Underground Railroad Exhibit: Teacher Resources - Backgrounder to UGRR - Lesson Plan One

Welcome to Next Stop Freedom! An exhibit on the story of the Underground Railroad.

Canadian Teachers Guide

CURRICULUM MATERIALS

Slave Trade

To understand the story of the Underground Railroad, we have to look at the history of slavery in the Atlantic world. The slave trade began in the 1400s when the Portuguese began to explore and trade on the west coast of Africa. Many European nations became involved over the next four centuries with the expansion of European colonial power into the western hemisphere.

It is estimated that 12 million up to 100 million Africans were brought against their will to work in the New World economies. The ever-increasing need for labour produced a highly profitable trade between the coast of Africa, the Americas and Northern Europe. The horrifying trip across the Atlantic Ocean, in which men, women and children were arranged and chained in the hull of a ship like sardines, is known as "the Middle Passage". At least 15 percent are said to have perished before they arrived in the new land.

New World  

In the Portuguese and Spanish colonies of South and Central America, the British, Dutch, Spanish, and French islands of the Caribbean, and in the disputed terrain of North America, enslaved Africans provided the majority of labour upon which empires were built.

No one knows how many slaves died under the harsh conditions of servitude. Men, women and children were bought and sold like livestock. Slaves did not own possessions, and they lived in fear of seeing loved ones sold apart from them to the highest bidder.

Slavery in Canada  

By the early 1600s, African and some Native slaves were being traded in the British and French colonies of North America. The first documented slave in New France was a young boy thought to be either from Madagascar or Guinea who was sold to a Quebec family in 1628. By 1709, Intendant Raudot issued an ordinance proclaiming slavery to be perfectly legal and that "all the panis and Negroes who have been purchased ? shall be the property of those who have purchased them?"

Based on the surviving evidence, no slaves were brought directly from Africa to Canada. Most slaves came from the Thirteen Colonies to the south or the West Indies. When British rule began in 1759, slavery was strengthened for a time. Colonial officials, military officers, and, later, the United Empire Loyalists brought more enslaved Africans to work in what is now Canada. Some slaves were agricultural workers, but the vast majority served as domestic servants to city dwellers.

Slaves were regularly bought and sold, handed down in wills and generally treated as property. Although the numbers were never great, slaves were known to exist in what are now Maritime provinces, Quebec and Ontario.

The Black Loyalists, Maroons and Refugees  

In 1784, after the American Revolution, close to 3,500 African Americans, who had fought on the side of the British, moved to Maritime Canada. The majority had been formerly enslaved in the American colonies and had been promised their freedom in return for military service against their former owners. The Black Loyalists did not find a warm welcome in Nova Scotia. The land grants given to Black Loyalists were generally small, and for the most part the soil was poor. A few years after their arrival, in 1792, more than 1,200 accepted the British government's offer to transport them to Sierra Leone in Africa, where they founded the capital of Freetown.

In 1796, the migration to Nova Scotia of almost 600 Jamaican Maroons, was also unsuccessful. After four years, during which they helped fortify the Halifax Citadel, they moved to Sierra Leone. Another group, the so-called "Black Refugees," arrived after the War of 1812. These were former American slaves who had loyally served on the British side during the recent war. Some 1,500 people were resettled in Nova Scotia, while another group of 500 went to New Brunswick. These successive groups, who remained in the Maritimes, established some of the earliest free Black communities in North America.

Legislation Against Slavery in Canada  

In 1793, the new province of Upper Canada became the first territory in the British Empire to legislate against slavery. Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe enacted a bill banning the importation of slaves after a slave woman, Chloe Cooley, violently resisted being bound and taken by force to New York State for sale. The legislation did not free anyone outright, but it did free the children of every slave at the age of twenty-five. Slaves continued to be held, however, until the British abolished slavery throughout its empire in 1834. [See www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Lslavery33.htm] Over the next few years, and especially after the War of 1812, the word spread into the southern United States that Canada was a place where Black people were free.

Slavery in the United States   

The history of American slavery was very different from that of Canada. African slavery was first introduced into America shortly after the founding of the Jamestown Colony in 1607. Almost from the beginning of the existence of the Thirteen Colonies, slave labour formed the basis of the expanding American economy. As America extended into the rich agricultural land of the southern region, so slavery spread. With the advent of the cotton gin in 1793, the demand of the South for slave labour became an insatiable thirst.

Many bondspeople laboured on farms and plantations, some worked in mines, others plied the waters as pilots, oarsmen or stewards. They worked in factories and foundries, served on dockyards, and drove carriages and wagons. Women worked in the fields alongside men, cooked, sewed and nursed. The southern belle's beautiful, embroidered finery and her beau's shiny black boots and fine suits were often the products of skilled Black hands.

