They had already
come under educative influences which prepared them for a larger task
in Canada. Fifteen thousand of sixty thousand Negroes in Canada in
1860 were free born.[1] Many of those, who had always been free, fled
to Canada[2] when the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made it possible
for even a dark-complexioned Caucasian to be reduced to a state of
bondage. Fortunately, too, these people settled in the same section.
The colored settlements at Dawn, Colchester, Elgin, Dresden, Windsor,
Sandwich, Queens, Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton, St. Catherines,
Chatham, Riley, Anderton, Maiden, Gonfield, were all in Southern
Ontario. In the course of time the growth of these groups produced a
population sufficiently dense to facilitate cooeperation in matters
pertaining to social betterment. The uplift of the refugees was made
less difficult also by the self-denying white persons who were their
first teachers and missionaries. While the hardships incident to this
pioneer effort all but baffled the ardent apostle to the lowly, he
found among the Canadian whites so much more sympathy than among the
northerners that his work was more agreeable and more successful than
it would have been in the free States.
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