University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VII

LIFE OF THE COLORED REFUGEES IN CANADA

The passengers of the Underground Railroad had but one
real refuge, one region alone within whose bounds they could
know they were safe from reënslavement; that region was
Canada. The position of Canada on the slavery question was
peculiar, for the imperial act abolishing slavery throughout
the colonies of England was not passed until 1833; and,
legally, if not actually, slavery existed in Canada until that
year. The importation of slaves into this northern country
had been tolerated by the French, and later, under an act
passed in 1790, had been encouraged by the English. It is a
singular fact that while this measure was in force slaves
escaped from their Canadian masters to the United States,
where they found freedom.[1] Before the separation of the
Upper and Lower Provinces in 1791, slavery had spread
westward into Upper Canada, and a few hundred negroes and
some Pawnee Indians were to be found in bondage through
the small scattered settlements of the Niagara, Home and
Western districts.

The Province of Upper Canada took the initiative in the
restriction of slavery. In the year 1793, in which Congress
provided for the rendition by the Northern states of fugitives
from labor, the first parliament of Upper Canada enacted a

A GROUP OF REFUGEE SETTLERS, OF WINDSOR, ONTARIO.
MRS. ANNE MARY JANE HUNT, MANSFIELD SMITH, MRS. LUCINDA SEYMOUR,
HENRY STEVENSON, BUSH JOHNSON.
(From a recent photograph.)

law against the importation of slaves, and incorporated in it
a clause to the effect that children of slaves then held were
to become free at the age of twenty-five years.[2] Nevertheless,
judicial rather than legislative action terminated slavery in
Lower Canada, for a series of three fugitive slave cases occurred
between the first day of February, 1798, and the last
day of February, 1800. The third of these suits, known as
the Robin case, was tried before the full Court of King's
Bench, and the court ordered the discharge of the fugitive
from his confinement. Perhaps the correctness of the decisions
rendered in these cases may be questioned; but it is
noteworthy that the provincial legislature would not cross
them, and it may therefore be asserted that slavery really
ceased in Lower Canada after the decision of the Robin case,
February 18, 1800.[3]

The seaboard provinces were but little infected by slavery.
Nova Scotia, to which probably more than to any other of these,
refugees from Southern bondage fled, had by reason of natural
causes, lost nearly, if not quite all traces of slavery by the
beginning of our century. The experience of the eighteenth
century had been sufficient to reform public opinion in
Canada on the question of slavery, and to show that the
climate of the provinces was a permanent barrier to the
profitable employment of slave labor.

During the period in which Canada was thus freeing herself
from the last vestiges of the evil, slaves who had escaped
from Southern masters were beginning to appeal for protection
to anti-slavery people in the Northern states.[4] The arrests of
refugees from bondage, and the cases of kidnapping of free
negroes, which were not infrequent in the North, strengthened
the appeals of the hunted suppliants. Under these
circumstances, it was natural that there should have arisen
early in the present century the beginnings of a movement
on the northern border of the United States for the purpose
of helping fugitives to Canadian soil.[5]

Upon the questions how and when this system arose, we
have both unofficial and official testimony. Dr. Samuel G.
Howe learned upon careful investigation, in 1863, that the
early abolition of slavery in Canada did not affect slavery in
the United States for several years. "Now and then a slave
was intelligent and bold enough," he states, "to cross the
vast forest between the Ohio and the Lakes, and find a refuse
beyond them. Such cases were at first very rare, and knowledge
of them was confined to few; but they increased early
in this century; and the rumor gradually spread among the
slaves of the Southern states, that there was, far away under
the north star, a land where the flag of the Union did not
float; where the law declared all men free and equal; where
the people respected the law, and the government, if need be,
enforced it. . . . Some, not content with personal freedom and
happiness, went secretly back to their old homes, and brought
away their wives arid children at much peril and cost. The
rumor widened; the fugitives so increased, that a secret
pathway, since called the Underground Railroad, was soon
formed, which ran by the huts of the blacks in the slave
states, and the houses of good Samaritans in the free states.
. . . Hundreds trod this path every year, but they did not
attract much public notice."[6] Before the year 1817 it is
said that a single little group of abolitionists in southern
Ohio had forwarded to Canada by this secret path more than
a thousand fugitive slaves.[7] The truth of this account is
confirmed by the diplomatic negotiations of 1826 relating to
this subject. Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, declared the
escape of slaves to British territory to be a "growing evil";
and in 1828 he again described it as still "growing," and
added that it was well calculated to disturb the peaceful
relations existing between the United States and the adjacent
British provinces. England, however, steadfastly refused to
accept. Mr. Clay's proposed stipulation for extradition, on the
ground that the British government could not, "with respect
to the British possessions where slavery is not admitted, depart

from the principle recognized by the British courts that
every man is free who reaches British ground."[8]

During the decade between 1828 and 1838 many persons
throughout the Northern states, as far west as Iowa, had
coöperated in forming new lines of Underground Railroad
with termini at various points along the Canadian frontier.
A resolution submitted to Congress in December, 1838, was
aimed at these persons, by calling for a bill providing for the
punishment, in the courts of the United States, of all persons
guilty of aiding fugitive slaves to escape, or of enticing them
from their owners.[9] Though this resolution came to nought,
the need of it may have been demonstrated to the minds of
Southern men by the fact that several companies of runaway
slaves were organized, and took part in the Patriot War of
this year in defence of Canadian territory against the attack
of two or three hundred armed men from the State of New
York.[10]

Each succeeding year witnessed the influx into Canada of
a larger number of colored emigrants from the South. At
length, in 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law called forth such
opposition in the North that the Underground Railroad
became more efficient than ever. The secretary of the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society wrote in 1851 that,
"notwithstanding the stringent provisions of the Fugitive
Bill, and the confidence which was felt in it as a certain cure
for escape, we are happy to know that the evasion of slaves
was never greater than at this moment. All abolitionists, at
any of the prominent points of the country, know that applications
for assistance were never more frequent."[11] This
statement is substantiated by the testimony of many persons
who did underground service in the North.

From the other end of the line, the Canadian terminus
we have abundant evidence of the lively traffic both before
and after the new act. Besides the later investigations of
Dr. Howe we have the statement of a contemporary, still
living. Anthony Bingey, of Windsor, Ontario, aided the Rev.
Hiram Wilson and the Rev. Isaac J. Rice, two graduates of
Hamilton College, in the conduct of a mission for refugees.
Mr. Bingey first settled at Amherstburg, at the mouth of the
Detroit River, where he kept a receiving station for fugitives
was in an excellent place for observation, and was allied
with trained men, who gave themselves, in the missionary
spirit, to the cause of the fugitive slave in Canada. When
Mr. Bingey first went to Amherstburg, in 1845, it was a rare
occurrence to see as many as fifteen fugitives arrive in a
single company. In the course of time runaways began to
disembark from the ferries and lake boats in larger numbers,
a day's tale often running as high as thirty. Through the
period of the Mexican War, and down to the beginning of
Fillmore's administration, many of the fugitives from the
South had settled in the States, but after 1850 many, fearing
recapture, journeyed in haste to Canada, greatly increasing
the number daily arriving there.[12] That there was no tendency
towards a decline in the movement is suggested by
two items appearing in the Independent during the year
1855. According to the first of these (quoted from the
Intelligencer of St. Louis, Missouri): "The evil (of running
off slaves) has got to be an immense one, and is daily becoming
more aggravated. It threatens to subvert the institution
of slavery in this state entirely, and unless effectually checked
it will certainly do so. There is no doubt that ten slaves are
now stolen from Missouri to every one that was 'spirited' off
before the Douglas bill."[13] It is significant that the ardent
abolitionists of Iowa and northwestern Illinois were vigorously

engaged in Underground Railroad work at this time.
The other item declared that the number of fugitives transported
by the "Ohio Underground Line" was twenty-five
per cent greater than in any previous year; "indeed, many
masters have brought their hands from the Kanawha (West
Virginia), not being willing to risk them there."[14]

That portion of Canada most easily reached by fugitives
was the lake-bound region lying between New York on the
east and Michigan on the west, and presenting a long and
inviting coast-line to northern Ohio, northwestern Pennsylvania
and western New York. Lower Canada was often
reached through the New England states and by way of the
coast-line routes. The fugitives slaves entering Canada
were principally from the border slave states, Missouri,
Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. Some, however,
favored by rare good fortune and possessed of more
than ordinary sagacity or aided by some venturesome friend,
had made their way from the far South, from the Carolinas,
Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, even from Louisiana.