In towns and cities, slave labour provided much of the work related to construction and road building, plastering and interior decorating. Slaves worked in every capacity from nursemaid to maître d'hôtel.

For all of this toil, slaves received no wages. In most states, it was against the law to educate them. While some slave masters were kind, on the whole, slavery was a brutal, harsh system, and slaves could be whipped or even killed on the slightest provocation. When the Civil War ended in 1865, about 4 million enslaved African Americans were freed.

The Underground Railroad  

After Lieutenant Governor Simcoe's 1793 legislation banning further importation of slaves into Upper Canada, American slaves began to seek refuge in the northern British colony. Numbers gradually increased, especially after the War of 1812 in which a number of African Canadians fought on the side of the Crown. When, in 1834, slavery was officially abolished throughout the British Empire, the word spread that Canada was a place where Black men and women could be free. At the same time, many of the northern states (in which slavery had already been abolished following the American Revolution) began to limit the civil rights of the free African Americans living within their state borders. This caused both fugitive slaves and free Blacks to seek a broader freedom in their neighbouring colony to the north.

African Americans had always fought against slavery, some by pretending to be too sick to work, some by injuring livestock or ruining farm equipment, and others by simply working as slowly as possible. One of the most effective ways a slave could resist was by running away. This deprived the slaveholder of the slave's labour, which meant a drop in profit. Thousands of people escaped slavery by secretly running away. We will never know how many were caught, but the estimates of those who were successful range between 100,000 and 200,000 people. Often fugitive slaves simply moved to other parts of the South and hid amongst members of the small free Black population, particularly in cities. However, business on the Underground Railroad was picking up.

The term "Underground Railroad" (UGRR) was coined in the early 1830s. It refers to the secret routes used by slaves to escape, elude capture and attain freedom in the northern states and Canada. In its more popular usage, however, the term is used to describe the loose-knit network of Black, white and Native abolitionists, including many Quakers, who assisted fugitive slaves on their way to freedom. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which allowed white people to arrest and detain any Black suspected of being a runaway slave, the steady trickle of human freight became a flood. Free Blacks as well as fugitives could be kidnapped and dragged back into slavery.

The entire affair was shrouded in mystery, and secrecy had to be guarded at all costs. "Conductors" conveyed fugitives on foot, in wagons or carriages, by boat or on actual trains. "Freight" referred to the secret human cargo and "station masters" were those who took fugitives into their homes (safe houses) and hid them until such time as they could be directed or transferred to the next "station" along the way.

Slaves donned many disguises in their efforts to elude the slave catchers, such as dressing up as someone of the opposite sex, pretending to be slaves travelling with their masters, who were really UGRR conductors, or dressing up as white people if they were particularly light-skinned. If pursued northward, sometimes the safest tactic was to turn around and go south. A Black person travelling southbound would not arouse the same suspicion as one heading north, for obvious reasons. This was one of the many strategies employed by Harriet Tubman, who rescued about 300 people in an estimated 19 trips back into slave territory. Tubman carried a gun on her secret missions and if any of her charges lost their nerve and wished to return, she would point it at them and retort, "Dead men tell no tales."

Harriet Tubman, or "Moses" as she was known to her people, lived in St. Catharines, Canada West from 1851-57, and the people she rescued were often the husbands, wives, children or parents of former fugitives living in St. Catharines. She also led her own parents and several brothers and sisters and their families out of bondage. Although Harriet Tubman is the best-known UGRR conductor, she was by no means the only one. Josiah Henson, well-known leader of the Dawn Settlement, for example, claimed to have travelled back into Kentucky on several occasions and brought back a total of 118 people. Others did the same.

As many as 40,000 African Americans came to Canada during the period of the Underground Railroad. It should be noted that many freedom-seekers received little or no assistance from an organized network. They made their journey entirely on their own.

Settlement  

Once arrived on Canadian soil, African American refugees settled in every corner of southern and eastern Ontario. They settled in rural areas, in growing towns and cities such as Windsor, Chatham, St. Catharines, Hamilton, Kingston and Toronto, and they established several all-Black colonies on land which could be had on good terms. These were: the Wilberforce Settlement, at the town of Lucan, due north of London, Ontario, Dawn, led by Josiah Henson near Dresden, the Refugee Home Society settlement run by Henry Bibb close to Windsor, and the Elgin or Buxton Settlement, founded near Chatham by white Presbyterian minister William King. The latter settlement still exists today at North Buxton and is designated a national historic site.

