UNDERGROUND RAILWAY

Underground Railway

Between 1840 and 1860 more than 30,000 American slaves came secretly to Canada and freedom.  Josiah Henson escaped to Canada along the Underground Railroad, a network of secret paths, hiding places and safe houses that stretched from the southern states to the borders of Canada.  Like countless other immigrants, Henson came to Canada as a refugee escaping brutality and oppression.

Josiah Henson Founder of the BLACK settlement at Dawn, UC (bat Charles Co, Md 15 June 1789; d at Dresden, Ont 5 May 1883). Born a slave, Henson escaped to Canada 1830. Four years later he founded the Dawn community near Dresden, UC, for American fugitive slaves. Aided by a white American missionary, Hiram Wilson, he and his associates organized a manual-labour school, the British-American Institute. He was active on the executive committee until the institute closed in 1868. Although a poor administrator, constantly engaged in disputes over finance and management, Henson served as Dawn’s spiritual leader and patriarch and made numerous fund-raising trips in the US and England. He published his autobiography in 1849, and he was allegedly Harriet Beecher Stowe’s model for the leading character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Jane H. Pearse and William H. Pearse, The Canadian Encyclopedia p.979.

The Underground Railroad, an informal network of safe houses and people who helped fugitive slaves pass from slave states in the US to free states or to Canada. It has been the object of much mythmaking, for not nearly so many fugitives passed along it, nor were there nearly so many whites involved, as is generally said. Although most fugitive slaves remained in the free states of the American North, perhaps 30 000 reached Canada. The “railroad,” in operation roughly 1840-60, was most effective after the passage of the US Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which empowered slave hunters to pursue fugitives onto free soil. This Act resulted in several efforts to kidnap fugitives who were in Canada to return them to Southern owners. 

Robin W. Winks, The Canadian Encyclopedia p. 2209.