The Underground Railroad

"When my feet first touched the Canada shore, I threw myself on the ground, rolled in the sand, seized handfulls of it and kissed them and danced around, till, in the eyes of several who were present, I passed for a madman.”

Underground Railroad was the widely popular term for the network of paths of flight, safe houses, and willing guides — men and women, white and black, Canadian and American — that helped slaves escape northwest from the American South to freedom before the American Civil War (1860-65) ended slavery in the United States. Dr. Martin Luther King referred to nineteenth century Canada as the “North Star” in the history of Black America. The old spiritual, “Follow the Drinking Gourd,”reminded slaves to keep their eyes on the Gourd, the Big Dipper, which pointed the way north to Heaven. Heaven was freedom and this was particularly true in Canada.

The Underground Railroad had a definite Canadian component because its final, most secure terminus lay directly across the American boundary in Upper Canada, today called Ontario. That became especially evident after the American Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made clear that “runaway” Black slaves from the South could be taken and returned even from the so-called Free States of the North. As a result, a much larger flow of refugees came over the Niagara and Detroit borders into a Canada where there was security and safety for Blacks of all ages, without chance of their seizure by well-paid slave-hunters ranging theNorthern States for their bounty.

From its earliest years Upper Canada had actually been a haven for enslaved Blacks. It was the leglislation of 1793 of Upper Canada’s first governor, John Graves Simcoe, that prohibited any future importation of slaves and further ensured that slavery would no longer exist following the death of existing victims. This farsighted legislation was enacted some seventy years before Abraham Lincoln’s abolition legislation.

Nearly seven decades before Abraham Lincoln was confronted by the slavery issue, John Graves Simcoe, Upper Canada's first Lieutenant Governor, proposed legislation to abolish slavery in the British Colony. The text of the Act as passed by the Second Session of the Parliament of Upper Canada (future Ontario) and signed into law by Simcoe in 1793 is illustrated here [NAC/RG 14, B3, volume 2]

This notably liberal stand by a Tory governor made Upper Canada a favoured arrival point for Blacks of all ages fleeing the democratic American republic to the south. In fact, some 30,000 courageous adventurers found their way to the province. They included such memorable figures as Josiah Henson, who made his way to Upper Canada in 1830. Eleven years later, on 80 hectares (200 acres) of land he had bought with Quaker and Abolitionist support, Henson founded the British American Institute for Fugitive Slaves, the first educational system in Canada in which skills such as blacksmithing and carpentry were taught primarily to former slaves. By 1842 he had founded the Dawn Settlement of Black farmers in southwestern Kent County. Henson not only became the patriarch of this settlement, but published his autobiography in 1849. It led Harriet Beecher Stowe,the powerful antislavery American author, to interview him and it thus inspired the title character of her celebrated Uncle Tom’sCabin, published in 1852.

The underground railway was a busy operation. "Depots" were points of destination; "agents" hid runaway slaves in their homes; "conductors" transported slaves to freedom; "stations" dotted the length of the "railway line." Fast-tracking to freedom meant late night meetings and careful planning. Even though the journey was treacherous, nearly 30,000 slaves found freedom at Canadian "terminals"

In Kent was also the Buxton Settlement organized in 1849 by the Elgin Association to help ex-slaves take up land. This charitable body was strongly based on Anglo-Presbyterian support and soon backed as well by the Anti-Slavery Society of Toronto which had been formed in strong Canadian response to the American Fugitive Slave Law. It heard eloquent speeches from visiting British and American foes of slavery, but also from George Brown, Presbyterian owner of the influential Toronto Globe. Brown worked ardently with the Society to assist suffering Black fugitives who found a path to Canada in the worst years before President Lincoln abolished American slavery in 1863. All in all, Canada, with long ties with North American Black history, shared significantly in this heroic epic of the Underground Railroad.