Before the Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom in the Canadian-American Borderland

Abstract

On the night of May 13, 1807, a woman and a four-year-old boy stealthily crept out of the home of the attorney James Woods in Sandwich, Upper Canada. Clutching a trunk containing some bedding and a few belongings, the mother led her son to the banks of the Detroit River, a short sprint away. There they met up with some acquaintances from the opposite shore who helped them into a small boat and rowed under cover of darkness for Detroit—a journey of about a mile. After reaching the town, the pair joined a rapidly growing community of runaways who had fled Canadian slavery for American freedom.1 The following day, Woods sent a letter over the river to Solomon Sibley, one of Detroit's leading jurists, promising him “a very handsome fee” if he could secure the slaves’ return, or could at least obtain some redress for the lost property. Woods expressed some ambivalence about recovering the “old woman,” whose body presumably had suffered the premature aging process of a life spent in slavery. Even so, he confessed to Sibley a burning desire to “punish her in a small degree” for absconding with her more valuable son. Under Upper Canada's gradual emancipation law, Woods was entitled to another two decades of service from the boy, until he turned twenty-five. Given the scarcity of laborers and domestic servants, slaves remained a precious commodity throughout labor-starved Upper Canada (now Ontario) and the broader Great Lakes region.2