Julia May’s parents never lost hope of finding Caleb and Daniel after the war ended, but unfortunately they never did. However, they and Julia May took solace in the thought that wherever they were, if Caleb and Daniel were still alive, they were free men.
They did not find any of their other missing relatives, either, but years later a great-great-niece of Julia May, a teacher who lived and taught in Pennsylvania in the United States, attended a genealogical conference in the town of Durham, in Ontario, Canada. She was pleased and proud to be able to trace her roots back to Julia May Jackson in Owen Sound, through Julia May’s long-lost older brother, Caleb.
Historical Note
In the eighteenth century, during the British colonial period in North America, all the colonies, including those in Canada, had slaves. Most of them had been brought over from Africa — kidnapped from their villages, wrenched from their families, and forced onto squalid slave ships to be sold in slave markets in the New World. It was not until 1807 that Parliament abolished the British slave trade and it became illegal to carry slaves in British ships, and it was not until 1833 that slavery was finally abolished in the entire British Empire, including Canada.
After the American War of Independence (1775–1783), a movement to end slavery began to grow throughout the North. Not all of the northerners were against slavery, and some Northern states still had a few slaves right through the 1850s, but many did look upon slavery as not in keeping with Christianity and with moral values. Indeed, it was strongly held by some that slavery corrupted whites because of the power they held over enslaved people, at the same time as it oppressed and abused Africans in America. Abolitionist societies were formed that advocated strongly for the cessation of this exploitative practice.
Slavery continued to flourish in the South, however. The large plantation owners and wealthy farmers growing indigo, rice, tobacco and cotton referred to slavery as the South’s “peculiar institution,” and insisted that slave labour was necessary to harvest their crops. In a speech to Congress on February 6, 1837, John C. Calhoun, a senator from South Carolina who also served as vice-president of the United States from March 4, 1825 to December 28, 1832, affirmed that slavery was actually a “positive good” and gave the slaves the benefit of white supervision and instruction. This became one of the justifications for slavery, countering the work of the abolitionists.
President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, was elected in 1860. His name was not included on the ballots of most Southern states, however, and thus his election split the nation. Slave owners in the South feared that the intent of the Republicans was the abolition of slavery in their states. This, along with other factors, led to the South seceding from the Union, and the onset of the American Civil War (1861–1865).
Not long after the war broke out, three slaves escaped from their master and sought refuge at Fortress Monroe, a Union Army fort in Virginia. The commander of the fort was General Benjamin F. Butler, a lawyer by profession. The slaves’ master followed them into the fort and demanded their return. General Butler, however, refused to return the men into slavery. As slaves were considered to be property in the South, not humans, and under the strict laws of nations all the property of an enemy may be seized in time of war, General Butler declared that these men could be considered “Contrabands of War.” He ruled that it was not legally necessary to return them to their masters, despite the Fugitive Slave Law that had been passed in 1850. (This was a law that made it mandatory for citizens of Northern states to return escaped slaves to their owners in the South, even though slavery was not legal in those Northern states.)
Butler’s decision established a precedent and opened the door wide for hundreds if not thousands of escaped slaves to seek refuge in the fort. Eventually there were so many that they could not be accommodated within the fortress walls, so camps were set up outside for them. Here they were given food and shelter and could work.
President Lincoln issued the first Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, declaring the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. The second order, issued January 1, 1863, named the specific states where it applied. On July 17, 1862, Congress passed two acts allowing the enlistment of African Americans in the Union Army, but official enrolment occurred only after the issuance of the first Proclamation. With President Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the second Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the Civil War became a war to save the Union and to abolish slavery.
Close to 180,000 African Americans, comprising 163 units, served in the Union Army during the Civil War; African Americans also served in the Union Navy. Both free men and runaway slaves joined the fight, distinguishing themselves in numerous battles. Civil War losses were extremely high — more American military personnel died, from injuries and illness, in the Civil War than have died in all wars since that time in which American troops have fought. However, the death rate among African Americans was even higher than the average — over twenty percent of those enrolled in the Union Army during the Civil War lost their lives.
With the victory of the North at the end of the war, all slaves in the United States obtained their freedom. Before this, however, the lives of most slaves on plantations in the Southern states had been unbelievably harsh, although slaves who lived in cities and towns often had easier lives and in some states were even allowed to learn to read and write. Many slaves lived in abject poverty, often half starved, and were worked almost beyond human endurance. They were whipped for attending prayer meetings, whipped for congregating in groups, whipped for having the audacity to learn to read and write, whipped for slipping away from their master’s plantation to visit a spouse or ailing parent. Sometimes they were whipped to death. Husbands were sold away from wives. Children were wrenched from their mothers’ arms and sold off, often never to see their parents again.
