was extremely unsettled in the 1830s, though one might have expected that the colonists, situated as they were on the frontier, would have remained unaware of political developments. Communication was nowhere very swift, and Upper Canada, where transportation was to a large extent overland, was at a disadvantage compared with Lower Canada, where not only were the settled areas much older but also strategically placed along the St. Lawrence River.
Great tensions were, however, developing in the political life of Canada, and there were those prominent in the affairs of both the French- and the English-speaking provinces who felt that the term “colony” could best be exchanged for another.
It was almost certainly Henson who first saw the advantage to be gained from an interest in politics. It was he who petitioned the legislature and who organized the Negro colonists in his area during the Rebellion of 1837. Nor was this the first Negro participation in Canadian affairs.
During the War of 1812 it was that portion of Canada in which the Negro colonists had settled which had been taken by the army of General Harrison who penetrated far into the province of Upper Canada. It is certain that at that time there were Negro troops in the Canadian militia on the British side, but it seems uncertain whether they were freemen or slaves. Since that date, however, slavery had been abolished in the British Empire by the Act of 1833. When it seemed certain that the rebels would attack from their headquarters in Detroit, the provincial legislature undertook to re-form the militia, and Henson was active in insuring that the Negro colonists would form a part of it.
He claims that he was appointed a captain in the Second Essex Company of Colored Volunteers. There is no other authority for this than his own statement. Another colored preacher, the Reverend J. W. Loguen, has also claimed that he commanded a black company.
Henson says that, owing to his crippled arms, he could not shoulder a musket and therefore carried a sword in its place. “My company held Fort Malden from Christmas till the following May, and also took the schooner Ann and captured all it contained, which were three hundred arms, two cannons, musketry, and provisions for the rebel troops. This was a fierce and gallant action and did much toward breaking up the rebel party, for they could not obtain provisions while we held the Fort, which we continued to do till we were relieved by the colonel of the Forty-fourth Regiment from England. The colored men were willing to help defend the government that had given them a home when they fled from slavery.”
The affair of the schooner Ann was a curious incident, for it is perhaps the only occasion in the history of warfare when a company of foot soldiers has captured a vessel. It seems that the schooner was caught, during a quick drop in temperature, in the ice floes which bound her solid, enabling the soldiers to make their way across the ice and board her.
The part which the ex-slaves played in the rebellion has been commented upon in an interesting letter written by the rebel leader himself. This letter was sent in answer to an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society who visited Canada immediately before the rebellion and canvassed a number of public men in the province as to their opinion on the state of the ex-slaves.
January 30, 1837
Sir,
In reply to your enquiries I beg to offer as my opinion with much diffidence, 1st, That nearly all of them are opposed to every species of reform in the civil institutions of the colony—they are so extravagantly loyal to the Executive that to the utmost of their power they uphold all the abuses of government and support those who profit by them. 2nd, As a people they are as well behaved as a majority of the whites, and perhaps more temperate. 3rd, To your third question (regarding crime), I would say, not more numerous. 4th, Cases in which colored people ask public charity are rare as far as I can recollect. I am opposed to slavery whether of whites or blacks, in every form. I wish to live long enough to see the people of this continent, of the humblest classes, educated and free, and held in respect, according to their conduct and attainments, without reference to country, color or worldly substance. But I regret that an unfounded fear of union with the United States on the part of the colored population should have induced them to oppose reform and free institutions in this colony, whenever they have the power to do so. The apology I make for them in this matter is that they have not been educated as freemen.
I am your respectful humble servant,
W. L. MacKenzie
The legal position of the refugees had been admittedly precarious, and the first fruit of this political intervention would seem to have been the law of 1837 permitting ex-slaves to vote. This apparently signified that the fugitive slaves were to be admitted to British citizenship, for it could hardly have been intended to apply to the insignificant number of Canadian-held slaves who had been freed by the Act of 1833. Naturalization was made easy, and the growing Negro colonies were about to become a political force whose direction would lie in the hands of the first man to show himself capable of manipulating their combined vote.
The political question was to lie dormant, however, for some years, until the tide of colored immigration had almost reached its peak about the year 1850. By that time, Josiah Henson was to be in a strong position as the chief member and director of an organized Negro colony. He spent the intervening years raising funds, traveling about the country attending meetings, and speaking everywhere, both to consolidate his own position and to advise the immigrants as to the necessity of owning land of their own. His activity on the platform and in the pulpit was to lead eventually to the foundation of the Dawn Institute, but first his activity was to precipitate him into a series of adventurous missions in the slave states.
[[ Ten years after his own escape, Henson made his way to Kentucky to rescue the Lightfoot family from slavery, but as they were reluctant to leave just then, he journeyed to the interior of the state to shepherd another group out; the next year he returned to the Lightfoots and, amid various difficulties, helped four brothers to escape. Overall, he brought back some 118 people from such trips into slave territory. In 1842, with $1,500 raised by abolitionists in England, he bought three hundred acres of the land he had seen several years earlier, plus an adjoining one hundred acres on his own account, and there he founded the Dawn Institute. At the colony, he proposed establishing a school that taught grammar and manual training—as suited frontier life—to enable independence from the white population. Periodically, he traveled to the northern states to seek assistance for newly arrived fugitives. To ensure the prosperity of the Dawn Institute, he also raised money to build a sawmill in order to profit by the felled trees on their land, but the project was not well planned and ran out of funds. Discontent with his stewardship began to set in at this point, but with support from friends in Boston he succeeded in getting the mill in working order. Around this time, about 1849, his life story was published by the Anti-Slavery Society of Boston and read by Harriet Beecher Stowe, whom he met while passing through Andover, Massachusetts, where she had just moved from Cincinnati. After a debt of $7,500 was discovered, to pay for which they had to appeal to abolitionists abroad, the trustees of the Dawn Institute decided that the school and the sawmill should be separately managed. Henson took over the mill; he took black walnut boards produced at the mill to the great exhibition in the Crystal Palace in London, where he was generally well received and even visited by Queen Victoria. ]]
/ 7 /
Henson was, in consequence of the temper of the society in which he found himself, introduced everywhere by his new friends, and he very often rose to a point of correction at the public meetings which were held at that time by the rare apologists for slavery who managed to appear before the English public. As a visiting celebrity, he was taken to see such charitable institutions as the Ragged Schools, to which he was accompanied by Lord Grey.
This gentleman made Henson a most interesting offer. The English government had been seeking for some time to procure for its manufacturers sources of cotton other than the slave states of America. The production of cotton had been introduced into Egypt
