Fannin’ Flies and Tellin’ Lies: Black Runaways and American Tales of Life in British Canada before the Civil War

Abstract

Fannin’ Flies and Tellin’ Lies examines the many falsehoods told by slaveholders in the American South to prevent enslaved Blacks from running away to British Canada throughout the antebellum. Blacks were wrongly instructed on Canada including fabrications ranging from the Monarch would demand half of their earnings to rice was the only crop that could be grown in the British colony. At times the lies were totally inaccurate and humorous; on occasion they were half-truths or white lies, but indefinitely these falsehoods, instead of misinforming Blacks, suggested to them the benefits of Canada. Blacks deconstructed and reacted to lies by concealing their desire to defile the institution of slavery by flight to Canada and turned the art of lying into a tool of insurrection and a means of greater liberation.

Keywords:

• Black runaways
• fugitive slaves
• American tales
• historical lies
• hidden transcript

Notes

^1. Ringgold War[d], Samuel. 1855. Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada, and England. London: John Snow [35, Paternoster Row], 161.

^2. Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Kelley, Robin D.G. 1993.” ‘We Are Not What We Seem,’ Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South.” The Journal of American History 80 (1): 75–112. “Hidden Transcript” is a term used by scholars to characterize the behavior performed by subordinate groups “offstage” or concealed from direct observation of power holders. The “Public Transcript” underscores the open and formal public interaction between the dominated and oppressed in which the subordinate are cast as submissive. The Hidden Transcript implies that resistance lies discreetly and strategically beneath the surface of the conventional public dimension (Scott, James C., Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 1–16 and 45–69).

^3. The Canadian “Promise Land” discourse overemphasizes Black freedoms enjoyed in Canada prior to the Civil War and beyond. It casts the British colony as a “Haven” and overlooks the transcending sentiment of racism that was present on both sides of the American–Canadian border. While there were legal differences that hampered bigotry in Canada, the social reality must not be taken out of context, as prejudice could be just as pervasive on the Crown’s soil. The “Promise Land” historical literature treats Canada as if it was an ideal “Heavenly” place floating above nineteenth and twentieth century intolerance and Black degradation. See Smardz Frost, Karolyn. 2007. I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad. New York: Rarrar, Straus and Giroux; Roger Hepburn, Sharon A. 1999. “Following the North Star: Canada as a Haven for Nineteenth-Century American Blacks.” Michigan Historical Review 25 (2): 91–126; Roger Hepburn, Sharon A. 2007. Crossing the Border: A Free Black Community in Canada. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.

^4. Bauer, Raymond A., and Alice H. Bauer. 1942. “Day to Day Resistance to Slavery.” Journal of Negro History 37: 388–419; Camp, Stephanie M.H. 2004. Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press; Hope Franklin, John, and Loren Schweninger. 2000. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. New York: Oxford University Press. Johnson, Walter. 2003. “On Agency.” Journal of Social History 37: 113–124.

^5. Wright, Richard. [1841] 1988. Twelve Million Black Voices. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 10.

^6. Braxton, Joanne M. 1993. The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, xxii–xxiii, 71. “We Wear the Mask,” appeared in Dunbar’s first professionally published volume, Lyrics of Lowly Life, in 1896 by Dodd, Mead, and Company. See Du Bois, W.E.B. [1920] 1999. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.

^7. Horne, Gerald. 2012. Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation. New York: New York University Press; Mason, Matthew. 2002. “The Battle of the Slaveholding Liberators: Great Britain, the United States, and Slavery in the Early Nineteenth Century.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 59 (3), Slaveries in the Atlantic World. Also refer to the works of Lindsay G. Arnett. Sylvia Frey, and Gary B. Nash. The Revolution eventually led to the settlement of African Americans in Nova Scotia. See Amani Whitfield, Harvey. 2006. Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–1860. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont Press; and Schama, Simon. 2007. Rough Crossings: The Slaves, and the American Revolution. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

^8. Allen Smith, Allen. 2013. The Slaves’ Gamble: Choosing Sides in the War of 1812. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Cassell, Frank A. 1972. “Slaves of the Chesapeake Bay Area and the War of 1812.” Journal of Negro History 57 (2): 144–155. Cassell’s work illustrates that Blacks acted as “spies, guides, messengers and laborers,” and ultimately as formal soldiers for the British (144).

