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."[565] "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."[566] "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.[567] 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.[568] 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."[569]
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!'"[570]
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."[571] Deacon Allen 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."[572] 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."[573] 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'."[574]
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."[575] 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."[576]
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."[577] During the winter of 1838-1839, 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.[578]
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"[579] 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."[580] John Brown did not fail to keep himself informed by personal visits how the fugitives were faring there.[581] 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."[582] 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."[583] "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."[584]
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."[585] 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."[586] 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."[587]
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.[588] 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;[589] another says it was first projected by the Rev. William King, a Louisiana slaveholder, in 1849.[590] 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.[591]