Blood and Daring (4 page)

In 1777, Vermont banned slavery. By the turn of the century many other states had followed its lead. Abolitionist leagues grew in all northern cities. Northern states did not need slavery for economic reasons and could not abide it on moral grounds. As the United States developed south and west, the struggle to maintain a balance in Congress between those representing slave and free states tore at the fabric of the nation and the state.

While white America argued, increasing numbers of enslaved Americans demonstrated the fundamental human desire to be free. There were rebellions that saw whites killed. There were many sad but heroic acts of resistance, such as men who acted dumb to slow or sabotage work, and slave women and girls who underwent abortions after being raped by white owners.

Thousands of slaves risked their lives and ran. As early as 1793, runaways were such a problem that Congress passed the first of many fugitive slave laws. Each afforded owners more freedom to hire slave catchers and their agents more power to chase, catch and return their prey. By the 1850s, about 50,000 runaway slaves were hiding somewhere in the United States.
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Others ran south to Mexico or Spanish-held Florida. Canada had abolished slavery in the 1830s and so was seen by many slaves as the great beacon of freedom to be won by following the northern star. Escape to Canada meant leaving both bondage and the slave catchers behind. By 1860 an estimated 100,000 slaves had escaped to freedom and about 30,000 of those had found it in Canada.
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In December 1860, sitting in silent dignity, John Anderson had become a symbol in the overlapping waves of international moral, legal, political debates that were coming to a head and would soon bring war. Anderson had come to know the indignity of slavery when he was born to a Missouri slave in 1831. At seven he saw his mother reach her breaking point and lash out at her mistress. She managed to knock the woman down and rip a handful of hair from her head before being pulled away and, as John watched, savagely beaten. Shortly thereafter, as was the practice for all slaves with the audacity to stand up for themselves or their children, she was sold to a Louisiana plantation where conditions were even more brutal and the chances for another such outburst remote. Young John had not known his father, for he had escaped years before, and now his mother had been “sold down the river,” as the saying went.

Owned by Moses Burton, Anderson was raised by the white mistress of the house. He had been renamed Jack Burton according to convention at the time whereby slaves were given the surnames of their owners in order to assist with identification. He played with the Burtons’ children, ate reasonably well, and was healthy and relatively well-clothed. At fifteen, he was sent to the tobacco fields to work the sun-up to sun-down hours of the adults. His intelligence and work ethic soon earned him the position of overseer, supervising the work of other slaves. Mrs. Burton was so taken with young Anderson that she arranged for him to be given
an acre and a half of land to raise his own crops and earn a meagre living when the tobacco work was done.

One Sunday Anderson attended one of the many religious revival meetings that owners allowed slaves to organize, where drink and fellowship were offered along with the spirituals and evangelical preaching. He was smitten by a young slave named Marie Tomlin, and the two were married in December of 1850. As was typical of slave weddings, the two vowed to be together until split by death or involuntary separation.

The couple were not allowed to live together; they were owned by different people and had work to do. Anderson walked two miles to visit Marie every Saturday afternoon and returned each Sunday night. Marie had two children from a previous marriage and the couple soon welcomed a third. Anderson began creeping out nearly every evening to be with his family. Early one morning, Moses Burton caught him sneaking back, and threatened to tie and flog him. Only the intervention of one of the Burton daughters, with whom Anderson had played as child, saved him.

The incident, and the death of Burton’s wife, led to Anderson’s sale to Saline County’s Colonel Reuben McDaniel for one thousand dollars. McDaniel told Anderson that he had been purchased as breeding stock and that he should pick himself some slave girls and forget his wife and baby. An old slave named Jacob told his young friend about slaves who had fled and never returned, and of a place called Canada where slaves could live in freedom. Anderson became excited and was soon making escape plans.

On a cool morning on September 25, 1853, Anderson took a large knife, steeled himself, and then slowly walked away, leaving the indignity of the McDaniel farm behind. He crept into Marie’s small shack and whispered goodbye to her and their child. He promised to find Canada and then return or send for her. Moments later, he vanished into the night. In fleeing, Anderson had become a thief. According to American custom and laws, Anderson was not a man but rather a piece of property, and so in running, he was robbing Colonel McDaniel by stealing himself.

