The Case of the Fugitive Slave The Mayor of Montreal, His Worship Charles Seraphin Rodier, Was a sick man. Two doctors had advised him not to leave his house. But he disregarded their advice. He went to the mechanics' Hall on St. James Street on the evening of January 17, 1861, to attend one of the most excited public meetings ever held in the city. The hall was crowded and hundreds were outside struggling to make their way in.At 7:30 Mayor Rodier opened the meeting. He explained that he was scarcely in a condition to make a speech. But he had been determined to be present that he might make known to all how deeply he sympathized with the purpose of the meeting. He, like thousands of others, did not believe that John Anderson should be sent back to the United States to meet a hideous fate. Nor was it necessary that the Mayor himself should address the audience. On the platform with him that night were many of the most prominent citizens of Montreal. One after another they stood up to speak. All had the force and fire of indignation. The Anderson case had stirred Montreal as it had stirred many another city in Canada. It was a case of a Missouri slave who had escaped to Canada in 1853. No one disturbed him until 1860; then a warrant sworn out by a Detroit man brought him to court in Toronto. Three judges heard his case, one of them Sir John Beverley Robinson, the Chief Justice of Upper Canada. The judges disagreed, but two of the three declared that Anderson should be returned to the United States. The case was complicated by the fact that Anderson had committed murder in his flight to Canada. A white man, Seneca Diggs, had tried to seize him. Desperate to escape, Anderson stabbed him to death. In court the Ashburton Treaty was raised - the treaty that had defined many outstanding questions in the relations between British North America and the United States. This treaty had an extradition clause. Any person having committed murder in either territory, and having sought refuge in the other, should be given up. But there was an important qualification. The person should be given up only if the crime against him would be recognized as murder in the country where he had sought refuge. This, then, was the question: since the laws of Canada did not recognize slavery, how could it be deemed a crime for a slave to kill in his determination to escape? Could crime committed under such circumstances be regarded as murder? Though the court had decided that Anderson must be handed over to the United States, many citizens of Canada had decided otherwise. However tolerant of slavery Montreal had once been, sentiment turned profoundly against it early in Victorian times. This sentiment grew more and more bitter as runaway slaves reached the city. Their appalling injuries and harrowing stories destroyed any attempt to represent slavery as a mild and justified institution. It so happened, about ten days after the indignation meeting in the Mechanics' Hall, that a Negress, Lavinia Bell, made her way to Montreal. She was taken to the house of a Negro named Cook, on St. Urbain Street. When interviewed, she told her story. She had been born in Washington, of free parents, but had been stolen when a child, taken to Glaveston, in Texas, and sold to a slave-owner names William Whirl. Until thirteen or fourteen she was brought up as a "show girl". She was taught to dance, sing, cackle like a hen, or crow like a rooster. Whirl was always able to attract a crowd from the country round about to see and hear her perform. When about fifteen years of age she was sent into the cotton fields to work with the other slaves. It was then that her torments began. She tried to escape again and again, but was always captured, brought back, and tortured. When she arrived in Montreal in 1861, Dr. John Reddy was called to Cook's house in St. Urbain Street to attend her. On January 28, Dr. Reddy gave his report: "I was requested by Mr. Cook to call and see a Negro woman who had arrived the previous day in Montreal, he telling me she was very ill from injuries she had received while a slave. "On visiting the woman, she complained of severe pain in her right side, cause as she said, by a violent wrench which she had received at the hands of her owners. On making examination I found her body very much distorted, her spine curbed towards the right side and the ribs forced completely in the same direction, having a very bulged appearance. " I also found the following marks of ill treatment on her person. A 'V-shaped' piece had been slit out of each ear; there was a depression on the right parietal bone where it had been fractured and is now very tender to the touch; the corresponding spot on the opposite side had a large scar uncovered by hair; there is large deep scar, 3 1/2 inches long on the left side of the lower jaw; several of her teeth are broken out; the back of her left hand has been branded with a heated flat-iron; the little finger of her right hand, with a portion of the bone that it connected with, has been cut off; the abdomen bears the mark of a large letter 4 inches long in one way and 2 1/2 inches in another, also branded with a hot-iron; her ankles are scarred, and the soles of her feet are all covered with little round marks apparently inflicted with some sharp instruments which she accounts for by her stating that she was obliged to walk over hackles used for hackling flax; her back and person are literally covered all over with scars and marks now healed, evidently produced by the lash. Altogether she presents a most pitiable appearance." Such a description by Dr. Reddy made horribly real to Montrealers the plight of a fugitive slave. Mrs. Harriet Beacher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin seemed almost moderate in its descriptions, compared with this matter-of-fact medical report on Lavinia Bell. Inevitable, the question was being asked in Montreal: "And now, Canadians, what say ye?" Shall the man Anderson be given up under the requirements of a code which throws the cloak of legality over such acts, for slaying the man who would stay him while escaping from a bondage so fearful?" But the case of John Anderson had been decided in a Canadian court. What, then, could be done? Word came from England that action was being taken there. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society took steps to obtain from an English judge a writ of habeas corpus, transferring the case to the Court of Queen's Bench in England. Before the English writ could be carried out, a writ of habeas corpus was issued in Canada by a Canadian judge, and the case of John Anderson was taken to another Canadian court, the Court of Common Pleas. The new trail was awaited with impatience. It was delayed when the train carrying John Anderson to the Court House in Toronto was blocked in the snow. On February 9, 1861, at half past ten in the morning, John Anderson first appeared in the Court of Common Pleas. Three judges began to review his case. News of their decision reached Montreal on the afternoon of February 17. It was a Sunday. However the newspapers must have turned out extras, for it is said that "the streets were soon filled with news-boys carrying the glad tildings". Anderson was free. Yet there was a note of inconclusiveness. The judges had not decided the case on principle but only on a technicality. They found that the warrant originally issued in Canada for Anderson's arrest had not been legally worded. The warrant, for example, had not charged Anderson with murder but with the lesser crime of "felonious homicide". The law governing extradition did not require that any person be surrendered "for any homicide not expressed to be murder". The judges had been obviously pleased to release Anderson on a technicality, and to avoid the responsibility of deciding the larger and more complex aspects of extradition. But this technical decision left the whole question open. If another slave, having murdered to escape, should seek refuge on Canadian soil, what would his position be? He could scarcely count upon being saved by a technical defect in the warrant for his arrest. It was even possible that Anderson might find himself again brought to trial. Uneasy over his position, he decided to leave Canada. First he visited Montreal. On March 6, 1861, The Montreal Gazette reported: "An- derson, the now celebrated fugitive slave, was in town yesterday, and called upon us among others to return thanks for the manner in which Montrealers stood by him. He intends to remain in town till the opening of navigation, when he proceeds to England." But on February 13, even before the judges of the Canadian Court of Common Pleas had reached their evasive decision, the papers were carrying the headlines:
UNITED STATES NEWS Courtesy of the Author, Edgar Collard Popular Slave Song I'm on my way to Canada,That cold and dreary land; The dire effects of slavery I can no longer stand... Farewell, old master, Don't come after me, I'm on my way to Canada Where coloured men are free. |
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