The fugitives who reached Canada do not seem to have
been notable; on the whole they were a representative body
of the slave-class. An observer on a Southern plantation
could hardly have selected out would-be fugitives, as being
superior to their fellows. If he had questioned them all
about their desire for liberty he would have found habitual
runaways agreeing with their fellows that they were content
with their present lot. The average slave was shrewd enough
under ordinary circumstances to tell what he thought least
likely to arouse suspicion. That such discretion did not
signify lack of desire for freedom is shown not only by the
numerous escapes, but by the narratives of fugitives. Said
Leonard Harrod: "Many a time my master has told me
things to try me; among others he said he thought of moving
up to Cincinnati, and asked me if I did not want to go.
I would tell him, 'No! I don't want to go to none of your
free countries!' Then he'd laugh, but I did want to come
—surely I did. A colored man tells the truth here,—there

he is afraid to."[15] "I have known slaves to be hungry," said
David West, "but when their master asked them if they had
enough, they would through fear say, 'Yes.' So if asked
if they wish to be free, they will say 'No.' I knew a case
where there was a division of between fifty and sixty slaves
among heirs, one of whom intended to set free her part. So
wishing to consult them she asked of such and such ones
if they would like to be free, and they all said 'No,' for
if they had said yes, and had then fallen to the other heirs,
they would be sold,—and so they said, 'No,' against their
own consciences."[16] "From the time I was a little boy it
always ground my feelings to know that I had to work for
another man," said Edward Walker, of Windsor, Ontario.[17]
When, asked to help hunt two slave-women, Henry Stevenson,
a slave in Odrain County, Missouri, at first declined,
knowing that his efforts to find them would bring upon
him the wrath of the other slaves. "I wouldn't go," he
related; "the colored folks would 'a' killed me." In his
refusal he was supported by a white man, who had the
wisdom to observe that "'Twas a bad policy to send a
nigger to hunt a nigger," Nevertheless, Stevenson's trustworthiness
had been so often tested that he was taken
along to help prosecute the search, and even accompanied
the party of pursuers to Chicago, where he disappeared by
the aid of abolitionists and was afterward heard of in Windsor,
Ontario.[18] Elder Anthony Bingey, of the same place,
said, "I never saw the day since I knew anything that I
didn't want to be free. Both Bucknel and Taylor [his
successive masters] liked to see their slaves happy and well
treated, but I always wanted to be free."[19]

The manifestations of delight by fugitives when landed
on the Canada shore is another part of the evidence of the
sincerity of their aspirations for freedom. Captain Chapman,

the commander of a vessel on Lake Erie in 1860, was requested
by two acquaintances at Cleveland to put ashore
on the Canada side two persons, who were, of course, fugitives,
and he gives the following account of the landing:
"While they were on my vessel I felt little interest in them,
and had no idea that the love of liberty as a part of man's
nature was in the least possible degree felt or understood by
them. Before entering Buffalo harbor, I ran in near the
Canada shore, manned a boat, and landed them on the beach.
. . They said, 'Is this Canada?' I said, 'Yes, there are
no slaves in this country'; then I witnessed a scene I shall
never forget. They seemed to be transformed; a new light
shone in their eyes, their tongues were loosed, they laughed
and cried, prayed and sang praises, fell upon the ground and
kissed it, hugged and kissed each other, crying, 'Bress de
Lord! Oh! "I'se free before I die!'"[20]

The state of ignorance in which the slave population of
the South was largely kept must be regarded as the admission
by the master class that their slaves were likely to seize
the boon of freedom, unless denied the encouragement
towards self-emancipation that knowledge would surely
afford. The fables about Canada brought to the North by
runaways well illustrate both the ignorance of the slave and
the apprehensions of his owner. William Johnson, who fled
from Hopkins County, Virginia, had been told that the
Detroit River was over three thousand miles wide, and a
ship starting out in the night would find herself in the
morning "right whar she started from." In the light of
his later experience Johnson says, "We knowed jess what
dey tole us and no more."[21] Deacon Alien Sidney, an engineer
on his master's boat, which touched at Cincinnati, had
a poor opinion of Canada because he had heard that "nothin'
but black-eyed peas could be raised there."[22] John Evans,
who travelled through the Northern country, and even in
Canada, with his Kentucky master, was insured against the

temptation to seize his liberty by the warning to let no
"British nigger "get near him lest he should be slain "jess
like on de battle-field."[23] John Reed heard the white people
in Memphis, Tennessee, talk much of Canada, but he adds
"they'd put some extract onto it to keep us from comin'."[24]

Although many disparaging things said about Canada at
the South were without the shadow of verity, there were
still hardships enough to be met by those who settled there.
The provinces constituted for them a strange country. Its
climate, raw, open and variable, and at certain periods of the
year severe, increased the sufferings of a people already destitute.
The condition in which many of them arrived beyond
the borders, especially those who migrated before the
forties, is vividly told by J. W. Loguen in his account of his
first arrival at Hamilton, Canada West, in 1835. Writing to
his friend, Frederick Douglass, under date of May 8, 1856,
he says: "Twenty-one years ago—I stood on this spot,
penniless, ragged, lonely, homeless, helpless, hungry and
forlorn. . . . Hamilton was a cold wilderness for the fugitive
when I came there."[25] The experience of Loguen corroborates
what Josiah Henson said of the general condition
of the fugitives as he saw them in 1830: "At that time they
were scattered in all directions and for the most part miserably
poor, subsisting not unfrequently on the roots and
herbs of the fields. . . . In 1830 there were no schools
among them and no churches, only occasionally preaching."[26]

The whole previous experience of these pioneers was a
block to their making a vigorous initiative in their own behalf.
Extreme poverty, ignorance and subjection were their
inheritance. Their new start in life was made with a
wretched prospect, and it would be difficult to imagine a
free lot more discouraging and hopeless. Yet it was brightened
much by the compassionate interest of the Canadian
people, who were so tolerant as to admit them to a share in

the equal rights that could at that time be found in America
only in the territory of a monarchical government. By
the year 1838 the fugitive host of Canada West began to
profit by organized efforts in its behalf. A mission of Upper
Canada was established. It was described as including "the
colored people who have emigrated from the United States
and settled in various parts of Upper Canada to enjoy the
inalienable rights of freedom."[27] J During the winter of 18381839,
this enterprise conducted four schools, while the Rev.
Hiram Wilson, who seems to have been acting under other
auspices, was supervising during the same year a number of
other schools in the province.[28]

From this time on much was done in Canada to help the
ransomed slave meet his new conditions. It was not long
before the benevolent interest of friends from the Northern
states followed the refugees to their very settlements as it
had succored them on their way through the free states. In
1844 Levi Coffin and William Beard made a tour of inspection
in Canada West. This was the first of several trips
made by these two Quakers "to look after the welfare of the
fugitives"[29] in that region. The Rev. Samuel J. May made
two such trips, "the first time to Toronto and its neighborhood,
the second time to that part of Canada which lies between
Lake Erie and Lake Huron."[30] John Brown did not
fail to keep himself informed by personal visits how the
fugitives were faring there.[31] Men less prominent but not
less interested among underground magnates were drawn to
see how their former protégés were prospering; such were
Abram Allen, a Hicksite Friend of Clinton County, Ohio,
and Reuben Goens, a South Carolinian by birth, who became
an enthusiastic coworker with the Quakers at Fountain.
City, Indiana, in aiding slaves to the Dominion.

These efforts were helpful to multitudes of negroes. Some
insight into the work that was being accomplished is afforded

by Levi Coffin, who gives a valuable account of his Canadian
trip, September to November, 1844. Among the first places
he visited was Amherstburg, more commonly known at that
time by the name of Fort Malden: "While at this place, we
made our headquarters at Isaac J. Rice's missionary buildings,
where he had a large school for colored children. He had
labored here among the colored people, mostly fugitives, for
six years. He was a devoted, self-denying worker, had
received very little pecuniary help, and had suffered many
privations. He was well situated in Ohio, as pastor of a
Presbyterian church, and had fine prospects before him, but'
believed that the Lord called him to this field of missionary
labor among the fugitive slaves who came here by hundreds
and by thousands, poor, destitute, ignorant, suffering from all
the evil influences of slavery. We entered into deep sympathy
with him in his labors, realizing the great need there
was here for just such an institution as he had established.
He had sheltered at this missionary home many hundreds of
fugitives till other homes for them could be found. This was
the great landing-point, the principal terminus of the Underground
Railroad of the West."[32] Later Mr. Coffin and his
companion "visited the institution under the care of Hiram
Wilson, called the British and American Manual Labor Institute
for colored children."[33] "The school was then," he
reports, "in a prosperous condition." Mr. Coffin continues:
"From this place we proceeded up the river Thames to London,
visiting the different settlements of colored people on
our way, and then went to the Wilberforce Colony. . . .
I often met fugitives who had been at my house ten or fifteen
years before, so long ago that I had forgotten them, and
could recall no recollection of them until they mentioned
some circumstance that brought them to mind. Some of them
were well situated, owned good farms, and were perhaps worth
more than their former masters. . . . We found many of
the fugitives more comfortably situated than we expected, but
there was much destitution and suffering among those who
had recently come in. Many fugitives arrived weary and
footsore, with their clothing in rags, having been torn by
briers and bitten by dogs on their way, and when the precious
boon of freedom was obtained, they found themselves possessed
of little else, in a country unknown to them and a
climate much colder than that to which they were accustomed.
We noted the cases and localities of destitution, and after
our return home took measures to collect and forward several
large boxes of clothing and bedding to be distributed by reliable
agents to the most needy."[34]

