Blood and Daring Read Online Free PDF

slaves to meet a labour shortage. 6 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 importantelement in their co-operative efforts was the construction of dispersed and diverse Black communities. 7 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. 8 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.
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW
    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 tosomewhat 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