The Journal of Negro History Volume IV Part 49

One branch of it ran from a point on the Ohio River, through Ohio and Michigan to Detroit; but there were many divagations, many termini, many stations: Oberlin was one of these. See Dr. A. M. Ross' _Memoirs of a Reformer_, Toronto, 1893, and _Mich. Hist. Coll._, XVII, p. 248.

[25] The Buxton Mission in the County of Kent is well known. The Wilberforce Colony in the County of Middles.e.x was founded by free Negroes; but they had in mind to furnish homes for future refugees.

See Mr. Fred Landon's account of this settlement in the recent (1918) _Transactions of the London and Middles.e.x Hist. Soc._, pp. 30-44. For an earlier account see A. Steward's _Twenty Years a Slave_, Rochester, N. Y., 1857.

[26] Ross in his _Memoirs_ gives, on page 111, 40,000, but he may be speaking for all Canada. The number is rather high for Upper Canada alone.

[27] "The Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force." There can be no doubt that the Southern Negro looked upon Canada as a paradise. I have heard a colored clergyman of high standing say that of his own personal knowledge, dying slaves in the South not infrequently expressed a hope to meet their friends in Canada.

[28] These being merely traditional and not supported by contemporary doc.u.ments are more or less mythical and I do not attempt to collect the various and varying stories.

There are several stories more or less well authenticated of masters bringing slaves into Canada with the intention of taking them back again as Charles Stewart intended with his slave James Somerset and the slaves successfully a.s.serting their freedom, resisting removal with the a.s.sistance of Canadians. Of one of the most shocking cases of wrong, if not quite kidnapping, a citizen of Toronto was the subject.

John Mink, a respectable man with some Negro blood, had a livery stable on King Street, Toronto. He was also the proprietor of stage-coach lines and a man of considerable wealth. He had an only daughter of great personal beauty, and showing little trace of Negro origin. It was understood that she would marry no one but a white man, and that the father was willing to give her a handsome dowry on such a marriage. A person of pure Caucasian stock from the Southern States came to Toronto, wooed and won her. They were married and the husband took his bride to his home in the South. Not long afterwards the father was horrified to learn that the plausible scoundrel had sold his wife as a slave. He at once went South and after great exertion and much expense, he succeeded in bringing back to his house the unhappy woman, the victim of brutal treachery.

There have been told other stories of the same kind, equally harrowing, and unfortunately not ending so well, but I have not been able to verify them. The one mentioned here I owe to the late Sir Charles Moss, Chief Justice of Ontario.

[29] The same rule obtained in Lower Canada; (1827) re Joseph Fisher, 1 Stuart's L. C. Rep. 245.

[30] This is the Act (1833), 3 Will IV, c. 7 (U. C.). This came forward as cap. 96 in the Consolidated Statutes of Upper Canada 1859, but was repealed by an Act of (United) Canada (1860), 23 Vic., c. 91 (Can.).

[31] To his people he seems to have been known as Hubbard Holmes; he is always called a yellow man, whether mulatto, quadroon, octoroon or other does not appear.

[32] The contemporary accounts of this transaction, _e. g._, in the _Christian Guardian_ of Toronto, and the _Niagara Chronicle_, are not wholly consistent. The main facts, however, are clear. Although there was some doubt as to the time, the military guard were ordered to fire. Miss Janet Carnochan has given a good account of this in _Slave Rescue in Niagara, Sixty Years Ago, Niag. Hist. Soc._, Pub. No. 2. It is said that "the Judge said he must go back," the fact being that the direction was by the executive and not the courts. The _Reminiscences_ of Mrs. J. G. Currie, born at Niagara in 1829 and living there at the time of the trouble, are printed in the _Niagara Hist. Soc._, Pub. No.

20. Mrs. Currie gives a brief account (p. 331) and says that one of the party, one MacIntyre, had a bullet or bayonet wound in his cheek.

In Miss Carnochan's account, her informant, who was the daughter of a slave who had escaped in 1802 and was herself born in Niagara in 1824, says that "the sheriff went up and down slashing with his sword and keeping the people back. Many of our people had sword cuts in their necks. They were armed with all kinds of weapons, pitchforks, flails, sticks, stones. One woman had a large stone in a stocking and many had their ap.r.o.ns full of stones and threw them too." Mrs. Anna Jameson, in her _Sketches in Canada_, ed. of 1852, London, on pp. 55-58, gives another account. She rightly makes the extradition order the governor's act, but errs in saying that "the law was too expressly and distinctly laid down and his duty as Governor was clear and imperative to give up the felon" as "by an international compact between the United States and our province, all felons are mutually surrendered."