The government of Canada was not in advance of the
public sentiment of the provinces when it gave the incoming
blacks considerate treatment. It was early a puzzle in Mr.
Clay's mind why Ontario and the mother country should
yield unhindered entrance to such a class of colonists; his
opinion of the character of the absconding slaves and of the
unadvisability of their being received by Canada was expressed
in a despatch of 1826 to the United States minister
at London: "They are generally the most worthless of their
class, and far, therefore, from being an acquisition which the
British government can be anxious to make. The sooner, we
should think, they are gotten rid of the better for Canada."[35]
But the Canadians did not at any time adopt this view. Dr.
Howe testified in 1863 that "the refugees have always received
. . . from the better class of people, good-will and
justice, and from a few, active friendship and important
assistance."[36] The attitude of the Canadian government
toward this class of immigrants was always one of welcome
and protection. Not only was there no obstruction put in
the way of their settling in the Dominion, but rather there
was the clear purpose to see them shielded from removal and
to foster among them the accumulation of property.

In the matter of the acquirement of land no discrimination
was made by the Canadian authorities against the fugitive
settlers. On the contrary these unpromising purchasers were
encouraged to take up government land and become tillers of
the soil. In 1844 Levi Coffin found that "Land had been
easily obtained and many had availed themselves of this

advantage to secure comfortable homesteads. Government
land had been divided up into fifty-acre lots, which they
could buy for two dollars an acre, and have ten years in which
to pay for it, and if it was not paid for at the end of that
time they did not lose all the labor they had bestowed on it,
but received a clear title to the land as soon as they paid for
it."[37]

In 1848 or 1849 a company was formed in Upper Canada,
under the name of the Elgin Association, for the purpose of
settling colored families upon crown or clergy reserve lands
to be purchased in the township of Raleigh. It was intended
thus to supply the families settled with stimulus to moral
improvement.[38] To whom is to be attributed the origin of
this enterprise is not altogether clear; one writer ascribes it
to the influence of Lord Elgin, Governor-General of Canada
from 1849 to 1854, and asserts that a tract of land of
eighteen thousand acres was allotted for a refugee settlement
in 1848;[39] another says it was first projected by the Rev.
William King, a Louisiana slaveholder, in 1849.[40] Mr. King's
own statement is that a company of fifteen slaves he had himself
emancipated became the nucleus of the settlement in
1849; and that under an act of incorporation procured by
himself in 1850 an association was formed to purchase nine
thousand acres of land and hold it for fugitive settlers.[41]

The Canadian authorities facilitated the efforts made by
the friends of the fugitives to provide this class such supplies
as could be gathered in various quarters, and they entered
into an arrangement with the mission-agent, the Rev. Hiram
"Wilson, to admit all supplies intended for the refugees free
of customs-duty. Mr. E. Child, a mission-teacher, educated
at Oneida Institute, New York, received many boxes of such
goods at Toronto;[42] and at a hamlet called "the Corners," a

few miles from Detroit, a Mr. Miller kept a depot for "fugitive
goods." Supplies were also shipped to Detroit direct for
transmission across the frontier.[43]

The circumstances attending the settlement of the refugees
from slavery in Canada were favorable to their kindly reception
by the native peoples. It was generally known that they
had suffered many hardships on their journey northward, and
that they usually came with nought but the unquenchable
yearning for a liberty denied them by the United States.
The movement to Canada had begun when the inter-lake
portion of Ontario was largely an unsettled region; and
indeed, during the period of the refugees' immigration, much
of the interior was in the process of clearing. Moreover, the
movement was one of small beginnings and gradual development.
It brought into the country what it then needed—
agricultural labor to open up government land and to help
the native farmers.

In the elbow of land lying between Lake Ontario and Lake
Erie, the fugitives were early received by the Indians under
Chief Brant, having possessions along the Grand River and
near Burlington Bay. Finding hospitality on these estates,
the negroes not infrequently adopted the customs and mode
of life of their benefactors, and remained among them.[44]

In the territory extending westward along the lake front
white settlers were working their clearings, which were
beginning to take on the aspect of cultivated farms. But
farm hands were not plentiful, and the fugitive slaves were
penniless, and eager to receive wages on their own account.

Mr. Benjamin Drew, who made a tour of investigation among
these people in 1855, and wrote down the narratives of more
than a hundred colored refugees, gives testimony to show
that in some quarters at least, as in the vicinity of Colchester,
Dresden and Dawn, the number of laborers was not equal to
the demand, and that the negroes readily found employment.[45]
It was not to be expected that the field-hands and house-servants
of the South could work to the best advantage in
their new surroundings; a gentleman of Windsor told Mr.
Drew that immigrants whose experience in agricultural pursuits
had been gained in Pennsylvania and other free states
were more capable and reliable than those coming directly
to Canada from Southern bondage.[46] But such was the disposition
of the white people in different parts of Canada,
and such the demand for laborers in this developing section,
that the Canada Anti-Slavery Society could say of the
refugees, in its Second Report (1853): "The true principle
is now to assume that every man, unless disabled by sickness,
can support himself and his family after he has obtained
steady employment. All that able-bodied men and women
require is a fair chance, friendly advice and a little encouragement,
perhaps a little assistance at first. Those who are really
willing to work can procure employment in a short time after
their arrival."[47]

The fact that there were large tracts of good land in the
portion of Canada accessible to the fugitive was a fortunate
circumstance, for the desire to possess and cultivate their
own land was wide-spread among the escaped slaves. This
eagerness drew many of them into the Canadian wilderness,
there to cut out little farms for themselves, and live the life
of pioneers. The extensive tract known as the Queen's
Bush, lying southwest of Toronto and stretching away to
Lake Huron, was early penetrated by refugees. William
Jackson, one of the first colored settlers in this region, says
that he entered it in 1846, when scarcely any one was to be
found there, that other fugitive slaves soon followed in considerable

REV. THEODORE PARKER,
A LEADING MEMBER OF THE VIGILANCE
COMMITTEE OF BOSTON.

DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE,

who made a valuable report on the life of
fugitive settlers in Canada in behalf
of the United States Freedman's Inquiry
Commission in 1833.

COL. T. W. HIGGINSON,
ONE OF THE PRIME MOVERS IN THE
ATTEMPTED RESCUE OF BURNS.

BENJAMIN DREW,

who studied the condition of the colored
refugees in Canada in 1855, and wrote
an interesting book on the subject.

numbers and cleared the land, and that in less than
two years as many as fifty families had located there. The
land proved to be good, was well timbered with hard wood,
and farms of from fifty to a hundred acres in extent were soon
put in cultivation.[48] In some other parts of Canada the same
tendency to spread into the outlying districts and secure
small holdings appeared among the colored people. Mr. Peter
Wright, the reeve of the town of Colchester, noted this fact,
and attributed the clearance of much land for cultivation to
fugitive slaves.[49] That such land did not always remain in
the possession of this class of pioneers was due to their ignorance
of the forms of conveyancing, and doubtless sometimes
to the sharp practices of unscrupulous whites.[50]

Encouragement was not lacking to induce refugees to take
up land; several fugitive aid societies were organized for this
purpose, and procured tracts of land and founded colonies
upon them. The most important of the colonies thus formed
were the Dawn Settlement at Dresden, the Elgin Settlement
at Buxton and the Refugees' Home near Windsor.[51] These
three communities deserve special consideration, inasmuch as
they illustrate an interesting movement in which benevolent
persons in Canada, England and the United States coöperated
to improve the condition of the refugees.

The Dawn Settlement, the first of the three established,
may be said to have had its beginning in the organization of a
school called the British and American Institute.[52] The purpose
to found such a school seems to have been cherished by the
missionary, the Rev. Hiram Wilson, and his coworker, Josiah
Henson, as early as 1838; but the plan was not undertaken
until 1842.[53] In that year a convention of colored persons was

called to decide upon the expenditure of some fifteen hundred
dollars collected in England by a Quaker named James C.
Fuller; and they decided, under suggestion, to start "a
manual-labor school, where children could be taught those
elements of knowledge which are usually the occupations of
a grammar-school; and where the boys could be taught, in
addition, the practice of some mechanic art, and the girls
could be instructed in those domestic arts which are the
proper occupation and ornament of her sex."[54] It was decided;
to locate the school at Dawn, and accordingly three hundred
acres of land were purchased there, upon which were erected
log buildings and schoolhouses, and soon the work of instruction
was begun. It was "an object from the beginning, of
those who . . . managed the affairs of the Institute, to make
it self-supporting, by the employment of the students, for certain
portions of their time, on the land."[55] The advantages
of schooling on this basis attracted many refugee settlers to
Dresden and Dawn. The Institute also gave shelter to fugitive
slaves "until they could be placed out upon the wild
lands in the neighborhoods to earn their own subsistence."

