Canadians have honoured Sir John A MacDonald for a very long time. However, statues of John A. MacDonald are being put in storage and one, perhaps more, has been vandalized. He was a father of Confederation, if not the Father of Confederation. So, what happened?
Macdonald, Sir John (NFB/National Archives of Canada) (Photo credit: Britannica)
First, as we have seen in earlier posts, when Canada grew westward, the White population settled on land they had appropriated from Amerindians on the basis of “conquest,” a disgraceful leftover from the “age of discovery.” Moreover, as we have also seen in earlier posts, Rupert’s Land, which Canada bought from the Hudson’s Bay Company, did not include settled land, such as the Red River Settlement, bought by the Earl of Selkirk, and lands inhabited by Amerindians.
Quebec
As for Quebec, it seems it was drawn into a Confederation that also excluded it. John A. Macdonald was an Orangeman, a fraternity that was inimical to Catholics and the French. The people of Quebec could not be educated in French outside Quebec. Waves of immigrants arrived who would live in provinces other than Quebec and be educated in English. We have already discussed the school question.
However, recognition occurred 102 years after Confederation (1867) when English had become the language spoken outside Quebec. The French had been in North America since 1534.
Conclusion
In short, what of such concepts as nationhood and the rights afforded conquerors and, first and foremost, what of Canada’s Confederation? If Confederation demanded that the children of Francophones be educated in English, outside Quebec, their children were likely to be Anglophones. So, what of Quebec nationalism. Separatism is usually associated with Quebecers, but it isn’t altogether québécois. Not if the children of French Canadians had to be educated in English outside Quebec and not if immigrants to Canada were sent to English-speaking communities.
Sir George-Étienne Cartier was pleased that Quebec would remain Quebec. The population of Quebec would retain its “code civil,” its language, its religion, and its culture while belonging to a strong partnership. He may have been afraid.
However, Canada has a new constitution, the Constitution Act of 1982, which Quebec has not signed.
Love to everyone 💕
Sir Ernest MacMillan, Two Skteches on French Canadian Airs
The Underground Railroad, painting by Charles T. Weber, c. 1893, depicting escaped slaves taking refuge at one of the stations on the Underground Railroad.
From enslavement to an elusive freedom
After posting my article on Harriet Tubman, something was gnawing at me. Once freed, slaves were not free. Those who could make it to Canada had a chance, but the others would live under the yoke of racism, genuinely systemic racism: the Ku Klux Klan lynched the Blacks. They were segregated: apartheid. They could not find employment. They were extremely poor. Those who were captured after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed were tried without the benefit of a jury. Finally, there was growing resentment in the Northern states. Southerners had the money to pursue the Blacks. In free-slave Northern states, there were no large plantations operated by an army of slaves, and, therefore, no wealthy plantation owners. Was this a conspiracy? The inhabitants of Southern states were richer than Americans who lived in Northern States. Therefore, slaves had to journey all the way to Canada:
The upshot was that distant Canada became the only truly safe destination for fugitive slaves. [1]
Just imagine the flight. Slaves traveled by night, all the way to Canada. It was a long and perilous journey. John Graves Simcoe did not have as brilliant a career as he wished, but he secured a very fine place for himself in the annals of history. He and his legislative assembly passed the Act Against Slavery on 9th July 1793.
Conditions in Lower Canada eased walking out of slavery:
“A precedent-setting case came before the courts in Lower Canada in February 1798. An enslaved woman named Charlotte was arrested in Montréal after leaving her mistress and refusing to return to her. She was brought before Chief Justice James Monk, who released her based on a technicality. British law stated that enslaved persons could only be detained in houses of correction, not in common jails. Since no houses of correction existed in Montréal, Monk decided that Charlotte could not be detained. The following month, another enslaved woman named Jude was freed by Monk on the same grounds. Monk asserted in his ruling that he would apply that interpretation of the law to all future cases.”
(See Black Enslavement in Canada,The Canadian Encyclopedia.)
The Canadian Encyclopedia also indicates that circumstances were even more favorable in the Maritime Provinces, which cannot translate into an easy life in Canada, but freedom. In short, there were no large plantations in Canada. The economy of Canada did not depend on a huge labour force. The same is true of the economy of Northern states. Economy is a chief factor in slavery. In fact, citizens of the Northern states resented the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Wealth bestowed power on the Southern states. And it was all about sugar. The French chose, reluctantly, to let go of Nouvelle-France because Guadeloupe and Martinique had sugar. I am inserted a video on the history of slavery.
The words above summarize Frederick Douglass’ undertaking once out of bondage. First, it should be noted that Frederick may have been his master’s child. I could be mistaken, but it was not uncommon for slave owners to have sexual relationships with slaves. In fact, female slaves were frequently raped, which was one of the worst plights of enslavement. Yet, there were relationships. Thomas Jefferson, a future president of the United States and the writer of the Declaration of Independence (4th July 1776), had a relationship with Sally Hemings. As for Frederick Douglass, he discovered that his mother, a Black slave, could read and write. How had she become literate? One suspects Frederick Douglass’ mother had a relationship with a white slave-owner. Not only did Frederick have White ancestry, but he also had Indigenous ancestry. Yet, he was born into slavery in Maryland and married a freed slave, which is how he escaped. He took a train wearing a sailor’s uniform, provided by his wife, Anne Murray-Douglass.