Even slight disobedience might be severely punished. Those who tried to escape and failed were subject to inhuman punishment, mutilation, shackling with chains, and often, death. Sometimes they were branded with hot irons. Still, many slaves became desperate enough to try to escape. Their aim was to get to the Northern states (where slavery had largely been abolished, starting just after the American War of Independence).
Even enslaved people whose owners were not purposefully cruel were never safe. Although a very few masters or mistresses did leave wills that set their slaves free, the vast majority willed their slaves to relatives, or left them to be sold off with the rest of their possessions to whoever wanted to buy them, without regard to the breaking up of families — even if those families had been together for years. These slaves could then find themselves in as harsh and as cruel conditions as all the rest, or even sold south to the cotton fields and be lost to their families forever. Many who had served their masters faithfully for years fared no better. When they grew too old to be of service they were often sold off to slave traders for whatever they could fetch.
Over the years, slaves found many ways to escape to freedom. Some got away by themselves. Others were able to secure false passes giving them “permission” from their masters to travel, or forged papers indicating that they had been freed. Quakers, a peaceful religious group that did not believe in slavery, helped slaves escape as early as the 1790s in Pennsylvania. There are many accounts handed down to us of brave and resourceful people — Black and white — who assisted fugitives on their way to the Northern states and even to Canada.
An organization arose that came to be called the Underground Railroad. This was not a railroad in the sense that we know it now, but rather a system of safe houses whose owners, both Black and white, would shelter escaping slaves and give them all the help they could. They adopted the language of the newest technological marvel of the age — the railroad — as a code to describe their secret and very dangerous activities. The people who guided escaping slaves along this railroad were called Conductors. An owl hoot, a
bird call, a whistle or a whisper in the dead of night was often the signal that a Conductor was waiting to lead a slave to safety.
Some Conductors, such as Harriet Tubman, were slaves who had escaped and then deliberately returned and put themselves back in danger in order to help others escape as well. Those who helped the escaping slaves were very brave. Black Conductors could suffer the same penalties as the slaves themselves — whipping or death. White people who gave refuge to slaves faced the fury of their neighbours, reprisals, imprisonment, heavy fines and loss of property. Even in the free states of the North, the penalty for a white person who broke the Fugitive Slave Law and assisted an escaped slave, or failed to return a slave to his or her master, was a fine of a thousand dollars (which would be around eighteen thousand dollars today) and imprisonment.
Because the Fugitive Slave Law forced people in the Northern states to return escaped slaves to their owners if their owners or hired slave catchers could find them, many slaves decided to escape farther north, out of the United States, and up to Canada. There were many songs that told the stories of these escapes, it is said; some even gave instructions by incorporating secret information into the words of the songs. One of the most well-known was the direction to follow the North Star. This was included in the song “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” Other signs, like the hanging of a quilt over the line outside a house, a candle in the window, or a lantern set outside, might indicate a safe house or “station.”
Slaves escaped into Canada by various means. Some were boated across rivers, others were hidden on steamboats plying the waters between the United States and Canada. Once on Canadian shores the fugitives were free, although slave catchers did sometimes cross the border after them. Canadian law would not allow the slave catchers to take slaves back, but there was always danger even so, and a few people who had made it safely to Canada were even kidnapped and returned to the American South.
There were many communities of escaped slaves in Canada. One of the most prosperous was in Toronto, composed of escaped slaves and free Blacks. Some of the latter were descendents of slaves formerly held by the British in the early years, when Toronto was known as the Town of York. That community included business men and women, two doctors and other professionals. Toronto schools, like schools in Owen Sound, were not segregated, but all of the teachers were white. Only small segregated country schools hired Black teachers. Wilson Brooks, an RCAF Veteran, became Toronto’s first Black schoolteacher, and later principal, in an integrated school in 1952. Segregated schools existed in Ontario until 1965.
The women of the Toronto Black community banded together to give help to newly arrived escaped slaves, while the Black churches also gave support. Even so, many fugitives did not feel safe so near the American border, and made their way farther inland. Some settled on farm land along the Durham Road; others made their way to Collingwood and on up to Owen Sound. Owen Sound was the northern terminus of the Underground Railroad. By 1872 over six hundred people of African origin lived there — almost ten percent of the town’s total population.
Black citizens opened businesses in Owen Sound. The town was welcoming, but not without prejudice. Some of these businesses succeeded, others did not. Black men found jobs on ships plying the Great Lakes waters, in lumber camps and in the limestone quarries but, in general, there were few jobs for men or women, so many had to leave to seek their fortunes in larger cities. Many stayed, however, and raised their families in the town. To this day there is a lively Black community in Owen Sound. The Annual Emancipation Day Picnic has continued uninterrupted since 1862, and is still a cherished tradition. It grows bigger every year.