The Rev. Mr. Wilson served the Institute during the first
seven years of its existence, teaching its school, and ministering
to such refugees as came. The number of "boarding-scholars
"with which he began was fourteen, and at that time
"there were no more than fifty colored persons in all the
vicinity of the tract purchased."[56] In 1852 there were about
sixty pupils attending the school, and the settlers on the land
of the Institute had increased to five hundred;[57] while other
colonies in the same region had, collectively, a population of

between three thousand and four thousand colored people.[58]
From what has been said it is easy to see that the influence
of Dawn Institute was considerable; its managers were not
content that it should instruct the children of colored persons
only; they extended the advantages of the school to the
children of whites and Indians as well. Adult students were
also admitted, and varied in number from fifty-six to one
hundred and sixteen.[59] The good results of the policy thus
pursued are apparent in the character and habits of the communities
that developed under the influence of the Institute.

Concerning these communities Mr. Drew observed: "The
colored people in the neighborhood of Dresden and Dawn
are generally prosperous farmers—of good morals. . . . But
here, as among all people, are a few persons of doubtful
character, who have not been trained 'to look out for a rainy
day,'—and when these get a little beforehand they are apt to
rest on their oars. . . . Some of the settlers are mechanics,
—shoemakers, blacksmiths and so forth. About one-third
of the adult settlers are in possession of land which is, either
in whole or in part, paid for."[60] In 1855, the year in which
these observations were made, the Institute had already
passed the zenith of its usefulness, and its buildings were
fast falling into a state of melancholy dilapidation. The
cause of this decline is probably to be found in the bad feeling,
neglect and failure arising out of a divided management.[61]

The origin of the Elgin Settlement is discussed above;
whether or not it was projected by Lord Elgin in 1848, it is
certain that in 1849 the Rev. William King, a Presbyterian
clergyman from Louisiana, had manumitted and settled slaves
on this tract. This company, fifteen in number, formed the
nucleus of a community named Buxton, in honor of Thomas
Fowell Buxton, the philanthropist, and the rapid growth of
the settlement thus begun seems to have led to the incorporation
of the Elgin Association in August, 1850. It is probable

that Mr. King early became the chief agent in advancing
the interests of the settlers, his support being derived mainly
from the Mission Committee of the Presbyterian Church of
Canada. The plan that was carried out under his management
provided for the parcelling of the land into farms of fifty
acres each, to be had by the colonists at the government price,
two dollars and fifty cents per acre, payable in twelve annual
instalments. No houses inferior to the model of a small log
house prescribed by the improvement committee were to be
erected,[62] although settlers were permitted to build as much
better as they chose. A court of arbitration was established
for the adjudication of disputes, and a day-school and Sunday-school
gave much needed instruction.

The growth of the Elgin Settlement is set forth in a series
of reports, which afford many interesting facts about the
enterprise. The number of families that entered the settlement
during the first two years and eight months is given as
seventy-five;[63] a year later this number was increased to
one hundred and thirty families, comprising five hundred
and twenty persons;[64] the year following there were a hundred
and fifty families in Buxton;[65] and eight years later,
in 1862, when Dr. Howe visited Canada, he was informed
by Mr. King that the population of the settlement was
"about one thousand,—men, women and children," and
that two thousand acres had been deeded in fee simple to
purchasers, one-third of which had been paid for, principal
and interest. The impressions of Dr. Howe are well worth
quoting: "Buxton is certainly a very interesting place. Sixteen
years ago it was a wilderness. Now, good highways
are laid out in all directions through the forest; and by their
side, standing back thirty-three feet from the road, are about
two hundred cottages, all built on the same pattern, all looking
neat and comfortable. Around each one is a cleared

place, of several acres, which is well cultivated. The fences
are in good order, the barns seem well-filled; and cattle and
horses, and pigs and poultry, abound. There are signs of
industry and thrift and comfort everywhere; signs of intemperance,
of idleness, of want, nowhere. There is no tavern,
and no groggery; but there is a chapel and a schoolhouse.

"Most interesting of all are the inhabitants. Twenty years
ago most of them were slaves, who owned nothing, not even
their children. Now they own themselves; they own their
houses and farms; and they have their wives and children
about them. They are enfranchised citizens of a government
which protects their rights. . . . The present condition of
all these colonists, as compared with their former one is very
remarkable."[66] Mr. King told Dr. Howe that only three of
the whole number that settled in the colony had their first
instalment on their farms paid for them by friends;[67] and he
summed up his experience as follows: "This settlement is a
perfect success. . . . Here are men who were bred in slavery,
who came here and purchased land at the government
prices, cleared it, bought their own implements, built their
own houses after a model, and have supported themselves in
all material circumstances, and now support their schools,
in part. . . . I consider that this settlement has done as
well as a white settlement would have done under the same
circumstances."[68]

The colony known as Refugees' Home was the outgrowth
of a suggestion of Henry Bibb, who was himself a fugitive
slave. Soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of
1850, he proposed the formation of "a society which should
'aim to purchase thirty thousand acres of government land
. . . in the most suitable sections of Canada . . . for the
homeless refugees from American slavery to settle upon.'"
The association, organized in the summer of 1852, set about
carrying out Bibb's plan and accomplishing a work similar
to the objects of the Elgin Association. The money required
for the purchase of land was to be obtained partly through
contributions and partly through sales of the farms first

marketed. Each family of colonists was to have twenty-five
acres, "five of which" it was to "receive free of cost, provided
"it should" within three years from the time of occupancy,
clear and cultivate the same." For the remaining
twenty acres the original price—two dollars an acre—was
to be paid in nine equal annual payments. Those obtaining
land from the Association, whether by purchase or gift, were
to hold it for fifteen years before having the right to dispose
of it.

In the first year of the association's existence forty lots of
twenty-five acres each were taken up, and arrangements were
made for a school and church. Mrs. Laura S. Haviland was
employed as a teacher in the fall of 1852, and at once opened
both a day-school and a Sunday-school. She also organized
an unsectarian or Christian Union Church, which later
entered the Methodist Episcopal denomination. The material
condition of the settlers Mrs. Haviland describes for us
in a few words. She says: "They had erected a frame-house
for school and meeting purposes. The settlers had built for
themselves small log houses, and cleared from one to five
acres each on their heavily timbered land, and raised corn,
potatoes and other garden vegetables. A few had put in
two and three acres of wheat, and were doing well for their
first year."[69]

The three colonies described in the foregoing pages are
typical of a number of communities settled upon lands purchased
in Canada for their use, and regulated by rules drawn
up by the associations that had sprung into existence for the
benefit of the homeless refugees. The assumption upon
which these associations proceeded was that they were to
deal with a class of persons who, notwithstanding their
present destitution, were desirous of living worthily in the
state of freedom to which they had just attained, a class
needing direction, instruction and opportunity for self-help
rather than sustained charity. It was intended that fugitives
should not be left to work out alone their own salvation, but
that the deficiencies of ignorance and inexperience should be
mitigated for those willing to profit by the good offices of the

missions. The fugitive aid society did not, as we have already
seen, try to prevent the fugitives from settling together in
the form of communities; on the contrary, such colonization
was the inevitable result of their procedure, and doubtless
to them it seemed desirable. Such is the suggestion
contained in the arrangement under which farms were sold
to purchasers by the Elgin and Refugees' Home associations:
settlers on the tract of the former agreed to hold their farms
for at least ten years without transferring their rights;
settlers on the land of the latter were to keep their holdings
for a minimum of fifteen years without transfer. In the
dealings of the Home Association this restriction, we are
told, caused some dissatisfaction.

Whether this segregation of the colored people in localities
more or less apart from the white population of Canada was
a good thing for the refugees has been questioned. Dr. S.
G. Howe studied the life of this class in Canada in 1862 as
the representative of the United States Freedman's Inquiry
Commission, and wrote a report which is indispensable for a
knowledge of the conditions surrounding the colored settlers
in the provinces. He summarizes his judgment as follows:
"The negroes, going into an inhabited and civilized country,
should not be systematically congregated in communities.
Their natural affinities are strong enough to keep up all
desirable relations without artificial encouragement. Experience
shows that they do best when scattered about, and
forming a small proportion of the whole community.

"Next, the discipline of the colonies, though it only subjects
the negroes to what is considered useful apprenticeship,
does prolong a dependence which amounts almost to servitude;
and does not convert them so surely into hardy, self-reliant
men, as the rude struggle with actual difficulties,
which they themselves have to face and to overcome, instead
of doing so through an agent.

