly exemplary and respectful manner” and could be placed in

639 “Speech by John Anderson, Delivered at Exeter Hall, London, England” July 2, 1861, in Peter C. Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume 1, The British Isles (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 494-5.

640 Twelvetrees, ed., The Story of Life of John Anderson, 116.

641 Ibid., 137.

642 Ibid., 136-7.

230

“any situation of trust and responsibility.”643 Anderson lived in the English town for a year before he announced he would travel to Liberia, which he believed would furnish

“unequalled opportunities for [his] prosperity and social advancement.”644 The Directors of the African Royal Mail Steam Ship agreed to provide him free passage and the John

Anderson Committee managed to secure him a grant of five acres of land from Gerald

Ralson, the Consul-General of Liberia. On December 24th, 1862, Anderson boarded the

Armenia and headed for a new life Liberia.645

Almost immediately after he touched land in Cape Palmas, Liberia, Anderson vanished into the haze of history. Although the members of the Anti-Slavery Society of

Canada briefly mentioned him at their 1863 meeting, they only vaguely remarked that he was now “occupying a good position in the free Republic of Liberia.”646 Eventually, John

Anderson’s name faded from the headlines of the Toronto Globe as the Canadian press became consumed with coverage of the . Back in Missouri, the

Digges family gave up hope of ever finding and charging Seneca’s killer. His sons simply continued to farm his land in Howard County and the story of the stabbing passed into the realm of local legend.647

The case had a lasting legacy within Canada’s court system, though. Chief Justice

Sir Beverley Robinson, who had initially ruled to send Anderson back to Missouri,

643 “Letter from Thomas Bull, M.A.,” December 11, 1862, reprinted in ibid., 144.

644 Ibid., 149.

645 Ibid., 150-6.

646 Globe and Mail [Toronto], February 5, 1863, Reel N-12928, LAC.

647 Brode, The Odyssey of John Anderson, 121.

231 retired from the bench not long after his infamous decision. Even though he never suggested that the fall out from the case had hastened his decision to retire, it was clear that the case had taken its toll on him. He died in January 1863, and his obituary noted that the “popularity of the bench seemed likely to suffer” because of the outrage over the case.648 Archibald McLean, who had been the sole dissenting vote in that decision, only seemed to rise higher in the public’s esteem after he stepped down from the bench. When he died a few years later, the Upper Canada Law Journal remarked that “whatever may be the strict law of the case, one cannot help admiring the free British spirit so characteristic of that man.”649 To prevent any other similar cases, the colonial government amended its extradition policy and the British parliament even passed a bill that prevented writs of habeas corpus from being issued to Canada.650

Although British and Canadian abolitionists were somewhat disappointed that the

Anderson’s release had not brought about a sweeping condemnation of human bondage, his release amounted to more than a “a quibble about the warrant” for Southern slaveholders.651 The influential Democratic newspaper, The New York Herald, believed the case confirmed Thomas Hart Benton’s assessment that London had become the international “headquarters of abolition” and that the British government was

648 Upper Canada Law Journal, March 1863, 63.

649 Ibid., November 1865, 282.

650 “Bill, entitled, ‘An Act respecting the Issue of Writs of Habeas Corpus out of England into Her Majesty’s Possessions Abroad,’” March 27, 1862, in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers: Volume 5 (London: 1862), 62.

651 Globe and Mail [Toronto], February 5, 1863, Reel N-12928, LAC.

232 intentionally using foreign policy to “bamboozle the Southrons.”652 If the United States could expect such wayward observance of treaties in future matters with the British, the

Herald’s editor added ominously, then “this is but the beginning of our troubles with the

English government. It can now afford to despise us.” The editor connected the Anderson case to a long list grievances against the British government, and warned that if the

British officials continued to insult the South “they may expect retaliation in this country.”653 The Baltimore America wholeheartedly agreed with this assessment and suggested that, were it not for the domestic crisis, Southerners would take up arms to protect their honor on the international stage.654 Perhaps the most radical claim, though, came from a Buffalo newspaper, which blamed the Canadians’ refusal to return Anderson for Southern disaffection. By protecting fugitive slaves and aiding Northern abolitionists, the Buffalo writer claimed, the British had forced the Southern states into a defensive crouch and driven them “in self-defence to form a Southern confederation.”655

