DOCUMENTS RECORDS ILLUSTRATING THE CONDITION OF REFUGEES FROM SLAVERY IN UPPER CANADA BEFORE 1860 1 I 1 The fourth annual report of the American Anti-Slavery Society contains the statement of an agent of the Society who was employed "to investigate the conditions and prospects of the colored people in Upper Canada." The report says: "He finds a population of about ten thousand, almost entirely fugitives from American oppression. Having crossed the line with no other wealth than their own bodies and souls, many of them have made themselves quite comfortable, and some have become even wealthy. Several schools have sprung up among them by the efforts of the agent. Full and satisfactory evidence of their good behaviour and value as citizens has been given by the highest civil authorities and by men of standing of different sects and parties. "The following letters were received by the agent in reply to his enquiries from gentlemen in Toronto whose character is too well known to need any description. "1st. From Hon. R. G. Dunlop, member of the Provincial Parliament": House of Assembly, Toronto, Dear Sir,-Permit me to assure you that I feel much pleasure in replying to your communication of yesterday, and in recording my testimony, whether in my private capacity as a subject, or in my public as a magistrate and representative of the people, it gives me infinite satisfaction to say that after much observation and some experience I have arrived at this conclusion, viz, that there are not in His Majesty's dominions a more loyal, honest, industrious, temperate and independent class of citizens than the colored people of Upper Canada. Go on, therefore, my dear sir, 1 Collected by Fred Landon, of University of Western Ontario. in your work of charity, and let us pray fervently to the Most High, that He will look down with compassion on the degraded children of Africa, and lead them as He did the chosen people of old, from your modern Egypt of oppression. I remain, dear sir, Yours very sincerely, R. G. DUNLOP,2 Captain of R.N., M.P. for the County of Huron. Toronto, Jan. 30, 1837 Sir,-In reply to your inquiries, I beg to offer as my opinion with much diffidence, 1st. That nearly all of them are opposed to every species of reform in the civil institutions of the colony-they are so extravagantly loyal to the Executive that to the utmost of their power they uphold all the abuses of government, and support those who profit by them. 2nd. As a people they are as well behaved as a majority of the whites and perhaps more temperate. 3rd. To your third question I would say, not "more numerous." 4th. Cases in which colored people ask public charity are rare, as far as I can recollect. I am opposed to slavery, whether of whites or blacks, in every form. I wish to live long enough to see the people of this continent, of the humblest classes, educated and free, and held in respect, according to their conduct and attainments, without reference to country, color or worldly substance. But I regret that an unfounded fear of a union with the United States on the part of the colored population should have induced them to oppose reform and free institutions in this colony, wherever they have had the power to do so. The apology I make for them in this matter is that they have not been educated as freemen. I am, your respectful humble servant, 2 Robert Graham Dunlop, born 1789, died near Goderich in Upper Canada in 1841. His early life was spent in the British naval service which he entered at the age of thirteen. He was the first representative of Huron County in the legislature of the province. 3 William Lyon Mackenzie (1795-1861) was prominent in the reform agitations in Upper Canada before 1837 and was at the head of the armed outbreak in the province in that year. His criticism of the colored population is that their gratitude for British protection makes them blind to the ills of government which others are seeking to remedy. 4 Sir, In acknowledging the receipt of your letter of the 26th. instant, containing certain inquiries relating to the people of color in this city, I have much pleasure in affording my testimony for the information of the Society of which you state yourself to be the agent, begging you will consider my observations as strictly applicable to the people of color within this city and immediate neighborhood, to which alone my knowledge extends. In reply to your query No. 1, I believe them to be truly loyal subjects of the government. 2nd. As a people I have no reason to question their honesty or industry, and as far as my observation serves me, they appear to be both temperate and well-behaved. 3rd. I am not aware that criminal cases are more numerous with them than with others in proportion to their numbers. But with respect to your 4th. question I wish to be more explicit, that although I have been in the habit of daily contributing assistance to a vast number of destitute poor ever since my residence in this province, now seventeen years, I do not remember ever having been solicited for alms by more than one or two people of color during the whole course of that period. I am, your respectful humble servant, JOHN H. DUNN," 6 The two following letters are from correspondence between the Hon. Malcolm Cameron and the colored stockholders of the Elgin Association,' printed in the Montreal Pilot and copied in The National Anti-Slavery Standard, of Feb. 21, 1850. 