"Taken as a whole, the colonists have cost to somebody a
great deal of money and a great deal of effort; and they
have not succeeded so well as many who have been thrown
entirely upon their own resources. . . .

"It is just to say that some intelligent persons, friends of

the colored people, believe that in none of the colonies, not
even in Buxton, do they succeed so well, upon the whole, as
those who are thrown entirely upon their own resources."[70]

Upon examination, these objections do not seem to be well
grounded. It is noteworthy that of the prime movers in the
organization of the three colonies we have considered, two,
Josiah Henson and Henry Bibb, were themselves fugitive
slaves; the third, the Rev. William King, had been at one
time a slave-owner, and the fourth, the Rev. Hiram Wilson,
was a missionary among the refugees for many years. These
men were persons of wide observation and experience among
fugitive slaves. It is safe to say that there were no men in
Canada that knew better the disadvantages under which the
average fugitive, just arrived from the South, was called upon
to begin the struggle for a livelihood. And it will be admitted
that there were none in or out of Canada more zealous
and self-sacrificing in promoting the refugee's interests.
These men evidently believed that the fugitive was not in a
condition to do the best for himself upon his first arrival on
free soil, that he needed to be delivered in some degree from
the weight of his ignorance, and guided in his wholesome
ambition to secure a home.

To the eyes of some Canadian observers those runaways
who had lingered a while in the Northern states before crossing
the border into Canada appeared to be more vigorous,
independent and successful in all undertakings than their
less experienced brethren. Whatever superiority they may
have possessed that is not assignable to natural endowment,
cannot safely be set down to the unchecked play upon
them of rough experiences, or to their facing and vanquishing
great discouragements unaided. The runaway slaves that
lived in the free states were not as a class left to fight their
way to attainable success alone. They settled among friends
in anti-slavery neighborhoods, whether in city or country,
and were stimulated by the practical interest manifested by
these persons in their welfare. They were thus enabled to
benefit by those educative influences that the missions of
Canada were organized to supply. It is not improbable that

some of the refugees whose self-reliant behavior called out
the approval of Dr. Howe and others belonged to this group
of partly disciplined fugitives. Dr. Howe must have seen
many such persons, for his journey in Canada West was not
made until 1862, after the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 had
driven many of them from the states into the provinces. Drew
remarks pertinently: "The Fugitive Slave Bill drove into
Canada a great many who had resided in the free states.
These brought some means with them, and their efforts and
good example have improved the condition of the older
settlers."[71]

The other group of Canadian refugees—those whose passage
had been direct from the condition of abject dependence,
where the whole routine of life had been determined by the
master or overseer, to the condition of active independence
and responsibility, where the readiness to take hold and to
care for one's own interests were required—this group doubtless
contained persons of ability and energy; but they must
have been in the minority. During the later years of its
history the Underground Railroad made flight comparatively
easy for all who once got out of the slave states, so that frail
women and young children often went through to Canada
with little or no difficulty. There were of course many
individuals of extraordinary ability, who had enjoyed in
slavery a wider range of experience than was vouchsafed
the average slave; but such people could take care of themselves
anywhere. Here we are concerned with the large
number that needed to have the way pointed out to them
if they were ever to become the possessors of their own
homes; they were not sufficiently informed to originate and
carry on successful building and loan associations for themselves,
but they certainly could profit by an institution devised
to serve the same purpose. If it be admitted that
ownership of land and all that that implies was a good thing
for the refugee, then it is difficult to see how that idea could
have been better inculcated far and wide than through the
methods employed by the Canadian organizations.

Besides enabling refugees to secure homes for themselves

there were other offices the associations conceived to be
a part of their duty, and the performance of which is set
forth in their records. The first and most urgent of these
was to supply immediate relief to the wayworn travellers
continually arriving; with this was combined the necessity
of helping these persons to find employment. The British
and American Institute at Dawn was obliged to conduct, as
part of its work, what would now be called perhaps a supply
and employment bureau. Josiah Henson, one of the founders
of the Institute, describing this branch of the work, says:
"Many of these poor creatures arrive destitute of means, and
often in want of suitable clothing, and these, as far as possible,
have been supplied them. Since the passage of the late
Fugitive Slave Bill, . . . they have arrived in large numbers
at the Institute, and have been drafted off among their
brethren who had been previously settled, and who are now
making every effort and sacrifice to meet their destitute
circumstances."[72] Henry Bibb, of the Refugees' Home, as
early as 1843 saw the need of maintaining a stock of supplies
at Windsor out of which to relieve the immediate necessities
of fugitives.[73] The missionary, Isaac J. Rice, kept a similar
supply room at Amherstburg.[74] It appears from all this that
the recognition of the deplorable destitution of arriving
fugitives was general among the aid societies and their
representatives, and that prompt action was taken to meet
wants that could brook no delay.

Another service performed by these colonization societies
was that of providing superior schools for the colored people;
education for all that could take it was one of the cardinal
features of their programme. The state of public sentiment
in some places in Canada was such that colored children
were either altogether excluded from the public schools, or,
if allowed to enter, they were annoyed beyond endurance by
the rude behavior of their fellow-pupils. In some places
they braved the prejudice against them, but the numbers
courageous enough to do this were insignificant. Under

such circumstances the best that could be done by the friends
of the black race was to open schools under private management.
That the societies were not averse to mixed schools
is shown by the fact that white pupils were admitted in various
instances to classes formed primarily for colored children.[75]
This need of schools did not appeal alone to the colonization
societies. It was seen and responded to by other organizations;
thus the English Colonial Church and School Society
thought it advisable to locate schools at London,[76] Amherstburg,[77]
Colchester[78] and perhaps other places; and certain
religious bodies of the United States felt it incumbent on
them to support school-teachers (ten or more) in different
parts of Canada.[79] Besides the schools thus provided a few
were conducted by individuals; as examples of this latter
class may be named a private school at Chatham taught by
Alfred Whipper,[80] a colored man, and another at Windsor
managed by Mrs. Mary E. Bibb, the wife of Henry Bibb mentioned
above.[81]

The supervision of the colonies maintained by their respective
associations does not appear to have been unduly
strict. Occasionally controversies came up over what was
thought by the refugees to be improper assumption of authority
by some agent or representative of the association, but an
examination of the terms under which land was taken by the
intending settlers brings to light only such rules as were
meant to foster intelligence, morality and sobriety among the
colonists. The aid societies were not only zealous for education.
They also provided against those evil influences to
which they thought the negroes were most likely to succumb.
Thus, for example, in the case of the Buxton[82] and Refugees'
Home settlements the manufacture and sale of intoxicants
were forbidden. Such regulations seem to have been sustained

by the sentiment of the communities for which, they
were made, and are not known to have been the source of
opposition. Indeed, the directors of Buxton specially commended
the habits of sobriety prevalent among the people
whose best interests they were striving to promote,[83] and the
Rev. William King found satisfaction in the fact that a
saloon opened on the borders of that settlement could not
find customers enough to support it, and closed its doors
within a twelvemonth. His testimony relating to the standard
of social purity mantained by the colonists was creditable
in its showing, and indicated a high sense of morality scarcely
to be expected among a people stained by the gross practices
of slave-life.[84] Of the colored people in the neighborhood
of Dawn Institute the reports were equally good. Mr.
Drew found them to be "generally very prosperous farmers—
of good morals, and mostly Methodists and Baptists."[85] Mr.
Henson related with evident pride that out of the three
thousand or four thousand colored people congregated in the
settlements about Dawn not one had "been sent to jail for
any infraction of the laws during the last seven years
(1845—1852)."[86]

The widest range of dissatisfaction appeared at the Refugees'
Home, where the fugitives are reputed to have been
unduly burdened. Thomas Jones, not a colonist, and without
any personal grievances to complain of, voiced the feeling
to Mr. Drew. After relating some annoying changes
made in the regulations as to the time in which clearings
were to be made, as to the size of the houses to be erected
and so forth, he declared that the settlers "doubt about
getting deeds, . . . The restrictions in regard to liquor, and
not selling [their land] under so many years, nor the power
to will . . . property to . . . friends, only to children if . . .
[they] have any, make them dissatisfied. They want to do
as they please." From this it appears that the population of

Refugees' Home was not altogether content with the local
government under which it lived, but apparently the complaints
made were to be attributed more to the unjust
changes in the charter of the colony than to the moral régime
the Home Association sought to enforce.

In general we may say, then, that in so far as the three
colonies considered were typical of the whole class, there was
nothing inherent in the provisions of their constitutions or
in the nature of their organizations to place their members in
a kind of servitude. As property owners, these citizens became
subject to legitimate obligations, which might have been
differently arranged, but could scarcely have been less onerous
or of better intention. The requirement that ownership
should be for a period of ten or fifteen years, made by the
Elgin and Refugees' Home societies, was perhaps annoying;
but the explanation, if not the full justification, of such a demand
lay in the evident desire of the societies to give all
purchasers ample time in which to make their payments,
and in the irresponsibility of the class with which they were
dealing.