While this final claim initially appears fantastic, it does hint at a fundamental truth revealed by the case. By freeing an admitted murderer, the case revealed that the world’s dominant military power had endorsed “the most radical doctrine of slave resistance”— self-defense.656 This result only came after an aroused humanitarian public applied sustained pressure on the British government. In this way, the battle to free Anderson,

652 Cong. Globe, 27 Cong., 3 Sess., 2 (August 20, 1842).

653 New York Herald, February 2, 1861.

654 Baltimore American, January 30, 1861.

655 Buffalo Republic quoted in the Hamilton Weekly Spectator, February 7, 1861.

656 Gosse, “‘As a Nation, the English Are Our Friends,’” 1015.

233 fought in the streets of Toronto and the halls of Parliament, also displayed the geographic reach of the trans-Atlantic abolitionist network and demonstrated the movement’s ability to shape international affairs. To black refugees, in particular, the Anderson case—more so than any other before it—gave meaning and substance to David Walker’s claim that

“The English are the best friends the coloured people have on earth.”657 Anderson’s release showcased for all the world to see how black refugees successfully used England as a “visible fulcrum” to direct international obloquy against the American Slave

Power.658 Through a variety of discursive forums, black refugees constructed and nurtured a symbiotic relationship with Empire that managed to withstand military battles, legal contests, and social changes within the Atlantic world. In this way, a stateless population was able to leverage the official apparatus of a sprawling empire for its own advantage. On a more fundamental level, however, the Anderson case represented the capstone of black refugees’ campaign to become British subjects. While the Westminster writ would ultimately prove irrelevant to Anderson’s final release, the fact that the former slave had been recognized as one of Her Majesty’s subject provided official confirmation that black Canadians were considered full members of the imperial community worthy of the Queen’s protection.

657 David Walker, David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, ed., and with a new introduction by Peter P. Hinks (1830, rprnt.; University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000), 43.

658 Gosse, “‘As a Nation, the English Are Our Friends,’”1015. 234

Conclusion:

On November 14th, 1860, the editor Toronto Globe and Mail, George Brown, ominously reported that “the crisis is upon us.”659 The editor was not referring to a sudden outbreak of violence in the colony or a natural disaster, he was speaking of the onset of the American Civil War. From across the border, Canadians watched the mounting tensions between the Northern and Southern states with an almost morbid fascination. The Canadian newspapers were stuffed with reports on the political squabbles and the military machinations taking place in the splintering United States.

George Brown, whose paper published an at least one article on the affair nearly every day, was convinced that Canadians should keep abreast of the conflict for they themselves might play an influential role in it and could even take part in ending

American slavery once and for all. “We are in the habit of calling the people of the

United States ‘the American,’ but we too are Americans,” he reminded his readers, “on us, as well as on them, lies the duty of preserving the honour of the continent.” Canadians could not afford to be apathetic during these momentous times, he explained, for the “the leprosy of the atrocious affects all around it” and a thriving Confederate state could threaten Canadian society as they knew it.660

659 Globe and Mail [Toronto], February 14, 1860, Reel N-12928, LAC.

660 Ibid., March 24, 1852; Also see Fred Landon, “The Anti-Slavery Society of Canada,” Journal of Negro History, 4 (1919): 39.

235

American abolitionists expected Canadians to join them in their crusade against the Slave

Power. After decades accepting and protecting fugitive slaves from the Southern states,

British North America had become a modern day Canaan in their eyes and they could only imagine what such a benevolent population might do in the face of an armed insurrection of Southern slavers. In a letter to anti-slavery activist ,

Samuel Gridley predicted that Canada would be a “great and reliable ally of the Northern

States, in the coming struggle with slaves.” When the battle lines were drawn between the states, he could only imagine what “immense moral aid” it would be for the Union to have Canadian support “at her back!”661

But when war erupted between the Yankees and the Confederates, many British

North Americans proved to be far more reluctant to join the fight than Northerners had initially hoped. Some white Canadians worried that a decisive Federal triumph would transform the Union into an avaricious republic and that the military conflict would cascade into an American drive for Canadian annexation. A Southern republic, they reasoned, would actually protect Canada by providing a more stable balance of power on the North American continent.662 Others critiqued Abraham Lincoln’s decision to conduct a limited war and refused to enter the conflict until it became a crusade against slavery itself. Some conservative papers went so far as to endorse the Confederate project because they believed that the Southern states were acting upon those “democratic

661 Samuel Gridley Howe quoted in Robin Winks, The Civil War Years: Canada and the United States (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998), 9.