Characters in the story who are real people:
In Toronto:
Mr. George Blunt
Mrs. Teakle
Dr. Abbott
In Owen Sound:
Mr. and Mrs. John Frost of Sheldon Place
Old Man Henson (James Henson, born as Charley Chance; he changed his name on becoming a free man in the 1840s)
Father Thomas Henry Miller
Catherine Sutton (Nahneebahweequay)
Granny Taylor (Mary Taylor)
John “Daddy” Hall (1783–1900; credited with being the first Black settler in the fledgling settlement of Sydenham, later called Owen Sound)
Images and Documents
Image 1: Slaves lived in cabins on the plantation, though some “house slaves” were required to sleep over at the Big House in case their masters or mistresses needed them during the night. Family members could be sold off at the master’s sole discretion.
Image 2: Slaves were routinely auctioned off. Legally, they were property.
Image 3: The list above, from Richmond, Virginia, in the 1860s, shows prices for men, women and child slaves. A girl “4 feet” high would sell for $450 to $475, a young woman $1125 to $1175.
Image 4: Runaways sometimes made for the Great Dismal Swamp near the Atlantic coast, searching for a place to hide.
Image 5: Escapees had to be on constant lookout for slave catchers, who operated even in states where escaped slaves were now living as free people.
Image 6: Escaped slaves often made their way to the Grand Contraband Camp at Fortress Monroe, built on a spit of land stretching into the Atlantic Ocean off southeastern Virginia.
Image 7: The Queen’s Hotel in Toronto was a favourite place to stay for Southerners and their families who had fled the turmoil of the Civil War.
Image 8: This broadsheet announced U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s freeing of three million slaves. It urged African American men to join the Union Army in fighting the South.
Image 9: The 54th Massachusetts “Colored” Regiment is shown fighting Confederate soldiers at Fort Wagner, South Carolina.
Image 10: John and Mary Frost of Sheldon Place built cabins for escapees on their 101-acre property, and helped them out with food and jobs. The building still stands overlooking Owen Sound.
Image 11: John “Daddy” Hall was born a free Black in Amherstburg, Canada West, but he and most of his family were kidnapped by slave traders and sold to a plantation owner in Kentucky. Daddy Hall escaped back to Canada via the Underground Railroad. He is credited with being the first Black settler in the fledgling settlement of Sydenham, later called Owen Sound.
Image 12: Father Thomas Henry Miller was a lay preacher for the British Methodist Episcopal Church in Owen Sound.
Image 13: Churches, such as the BME in Owen Sound, were often central to the lives of those who had made the long and dangerous journey to Canada.
Image 14: Freighters dock in Owen Sound Harbour, near the CPR tracks, in 1890. The harbour was a key link between ship traffic and the railroad, for both passengers and freight.
Image 15: Children pose for a photograph in front of a school in Owen Sound in the early 1900s.
Image 16: The West Rocks are part of the Niagara Escarpment that stretches from Niagara Falls through the Bruce Peninsula to Manitoulin Island.
Follow the Drinking Gourd
When the sun comes back,
and the first quail calls,
Follow the drinking gourd,
For the old man is waiting
for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
Chorus:
Follow the drinking gourd,
Follow the drinking gourd,
For the old man is waiting
for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
The riverbank will make a very good road,
The dead trees show you the way.
Left foot, peg foot traveling on,
Following the drinking gourd.
The river ends between two hills,
Follow the drinking gourd,
There’s another river on the other side,
Follow the drinking gourd.
When the great big river meets the little river,
Follow the drinking gourd.
For
the old man is waiting
for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
Virginia Cornbread
Three cups of corn meal, one cup of flour, one tablespoonful of sugar, one teaspoonful of salt, two heaping teaspoonfuls of baking powder, one tablespoonful of lard, three cups of milk and three eggs.
Mix together the flour, corn meal, sugar, salt and baking powder; rub in the lard cold, add the eggs well beaten, then the milk. Pour into a greased iron pot or skillet. Bake on the hearth covered in coals or in a hot oven until firm.
Image 17: The route from southern Virginia to Fortress Monroe, north to Albany and across Lake Ontario, is one that many fugitives took while fleeing north to Canada West on the Underground Railroad. The Jacksons followed another typical route northwest from Toronto to Owen Sound.
Image 18: British North America, including Canada West and Canada East, in 1863.
Acknowledgments
Every effort has been made to trace ownership of visual and written material used in this book. Errors and omissions will be corrected in subsequent updates or editions.
A Desperate Road to Freedom Page 13