It is impossible to tell how many landed colonies there
were in Canada. Dr. Howe, perhaps the best contemporary
observer, speaks indefinitely of benevolent persons that formed
organizations at various periods for the relief and aid of the
refugees, and says that these organizations generally took the
form of societies for procuring tracts of land and settling
colonies upon them, but he gives no further details.[87] Whatever
their number, it is quite certain that these colonies comprised
but a small part of the refugee population. The
natural tendency was for fugitives to drift at once to the
towns, where there was immediate prospect of relief and
employment. In this way many of the Canadian centres
came to have an increasing proportion of colored inhabitants.
The towns first receiving such additions were naturally those
of mercantile importance in the lake traffic of the decades
before the Civil War. Thus, Amherstburg and Windsor,
Port Stanley and Port Burwell, St. Catherines, Hamilton and

Toronto, and Kingston and Montreal, early became important
places of resort for escaped slaves.

The movement was normally from these and other centres
on the lake shore, or near it, to the interior. How rapid it
was we can only judge by the few chance indications that
remain. During Drew's travels in Canada West he learned
that in 1832 the town of Chatham was a mere hamlet comprising
a few houses and two or three shops, although the
oldest deed of the place on record is dated 1801. Steamboats
did not begin to ply on the river Sydenham between Chatham
and Detroit until 1837. But long before this year, and, in
fact, at the first settlement of the town, colored people began
to come in.[88] When Levi Coffin made his first trip to Canada,
in 1844, he visited a number of settlements of colored people
scattered along the river Thames north of Dawn, and found
the colony at Wilberforce already established.[89] This colony
had been founded as early as 1830, and because it was
originally settled by a group of emancipated slaves, it soon
began to attract new settlers from the incoming stream of
runaways. By 1846 the more distant interior was invaded.
In that year the long strip of country stretching from the
western extremity of Lake Ontario across to Lake Huron,
and designated on the general map as Queen's Bush, was
entered by pioneers who had escaped from slavery. This
region was not surveyed until about 1848, and by that time
there were as many as fifty families located there.[90] Some
time during the years 1845 to 1847, the Rev. R. S. W. Sorrick
went as far north as Oro, where he found "some fifty persons
settled, many comfortable and doing well, but many [suffering]
a great deal from poverty."[91] The surveying of the tract
called Queen's Bush, and the subsequent arranging of the
terms of payment for land already occupied, caused a number
of colored settlers to sell their clearings in "the Bush" and
move away. Some of these, it appears, went south to Buxton,
but some went north to the shores of Georgian Bay and

located at Owen Sound.[92] From this testimony it is certain
that by 1850 fugitive slaves had found their way in considerable
numbers throughout the inter-lake portion of Canada
West.

Farther east, the Province of Quebec attracted negroes
from the Southern states as early as the thirties; and they
began to make pilgrimages northward by way of secret lines
of travel through New England. By 1850, there were at least
five or six of these lines, all well patronized, considering their
remoteness from slaveholding territory. Maritime routes, by
way of ports along the New England coast to New Brunswick,
Nova Scotia, and even Cape Breton Island, seem also to have
existed. A case is cited by the Rev. Austin Willey in his
book, entitled Anti-Slavery in the State and Nation, in which
more than twenty colored refugees were sent from Portland
to New Brunswick at one time, soon after the rescue of
Shadrach in Boston, in 1851. It is reported that there are
still settlements of ex-slaves in Nova Scotia, near Halifax;[93]
and the statement has recently been made that "there are at
least two negro families living in Inverness County, Cape
Breton, who are, in all probability, the descendants of fugitive
slaves."[94]

As regards this movement into the Eastern provinces, no
detailed information can be had. Even in the "Western lake-bound
region, it was the towns that were the most accessible
for the traveller desirous of studying the condition of fugitives;
most visitors contented themselves with the briefest
memorials of their visits; and those whose accounts are at
the same time helpful and extended, describe or even mention
only a limited number of abiding-places of escaped slaves.
Though Drew notices in his book but thirteen communities,
and Dr. Howe refers to eleven only, numerous other places
are mentioned by other observers. Sketching his first visit
to Canada, Mr. Coffin writes: "Leaving Gosfield County,

we made our way to Chatham and Sydenham, visiting the
various neighborhoods of colored people. We spent several
days at the settlement near Down's Mills, and visited the
institution under the care of Hiram Wilson, called the British
and American Manual Labor Institute. . . . From this place
we proceeded up the river Thames to London, visiting the
different settlements of colored people on our way, and then
went to the Wilberforce colony."[95] After naming a list of
twelve towns near which refugees had settled, Josiah Henson
says: "Others are scattered in small numbers in different
townships, and at Toronto there are about four hundred or
five hundred variously employed. . . ."[96] Such testimony
goes to show that the refugee population of Canada was
widely distributed, both in the cities and towns and in the
country.

If the information at hand in regard to the distribution
of the refugees is unsatisfactory, it can hardly be expected
that the numbers can now be ascertained. The official figures
of the successive Canadian censuses are untrustworthy.
Dr. Howe, who studied them, concluded that, "It is impossible
to ascertain the number of exiles who have found refuge
in Canada since 1800. . . . It is difficult, moreover, to
ascertain the present number (1862). The census of 1850
is confused. It puts the number in Upper Canada at 2,502
males and 2,167 females. But in a note it is stated, 'there
are about 8,000 colored persons in Western Canada.' This
word "about" is an admission of the uncertainty; and as if
to make that uncertainty greater, the same census in another
part puts the number in Western Canada at 4,669." The
census of 1860 Dr. Howe found to be equally unreliable.
In giving the colored population as 11,223, it underrated
the number greatly, as he discovered by looking into the
records of several cities and by making inquiry of town officers.
In this manner he learned that the number of colored
people living in St. Catherines was about 700, although the
census showed only 472; in Hamilton, probably more than

500, despite the government showing of only 62; in Toronto,
934, although the census gave but 510; in London, Canada
West, as the mayor estimated, there were 75 families of colored
people, whereas the census showed only 36 persons.
"There has been no movement of the colored population,"
Dr. Howe tells us, "sufficient to explain such discrepancies;
and the conclusion is that the census of 1850, and that of
1860, included some of the colored people in the white
column."[97]

If the information contained in the census reports of
the Canadas relating to the refugee population of the
provinces is misleading, so also is it true that little value
can be attached to the estimates made at various times
by visitors to the communities of fugitives, most of whom
had inadequate data upon which to base their conclusions.
These estimates not only differ widely, but
sometimes leave room for doubt as to what geographical
area and period of time they are intended to cover.
Coffin in 1844 was told that there were about forty thousand
fugitives in Canada;[98] but eight years later Henson
estimated the number at between twenty thousand and
thirty thousand, and daily increasing.[99] In the same year
(1852) the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada in its First
Annual Report stated that there were about thirty thousand
colored residents in Canada West.[100] The Rev. Hiram Wilson
said from the lecture platform that there were sixty
thousand fugitives in Canada, and Elder Anthony Bingey, a
coworker with Mr. Wilson, who heard this estimate given
by his friend, informed the writer that Mr. Wilson had travelled
over the country from Toronto westward and was as
competent a judge as could be found in Ontario.[101] John
Brown attended a conference at Chatham in the spring of
1858, and his biographer, Mr. R. J. Hinton, thinks there
were probably not less than seventy-five thousand fugitives

living in Canada West at that time.[102] The Rev. W. M.
Mitchell, a negro missionary writing in 1860, was of the
opinion that there were sixty thousand colored people in
Upper Canada, that fifteen thousand of these were free-born,
and that the remaining forty-five thousand were fugitive
slaves from the United States.[103] The Rev. Dr. Willes, Professor
of Divinity in Toronto College, is quoted as having
said that there were about sixty thousand emancipated slaves
in Canada, the most of whom had escaped from bondage.[104]
Dr. Howe came to the conclusion in 1863 that the whole
number of slaves enfranchised by residence in the provinces
was between thirty and forty thousand. He thought that
at the time of his visit the population did not fall below fifteen
thousand nor exceed twenty thousand; although other
observers, he said, estimated it as ranging from twenty
thousand to thirty thousand.[105]

Besides the diversity of the figures here presented, it
should be noted that most of the estimates refer only to
Canada West; and further that they take no account of the
losses under a high death-rate, due to the action of the new
climatic conditions upon the settlers. Travellers were not
in possession of the elements necessary for a computation,
the resident missions were tempted to overstate, and the
Canadian officials did not know how to secure data, and, perhaps,
did not try to secure them fully. One can only say that
the numerous lines of Underground Railroad would not have
been taxed beyond their capacity to convey a number of
refugees equal to the highest estimate given above during
the period these lines are known to have been active.