Anderson had inadvertently fled when Missouri was aflame with a season of violence, crime and intrigue. F.H. Moss, a Canadian abolitionist,
had travelled to Missouri and had been sneaking onto a number of farms to talk to slaves about joining him on an adventure back north. His work led to a number of escapes. Meanwhile, communities were shaken by two reports of escaping slaves raping white women. In both cases, suspects were caught and hanged without trial. The state had become so concerned about slaves escaping and running wild that a bounty was offered to anyone who caught a slave.

On the third day of his flight, Anderson accidently stumbled upon a farmer named Seneca Digges and four of his slaves. Anderson explained that he was travelling with the permission of Colonel McDaniel to see if he could have himself sold to a farm closer to his wife. Digges did not believe the tale, but he played for time by inviting Anderson to stay for dinner with his slaves. Anderson initially agreed, but then bolted for the woods. Digges shouted to his slaves that he would pay for Anderson’s capture and with that, the chase was on. For thirty minutes they ran through woods and fields until Digges’s slaves finally had Anderson surrounded. He pulled the long knife from his waistband and escaped, but almost immediately ran into Digges. Digges raised a tree branch, but before he could swing it the two men fell together. Anderson’s knife plunged into Digges’s chest. Two more thrusts to the back dropped Digges, and Anderson fled. Eight-year-old Ben Digges, who had been there throughout the violent encounter, was left staring at his wounded and bleeding father while the slaves gave chase.

With Digges dying of his wounds, local newspapers reported this latest attack on a law-abiding white man by a rampaging slave. At a hastily called meeting, Howard County residents expressed shock and anger. A vigilante committee was formed and a number of men eager to collect a reward headed out. Twice Anderson was nearly caught, but he managed to slip away before he was seen.

Dirty, exhausted, starving, and wearing shredded clothing, Anderson slowly struggled northward. He happened upon a white man whose reaction to seeing him was such that Anderson decided to risk trusting him. The gentleman offered a meal and bed for the night. He told Anderson
of the quickest way to Chicago and of certain individuals he should find there who would help get him to Canada. With suspicion in his heart, but anguished desperation in his mind, he left the next morning, his pockets bulging with apples and bread. After weeks on his own, Anderson had boarded the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad was at the time and would forever be shrouded in mystery and myth. Most slaves were on their own when running, but many were helped by sympathetic white people who offered them food, homes, wagons and courage.
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Helping a slave to escape was akin to abetting theft and punishable with fines and imprisonment that became increasingly severe. Brave whites nonetheless persisted and their numbers increased. The Underground Railroad’s name came from code words; safe houses were called stations and those offering help were dubbed conductors. In the harsh cruelty of all that slavery entailed, the Underground Railroad offered a spark of decency. Influential abolitionist Levi Coffin, a North Carolina Quaker, said with a sentiment that reflected the beliefs of all conductors, “The dictates of humanity came in opposition to the law and we ignored the law.”
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After a few more days of hardship and terror, Anderson arrived in Chicago and he quickly found the people who had been recommended to him. They bought him clothes, found him lodging and gave him food. For three weeks, he lay hidden in a small room above a barbershop. Finally, train tickets were provided for him to travel to Detroit. Within days he was over the Detroit River and in Windsor. It was late November 1853, and John Anderson had made it to Canada. He was free.

Following directions given to him by his Detroit contacts, Anderson found a safe house in Windsor owned by Henry Bibb, an escaped slave who dedicated himself to helping other fugitive slaves and the Canadian abolitionist movement. His efforts included the creation of an institute designed to help recent arrivals learn to read and master the vocational skills needed to begin their new lives. Bibb enrolled Anderson, who worked
hard and did well. Soon, Anderson had a job working as a labourer with the Great Western Railway. He saved his money, and devoted his days off to doing maintenance work and his free time to learning to read, write and do sums.

