Volume V Part 40 (2/2)

NOTES

The next annual meeting of the a.s.sociation for the Study of Negro Life and History will convene in Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., next November. All inst.i.tutions interested in the teaching of Negro life and history will be invited to send representatives to this meeting to confer as to the best methods of prosecuting studies in this neglected field. The session will cover two days to be devoted to addresses by the best thinkers of the country. The official program will appear within a few weeks.

The ill.u.s.trated textbook in Negro history by Dr. C. G. Woodson has been further delayed by disturbances among the printers. It is hoped that it will appear before the end of the year.

A. B. Caldwell, of Atlanta, has published Volume III (South Carolina edition) of what he calls the _History of the American Negro_.

THE JOURNAL

OF

NEGRO HISTORY

VOL. V--JULY, 1920--NO. 3

THE SLAVE IN CANADA

PREFACE

When engaged in a certain historical inquiry, I found occasion to examine the magnificent collection of the Canadian Archives at Ottawa, a collection which ought not to be left unexamined by anyone writing on Canada. In that inquiry I discovered the proceedings in the case of Chloe Cooley set out in Chapter V of the text. This induced me to make further researches on the subject of slavery in Upper Canada. The result was incorporated in a paper, _The Slave in Upper Canada_, read before the Royal Society of Canada in May 1919, and subsequently published in the JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY for October, 1919. Some of the Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada and the editor of the JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY have asked me to expand the paper. The present work is the result.

I have spent many happy hours in the Canadian Archives and have read all and copied most of the doc.u.ments referred to in this book; but I cannot omit to thank the officers at Ottawa for their courtesy in forwarding my labor of love, in furnis.h.i.+ng me with copies, photographic and otherwise, and in unearthing interesting facts. It will not be considered invidious if I mention William Smith, Esq., I.S.O. and Miss Smillie, M.A., as specially helpful. My thanks are also due to Messrs. Herrington, K.C., of Napanee, F. Landon, M.A., of London, Mrs. Hallam and Mrs. Seymour Corley of Toronto, General Cruikshank of Ottawa, the Very Reverend Dean Raymond of Victoria, as well as to many others of whose labors I have taken advantage. This general acknowledgment will, I trust, be accepted in lieu of special and particular acknowledgment from time to time.

The chapter on the Maritime Provinces is almost wholly taken from the Reverend Dr. T. Watson Smith's paper on _Slavery in Canada_ in the _Nova Scotia Historical Society's Collections_, Vol. X, Halifax, 1899.

CHAPTER I

BEFORE THE CONQUEST

That slavery existed in Canada before its conquest by Britain in 1759-60, there can be no doubt, although curiously enough it has been denied by some historians and essayists.[1] The first Negro slave of which any account is given was brought to Quebec by the English in 1628. He was a young man from Madagascar and was sold in Quebec for 50 half crowns.[2] Sixty years thereafter in 1688, Denonville, the Governor and DeChampigny, the Intendant of New France, wrote to the French Secretary of State, complaining of the dearness and scarcity of labor, agricultural and domestic, and suggesting that the best remedy would be to have Negro slaves. If His Majesty would agree to that course, some of the princ.i.p.al inhabitants would have some bought in the West Indies on the arrival of the Guinea s.h.i.+ps. The minister replied in 1689 in a note giving the King's consent but drawing attention to the danger of the slaves coming from so different a climate dying in Canada and thereby rendering the experiment of no avail.[3]

The Indians were accustomed to make use of slaves, generally if not universally of those belonging to other tribes: and the French Canadians frequently bought Indian slaves from the aborigines. These were called ”Panis.”[4] It would seem that a very few Indians were directly enslaved by the inhabitants: but the chief means of acquiring Panis was purchase from _les sauvages_.

The property in slaves was well recognized in International Law. We find that in the Treaty of Peace and Neutrality in America signed at London, November 16, 1686,[5] between the Kings of France and England, which James II had arranged shortly after attaining the throne, Article 10 provides that the subjects of neither nation should take away the savage inhabitants, or their slaves or the goods which the savages had taken belonging to the subjects of either nation, and that they should give no a.s.sistance or protection to such raids and pillage. In 1705 it was decided that Negroes in America were ”moveables,” meubles, corresponding in substance to what is called ”personal property” in the English law.[6] This decision was on the _Coutume de Paris_, the law of New France.

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