^9. Silverman, Jason H. 1985. Unwelcome Guests: Canada West’s Response to American Fugitive Slaves. Millwood, NY: Associated Faculty Press, Inc., 12. Blacks were “Unwelcome Guests” in Canada Silverman argues because of the social and institutional discrimination they experienced, but from a legal standpoint they benefited significantly.

^10. Winks, Robin W. [1971] 1997. The Blacks in Canada: A History. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 110–111. The limited number of slaves in Canada in 1833 was partly due to the 1793 Abolition Act of Upper Canada overseen by Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, which did not free a single slave, but instituted provisions against the further importation of enslaved Blacks and freed the future children of slaves at the age of 25. Power, Michael and Nancy Butler. 1993. Slavery and Freedom in Niagara. Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON: Niagara Historical Society, 36–39.

^11. See Kerr-Ritchie, J.R. 2007. Rites of August First: Emancipation in the Black Atlantic World. Baton Rouge, LO: Louisiana State University Press; Henry, Natasha L. 2010. Emancipation Day: Celebrating Freedom In Canada. Toronto, Ontario: Dundurn Press. Also see Douglass, Frederick. 1852. “What to the Slave, is the Fourth of July.” Rochester, NY, Corinthian Hall; and Colaiaco, James A. 2006. Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, which documents: “Mindful that the liberty and equality principles of the Declaration of Independence had not applied to slaves, many abolitionists and black protesters chose to recognize the national holiday the day after; on July 5” (9).

^12. Walker, David. 2000. David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 43. See Van Gosse, 2008. “‘As a Nation, the English Are Our Friends’: The Emergence of African American Politics in the British Atlantic World, 1772–1861.” American Historical Review, 113 (4) 1003–1028.

^13. Botting, Gary. 2005. Extradition Between Canada and The United States. Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, Inc., 49–78. Slaveholders’ claims for return of escaped slaves, to a large extent, had been denied since 1819 both by way of diplomatic efforts and judicial decisions. In the aftermath of the Imperial Act, which gave vast leeway to the courts and governor to deem if a fugitive should be commissioned back to the United States, Southerners tested the British law between 1833 and 1842. See the cases of: Solomon Mosely (or Molesby), Jesse Happy, and Nelson Hackett. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty resolved longstanding border issues between the United States and British Canada and defined seven crimes subject to extradition in Article 10 including: “Murder, or assault with intent to commit murder, or piracy, or arson, or robbery, or forgery, or the utterance of forged paper.” (Murray, David. 2000. “Hands Across the Border: The Abortive Extradition of Solomon Moesby.” The Canadian Historical Review of American Studies, 30: 186–209; Winks, Robin W. The Blacks in Canada, 168–177).

^14. Ward, Samuel R. 157–158.

^15. Lubet, Steven. 2010. Fugitive Justice: Runaway, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 37–49. Fehrenbacher, Don E., and McAfee, Ward M. eds, 2002. Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 205–230. The build-up to the “Crescendo” refers to the 1850s events such as the Kansas–Nebraska Act and Dred Scott Decision, which deepened North-South aggression, favored pro-slavery forces, and further alienated Black America (Varon, Elizabeth R. 2008. Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 199–304).

^16. Wayne, Michael. 1995. “The Black Population of Canada West on the Eve of the American Civil War. A Reassessment Based on the Manuscript Census of 1861.” Histoire Sociale/ Social History 28 (56): 465–481. The number of American Blacks that took flight to Canada was originally estimated to be as high as 100,000 to 60,000, but modern scholars have cut the figure down to approximately 30,000 to 35,000.

^17. This saying is commonly described as an Arabian proverb meaning two parties with the same enemy can work together to advance their common interest.

