The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919

Mich. Hist. Coll., XIV, p. 659.

604

A fairly good account of the Underground Railroad will be found in William Still's Underground Railroad, Philadelphia, 1872, in W.M. Mitchell's Underground Railway, London, 1860; in W.H. Siebert's Underground Railway, New York, 1899; and in a number of other works on Slavery. Considerable space is given the subject in most works on slavery.

One branch of it ran from a point on the Ohio River, through Ohio and Michigan to Detroit; but there were many divagations, many termini, many stations: Oberlin was one of these. See Dr. A. M. Ross' Memoirs of a Reformer, Toronto, 1893, and Mich. Hist. Coll., XVII, p. 248.

605

The Buxton Mission in the County of Kent is well known. The Wilberforce Colony in the County of Middlesex was founded by free Negroes; but they had in mind to furnish homes for future refugees. See Mr. Fred Landon's account of this settlement in the recent (1918) Transactions of the London and Middlesex Hist. Soc., pp. 30-44. For an earlier account see A. Steward's Twenty Years a Slave, Rochester, N. Y., 1857.

606

Ross in his Memoirs gives, on page 111, 40,000, but he may be speaking for all Canada. The number is rather high for Upper Canada alone.

607

"The Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force." There can be no doubt that the Southern Negro looked upon Canada as a paradise. I have heard a colored clergyman of high standing say that of his own personal knowledge, dying slaves in the South not infrequently expressed a hope to meet their friends in Canada.

608

These being merely traditional and not supported by contemporary documents are more or less mythical and I do not attempt to collect the various and varying stories.

There are several stories more or less well authenticated of masters bringing slaves into Canada with the intention of taking them back again as Charles Stewart intended with his slave James Somerset and the slaves successfully asserting their freedom, resisting removal with the assistance of Canadians. Of one of the most shocking cases of wrong, if not quite kidnapping, a citizen of Toronto was the subject. John Mink, a respectable man with some Negro blood, had a livery stable on King Street, Toronto. He was also the proprietor of stage-coach lines and a man of considerable wealth. He had an only daughter of great personal beauty, and showing little trace of Negro origin. It was understood that she would marry no one but a white man, and that the father was willing to give her a handsome dowry on such a marriage. A person of pure Caucasian stock from the Southern States came to Toronto, wooed and won her. They were married and the husband took his bride to his home in the South. Not long afterwards the father was horrified to learn that the plausible scoundrel had sold his wife as a slave. He at once went South and after great exertion and much expense, he succeeded in bringing back to his house the unhappy woman, the victim of brutal treachery.

There have been told other stories of the same kind, equally harrowing, and unfortunately not ending so well, but I have not been able to verify them. The one mentioned here I owe to the late Sir Charles Moss, Chief Justice of Ontario.

609

The same rule obtained in Lower Canada; (1827) re Joseph Fisher, 1 Stuart's L. C. Rep. 245.

610

This is the Act (1833), 3 Will IV, c. 7 (U. C.). This came forward as cap. 96 in the Consolidated Statutes of Upper Canada 1859, but was repealed by an Act of (United) Canada (1860), 23 Vic., c. 91 (Can.).

611

To his people he seems to have been known as Hubbard Holmes; he is always called a yellow man, whether mulatto, quadroon, octoroon or other does not appear.

612

The contemporary accounts of this transaction, e. g., in the Christian Guardian of Toronto, and the Niagara Chronicle, are not wholly consistent. The main facts, however, are clear. Although there was some doubt as to the time, the military guard were ordered to fire. Miss Janet Carnochan has given a good account of this in Slave Rescue in Niagara, Sixty Years Ago, Niag. Hist. Soc., Pub. No. 2. It is said that "the Judge said he must go back," the fact being that the direction was by the executive and not the courts. The Reminiscences of Mrs. J. G. Currie, born at Niagara in 1829 and living there at the time of the trouble, are printed in the Niagara Hist. Soc., Pub. No. 20. Mrs. Currie gives a brief account (p. 331) and says that one of the party, one MacIntyre, had a bullet or bayonet wound in his cheek. In Miss Carnochan's account, her informant, who was the daughter of a slave who had escaped in 1802 and was herself born in Niagara in 1824, says that "the sheriff went up and down slashing with his sword and keeping the people back. Many of our people had sword cuts in their necks. They were armed with all kinds of weapons, pitchforks, flails, sticks, stones. One woman had a large stone in a stocking and many had their aprons full of stones and threw them too." Mrs. Anna Jameson, in her Sketches in Canada, ed. of 1852, London, on pp. 55-58, gives another account. She rightly makes the extradition order the governor's act, but errs in saying that "the law was too expressly and distinctly laid down and his duty as Governor was clear and imperative to give up the felon" as "by an international compact between the United States and our province, all felons are mutually surrendered." There was nothing in the common law, or in the statute of 1833 which made it the duty of the governor to order extradition, and there was no binding compact between the United States and Upper Canada such as Mrs. Jameson speaks of. No doubt the reason given by her for the order was that in vogue among the official set with whom she associated, her husband being vice-chancellor and head (treasurer) of the Law Society. The Christian Guardian, Niagara Reporter and Niagara Chronicle and St. Catharines Journal of September, October and November, 1837, contain accounts of and comments upon the occurrences, and sometimes attacks upon each other.

