Hall in Toronto from September 11–13, 1851. It started a trend of discussing black nationalism and emigration of enslaved Africans to Canada. Called by many Ontario black residents such as Henry Bibb, editor of the Voice of the Fugitive, and James Theodore Holly, an American-born free black who was devoted to emigration, the convention concluded with the agreement that Canada was a preferred destination for freedom seekers. Other options, such as the West Indies or Africa, were too far from black abolitionist centres in the U.S., and Canada was a more convenient location from which to initiate the escapes of slaves or to assist in the establishing of African-Canadian settlements. Canada, in the eyes of the black community, was considered to be a “beacon of hope” to the enslaved.
When Harriet decided to make her fourth rescue to get her brother James Ross, his wife, children, and nine others, the trip was longer and more dangerous. After stopping at the home of black abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Rochester, Harriet likely made her way to St. Catharines, Ontario, in December 1851 with eleven fugitives.
Frederick Douglass was a self-freed former slave who hailed from Maryland like Harriet Tubman. Unlike Tubman, who suffered a disabling injury as a young woman, Douglass was secretly taught to read by his owner’s wife while a young man. In this way he came to learn about other abolitionist stances and about The Liberator, the paper of William Lloyd Garrison, a white anti-slavery worker. Ultimately making himself free through the use of a sailor’s uniform with “free papers,” Douglass married and began to give rousing public speeches, later to write about his experiences as an enslaved African. His autobiography, Narratives in the Life of Frederick Douglass, was a bestseller and reprinted several times. He would write a paper, The North Star, that would challenge the readership of the Garrison paper and became an advocate for women’s rights. Following the Civil War, he was appointed Consul General to Haiti.
However, for Harriet, Douglass also had some valuable contacts in many of the cities that became a part of Harriet Tubman’s routes to Canada. From his first steps as a free man, he was acquainted with David Ruggles in New York, initially staying at his safe house. From his women’s rights activities he knew the co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, James Mott, his wife Lucretia (Lucretia having relatives in Rochester), and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Other abolitionists or station masters would include John Hooper and Stephen Meyers in Albany (the Meyer home is being restored as an example of a black abolitionist abode) and Jermaine Loguen in Syracuse.
Some of Harriet’s helpers. From left to right: unidentified woman (possibly Eliza Wright Osborne’s daughter), Martha Coffin Wright, Eliza Wright Osborne (Martha’s daughter), and Lucretia Mott.
Courtesy Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
While some freedom seekers were comfortable in remaining in some of these northern cities, others opted to head all the way across the Canadian border. This would have them enter Canada at Niagara Falls. However, since it was so close to the border at Niagara Falls, a safer option was to go further inland to St. Catharines, Ontario. Harriet Tubman met with Douglass in Rochester and headed to St. Catharines because of a well-known contact, Reverend Hiram Wilson. Wilson had been working with refugees first in Dresden, Ontario, then in the Niagara area for several years.
In addition to the human landscape, there was the physical landscape that presented an excellent opportunity for Harriet Tubman and to anyone wishing to have a fairly direct route to the Niagara area. The canal system of New York State and in southern Ontario provided good secret highways for freedom seekers and the canal systems were fairly well established by the 1850s. Tubman could make her way to Troy, New York, and from there travel east along the route of the Erie Canal. This route would have her touch the tips of the Finger Lakes under the shroud of cover provided by the canal trench and the human connections. If her connections were able to respond to her request for assistance, that would further facilitate her journey. Ultimately crossing at Niagara, a freedom seeker could make their way without as much need for secrecy since crossing into Canada provided freedom under the law. However, should there have been a need to be extra cautious, freedom seekers could have also followed the Welland Canal north from Port Colborne into St. Catharines. With the construction going on for its second stage, the movement of new arrivals would scarcely have been noticed.
Many blacks had settled the Niagara Peninsula before 1840. As a group they were tolerated and accepted, primarily for the manual labour they provided at a low cost. At times, despite their hard work, thriftiness, and industriousness, they were in need of assistance or were in a position where they needed donated food, especially when they first arrived in Canada. At the time of the Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837, the men, black and non-black, left their families for military duties. So when a group of white women gave the “coloured ladies of St. Catharines” some highly rationed sugar and tea, it was not just enough for them to say thank you, but it became an item for the newspapers! Even though the assistance was sporadic, and not really enough to have kept black people from starving if they were impoverished, there was a certain expected type of behaviour that sympathetic whites wished to see. Blacks were to be overly grateful for every courtesy extended to them, even by people who considered themselves to be abolitionists — the supposed progressive, liberal, activist element of society. Mary Ann Shadd, a black investigative reporter and editor, felt that anti-slavery advocates were more inclined to expect this degrading behaviour than the regular population who might be less supportive of the black community. Said of this ad hoc charity by Shadd, “[The charity of white abolitionists displays] this disgusting, repulsive surveillance, this despotic, dictatorial, snobbish air of superiority of white people over the fugitives.”
In June 1852, a group of black military men were parading and, without provocation, were attacked by a group of white young people who also damaged or destroyed homes within the African-Canadian community. The sight of black men in military uniform invoked angry feelings since it was seen by the white youth as demeaning to the uniform. And, because blacks had a role in peacekeeping with the canal workers and in halting the illegal importation of goods from the United States, they were further resented as officers and as African Canadians. The town of St. Catharines voted in 1853 to pay for the damages to the black settlement caused by this riot.
At St. Thomas Church, a black churchgoer, Augustus Halliday, felt that he had to take Communion last so that he would not offend other white churchgoers who would not want to use the Communion cup after him — this even by the 1900s and even though he was a property owner on Wellington Street. His concern was very real and appropriate for the recent historical and social experience of being a person of African descent in St. Catharines. A stained glass window depicting St. Thomas was dedicated on September 10, 1905, in the honour of Mr. Halliday who left money to the church in his will.
In 1867, a young black woman who was employed at the Stephenson House, another of the city’s spas, attempted to buy a ticket for the mineral baths, which were supposed to have therapeutic properties, and was refused admission. In an editorial in the St. Catharines Journal, some attitudes about African Canadians using public facilities are reflected:
… the managers would be extremely foolish to allow any such person to bathe with the guests of the house … for there are few who are willing to meet him [the black person] on terms of equality … So long as the coloured man behaves himself in this country he will be respected, but when he presumes to dine at a public house, or to wash in the same bath as a white man, he is going a little too far, and public opinion will frown him down.
As long as the growing black population applied themselves to their work and made themselves as unseen as possible, there would be no problem. And with the 1840s arrival of European immigrants who were also eager to work, the interest in tolerating or supporting people of African descent was waning. After all, by the time of the 1863 abolition of slavery in the United States and the 1865 end of the Civil War, many people may have felt that the blacks could now go home, back where they came from, or, at the very least, someplace else. It was a time of white encouragement for blacks to resettle in the Caribbean Islands, Africa, or remote outposts as if their usefulness had been outlived, as if they were not rooted to the soil they had tilled, as if they were not entitled to live in the country