^18. Note on narratives: When utilizing narratives and interviews of American slaves it is important to caution that they were written in a highly charged political context and employed abolitionist publishers, editors, and writers for the illiterate. Overtime the historiography has progressed. In 1929 historian Ulrich B. Philips explained that the “Ex-slave narratives … as a class, their authenticity was doubtful.” However, in the late twentieth century and beyond, thanks to the works of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Vincent Harding, Robin Winks, Jacqueline Jones, and William Andrews these slave accounts have retained more validation. In regards to interviews conducted for mini-narratives collected by Benjamin Drew, Samuel Howe, William Still, as well as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Blacks demonstrated apprehension to be entirely forthright, especially when questioned by Whites or persons “untrustworthy.” Nonetheless, all things considered, their stories reveal the hidden patterns of lying, which commonly occurred and cannot be found en mass in other source material (Philips, Ulrich B. 1929. Life and Labor in the Old South. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 219.

^19. “Freedmen’s Inquiry,” in Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews and Autobiographies, edited byJohn W. Blassingame, 405–408. Baton Rouge, LO: Louisiana State University Press, 1977. Hereafter cited as Freedmen’s Inquiry.

^20. Still, William. [1873] 1968. The Underground Railroad. New York: Arno Press, Inc., 445–447. Alterative spellings Thomas Hodges (Hodson) and Horatio Wilkinson (Wilkins).

^21. Garrard Clarke, Lewis. 1845. Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke, During a Captivity of More than Twenty-Five Years, Among the Algerines of Kentucky, One of the So Called Christian States of North America. Boston, MA: David H. Ela, Printer, 30–41, quote on p. 39.

^22. Freedmen’s Inquiry, 410–411.

^23. Drew, Benjamin. 1856. The Refugee: Or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. New York: John P. Jewett and Company, 15.

^24. Please note that the area now called present-day Ontario was “Upper Canada” from 1791 to 1841 and then “Canada West” from 1841 to Confederation in 1867.

^25. Wells Brown, William, 1847. Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave. Written by Himself. Boston, MA: The Anti-Slavery Office, 84.

^26. Freedmen’s Inquiry, 440.

^27. Freedmen’s Inquiry, 422–423.

^28. Drew, 19–20.

^29. “Underground Passengers,” Union and Advertiser, March 30, 1860, p. 2, col. 2.

^30. Furrow, Matthew. 2010. “Samuel Gridley Howe, the Black Population of Canada West, and the Racial Ideology of the ‘Blueprint for Radical Reconstruction.’” The Journal of American History 97 (2): 360.

^31. Freedmen’s Inquiry, 405.

^32. See Adrienne Shadd, Adrienne. 2010. The Journey From Tollgate to Parkway: African Canadians in Hamilton. Toronto, ON: Dundurn Press.

^33. Drew, 92–94.

^34. Siebert, Wilbur H., 2006. The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A Comprehensive History. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 197.

^35. Drew, 34.

^36. Hope Franklin, John., and Loren Schweninger, 293; Joseph Taper, St. Catharines, Canada West, to Joseph Long, New Town, Virginia, November 11, 1840, Joseph Long Papers, Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, NC.

^37. “Fugitive Slaves in London Before 1860.” In Ontario’s African-Canadian Heritage: Collected Writings by Fred Landon, 1918–1967, edited by Karolyn Smardz Frost, Bryan Walls, Hilary Bates Neary and Frederick H. Armstrong, 139–156. Toronto, ON: Dundurn Press, 2009. This classic work on the London Black community is still a relevant overview of life there prior to 1861. Reprinted from the Transactions of London & Middlesex Historical Society, Vol. 10 (1919), 25–38.

^38. Freedmen’s Inquiry, 413. See Canadian Agricultural Census to substantiate its ability to produce crops in large numbers.

^39. Ringgold Ward, Samuel. Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, 193–194.

^40. Cox Richardson, Heather. 2007. West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America After the Civil War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 83.

^41. “See How They Run!,” Rochester Daily Democrat, November 22, 1853. p. 2. col. 5.

^42. The Mail (Niagara Falls, Ontario) April 28, 1852, p. 2. col. 6.

