THE colored population of Upper Canada, was estimated in the First
Report of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, in 1852, at thirty
thousand. Of this large number, nearly all the adults, and many of
the children, have been fugitive slaves from the United States; it
is, therefore, natural that the citizens of this Republic should
feel an interest in their fate and fortunes. Many causes, however,
have hitherto prevented the public generally from knowing their
exact condition and circumstances. Their enemies, the supporters of
slavery, have represented them as "indolent, vicious, and debased;
suffering and starving, because they have no kind masters to do the
thinking for them, and to urge them to the necessary labor, which
their own laziness and want of forecast, lead them to avoid." Some
of their friends, anxious to obtain aid for the comparatively few
in number, (perhaps three thousand in all, ) who have actually
stood in need of assistance, have not, in all cases, been
sufficiently discriminating in their statements: old settlers and
new, the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, have suffered
alike from imputations of poverty and starvation--misfortunes,
which, if resulting from idleness, are akin to crimes. Still
another set of men, selfish in purpose, have, while pretending to
act for the fugitives, found a way to the purses of the
sympathetic, and appropriated to their own use, funds intended for
supposititious sufferers. Such being the state of the case, it may
relieve some minds from doubt and perplexity, to hear from the
refugees themselves, their own opinions of their condition and
their wants. These will be found among the narratives which occupy
the greater part of the present volume. Further, the personal
experiences of the colored Canadians, while held in bondage in
their native land, shed a peculiar lustre on the Institution of the
South. They reveal the hideousness of the sin, which, while calling
on the North to fall down and worship it, almost equals the tempter
himself in the felicity of scriptural quotations. The narratives
were gathered promiscuously from persons whom the author met with
in the course of a tour through the cities and settlements of
Canada West. While his informants talked, the author wrote: nor are
there in the whole volume a dozen verbal alterations which were not
made at the moment of writing, while in haste to make the pen
become a tongue for the dumb. Many who furnished interesting
anecdotes and personal histories may, perhaps, feel some
disappointment because their contributions are omitted in the
present work. But to publish the whole, would far transcend the
limits of a single volume. The manuscripts, however, are in
safe-keeping, and will, in all probability, be given to the world
on some future occasion.
General
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