Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 31–35. Rosemary Sadlier
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and was hurt when they laughed at her suggestion that she could conduct them north. Because of John’s rejection, she became even more determined to find happiness in helping others. She also had a large family that needed to be freed. She decided that she would not be content until all of her people in bondage were free.
Harriet found ten slaves who were interested in fleeing north and she conducted them on to freedom. So, in the fall of 1851, Harriet began her third rescue. Her experience and advice prompted her to start out from the south on a Friday, or, more commonly, Saturday night. Slaves did not have as stringent a routine on Sundays because their overseers had the day off, so their absence would not be immediately noticed or acted upon. Handbills and newspapers alerting the community that there were runaways could not be printed until Monday at the earliest because Christian printers closed their businesses on Sunday.
Harriet Tubman travelled by night and rested by day to further avoid detection. She was now a seasoned escape artist and motivator for freedom seekers. However dedicated to freedom Harriet may have been, there were times when “passengers” on her train doubted her ability to escort them north in safety, and who could believe this short, plain woman with sudden sleeping attacks could successfully get them to freedom? She often tried to motivate and assuage fears through singing songs familiar to her passengers, but when that was not enough she was known to pull out her lethal sharpened clam shells and threaten, “Live north or die here!” Harriet Tubman later said of a passenger who wanted to return to his plantation after joining Harriet’s rescue party, “If he was weak enough to give out, he’d be weak enough to betray us all, and all who had helped us, and do you think I’d let so many die just for one coward man?”
Harriet was the primary conductor on her freedom train, and she took her responsibility seriously.
6
Arriving in Canada
By 1850 the more powerful Fugitive Slave Act had been passed in the United States. It stipulated that any black person could be arrested as a suspected runaway slave if a white person accused them anywhere in the United States, and the charged black person could not testify on their own behalf or be represented by a lawyer. In other words, now there was no safe place in the United States for those who had been free because they had been manumitted or self-emancipated. In the eyes of the law, if you were black, you were likely an escaping slave who ought to be captured. If you had achieved some measure of wealth through hard work, your business, home, or assets might seem attractive to someone who would then accuse you of being an escaped slave. It also stated that any person aiding a runaway slave could be fined $1,000 or face six months in jail. To make matters worse, the special commissioners who chaired the hearings were paid on the basis of their verdicts. They received twice the amount of money for every black person they sent back to the south and perpetual slavery than for the ones who were freed. It was therefore more profitable for them to return someone to slavery. This made Canada seem to be the only viable refuge for American blacks because the legal and social system which had provided some measure of support for free black people now clearly was being used against them.
Harriet’s Escape Routes
A
This was probably Harriet’s favourite route: from Polar Neck in Caroline County to Denton and then into Delaware; from there up to Wilmington, home of Harriet’s friend, the Quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett, and from there across the Pennsylvania state line to Philadelphia.
B
The daring route of James and Kessiah Bowley and their children, from the courthouse steps in Cambridge and into the Choptank River on a small boat, in which they rowed their way into the Chesapeake and up to Baltimore, where Harriet awaited their arrival in order to whisk them on to Philadelphia. Afterward they made their way across New York State and into Canada.
C
The route from Cambridge to Polar Neck, which Harriet used when facilitating rescues from Bucktown and other Dorchester communities.
D
From Philadelphia, Harriet travelled through the Delaware Canal and down the Chesapeake to Baltimore, where she gathered up Tilly. The two women then went by steamboat even farther south, beyond Cambridge to the southern Dorchester County line, where, after passing through the Hooper Strait, they steamed up the Nanticoke River to Seaford, Delaware, then took a land route north to Wilmington, and, finally, Philadelphia.
Many incidents of racial intolerance and riots also occurred during this period in the northern States as the competition for manual labour or any wage labour became more competitive since immigration from Europe was increasing. Harriet, her passengers, and her family were at terrible risk. Canada presented itself as the closest location in which to find freedom, although other British possessions within the Caribbean and South America were potential sites, but not as easy to travel to. Harriet had travelled on her own two feet; being self-reliant, Harriet would want to take a route that she could walk the whole way if she had to, a route that allowed her many options in arriving at her goal. Canada seemed a good choice, not only because it was close and because it would be possible to walk to this destination, but also because of a series of laws and events within Canada that had given the impression that Canada truly welcomed slaves and would respect their rights to remain free under the law.
The first African to reach Canadian shores was a free black, Mathieu Da Costa, serving in the capacity of translator, and he arrived as early as 1604. The first slave arrived in 1628. So people of African descent had long been part of the fabric of what we now call Canada. While large-scale plantation use of African Canadians was not common, they did provide personal and domestic services for affluent and prominent individuals in all the major cities of the time. The black population grew slowly and steadily following the American War of Independence and the War of 1812, until certain events accelerated this rate.
Black men had been invited to join the ranks of the British forces by Lord Dunmore in 1775 to help to overcome the rebels in the American colony. Sir Henry Clinton invited all blacks, whether fighting men or infirm, women or children, to come to the British side by 1779, and they were promised they would receive the same treatment and rewards as white Loyalists for fighting the rebels. The Upper Canada Abolition Act of 1793 provided that any slave that came into what we now call the province of Ontario would be free, whether being brought in by a master or brought there by the force of the slave’s will to escape bondage. Any child born of a slave mother would be free by the age of twenty-five. William Osgoode, Chief Justice of Lower Canada, declared in 1803 that slavery was inconsistent with British Law. The Cochrane Proclamation aimed at the white and black refugees of the War of 1812 and invited Americans to become British citizens through residence in British Possessions which included Canada, the West Indies, and Bermuda. The British Imperial Act of 1833 abolished slavery throughout the Empire, including Canada. This act became effective August 1, 1834. And, at the North American Convention of Colored Freemen, held for the first time outside of the United States in Toronto in September 1851, it was decided by black peoples that Canada was the preferred choice for black emigration from the United States because free black people within Canada would be able to assist the fleeing former slave population. Canada seemed to be a safe haven for enslaved black people wanting their freedom and for free blacks desiring a more secure lifestyle because it seemed to be a place where the rights and privileges of the African population would be protected. It was close enough to walk to, the climate was similar to that of the northern United States, there were opportunities to become self-supporting, and Canadians spoke English, the language that most enslaved Africans had become familiar with during enslavement in the United States.
Beginning in the 1830s, free black people and other abolitionists often met at conventions. Initially these gatherings allowed people to share their concerns and to plan ways to end slavery. Interested black people would invite others to their city to have these meetings.
One of the most important of these meetings was the North American Convention