^43. Including present-day West Virginia.

^44. Canadian Census 1861.

^45. See Harrold, Stanley 2010. Border War: Fighting Over Slavery Before the Civil War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1–16.

^46. Douglass, Frederick. 1994. “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.” Douglass: Autobiographies. New York: Library of America, 610-19.

^47. The Upper South or “Upland South” in this context is referring to areas of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.

^48. Stauffer, John. 2008. Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. New York: Twelve, 46. Like slaveholders, Douglass employed fiction as well; his sole attempt was the 1852 novella “The Heroic Slave,” which mirrored his own life and the broader experience and decisions that runaways had to make in negotiating the United States, Canada, and the larger British Empire.

^49. Lindsay is variously spelled: Linzy, Lindsy, and Lindsey depending on the source.

^50. St. Catharines Census, 1861. Mrs. Lindsey was educated at Oberlin College between 1837 and 1840 (1960 Oberlin College Directory, p. 23., Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin, Ohio).

^51. “A Recent Tour,” Provincial Freedman, March 24, 1853.

^52. St. Catharines Journal, November 17, 1853.

^53. Freedmen’s Inquiry, 430–432.

^54. Brown, 90–91. William Wells Brown was a brilliant storyteller. In fact, his 1853 book titled Clotel is credited with being the first African-American novel. It was published in London, where he resided at the time. Brown also was a playwright, writing two plays: Experience; or, How to Give a Northern Man a Backbone (1856) and The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858).

^55. Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, 166–182.

^56. Georgetown is actually a neighborhood in Washington DC. Only Washington carries the DC. affiliation officially; however Harrod refers to it as “Georgetown, DC.”

^57. Drew, 238–239.

^58. Not to be confused with William Wells Brown mentioned above.

^59. See Black, Frderick R. 1972. “Bibliographical Essay: Benjamin Drew’s Refuge and the Black Family.” Journal of Negro History 57: 287–288.

^60. Drew, 196–197. See Rhodes, Jane. 1998. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 100–135; Yee, Shirley J., 1997. “Finding a Place: Mary Ann Shadd Clay and the Dilemmas of Black Migration to Canada, 1850–1870” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 18 (3): 1–16; Adeleke, Tunde. 2004. Without Regard to Race: The Other Martin Robison Delany. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 73–74.

^61. Blassingame, John W. ed. Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies, 516–519.

^62. Scarborough, William K. 1994. The Overseer: Plantation Management in the Old South. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 164–166.

^63. Blassingame, ed., 516–519.

^64. DeRamus, Betty. 2009. Freedom by Any Means: Con Games, Voodoo Schemes, True Love and Lawsuits on the Underground Railroad. New York: Atria Books. DeRamus provides a great example, via the story of John Bowley, Kessiah, and Harriet Tubman, of the ways Blacks used deception to avoid bondage in her chapter “The Big Bluff” (3–20).

^65. Drew, 139–157.

^66. Wells Brown, William. 1849. Narrative of William W. Brown, an American Slave. Written by Himself. London: C. Gilpin, 45.

^67. Aaron. 1845. The Light and Truth of Slavery. Aaron’s History. Worcester, MA: The Author, 15–16.

^68. It was the early Black newspapers such as Freedom’s Journal and The Colored American as well as pamphlets like David Walker’s Appeal, which first help to give “public voice” to Black protest widely. Later the North Star, Voice of the Fugitive, the Provincial Freeman, and a wealth of other newspapers followed in this tradition.

^69. Bibb, Henry. 1849. Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb. An American Slave Written by Himself. New York: The Author, 154–155.

^70. Bibb, 152.

^71. Bibb, 155. For more information on Bibb and his perspective and politics in Canada see Hite, Roger W. 1974. “Voice of a Fugitive: Henry Bibb and Ante-Bellum Black Separatism,” Journal of Black Studies 4 (3): 269–286; and Cooper, Afua, 2000. “The Fluid Frontier: Blacks and the Detroit River Region—A Focus on Henry Bibb.” Canadian Review of American Studies 30 (2): 129–149.