In centres large and small, African Canadians began to forge a new life. Some cleared the land and farmed it. Some worked in all manner of labouring jobs, construction work, road, railway and canal building. In the towns and cities, many worked in the service industry as waiters, cooks, laundresses, barbers and hoteliers. Often these new Canadians were skilled craftspeople, plying their trades as blacksmiths, dressmakers, painters and carpenters. A number became teachers, mostly in separate Black schools, doctors and lawyers. Some owned their own businesses ? barbershops, restaurants, cab stands, taverns and livery stables and stagecoach lines.

Toronto  

As elsewhere, African Americans settled in Toronto and reinvented themselves. As elsewhere, too, they came from different backgrounds and circumstances. Thornton and Lucie Blackburn were escaped slaves from Kentucky who established the first cab company in the city in the 1830s. James Mink, one of Toronto's wealthiest Blacks, was born in Upper Canada of former slaves. He owned the Mansion Inn and Livery on Adelaide street. Wilson Abbott, who was freeborn from Mobile, Alabama, came with his wife Ellen Toyer Abbott from New York. Abbott became the richest Black property owner, who bought and rented houses, warehouses and offices. Whether they were coming directly from slavery or had already been free, people of African descent possessed the skills and abilities that gave them a head start in Canada.

By 1850, Black people owned homes and businesses in several parts of the city. There were no less than 16 Black businesses on King Street alone, including 4 barbershops, 3 dry goods and provisions stores, 4 cab companies and 3 restaurants or taverns. Many Blacks settled in the St. John's Ward district in Toronto's core. Others preferred to live on the outskirts of the city in York Township where they could farm, engage in market gardening and own a cow, a couple of pigs, or some chickens in a more rural type of setting.

Toronto was one of the centres of abolitionism in Ontario. George Brown, publisher of The Globe newspaper who went on to become a Father of Confederation, was a staunch anti-slavery man along with his father, sister and brother. Many anti-slavery speeches and events in the Black community were held at the St. Lawrence Hall, including the Convention of Colored Freemen in 1851, presided over by former fugitive slave and newspaper publisher Henry Bibb. Mary Ann Shadd published her anti-slavery newspaper Provincial Freeman (1853-1860) for over a year from Toronto and Thomas Smallwood, Reverend William Mitchell and Samuel Ringgold Ward, all of whom were active in the Black community of Toronto, published anti-slavery narratives.

The John Anderson trial, which took place at Osgoode Hall in 1860-61, was an important cause among the Black abolitionist communities. Anderson, who was to be extradited for murder to the United States because he killed a white man while attempting to escape, appealed his case to the British courts. Britain sided with the former fugitive and Anderson was freed. There was much celebration in Toronto where abolitionists had agitated on his behalf.

African Canadians in the Civil War  

In December 1860, South Carolina became the first southern state to secede from the Union of the United States. The Civil War broke out in April of 1861. There were many reasons for the war, but a very important one was the objection of northern states to the extension of the institution of slavery into the newly formed territories of the west and southwest. Southerners believed that each territory and state should have the right to choose between being slave or free. (See map of free & slave states)

Many young men from African Canadian communities rushed to enlist in the Union Army after Black enlistment began in the spring of 1863. There were more than 180,000 men of African descent who fought on the side of the North, with Canadians generally enlisting in units from Michigan, Massachusetts and New York. There were about 120 officers, several of whom came from Canada. Dr. Martin Delaney, a free African American from Virginia who had practised medicine in Chatham, Ontario, before the Civil War, was the first Black Major in the Union Army.

Three of the eight Black surgeons in the Union Army were African Canadians: Dr. A.T. Augusta, originally from Pennsylvania, and formerly the physician in charge of the Toronto Poor House, Dr. Anderson Ruffin Abbott, the first Black man to graduate from Toronto's King's College Medical School and Dr. Jerome Riley. Both Abbott and Riley had received their early education at Buxton in the Elgin Settlement. Women, too, played a part. Harriet Tubman, famous for her years as a fearless Underground Railroad conductor, served as a nurse, guide and spy, while Mary Ann Shadd Cary became the only woman recruiting officer in the Union Army.

Emancipation Proclamation and Aftermath of the Civil War  

In January of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation ( www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall
/featured_documents /emancipation_proclamation/
emancipation_proclamation.html ) and the Civil War ended on April 9, 1865. The Thirteenth Amendment of the United States was passed by the Congress on December 18, 1865, emancipating all slaves in the United States of America. The long run of the Underground Railroad came to an end, thus closing a pivotal chapter in Canadian and American history. Some Canadian Blacks left to lend their support to the newly-emancipated population as teachers, doctors and elected politicians. Some also returned to reunite with their families that had been left behind. Evidence also suggests, however, that some African Canadians had family members join them in Canada after Emancipation and the end of the Civil War. Whatever the case, African Canadians left an indelible mark on the province and country that gave them a home during these turbulent years.