There was nothing in the common law, or in the statute of 1833 which made it the duty of the governor to order extradition, and there was no binding compact between the United States and Upper Canada such as Mrs. Jameson speaks of. No doubt the reason given by her for the order was that in vogue among the official set with whom she a.s.sociated, her husband being vice-chancellor and head (treasurer) of the Law Society.

The _Christian Guardian_, _Niagara Reporter_ and _Niagara Chronicle_ and _St. Catharines Journal_ of September, October and November, 1837, contain accounts of and comments upon the occurrences, and sometimes attacks upon each other.

Deputy Sheriff Alexander McLeod was a man of some note if not notoriety. During the rebellion of 1837 and 1838 he was in the Militia of Upper Canada. He took a creditable part in the defence of Toronto against the followers of Mackenzie in December, 1837, and was afterwards stationed on the Niagara frontier. There he claimed to have taken part in the cutting out of the Steamer _Caroline_ in which exploit a Buffalo citizen, Amos Durfee, was killed. McLeod, visiting Lewiston in New York State, in November, 1840, was arrested on the charge of murder and committed for trial. This arrest was the cause of a great deal of communication and discussion between the governments of the United States and of Great Britain, the latter claiming that what had been done by the Canadian militia was a proper public act and they demanded the surrender of McLeod. This was refused. McLeod was tried for murder at Utica, October, 1841, and acquitted, it being conclusively proved that he was not in the expedition at all.

[33] Concluded at Washington, August 9, 1842, ratification exchanged at London, October 13, 1842, proclaimed November 10, 1842; this treaty put an end to many troublesome questions, amongst them the Maine boundary which it was found impracticable to settle by Joint Commissions or by reference to a European crowned head, William, King of the Netherlands. It will be found in all the collections of treaties of Great Britain or the United States, and in most of the treaties on extradition, amongst them the useful work by John G.

Hawley, Chicago, 1893 (see pp. 119 sqq.).

[34] It was held in this province that the Act of 1883 was superseded by the Ashburton Treaty in respect to the United States, but that it remained in force with respect to other countries (Reg. _v._ Tubber, 1854, 1, P. R., 98). Since the treaty, our government has refused to extradite where the offense charged is not included in the treaty. In re Laverne Beebe (1863), 3, P. R., 273--a case of burglary.

The provisions of the treaty were brought into full effect in Canada (Upper and Lower) by the Canadian Statute of 1849, 12, Vic., c. 19, C.

S. C. (1859), c. 89.

[35] Chief Justice Sir John Beverley Robinson, Mr. Justice McLean (afterwards Chief Justice of Upper Canada) and Mr. Justice Burns.

[36] The seat of the Superior Courts in Toronto, the Palais de Justice of the Province.

[37] Mr. Samuel B. Freeman, Q.C., of Hamilton, a man of much natural eloquence, considerable knowledge of law and more of human nature; he was always ready and willing to take up the cause of one unjustly accused and was singularly successful in his defences.

I have heard it said that it was Mr. M. C. Cameron, Q.C., who so addressed the gathering, but he does not seem to have been concerned in the case in the Queen's Bench.

[38] The case is reported in (1860), 20 Up. Can., Q. B., pp. 124-193.

The warrant is given at pp. 192, 193.

[39] The case is reported in (1861), 3, Ellis & Ellis Reports, Queen's Bench, p. 487; 30, _Law Jour._, Q. B., p. 129; 7, _Jurist_, N. S., p.

122; 3, _Law Times_, N. S., p. 622; 9, _Weekly Rep._, p. 255.

It was owing to this decision that the statute was pa.s.sed at Westminster (1862) 25, 26, Vic., c. 20, which by sec. 1 forbids the courts in England to issue a writ of habeas corpus into any British possession which has a court with the power to issue such writ. The court was Lord Chief Justice c.o.c.kburn, and Justices Crompton, Hill and Blackburn, a very strong court. The Counsel for Anderson was the celebrated but ill-fated Edwin James. The writ was specially directed to the sheriff at Toronto, the sheriff at Brantford and the jail-keeper at Brantford. Judgment was given January 15, 1861.

[40] Common law, of course, not chancery.

[41] The court was composed of Chief Justice William Henry Draper, C.B., Mr. Justice Richards, afterwards Chief Justice successively of the Court of Common Pleas, of the Court of Queen's Bench, and, as Sir William Buell Richards, of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Mr.

Justice Hagarty, afterwards Chief Justice successively of the Court of Common Pleas, of the Court of King's Bench, and, as Sir John Hawkins Hagarty, of Ontario.

