Online Response #3: Simcoe and the Slaves

Author: Patrick Bode
Source: Beaver Magazine
Date: June, 1993

Upper Canada, 1793

This year marks the 200th anniversary of a largely forgotten but significant event in Canadian history. It was in the year 1793 that the Assembly of Upper Canada (barely a year old itself) passed an Act "to prevent the further introduction of Slaves, and to limit the term of contracts for servitude." This Act, passed in an obscure colony in the heart of North America, was a first tentative step in ending the tyranny of slavery in Canada.

Significantly, the moving spirit behind the Act would be a black Canadian.

In March 1793, Peter Martin, servant of Colonel John Butler, appeared before the first meeting of the province's Executive Council at Navy Hall in Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake). Little is known of Peter Martin except that he was selected to represent the black citizens before the colonial government.

The Executive Council of the day was composed of the Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, Chief Justice William Osgoode and a prominent citizen and slaveowner, Peter Russell. This new executive was determined to create an orderly government among the Loyalists who had taken up land along the fringes of the American republic. Among these Loyalists were a number of black veterans, men who had escaped from slavery and volunteered to fight in Loyalist regiments against the revolutionaries. One veteran, Richard Pierpoint, had been born in West Africa and had been a slave in New York for 20 years. In 1780 he escaped, made his way to the Niagara Peninsula and joined Butler's Rangers. As a reward for his services he was granted land near Fort Niagara and settled in the area.

However, most blacks living in what was to become Ontario were condemned to slavery. Slavery of both blacks and natives had existed since the beginning of European settlement. French settlers at what eventually became Windsor, had used slave labour since 1749. Many Loyalists brought their slaves with them to Canada. An Imperial Act of 1790 encouraged immigration to Canada and assured prospective immigrants that their slaves would remain their property. The province's black population was therefore a peculiar mixture of black veterans who had been granted land for their services and slaves who were completely without rights or freedom.

Peter Martin was before the Executive Council to speak on behalf of the latter He began by telling them of the violent outrage committed against a black woman, Chloe Cooley, near Queenston. Her master, one William Vrommond, had decided to sell her in New York State Because she resisted, he had her securely bound and dragged across the border to her new owner. Simcoe was shocked, and the Council resolved to direct the Attorney General to prevent such breaches of the peace in the future. Nevertheless, both Simcoe and his Attorney General, John White, knew that under the existing law, Vrommond was within his rights and that nothing could be done. But this would not dissuade Simcoe.

The Lieutenant Governor, John Graves Simcoe, was a distinguished military officer, but largely unfamiliar with civil administration. Yet he was determined to erect in the province a copy of the British form of government and root out the "democratic subversion" that had been at the heart of the American Revolution. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Simcoe had come to abhor slavery and he was one of the first imperial administrators to work for its abolition. While a member of the British House of Commons, Simcoe had spoken against slavery as an offence against Christianity. Given his own way, he would have freed all slaves immediately. The political realities of Upper Canada, however, intervened.

Simcoe's agent in the provincial Assembly, Attorney General John White, introduced a bill in June 1793 to provide for the gradual abolition of slavery. It was not well received. The elected members, many of whom were merchants or farmers who depended on slave labour, saw no need for emancipation. White later wrote that there was "much opposition but little argument" to his measure. On the Canadian frontier, hard labour was the only way to clear land or make it productive, and many settlers considered slaves to be their most valuable assets. After considerable concessions to the slave owners, the bill to provide for gradual abolition of slavery was passed and given royal assent on 9 July 1793. In his address to the Assembly, Simcoe praised this act as a "singular pleasure that such persons as may be in that unhappy condition which sound policy unites to condemn, added to their own protection from all undue severity... may henceforth look forward with certainty to the emancipation of their offspring."

Undoubtedly, Simcoe looked upon the act as the first step in the total elimination of slavery.

Yet the unfortunate reality was that it freed no one. All persons who were slaves would remain so until they died. However, no further slaves could be brought into the province, and all children of female slaves would become free at the age of 25. As a concession to slaveholders, the Act actually discouraged the freeing or manumission of slaves by requiring the master to provide security that the former slave would not become a public charge.

One member of the Assembly, D.W. Smith, was sympathetic to black Canadians and he did not think that the act went far enough. Smith wrote to a friend "We have made no law to free the Slaves.... A free man who is married to a Slave, his heir is declared by this act to be a slave. Fye, fye. The Laws of God & man cannot authorize it."

But there was no doubt that Simcoe's act was intended to throttle slavery. "By a piece of chicanery", wrote the wife of the Provincial Secretary, Simcoe had "freed all the Negroes." So unpopular was the act with slave owners that in 1798 a group of them headed by the Virginia-born Christopher Robinson introduced a bill into the Upper Canada Assembly to permit the importation of additional slaves. As well, this act confirmed the Imperial Act of 1790 permitting immigrants to bring their slaves into the province. It is an indication of the strength of the slavery lobby that this bill passed in the Assembly, but was stalled by the government appointees in the Upper Chamber. This bill died at the end of the session, but the attempt to fully re-instate slavery in Upper Canada had almost succeeded.

Slavery persisted in Upper Canada after 1793. In the first decade of the nineteenth century there are many accounts of slave sales. Occasionally, people simply ignored the law and imported additional slaves from the United States. But the institution was doomed. In 1807, Sandwich merchant John Askin tried, without success, to sell his "Negro Man Ben". Askin noted that the hostility of the adjacent states to bondage was having its effect in destroying slavery as a viable enterprise.

By the second decade of the nineteenth century, references to slave transactions were rare. The end of slavery may have been hastened by the overwhelming loyalty of black residents during the War of 1812. A company of black Canadians was enrolled in the militia and served with great distinction throughout the war. When Imperial emancipation was finally enacted by London in 1834, there may have been no slaves left in the colony to be emancipated.

The Slave Act of 1793 stands as the only attempt by a Canadian legislature to act against enslavement. In typical Canadian fashion, it was a compromise affair and it had none of the drama of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. It was limited in effect, and intended to end a known evil gradually, not instantly. The preamble to the Act embodies this cautious approach:

Whereas it is unjust that a people who enjoy freedom by law should encourage the introduction of Slaves; And Whereas it is highly expedient to abolish slavery in this Province, so far as the same may be done without violating private property.

Thus, one of Ontario's oldest laws expressed the ideal of freedom that free people could not enslave others, while at the same time it sought to preserve stability and protect existing rights.

Response Questions:

*** Feel free to answer any/all of the following questions regarding Simcoe's life in Upper Canada and the treatment of the slaves.

1. Based upon this reading, what is your personal opinion of John Graves Simcoe?

2. Did Simcoe and the Upper Canadian government go far enough with the Slave Act of 1793?

3. One of Canada's first and most important laws was an act of compromise. Even today, Canadians are sometimes criticized for being indecisive over important issues both at home and abroad. Do you feel that this quality is a positive attribute or a negative one?