Blood and Daring (6 page)

While happy with the beginnings of a new life as a free man, Anderson missed his wife terribly. One evening in the early spring of 1854, four months after arriving in Canada, he broke down in tears and told one of his sympathetic teachers, an American social reformer named Laura Haviland, of how separation from his wife and family was breaking his heart. With Haviland’s help, he composed a letter to Marie telling proudly of his adventures. Guessing that Missouri authorities were likely still after him, Haviland offered to have the letter mailed from a friend in Michigan to Lewis Tomlin in Missouri, who would, in turn, forward it to Marie.

Within weeks it looked as if the letter had succeeded in reaching its destination, for a reply arrived saying that Tomlin had arranged to steal Marie away from her owner, and that he and a man named Warren would bring her and the children north. The family could be reunited in Detroit. It sounded good, but Anderson and Haviland were suspicious. It seemed too easy.

In late April, Haviland travelled to Michigan and met with Warren. She became wary of the man with the southern accent. After the meeting she immediately sent word to Anderson that Warren was most certainly a slave catcher. Anderson was instantly on the run again.

Swallowing the pain of dashed dreams, Anderson told friends he was going north to Sault Ste. Marie, but then he took the train to Chatham. He introduced himself as James Hamilton to the first African-Canadian men he saw and was immediately welcomed into the town’s eight-hundred-member community of fugitive slaves and freemen.
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In a couple of days a group of white men with southern accents arrived in town asking about a slave named Jack who had escaped from Missouri and killed a man. No one betrayed him. On the contrary, one evening a group of Black men cornered and surrounded a particularly aggressive slave catcher named Brown. They taunted the entrapped man, producing a rope and threatening to lynch him. Brown drew a pistol and barely escaped with his life.

Anderson had no way of knowing that Missouri authorities had posted a thousand-dollar bond for his return after his love-torn letter was
intercepted by the Howard County police. Tomlin, to whom Haviland had forwarded the letter, was wrongfully convicted of having helped Anderson to escape. He had been ruthlessly whipped and banished from the county, and Warren and Brown had been hired to bring Anderson back to Missouri.

With reports of Anderson’s new disappearance, the authorities of Howard County took the case to Missouri governor Robert Stewart. He wrote to Canada’s governor general, Lord Elgin, asking for his assistance. Haviland later wrote that a New Orleans attorney told her that, by that point, Anderson had become known across the South. He had become the symbol of all that was wrong with the lenient Northerners and Canadians who attracted and harboured criminals. He had told her: “We are going to have Anderson by hook or by crook; we will have him by fair means or foul; the South is determined to have that man.”
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Anderson fled again. He moved to Brantford and learned to be a mason and plasterer. With his work ethic, intelligence and new vocational skills, and ability to read, write and keep ledgers, he quickly set out on his own as a successful independent contractor. After four years, in 1858, he had saved enough to purchase a house. Those chasing him seemed to have forgotten him. But it would not last.

While Anderson was hiding in plain sight, American slave interests became even more convinced that abolitionists and their Canadian accomplices were dangerous threats to their way of life. As the abolitionist movement grew more powerful on both sides of the border, more incidents of violence were sparked by slave catchers attempting to capture and return alleged fugitive slaves. A Democratic Mississippi congressman summed up Southern rage at the increasingly frustrating situation in a speech to the House of Representatives:

Letters from angry Southern governors demanding the return of slaves had been sent to Canadian political leaders as far back as the 1820s. Canadian replies were blunt. In an 1829 response to Illinois governor Ninian Edwards, for instance, Sir James Kemp of the Canadian Executive Council explained that the slave under discussion would not be returned: “The state of slavery is not recognized in the law of Canada nor does the law admit that any Man can be the proprietor of another.”
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The case was closed.