The great majority of escaped slaves were possessed of
but little more than the boon of freedom when they arrived
in what was for them "the promised land." Church missions,
anti-slavery societies and colonies found in them worthy
subjects for their benefactions, which were intended to put
the recipients in the way of earning their own livelihood.

The need of clothing, shelter and employment was provided
for as promptly as circumstances would allow, and the fugitives
soon came to realize that the efforts made in their behalf
were to help them attain that independence of which they
had been so long deprived.

As the region to which the refugees had recourse in largest
numbers was well covered with forests, and was beginning
to be cleared for tillage, a common occupation among them
was that of the woodsman. Many were able to hire themselves
to the native farmers to cut timber, while many
others, who arranged to lease or buy land, went to work
to clear garden patches and little farms for themselves.
Josiah Henson sought to develop a lumber industry in the
neighborhood of Dawn by setting up a sawmill on the farm
of the British and American Institute, and shipping its
products to Boston and New York.[106] Such work, in a climate
to which they were unaccustomed, was an experience beyond
the strength of some of the fugitives; and their exposure
to the cold of the Canadian winter sowed the seeds of consumption
in many.[107]

Farming appears to have been the occupation naturally
preferred by the refugees, and probably the majority of them
looked forward to owning farms.[108] It was the pursuit their
masters followed, and for which they themselves were best
adapted. The way to it was open through the demand for
farm-hands on the part of many white settlers, and the
special encouragement frequently needed was supplied by
the example and aid of one or another of the colonies.

It is not surprising that a considerable number of the
fugitives contented themselves with the present enjoyment
of their newly acquired liberty, and neglected to make provision
for the future. Such persons were quite ready to
work, but were slow to understand how they could acquire
land in time, and secure the full profits of their labor to
themselves. The weight of enforced ignorance, dependence
and poverty was upon them. Not infrequently they entered

into profitless bargains, leasing wild lands on short terms,
and finding themselves dispossessed when their clearings
were about ready for advantageous cultivation.[109] Their
knowledge of agriculture was scanty, and their planting,
in consequence, often injudicious. They were, however,
zealous to learn. The Rev. R. S. W. Sorrick, who gave
some instruction to the settlers at Oro in the art of farming,
declared them to be a most teachable people.[110] The
refugees at Colchester appear to have been equally open-minded
to the practical suggestions given them in a series
of lectures on "crops, wages and profit" delivered before
them by Mr. Henson.

It is well known that among the slave-owners of the border
states the practice existed widely of entrusting some
of their negroes with the responsibilities of farm management;
and that in the same portion of the South slaves were
often permitted to hire their own time for farm labor; thousands
of runaways also had gathered experience in the free
states before their emigration to Canada; hence one is prepared
in a measure to understand the rapid strides made by
a large class of the negro population in the country of their
adoption. Many of these people already had a gauge of their
ability, and were not afraid to go forward in the acquirement
of lands and homes of their own. To the advancement made
by this numerous class is due the favorable comment called
forth from observing persons, both Canadians and visiting
Americans. Dr. Howe has left us some interesting information
concerning the condition of refugee farmers in Canada.
He found some cultivating small gardens of their own near
large towns, where they had a ready market for the produce
they raised; others, more widely scattered, tilled little farms,
which for the most part were clear of encumbrance; these
farms were "inferior to the first-class farms of their region
in point of cultivation, fences, stock and the like," but were
"equal to the average of second-class farms"; their owners
lacked the capital, intelligence and skill of the best farmers,

but, far from being lazy, stupid or thriftless, supported themselves
in a fair degree of comfort, and occupied houses not
easily distinguishable in appearance from the farmhouses of
their white neighbors. The miserable hut of the worthless
negro squatter was occasionally to be seen, but usually the
rude cabin and small clearing marked the spot where a newly
arrived fugitive had begun his home, which in due course
was to pass through successive stages until it should become
a well-cleared farm, with good buildings and a large stock of
animals and tools.[111]

A fact deplored by some friends of the refugees was the
inclination to congregate in towns and cities.[112] A committee
of investigation appointed by the Anti-Slavery Society of
Canada reported in 1852 that, although many fugitives were
scattered through the various districts, the larger number
was massing in certain localities, those named being Elgin,
Dawn and Colchester village settlements, Sandwich, Queen's
Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton and St. Catherines, together
with the Niagara district and Toronto.[113] According to
Josiah Henson the towns about which these people were
gathering were Chatham, Riley, Sandwich, Anderton (probably
Anderson), Malden, Colchester, Gonfield (doubtless
Gosfield), London, Hamilton and the colonies at Dawn and
Wilberforce.[114] Other centres undoubtedly existed, though
no exhaustive list of such places could be made from the
meagre accounts left us.

The movement to the towns was natural, for friends and
employment were more easily to be found there than elsewhere.
Certain parts or quarters of the towns rapidly
filled up with the negroes, and the bonds of race and sympathy
came into full play, causing constant accretions of
new settlers. This was especially true of Fort Malden or
Amherstburg, for years the principal port of entry for fugitives
landing from the Michigan and Ohio borders. The

result in this and similar cases was unsatisfactory; the people
seemed not to do as well as in other places.[115] In Hamilton
and Toronto, we are told, the dwellings of the blacks
were scattered among those of the whites, instead of being
crowded together in a single suburban locality more or less
distinct from the city of which it formed a part.[116] However,
local conditions existing in Toronto, such as rent charges,
tended to confine the colored people to the northwest section
of the city.[117]

A wide range of occupations was open to the refugees in
the towns; besides the lighter kinds of service about hotels
and other public houses, and the work of plastering and
whitewashing, often performed by negroes, various trades
were followed, such as blacksmithing, carpentering, building,
painting, mill-work and other handicrafts. There were
good negro mechanics in Hamilton, Chatham, Windsor, Amherstburg
and other places. A few were engaged in shopkeeping,
or were employed as clerks, while a still smaller
number devoted themselves to teaching and preaching.

As a class the fugitives in the towns, as in the country,
were accounted steady and industrious, and their dwellings
were said to be "generally superior to those of the Irish, or
other foreign emigrants of the laboring class," and "far
superior to the negro huts upon slave plantations, which
many of them formerly inhabited."[118] Dr. J. Wilson Moore,
of Philadelphia, visited the refugee communities in various
Canadian towns, for example at Chatham, London and
Wilberforce, and was favorably impressed with what he saw;
with the orderly deportment of the crowds of colored people

at Chatham while returning from a celebration of the
anniversary of the West Indian emancipation, with the air
of neatness and comfort displayed by the homes of the
fugitives at London, with the advance from log cabins to
brick and frame-houses made by the settlers at Wilberforce.[119]
The weight of evidence supplied by Mr. Drew was unquestionably
favorable to the view that the refugees were making
substantial progress. He found the condition of the colored
people in Toronto such as to be a proper cause of satisfaction
for the philanthropist; many men in Hamilton were
well-to-do; concerning those living in London he learned
that some were highly intelligent and respectable, but that
others wasted their time and neglected their opportunities;
he noted that there was great activity among the negroes
at Chatham, where they engaged in a large variety of manual
pursuits; at Windsor, almost all the members of this
class had comfortable homes, and some owned neat and
handsome houses; at Sandwich a few were house-owners,
the rest were tenants; in Amherstburg the assurance was
given that the colored people of Canada were doing better
than the free negroes in the United States; the settlers at
New Canaan were reported to be making extraordinary
progress, considering the length of time they had lived
there; and out of a colored population of seventy-eight at
Gosfield all of the heads of families, with two or three
exceptions, were freeholders.[120] Dr. Howe, who visited the
houses of the colored people in the outskirts of Chatham
and other large places, described them as being for the most
part small and tidy two-story houses with garden lots about
them, neatly furnished, the tables decently spread and plentifully
supplied. He was convinced that the fugitive slaves
lived better than foreign immigrants in the same region,
and clothed their children better.[121]

The relation of the slave to his wife and children was a

precarious one in the South, especially in the border region
from which most of the Canadian exiles came. Slave-breeding
for the Southern market was extensively carried on in
Virginia, Kentucky and other border states; slave-traders
made frequent trips through this section; and their coming
brought consternation, distress and separation to many a
slave-family. These and other violations of the domestic
ties might be expected to react on the home life of the slave-family,
tending to discourage regard for the forms of family
life, and to take away incentive to constancy. In view of
such degradation it is surprising to note the care taken by
many refugees for the formal legitimation of the alliances
made by them in slavery. Once secure in their freedom
and in their domestic relations, they began to substitute for
the marriage after "slave fashion" the legal form of marriage,
which they saw observed about them in Canada. Dr. Howe
noticed that the fugitives settled themselves in families,
respected the sanctity of marriage, and showed a general
improvement in morals.[122]

This recognition of a new standard of social virtue signifies
a great gain on the part of the refugees. As the withholding
of any real instruction from the slaves in the South
helped to brutalize them, so their moral elevation in Canada
went hand in hand with their enlightenment through schools
and religious teaching. What advantages were afforded
them in the way of education in their new abiding-place,
and what measure of benefit did they derive from these
opportunities?