Deputy Sheriff Alexander McLeod was a man of some note if not notoriety. During the rebellion of 1837 and 1838 he was in the Militia of Upper Canada. He took a creditable part in the defence of Toronto against the followers of Mackenzie in December, 1837, and was afterwards stationed on the Niagara frontier. There he claimed to have taken part in the cutting out of the Steamer Caroline in which exploit a Buffalo citizen, Amos Durfee, was killed. McLeod, visiting Lewiston in New York State, in November, 1840, was arrested on the charge of murder and committed for trial. This arrest was the cause of a great deal of communication and discussion between the governments of the United States and of Great Britain, the latter claiming that what had been done by the Canadian militia was a proper public act and they demanded the surrender of McLeod. This was refused. McLeod was tried for murder at Utica, October, 1841, and acquitted, it being conclusively proved that he was not in the expedition at all.

613

Concluded at Washington, August 9, 1842, ratification exchanged at London, October 13, 1842, proclaimed November 10, 1842; this treaty put an end to many troublesome questions, amongst them the Maine boundary which it was found impracticable to settle by Joint Commissions or by reference to a European crowned head, William, King of the Netherlands. It will be found in all the collections of treaties of Great Britain or the United States, and in most of the treaties on extradition, amongst them the useful work by John G. Hawley, Chicago, 1893 (see pp. 119 sqq.).

614

It was held in this province that the Act of 1883 was superseded by the Ashburton Treaty in respect to the United States, but that it remained in force with respect to other countries (Reg. v. Tubber, 1854, 1, P. R., 98). Since the treaty, our government has refused to extradite where the offense charged is not included in the treaty. In re Laverne Beebe (1863), 3, P. R., 273—a case of burglary.

The provisions of the treaty were brought into full effect in Canada (Upper and Lower) by the Canadian Statute of 1849, 12, Vic., c. 19, C. S. C. (1859), c. 89.

615

Chief Justice Sir John Beverley Robinson, Mr. Justice McLean (afterwards Chief Justice of Upper Canada) and Mr. Justice Burns.

616

The seat of the Superior Courts in Toronto, the Palais de Justice of the Province.

617

Mr. Samuel B. Freeman, Q.C., of Hamilton, a man of much natural eloquence, considerable knowledge of law and more of human nature; he was always ready and willing to take up the cause of one unjustly accused and was singularly successful in his defences.

I have heard it said that it was Mr. M. C. Cameron, Q.C., who so addressed the gathering, but he does not seem to have been concerned in the case in the Queen's Bench.

618

The case is reported in (1860), 20 Up. Can., Q. B., pp. 124-193. The warrant is given at pp. 192, 193.

619

The case is reported in (1861), 3, Ellis & Ellis Reports, Queen's Bench, p. 487; 30, Law Jour., Q. B., p. 129; 7, Jurist, N. S., p. 122; 3, Law Times, N. S., p. 622; 9, Weekly Rep., p. 255.

It was owing to this decision that the statute was passed at Westminster (1862) 25, 26, Vic., c. 20, which by sec. 1 forbids the courts in England to issue a writ of habeas corpus into any British possession which has a court with the power to issue such writ. The court was Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, and Justices Crompton, Hill and Blackburn, a very strong court. The Counsel for Anderson was the celebrated but ill-fated Edwin James. The writ was specially directed to the sheriff at Toronto, the sheriff at Brantford and the jail-keeper at Brantford. Judgment was given January 15, 1861.

620

Common law, of course, not chancery.

621

The court was composed of Chief Justice William Henry Draper, C.B., Mr. Justice Richards, afterwards Chief Justice successively of the Court of Common Pleas, of the Court of Queen's Bench, and, as Sir William Buell Richards, of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Mr. Justice Hagarty, afterwards Chief Justice successively of the Court of Common Pleas, of the Court of King's Bench, and, as Sir John Hawkins Hagarty, of Ontario.

Mr. Freeman was assisted in this argument by Mr. M. C. Cameron, a lawyer of the highest standing professionally and otherwise, afterwards Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, and afterwards, as Sir Matthew Cameron, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. Counsel for the crown on both arguments were Mr. Eccles, Q.C., a man of deservedly high reputation, and Robert Alexander Harrison, afterwards Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, an exceedingly learned and accurate lawyer.

The case in the Court of Common Pleas is reported in Vol. 11, Upper Can., C. P., pp. 1 sqq.

622

For these documents Mr. Justice Riddell is indebted to Mr. William Smith of the Department of Archives, Ottawa, Canada.

623

These letters were collected under the direction of Mr. Emmett J. Scott.