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Slavery and Self-Emancipation in Colonial Canada
Tues., Feb. 13 | 12:30 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP
The US-Canada border played a central role in the history of slavery in North America. Yet, while Canada is remembered chiefly as a haven for those fleeing slavery in the United States via the Underground Railroad during the mid-nineteenth century, it is less well known that many people enslaved in colonial Canada during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gained their freedom by crossing the border into the United States. Early Canadian and American anti-slavery laws did remarkably little to free people enslaved within their respective jurisdictions. But their enactment – and the proximity of a permeable border between rival regimes – afforded an unprecedented opportunity to enslaved men, women, and children. Laws on both sides of the Great Lakes inadvertently established free spaces, where fugitives from the opposite side could find sanctuary. By passing from one jurisdiction to another, enslaved individuals could exploit competing slavery laws and emancipate themselves simply by crossing the border, a development that destabilized and ultimately destroyed chattel slavery in the borderlands.
In this talk, Dr. Gregory Wigmore will provide a broad overview of slavery in early Canada, especially in the Great Lakes region. His talk will explain how both slaveholders and the enslaved, along with British and American authorities, responded to the emergence of the new Canadian-American border after the American Revolution. While slaveholders in Upper Canada (now Ontario) begged the colonial government to help them protect their valuable human property, their enslaved laborers were among the first people in North America to understand the political significance of the new international boundary, using it as a portal to freedom.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Gregory Wigmore is a lecturer in the Department of History at Santa Clara University. He received his B.A. in journalism and history from Carleton University, and his Ph.D. in history from UC Davis. His research and teaching focus on the intersection of social and political history and foreign relations, especially the role of frontiers and borders. His article, “Before the Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom in the Canadian-American Borderland”, received the Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and the Ontario Historical Society’s Riddell Award. He is currently working on a book manuscript based on his dissertation, “The Limits of Empire: Allegiance, Opportunity, and Imperial Rivalry in the Canadian-American Borderland.” |
Royal Canadian Legion, US Branch #25 