It appears that under the Canadian law colored people
were permitted either to send their children to the common
schools or to have separate schools provided from their proportionate
share of the school funds. In some districts,
however, local conditions stood in the way of the education
of colored children. Many of the parents did not appreciate
the need of sending their children to school regularly; it
often happened that they were too destitute to take advantage

of these opportunities; again, they were unaccustomed
to the enjoyment of equal privileges with the whites and were
timid about assuming them. The children, unused to the
climate of the new country, perhaps also thinly clad, were
sickly and often unable to go to school.[123]

Prejudice was also not wanting in some quarters among
the whites. In the town of Sandwich, on the Detroit River,
in 1851 or 1852, the feelings of the two people were much
agitated over the question of mixed schools.[124] The towns
of Chatham, London and Hamilton appear also to have been
more or less affected by prejudice against the negro.[125] Partly
owing to this prejudice, and partly to their own preference,
the colored people, acting under the provision of the law
that allowed them to have separate schools, set up their own
schools in Sandwich and in many other parts of Ontario.[126]
Drew incidentally noted the existence of separate schools at
Colchester, Amherstburg, Sandwich, Dawn and Buxton; the
existence of private schools at London, Windsor and perhaps
one or two other places; and the presence of an extremely
small number of colored children in the common schools at
Hamilton and London. Concerning Toronto, he tells us that
no distinction existed there in regard to school privileges.
Such figures as Drew supplies show the separate, private and
mission schools to have been more numerously attended than
the public or common schools. The former furnished the
conditions under which whatever appreciation of education
there was native in a community of negroes, or whatever taste
for it could be awakened there, was free to assert itself unhindered
by real or imagined opposition. That the refugees
were capable of a genuine interest in the schools provided
for them, even under the most disheartening circumstances,
appears from the fact that "many of the colored settlers were
attracted to Dresden and Dawn by the preferred advantages
of education on the industrial plan in the Dawn Institute."[127]
Adults and children both attended; the schools of the
mission-workers were intended to reach as many as possible

of a constituency made up largely of grown persons. An
evening school for adults was established in Toronto, and
had a good attendance.[128] Sunday-schools were an important
accessory, furnishing, as they did, opportunities to many
whose week days were full of other cares. Mrs. Haviland's
experience was probably that of mission-teachers in other
parts of Canada. On Sundays her schoolhouse was filled
to overflowing, many of her congregation coming five or six
miles to get to the meeting. The Bible was read with eagerness
by those whose ignorance required prompting at every
word. The oppression of past years was forgotten, for the
hour, in the pleasure of learning to read the Word of God.
An aged couple, past eighty, were among the most regular
attendants.[129] The spread of the earnest desire for knowledge
shown in these meetings would suffice to explain an observation
made by Dr. Howe in 1863 to the effect that a surprisingly
large number could then read and write.[130]

An agency illustrative of the refugees' desire for self-improvement
was the association made up of local societies
called "True Bands." The first of these clubs was organized
at Amherstburg or Malden in September, 1854, and in less
than two years there were fourteen such societies in various
parts of Canada West. The total membership of the association
is not known, but the True Band of Malden comprised
six hundred persons, and that of Chatham, on the first enrolment,
three hundred and seventy-five. Persons of both
sexes were admitted to membership, and a small monthly
payment was required. The objects of the association were
comprehensive; they included the improvement of the
schools, the increase of the school attendance among the
colored people, the abatement of race prejudice, the arbitration
of disputes between colored persons, the employment of
a fund for aiding destitute persons just arriving from slavery,
the suppression of begging in behalf of refugees by self-appointed
agents, and so forth. The True Band at Malden did
much good work; and in all other places where the societies

were formed it is reported that excellent results were secured.
These clubs demonstrated their ability by concerted action
to care for numerous strangers as they arrived in Canada
after their long pilgrimage.[131]

Another object of the True Band association was to prevent
divisions in the church, and as far as possible to heal
those that had already occurred. This provision was apparently
intended to serve as a check on the disposition of the
refugees to multiply churches. "Whenever there are a few
families gathered together," wrote one observer, "they split
up into various sects and each sect must have a meeting-house
of its own. . . . Their ministers have canvassed the United
States and England, contribution-box in hand; and by appealing
to sectarian zeal, got the means of building up tabernacles
of brick and wood, trusting to their own zeal for
gathering a congregation. . . ."[132] This eagerness to build
churches has been criticised as consuming much of the time
and substance of the exiles, and causing division where union
was desirable. But if this side of the religious life and activities
of the refugees calls for condemnation, another side,
which was fostered by the new conditions, was the more
marked manifestation of the religious nature of the blacks in
what has been well called in contrast with their emotionalism
the higher forms of conscience, morality and good works.[133]

The minds of many of the Canadian exiles were ever going
back to the friends and loved ones they had left behind them
on the plantations of the South. Each new band of pilgrims
as it came ashore at some Canadian port was scanned by little
groups of negroes eagerly looking for familiar faces. Strange
and solemn reunions after years of separation and of hardship
took place along the friendly shores of Canada. But the
fugitive that was safe in the promised land was anxious to
assist fortune, and as soon as he had learned to write or could
find an acquaintance to write for him, was likely to send a
letter to some trusted agent of the Underground Railroad
for advice or assistance in an attempt to release some slave

or family of slaves from their thraldom. Many, we know,
took a more dangerous method than this, and went personally
to seek their relatives in the South, and piloted them safely
back to English soil; but the appeal to anti-slavery friends
in the States, while probably less effective, sometimes secured
the desired results. William Still, the chairman of the Acting
Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia,—a position that
brought him in contact with hundreds of escaped slaves as
they were being sent beyond our northern frontier,—was
the recipient of numerous letters entreating his aid for the
deliverance of the kinsmen of refugees.[134]

Fugitive slaves were admitted to citizenship in the provinces
on the same terms as other immigrants. Many of them
became property owners in the course of time, paid their
allotted share of the taxes, and thus gained the franchise;
Dr. Howe examined the records of several towns in 1862
and made comparisons of the amount of taxable property
owned by whites and blacks. According to his statement
the proportion of white rate or tax payers to the
white population of Malden was in the ratio of one to
three and one-third; that of the colored ratepayers of
the town to the colored population, one to eleven. The
average amount paid by the whites was $9.52, while that
paid by the blacks was $5.12. In Chatham the white ratepayers
were "about one to every three and one-half of
the white population, and the colored about one to every
thirteen of the colored population." The average tax paid
by white and black was $10.63 and $4.98 respectively. At
Windsor it appears that the proportion of ratepayers among
the whites was as one to seven and one-fourth, and among
the blacks it was as one to five. Here the per capita average
was $18.76 for the former, and $4.18 for the latter.[135] These
towns, it is to be noted, were not colonies; and in them the
fugitives were offered no peculiar inducements to become
the owners of property. All things considered, the showing
is highly creditable for the negroes.

The fact that they had been slaves did not debar the refugees
from the exercise of whatever political rights they
had acquired. The negro voters used their privilege freely
in common with the native citizens, allying themselves with
the two regular parties of Canada, the Conservative and the
Reform.[136] In some communities negroes were elected to
office. The Rev. William King, head of the Buxton Settlement,
has mentioned the offices of pathmasters, school
trustees, and councillors as those to which colored men were
chosen within his knowledge. These, he said, were as high
as the negro had then attained, and he thought that white
men would refuse to vote for a black running for Parliament.[137]
Dr. J. Wilson Moore, a friend of the refugees,
said of them in 1858 that their standing was fair, and that
the laws of the land made no distinction. He observed that
they did jury duty with their white neighbors, and served as
school directors and road commissioners. On the whole, he
thought, they were as much respected as their intelligence
and virtue entitled them to be.[138]

In view of the remarkable progress made by the refugees
and of their general serviceableness as settlers in the provinces,
it is easy to understand why the Canadian government
maintained its favorable attitude towards them to the
end of the long period of immigration. In 1859 the Governor-General
testified to the favorable opinion the central government
entertained of the fugitives as settlers and citizens by
assuring the Rev. W. M. Mitchell that "We can still afford
them homes in our dominions"; and the Parliament of Ontario
manifested its interest in their continued welfare by
voting to incorporate the Association for the Education and
Elevation of the Colored People of Canada upon the showing
that the association would thereby be enabled to extend its
philanthropic labors among the blacks.[139] The Canadian
authorities seem to have become established in the view
reached after a candid and prolonged investigation by Dr.

Howe, that the refugees "promote the industrial and
material interests of the country and are valuable citizens."[140]