^72. See Hope Franklin, John, and Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation.

^73. Roger Hepburn, Sharon A. Crossing the Border: A Free Black Community in Canada.

^74. King, Rev. William, “Autobiography of Rev. Wm. King Written during the Last Three Years of his Life.” January 6, 1892, King Papers, Archives of Canada, 338–344.

^75. Garrard Clarke, Lewis, 42. See Robinson, Marsha R. 2013. Purgatory Between Kentucky and Canada: African Americans in Ohio. New York: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

^76. Smallwood, Thomas. 1851. A Narrative of Thomas Smallwood, (Coloured Man:) Giving an Account of His Birth—The Period He Was Held in Slavery—His Release—and Removal to Canada, etc. Together With an Account of the Underground Railroad. Toronto: Smallwood; James Stephens, 45.

^77. Hahn, Steven. 2009. The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1–53. The first quarter of the book investigates the blurred lines of emancipation, political rights, liberties, and immunities in the American North.

^78. Still, William. 193–194. “Comfortable” is misspelled in the original quote.

^79. Drew, 105–106. See, Silverman, Jason H., “The American Fugitive Slave in Canada: Myth and Realities.” Southern Studies 19 (3): 215–227.

^80. Drew, 59.

^81. Braxton, Joanne M., 71.

^82. Drew, 139–157.

^83. See Walker, Barrington. 2010. Race on Trial: Black Defendants in Ontario’s Criminal Courts, 1858–1958 . Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press; and Walker, Barrington, ed. 2013. The African Canadian Legal Odyssey: Historical Essays. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2013.

^84. Henbree, Michael F. 1991. “The Question of ‘Begging’: Fugitive Slave Relief in Canada, 1830–1865.” Civil War History 37: 314–327.

^85. Wells Brown, William. 1847. Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave. Written by Himself. Boston, MA: The Anti-Slavery Office, 57.

^86. Dungy is variously spelled Dungee and Dunjee, depending on the source.

^87. Still, William, 541–545.

^88. Henson, Josiah. 1849. The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself. Boston, MA: A.D. Phelps, 25.

^89. Henson, Josiah. 1881. An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (“Uncle Tom”). From 1789 to 1881. With a Preface by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Introductory Notes by George Sturge, S. Morley, Esq., M. P., Wendell Phillips, and John G. Whittier. Edited by John Lobb, F.R.G.S. Revised and Enlarged. London, ON: Schuyler, Smith, & Co., 81.

^90. Henson, Autobiography, 81–96. Also see: Henson, Josiah. 1858. Truth Stranger Than Fiction. Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life. Boston, MA: John P. Jewett. Henson produced several different versions of his narrative including two initial versions in 1849 and 1858, followed by 1876, 1877, and 1890 editions that appeared in England, in the United States in 1879, and in British Canada in 1881. While sections of the narrative are reprinted without alternations, others parts add more detail and dialogue to the core story.

^91. Loguen, Jermain Wesley. 1859. The Rev. J.W. Loguen. As a Slave and as a Freeman. A Narrative of Real Life Syracuse, NY: J.G.K. Truair & Co., 315. Born into slavery in Davidson County, Tennessee, Loguen escaped to St. Catharines in the 1830s. He eventually returned to the United States and settled in Syracuse. There, he was active in helping freedom seekers reach Canada and working with abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Samuel R. Ward to end Black bondage.

^92. Ward, 169.

^93. “Speech of Frederick Douglass: Delivered in the Court House, at Chatham, C.W., August 3rd,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, August 18, 1854, p. 2. col. 6.

^94. Drew, 34–35.

Additional information

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dann j. Broyld

dann j. Broyld is a visiting assistant professor of Public History & African American History at Central Connecticut State University. He earned his PhD in nineteenth century United States and African Diaspora history at Howard University in 2011. His work focuses on the American–Canadian borderlands and issues of Black identity, migration, and transnational relations, as well as oral history and museum/community interaction. Broyld is currently working on a manuscript with the University of Toronto Press.