Revisiting “British Principle Talk”

Abstract

This chapter explores the meaning of fugitive slave freedom in Canada West during the antebellum and Civil War era by examining the legal framework relating to slavery and race that emerged in what is now modern-day Ontario. Changes in statutory law, jurisprudence, and British free soil diplomacy will be addressed, revealing the evolution of Canada West as a safe haven from which few fugitive slaves were taken by slave catchers or state-sanctioned extradition. The chapter discusses what freedom on the ground meant for early black Canadians in terms of political rights, access to courts, education, landownership, employment, religious worship, participation in the militia, and the enjoyment of public places and services. Particular attention is given to the agency exercised by fugitive slave refugees and other black Canadians in shaping their own freedom and building new lives for themselves and their children, in sustaining Canada West as a beacon of freedom for others still enslaved in the American South, and in combatting race prejudice, which at times differed little from that prevailing south of the border.