Canada: A Precarious Canaan—The Issue of Extradition of Fugitive Slaves

This paper examines some landmark cases involving the contentious issue of extradition of fugitive slaves who had fled the United States for Canada, including moral dilemmas that often clouded the matter, laws that evolved to guide the decision-makers and experiences of individuals whose euphoria upon attaining freedom was replaced by the terror of possible extradition and the wrath of their former owners.

In the antebellum period, the waters of the Great Lakes system and lines of demarcation that separated the United States and Canada offered a psychological – but not impenetrable – barrier between slavery and freedom.  The notion of the British colony as a safe haven had been suggested in the 1793 Act to prevent the further introduction of Slaves and to limit the term of contracts for servitude within this Province, encouraged by the 1807 British abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and fortified by the 1833 the Imperial Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies.  However, that decades-old impression was constantly scrutinized and hotly debated. 

Formal requests for the extradition of slaves from Canada by U.S. authorities were common beginning immediately after the American Revolution.  Article VII of Definitive Treaty of Peace Between the United States of America and his Britannic Majesty signed on September 3, 1773 stated that following their surrender, the British were to leave the country quickly “without causing any destruction, or carrying away any Negroes, or other property, of the American inhabitants.” The dismissive reply was “every slave like every horse, which escaped or strayed from within the American lines, and came into the possession of the British army, became by the laws and rights of war, British property.”  That response may have set the tone for future deliberations on the subject, but it was by no means the definitive ruling.