662 Ibid., 15-7.

236 principles” the Americans had so long touted.663 A writer for the conservative newspaper the Toronto Leader even defended the peculiar institution and derided Lincoln’s conduct as Commander in Chief.664

Black Canadians watched the American Civil War just as attentively. For some, the conflict exposed just how many black refugees continued to view themselves as

American exiles and they yearned to join the fight alongside the Union troops. In a letter from Victoria, Vancouver Island, Sarah A. Lester referred to the fractured United States as her “fatherland” and asked American black abolitionists to keep her abreast of “our national affairs.”665 She had no patience for those who chose to remain indifferent to the conflict because “neither the North nor the South is the true fried of right.” In her eyes, black Canadians could not afford to be “mere spectators” in this fight, but instead must prove themselves and even “take up arms for the North and sustain the President.”666 In so doing, black refugees, and black men in particular, could prove themselves as

“Christian soldiers” who could simultaneously “pray for those who despitefully use us,” while also “like David, beat them as the dust when they oppose the cause of God and

663 Sheppard quoted in J. J. Talman, ed., “A Canadian View of Parties and Issues on the Eve of the Civil War,” Journal of Southern History 5, no. 1 (1939): 251.

664 Toronto Leader, July 1, 1862.

665 “Letter from Sarah A. Lester to William Still,” April 21, 1863, in Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume 2, 515.

666 Ibid., 517.

237 human progress.”667 Some acted upon these urges and enlisted in the Union army or help the war effort as recruiting agents.668

While the onset of the American Civil War pulled some black migrants back across the border in order to save the young republic, for others it further cemented their connection to the British imperial state. Even as they cheered on the Union war effort and gloried in the prospect of a free United States, to many black Canadians the war made them even more grateful to be “subjects of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen” who lived under a flag “that has ‘braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze.’” They pledged their commitment to aid the war effort in any way they could, but as loyal subjects they would only do so in ways that were “consistent with the laws under which they live.”669

In order to aid the Union army, black Canadians turned to the tactics they had developed in their decades-long fight against the Slave Power. They convened mass meetings, drafted petitions to the British Parliament, published addresses, wrote letters to colonial officials, and published newspaper articles in which they advocated for the

British government to assist the Northern states. In each of these forums, black Canadians deployed their language of subjecthood in order to lobby the British government to aid the Union war effort and endorse Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. When white

667 Ibid., 516.

668 A few of the most notable recruiters who traveled from Canada to the Northern states during the war included Martin R. Delany, Osborne P. Anderson, and Mary Ann Shadd Cary. See “Letter from Martin R. Delany to Mary Ann Shadd Cary,” December 7, 1863, in Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume 2, 520.

669 “Address by a Committee of Toronto Blacks,” April 21, 1863, in Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume 2, 515.

238

Canadians replied that the collapse of slavery in the South would lead to “an influx of free colored people into Canada,” black Canadians suggested that such an outcome would be advantageous for the provinces. Noting that British North America was always in

“want of laborers,” an injection of a “few thousands of those stout fellows [former slaves]” would be a boon to the local economy. After pointing out that some of the best farms in Canada West were “owned by colored men,” black Canadians reasoned that the freemen could easily cultivate Canada’s open countryside and “yield their natural productions so as to increase their value.”670

Therefore, although the Underground Railroad came to a screeching halt during the war and the saga of the fugitive slave lost its symbolic potency, black Canadians continued to exert considerable influence over Anglo-American diplomatic relations.

Even while the British remained neutral throughout the war, Canada continued to serve as a safe harbor for black refugees and the British state apparatus provided a platform for an emerging black political class to participate in Atlantic affairs. Throughout the war, black

Canadians continued to view themselves as equal members of the British Empire and were content that “England has done her duty towards us; she has abolished slavery in her colonies, and is doing what she can to destroy the system from the earth.” By constantly applying pressure against the slaveholding republic “on the side of freedom,” black Canadians were satisfied that their partnership with British Lion had proven fruitful.671 In this way, black refugees successfully leveraged Great Britain imperial

670 “One of the Sons of Ham,” Globe and Mail [Toronto], October 2, 1862, Reel N-12928, LAC.

671 Reverend William Newby quoted in C. Peter Ripley, ed., The Black Abolitionist Papers, Volume 4: The United States, 1847-1858 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 357. 239 might for their own advantage and were active participants in the geopolitics of the

Atlantic world.

240

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