In 1833, the Canadian government had attempted to bring order to the cross-border problems with the passage of the Fugitive Offenders Act. It did little to placate Southern governors, however, for it stated in law what had long been common practice; that is, a person would be returned to the United States only if it was clear that he or she had committed a crime for which an arrest could be made in Canada. Stealing oneself was clearly not a Canadian crime, so the law promised that no escaped slaves would be returned simply because they had once been slaves in America.

Abraham Johnson escaped from a Virginia plantation on a stolen horse in 1834. He eventually found his way to Detroit and Windsor, but was captured by a slave catcher. Canadian authorities intervened and refused to allow Johnson to be returned to the United States. Michigan’s territorial governor Stevens Mason involved himself in the case, arguing that he wanted Johnson back not because he was a slave but because he had committed a capital crime: horse theft. Mason was told that while Johnson had indeed stolen the horse, he had done so in order to escape slavery and so the crime was justifiable. A precedent was set. It appeared that anyone could do just about anything as long as it was part of an effort to escape slavery.

American authorities were not surprisingly displeased by the Canadian laws and the way they were being interpreted and enforced. In 1842, the
Webster-Ashburton Treaty had been negotiated between Britain’s privy councillor Alexander Baring, First Baron of Ashburton, and American secretary of state Daniel Webster. Their primary goal was to settle the boundary disputes on the Maine–New Brunswick border and on Lake Superior’s northwest shore. Tangential to the negotiations were questions arising from the
Creole
Affair. In 1841, a ship called the
Creole
was transporting 135 American slaves from Virginia to New Orleans when the slaves took control of the ship. Several of the nineteen crew members were killed. The ship was forced to shore at British-controlled Nassau, where authorities freed the slaves. Despite President Tyler’s pleas and threats, the slaves were not returned. Eager to alleviate the tension that had developed from the incident and to avoid future misunderstandings, Ashburton and Webster wrote up extradition procedures and tacked them on to the agreement in a tenth article of the treaty. They would leave it to others to establish a more complete extradition agreement later.
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By 1859, however, later had yet to arrive. Consequently, Anderson’s life was to be decided by an interpretation of the treaty’s hastily devised tenth article.

Anderson had a friend named Wynne, whom he had known for some time. The two had shared stories of escape and for years Wynne had known Anderson’s true identity, of his having stabbed a man while fleeing, and of the Missouri officials probably still on his trail. As sometimes happens with friends, a trivial disagreement in the spring of 1860 turned into a falling out. But Wynne took it further. He reported Anderson to a local magistrate named William Matthews, who did as his duty implied. The next day, while Anderson was tapping a maple tree, a sheriff approached and without incident arrested him.

While Anderson languished in the Brantford jail, Matthews sent a message to police in Detroit. They dispatched Samuel Port with the original Missouri warrant for Anderson’s arrest for having killed Digges. At a brief hearing, despite never having seen Anderson before, Port identified him as Digges’s slayer. Matthews then informed Port that Anderson
would be held until the proper extradition papers were received. American detective James Gunning took charge of the case and directed cables to Missouri and Washington asking for help. American secretary of state Lewis Cass became personally involved in expediting the matter.

While waiting for the American response, Matthews interviewed Anderson, who was forthright about his escape and about having stabbed a man who was trying to stop him. Until that conversation, Anderson did not know Digges’s name or the fact that he had died of his wounds.

Influential British abolitionist John Scoble, who in 1851 had moved to Canada and become involved in the Canadian abolitionist movement, understood the importance of the case and found a lawyer to represent Anderson. He hired successful Hamilton attorney Samuel Black Freeman who, eight years previously, had been a founding member of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. Freeman had read of the Anderson case and it had moved him.

Freeman met with Anderson, then Matthews. He argued that according to British and Canadian law, there was no Canadian charge pending against Anderson and so no reason to keep him jailed. The persuasive lawyer threatened that if Anderson were not immediately freed, he would take the case to a higher court.