Literacy
Frederick’s story differs from that of other slaves. Not only was he born to a White father, but he was taught how to read by a master’s wife, Lucretia Auld. Lucretia was not his father’s wife and she stopped teaching Frederick how to read when she realized that slavery and literacy were not compatible. Literacy is empowering. Unless a thought is wrapped into words, it cannot be expressed. The Jesuit missionaries to New France had to invent and teach Amerindians words expressing concepts. Lucretia stopped teaching Frederick, but he knew enough to continue on his own, and literacy would earn him notoriety and financial autonomy.
Frederick Douglass fled by train, married, and quickly published his autobiography. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), (…) became a bestseller” (see Frederick Douglass, wiki2.org). He also wrote My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and kept updating his autobiography. Frederick Douglass was eloquent and would run for office and move to Washington D.C., where the matter of suffrage would be a main pursuit. The right to vote is fundamental in a democracy. In this respect the three-fifth compromise of 1787, was unacceptable. In slave states, five slaves equalled three votes.
Frederick Douglass was elected into office almost unknowingly and moved his family from New York to Washington. Suffrage was his main cause. As well, he was invited to give speeches. To escape capture, he traveled to Europe where he did not face discrimination.
African Traders of Enslave People (Century Magazine illustration by E.W. Kemble for an article called “The Slave-Trade in the Congo Basin.” (Kean Collection / Getty Images)
Captives being brought on board a slave ship on the West Coast of Africa (Slave Coast), c1880. (Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images.)
Diagram of a slave ship, depicting how humans were loaded to cross the Atlantic Ocean. (Getty Images)
The Emancipation Proclamation (22 September 1862; 1st January 1863) was incomplete. It required clarification and further legislation, but it had put an end to slavery in the United States.
Yet, the Gettysburg address is a monument to freedom. It is perfect. Britannica has videos on the Gettysburg address that show profound understanding the aims of the Civil War.[2]
Frederick Douglass regretted that Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not include the right to vote. Five former slaves equalled three former slaves, which was less than equal. When the abolition of slavery divides a country, one fears signing so categorical an executive order as the Emancipation Proclamation. The country was at war with itself. Abraham Lincoln did not include the right to vote. It would be for others to do so. Frederick angered his friend William Lloyd Garrison because he agreed with Lysander Spooner’s “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery.” Frederick Douglass believed that the Constitution should be used as an instrument in the fight against slavery. The Constitution was not necessarily a lie. It was a goal, but a difficult goal to attain, as it would impoverished the South.
As a result of the Union victory in the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1865), nearly four million slaves were freed. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) granted African Americans citizenship, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) guaranteed their right to vote. Yet the Reconstruction period (1865–77) was one of disappointment and frustration for African Americans, for these new provisions of the Constitution were often ignored, particularly in the South.[3]
Conclusion
Frederick Douglass seldom led slaves out of a plantation, but he worked unremittingly at ensuring former Black slaves enjoyed the same rights as the Whites once they had left enslavement. He prefigures the great civil rights activists, those who would lose their life because they had a dream that has yet to come true. It is now for us to make sure that all men are created equal.
There were abolitionists, Black and White, long before the Act Against Slavery. They could help fugitive slaves by offering “stations,” (safe houses), but fleeing to one of the fourteen free states to the North was dangerous. Slave-hunters could catch escapees and were encouraged to do so. Bounties were very attractive. Moreover, the Anti-Fugitive Act of 1850 directed everyone to participate in preventing Black slaves from leaving plantations where they grew rice, tobacco, cotton and indigo to the point of exhaustion. In the eyes of slave-hunters, Black slaves were flesh, mere chattel, and returning them to their plantation was lucrative.
Harriet Tubman (née Ross), 1820 -10 March 1913, was born and raised in Maryland, a slave state. In about 1844, she married a free slave. She was motivated to flee in 1849, when she heard that she could be sold. She and two of her brothers fled the plantation. She may have stopped at Preston, a community where Quakers were abolitionists. She met people. She traveled from Preston to Philadelphia on foot during the night. She was guided by the North star.
In 1850, she returned to Maryland to help free her family[1]and made 19 trips rescuing 70 slaves. She followed the North star and “never lost a passenger.” She went back to Maryland to free her family. In 1859, she bought a house at Auburn, New York, where her parents lived.
She met white abolitionist John Brown in 1858, and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry John Brown was executed.
During the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was an armed scout and spy and the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war. She guided “the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people.” (See Harriet Tubman, wiki2.org.)
After the Civil War, she retired to a house she had purchased, in 1859, in Auburn, New York, but died in a home for Indigent Aged Negroes which she helped establish.
She divorced Mr Tubman in 1850 and married a man whose name I can no longer locate. He was the love of her life, but he died years before she passed away.
At the age of 15, she suffered a head injury. It was a heavy blow to the head. She never recovered:
Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another enslaved person, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life.
over the next decade, she conducted upward of 300 fugitive slaves along the Underground Railroad to Canada. By her extraordinary courage, ingenuity, persistence, and iron discipline, which she enforced upon her charges, Tubman became the railroad’s most famous conductor and was known as the “Moses of her people.”[2]
Harriet Tubman was a Methodist and “deeply” religious. “Rewards offered by slaveholders for Tubman’s capture eventually totaled $40,000.”[3]
She followed her North star. The North Star would be the name of Frederick Douglass‘ anti-slavery newspaper published from the Talman Building in Rochester, New York. The paper was published from 3 December 1847 to June 1851. Frederick Douglass is our next star. He was multi-racial and had been a slave.
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