4 Toronto, the capital of the province, more generally known in this period as York. John Henry Dunn came to Canada in 1820 from England, and died in London, 1854. Was Receiver-General and member of Executive and Legislative Councils of Upper Canada. • Malcolm Cameron (1808-1876), elected to Assembly of Upper Canada for Lanark, 1836. A persistent advocate of the Family Compact. Held various offices in the La Fontaine-Baldwin and Hincks administrations. Appointed Queen's Printer, 1863. Represented South Lanark in the Canadian House of Commons, 1874-1876. 7 The Elgin Association settlement was founded in the late forties by Rev. Wm. King. For a sketch of its history, see THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY, October, 1918, vol. III, No. 4, pp. 360–367. "To the Hon. Malcolm Cameron:-Sir, We the undersigned committee have been appointed by a number of colored stock holders of the Elgin Association to ask your views on a subject that chiefly concerns our civil rights. Your long residence in the western part of the province, where most of our people are settled, makes you well acquainted with our condition, and the many disadvantages under which we labor, in consequence of an unjust prejudice, which deprives our children, in a great measure, of the use of the common schools, and excludes us from participating in the rights and privileges guaranteed to us by law. This prejudice has lately assumed a hostile form, in an address published at Chatham in August last, the object of which is to prevent us from settling where we please, and if carried into effect, would eventually drive us from the province. As you represent the county where the Elgin Association has purchased land for colored settlers they wish to know if you are in favor of our settling there, or any other place that we may select in the province, and if you will aid us in obtaining all the rights and privileges we are entitled to by law. An answer at your earliest convenience will oblige the committee. "Gentlemen, In reply to your letter of this day I beg leave to say that the evil you complain of, relative to your position in common schools, was fully provided for in the new school bill which I had the honor to conduct through parliament last session and which comes into operation in January next. "I regretted very much the tone and sentiments of the resolutions and address to which you allude as having been passed at Chatham in August last, and I feel quite sure that they are not the sentiments of the great mass of the County of Kent. For my own part I have ever advocated the perfect equality of all mankind, and the right of all to every civil and religious privilege without regard to creed or color. And under the constitution we now enjoy all men are really "free and equal" and none can deny to the African anything granted to the Scotchmen the Irishmen or the Saxon; they have the right to purchase where they please, and settle in groups or singly as they like; and wherever they are, they will find me ready to defend and maintain the principles of civil and religious freedom to all, as the principle I hold most dear to myself and most sacred to my country. I have the honor to be your obedient servant, III MALCOLM CAMERON.” The following notes on the Negro settlements in the Detroit River district of Upper Canada appear in The Voice of the Fugitive, Jan. 29, 1852: "There is still a government school in operation at Sandwich with from 20 to 30 scholars. It is taught by Mr. Jackson, a man of color; the school at Windsor is taught by Miss Mary Ann Shadd, a worthy colored lady. She has between 18 and 20 scholars whom she is teaching in a private house. "The colored people here have procured a lot on which to erect a school and meeting house, and have got an agent out collecting funds for that purpose and expect soon to erect the building. "We visited during the past week, the colored settlement seven miles from Windsor; also the New Canaan settlement which is 11 miles east of Amherstburg. The former settlement has been sometimes called the Sandwich Industrial Society; a few years ago the African M. E. Church sent out an agent (the Rev. T. Willis) who collected money enough to purchase 200 acres of wild land, which was bought and divided into ten acre plots, and sold out to colored persons, on each of which they were to settle, with the exception of 10 or 20 acres which were reserved on which to build a school and meeting house. We found four or five families settled on the land, who seemed to be industriously engaged in clearing it off. We observed that they had erected the body of a log school-house on the reserved lot; but there was no roof on it. There is a school in operation about one mile from the above, where there are several colored families settled who are the owners of farms containing from 30 to 100 acres of good land. The school is taught by Mrs. Prescott, a white lady. "In the New Canaan settlement they have a flourishing school, which is taught by Miss Lyon. Here they have a good schoolhouse and a very promising settlement around it of good, industri 8 Published at Sandwich, U. C., by Henry Bibb. See JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY, October, 1920, vol. V, No. 4, pp. 437-447. |