Mr. Freeman was a.s.sisted in this argument by Mr. M. C. Cameron, a lawyer of the highest standing professionally and otherwise, afterwards Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, and afterwards, as Sir Matthew Cameron, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas.

Counsel for the crown on both arguments were Mr. Eccles, Q.C., a man of deservedly high reputation, and Robert Alexander Harrison, afterwards Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, an exceedingly learned and accurate lawyer.

The case in the Court of Common Pleas is reported in Vol. 11, Upper Can., C. P., pp. 1 sqq.

DOc.u.mENTS

NOTES ON SLAVERY IN CANADA[1]

The following Notes received from the Canadian Archives Department, Ottawa, have more or less bearing upon the question of slavery in Upper Canada:

1. General James Murray, the first Governor of the new Government of Quebec, writing to John Watts, of New York, from Quebec, November 2, 1763, and speaking of the promoting of the improvement of agriculture, says:

"I must most earnestly entreat your a.s.sistance, without servants nothing can be done, had I the inclination to employ soldiers which is not the case, they would disappoint me, and Canadians will work for n.o.body but themselves. Black Slaves are certainly the only people to be depended upon, but it is necessary, I imagine they should be born in one or other of our Northern Colonies, the Winters here will not agree with a Native of the torrid zone, pray therefore if possible procure for me two Stout Young fellows, who have been accustomed to Country Business, and as I shall wish to see them happy, I am of opinion there is little felicity without a Communication with the Ladys, you may buy for each a clean young wife, who can wash and do the female offices about a farm, I shall begrudge no price, so hope we may, by your goodness succeed," (_Can. Arch._, Murray Papers, Vol. II, p. 15.)

2. D. M. Erskine, writing from New York, May 26, 1807, to Francis Gore, Lt. Governor of Upper Canada, says:

"I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 24th ult enclosing a Memorial presented to you by the Proprietors of Slaves in the Western District of the Province of Upper Canada.

"I regret equally with yourself the Inconvenience which His Majesty's subjects in Upper Canada experience from the Desertions of their slaves into the Territory of the United States, and of Persons bound to them for a term of years, as also of His Majesty's soldiers and sailors; but I fear no Representation to the Government of the United States will at the present avail in checking the evils complained of, as I have frequently of late had occasion to apply to them for the Surrender of various Deserters under different circ.u.mstances, and always without success--

"The answer that has been usually given, has been. 'That the Treaty between Great Britain & the United States which _alone_ gave them the Power to surrender Deserters having expired, it was impossible for them to exercise such an authority without the Sanction of the Laws--'

"I will however forward to His Majesty's Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Memorial above mentioned in the Hope that some arrangements may be entered into to obviate in future the great Losses which are therein described." (_Can. Arch._, Sundries, Upper Canada, 1807.)

3. John Beverley Robinson, Attorney General, Upper Canada, giving an opinion to the Lt. Governor, York, July 8, 1819, says the following:

"May it please Your Excellency

"In obedience to Your Excellency's commands I have perused the accompanying letter from C. C. Antrobus Esquire, His Majesty's Charge d'affaires at the Court of Washington and have attentively considered the question referred to me by Your Excellency therein--namely--'Whether the owners of several Negro slaves from the United States of America and are now resident in this Province' and I beg to express most respectfully my opinion to Your Excellency that the Legislature of this Province having adopted the Law of England as the rule of decision in all questions relative to property and civil rights, and freedom of the person being the most important civil right protected by those laws, it follows that whatever may have been the condition of these Negroes in the Country to which they formerly belonged, here they are free--For the enjoyment of all civil rights consequent to a mere residence in the country and among them the right to personal freedom as acknowledged and protected by the Laws of England in Cases similar to that under consideration, must notwithstanding any legislative enactment that may be thought to affect it, with which I am acquainted, be extended to these Negroes as well as to all others under His Majesty's Government in this Province--

"The consequence is that should any attempt be made by any person to infringe upon this right in the persons of these Negroes, they would most probably call for, and could compel the interference of those to whom the administration of our Laws is committed and I submit with the greatest deference to Your Excellency that it would not be in the power of the Executive Government in any manner to restrain or direct the Courts or Judges in the exercise of their duty upon such an application." (_Can. Arch._, Sundries, Upper Canada, 1819.)

4. At a meeting of the Executive Council of the Province of Lower Canada held at the Council Chamber in the Castle of St. Lewis, on Thursday, June 18, 1829, under Sir James Kempt, the Administrator of the Government, the following proceedings were had:

"Report of a Committee of the whole Council Present The Honble.