While Matthews considered his options, Scoble saw to it that Canadian newspapers brought Anderson’s story to the largely anti-slavery public. In an April 9 editorial, the
Globe
, like most others, took a protective stance: “Every care will be taken that he is not delivered to the United States authorities for such a crime.”
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Meanwhile, a number of abolitionist sympathizers and members of the Anti-Slavery Society sent letters to Canadian government officials, all demanding that Matthews free Anderson.

Detective Gunning finally arrived on April 30 with extradition papers, but he was too late. Anderson was gone. Matthews had ordered him released just two days earlier, and Freeman and Scoble had helped him disappear.

Anderson settled this time in the small town of Simcoe, where he found lodging within the town’s community of fugitive ex-slaves. Undeterred, however, Gunning, a Detroit detective named Julius Blodgett, and a hired
tracker set after their man. Anderson was protected and the hunters misdirected, but they were pugnaciously persistent. On August 27 Anderson was discovered and after a brief struggle hauled to Simcoe’s Norfolk County jail.

Having had an apparent change of heart, brought on, some said, by a promise to share in Missouri’s thousand-dollar bounty, Magistrate Matthews petitioned to have Anderson returned to Brantford, and sent a group of police officers to carry out his orders. But Crown lawyers and Simcoe magistrates would not give him up. Meanwhile, newspapers told the tale of Anderson’s arrest and the stories brought abolitionists and Simcoe’s Black community out in force, demanding that the prisoner be set free.

Matthews eventually won the day and Anderson was returned to Brantford. He was accompanied along the entire route by white abolitionists and Black friends and supporters. They camped outside the Brantford jail to ensure that the Americans did not simply whisk their prisoner back over the border without Canadian due process. Inside, Anderson lay handcuffed and alone in a small cell. He was allowed to see only his lawyer.

The extradition hearing began with American and Canadian reporters joining Anderson’s supporters, a contingent from Missouri, and others filling the small courtroom. Matthews would make the final decision without the advice of a jury. He had a background and reputation that impressed few. A former mayor of Brantford, he had harassed electors, been accused of fraud during his election and of having beaten a prisoner, and was widely believed to have found his way to the bench only because he was a friend of John A. Macdonald.
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Macdonald was Canada’s most fascinating and influential political leader. Tall and gangly, with a quick smile, dancing eyes and an endless supply of jokes and funny stories, Macdonald was a hard drinker, a rascal and a charmer. His intelligence, political genius, and charisma would soon play an essential role in the birth of an independent Canada, and by 1860 Macdonald was already a successful corporate lawyer in Kingston and an experienced and skilful political strategist. His allies loved him and even enemies bore him grudging respect.

Since 1849, Canada’s government had been split into three parts: the Legislative Assembly (House of Commons), the Legislative Council (Senate) and the Executive Council (Cabinet). The British-appointed governor oversaw it all. In the late 1850s, the governor general still held significant power, especially with respect to international matters. Internal political power, however, rested in the elected Legislative Assembly, as it controlled the purse and decided which party would form the government (that party’s leader became premier, or in modern parlance, the prime minister). Macdonald had been Canada’s joint premier, with Étienne-Paschal Taché and George Étienne Cartier, since 1856. He was also attorney general of Canada West, although everyone regarded him as representing the entire colony in legal matters. The Anderson case was a complex challenge that Macdonald needed to meet with consideration for its legal and domestic political ramifications, and its effect on Canada’s dangerous and shifting relationship with the United States and an increasingly truculent Britain.

Macdonald was torn by the case. His personal opinion sided with Anderson and the abolitionists.
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In April 1856, he had involved himself in a similar case relating to a fugitive slave named Archy Lanton, whom American authorities wanted returned. Macdonald wrote to the provincial secretary arguing that the local magistrates had badly mishandled the case in allowing the Americans to retrieve Lanton without a hearing. He said, “There is so much reason to fear that Lanton, a man of colour, fugitive from the United States, was a victim of a scheme to kidnap him.”
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Macdonald ordered that the magistrates responsible for allowing Lanton to be taken back to the United States be fired.