The Canada in which Anderson found himself was idyllic compared to Missouri, but it still struggled with racism and segregation. Canada was not a stranger to slavery. Early French settlers had enslaved Aboriginal people, and then, in the late seventeenth century, African slaves arrived in Quebec. The capitulation agreement that ceded Quebec to Britain after the 1759 conquest guaranteed the continuation of slavery. In 1763, Quebec governor James Murray had sent an urgent request to New York for a shipment of slaves to meet a labour shortage.
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Slavery was also common in the British colony of Nova Scotia. About five hundred slaves were brought to the Maritimes by loyalists fleeing the American Revolution.

Slaves were also a common sight in Upper Canada. Again, most had been brought north by American loyalists. As in Lower Canada and the Maritime colonies, slaves worked predominantly on docks and as domestic servants. But Upper Canada found its great emancipator when British army officer John Graves Simcoe was appointed the first governor of the colony of Upper Canada. He was a visionary under whose leadership the colony grew quickly. Simcoe was also an abolitionist. While he wanted complete emancipation, in 1793 he settled for the passage of an act that rendered illegal the further introduction of slaves into Upper Canada and the freedom of all children born to slaves.

Simcoe’s gradual emancipation law reflected the growth of abolitionist sentiment in both Canada and Britain. In 1807, Britain had abolished the Atlantic slave trade, and in August 1834, it abolished slavery throughout its empire. British-Canadian abolitionist laws had thus created a haven for slaves and freemen. With numbers that started slowly but grew each year, American slaves began moving to what many called Canaan, a land where they could be human.

Partnerships between American and Canadian abolitionists were developed to assist the growing number of racial refugees. An important
element in their co-operative efforts was the construction of dispersed and diverse Black communities.
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Some small Black communities developed in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but most—about forty—were established in Canada West.

Canadian and War of 1812 veteran Richard Pierpoint founded Garafrax in the 1820s. The community struggled but eventually did well and grew to become the town of Fergus. In 1831, Wilberforce was formed by American freemen James Charles Brown and Benjamin Lundy, who had been inspired by their attendance at a Philadelphia abolitionist conference the year before. While well-intentioned, that community failed because of inadequate capitalization and faulty management.
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Escaped slave Josiah Henson established the Dawn Settlement in 1842. It began as a school to teach basic vocational skills and grew to become a small village. It helped a good number of people, but like Wilberforce, quickly fell into trouble. Henson had literally and heroically carried his children on his back to escape slavery and was later both the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom and an influential leader in the Canadian abolitionist movement. Nevertheless, he was a poor administrator. The most successful of the many communities began with a fundraising effort that saw the purchase of 9,000 acres of farmland in Elgin County’s Raleigh Township. The Buxton Mission, named after British abolitionist Thomas Fowell Buxton, became a thriving town.

While all southern American states and most municipalities had laws that segregated the races and rendered life miserable for slaves and freemen alike, in 1850 things got worse. In September, the American Congress passed, and weak president Millard Fillmore signed, an omnibus bill that included a new and strengthened version of the Fugitive Slave Law. The law went further than previous laws by making it obligatory for all whites to help apprehend fugitive slaves. More severe penalties than ever before were imposed on runaways, and their right to a trial was removed. The law changed everything. Issues that had been distant and subject to
somewhat philosophical discussion for northern Americans suddenly became real, practical, urgent and local because it was now their legal responsibility to involve themselves in capturing escaped slaves. Wilful blindness was no longer possible. All were suddenly involved.

The Fugitive Slave Law and the new generation of slave catchers it spawned sent a wave of fear through northern cities, where many African-Americans had been living peaceful lives in their first or second generation of freedom.
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The law enraged and inspired northern abolitionists. In rapidly increasing numbers, they reacted by bringing the Underground Railroad above ground. Public meetings and support, along with overt defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law, became commonplace. The federal government’s inability to effectively enforce the law pleased and encouraged abolitionists.