Blood and Daring by John Boyko Read Free Book Online

most certainly a slave catcher. Anderson was instantly on the run again.
    Swallowing the pain of dashed dreams, Anderson told friends he was going north to Sault Ste. Marie, but then he took the train to Chatham. He introduced himself as James Hamilton to the first African-Canadian men he saw and was immediately welcomed into the town’s eight-hundred-member community of fugitive slaves and freemen. 25 In a couple of days a group of white men with southern accents arrived in town asking about a slave named Jack who had escaped from Missouri and killed a man. No one betrayed him. On the contrary, one evening a group of Black men cornered and surrounded a particularly aggressive slave catcher named Brown. They taunted the entrapped man, producing a rope and threatening to lynch him. Brown drew a pistol and barely escaped with his life.
    Anderson had no way of knowing that Missouri authorities had posted a thousand-dollar bond for his return after his love-torn letter wasintercepted by the Howard County police. Tomlin, to whom Haviland had forwarded the letter, was wrongfully convicted of having helped Anderson to escape. He had been ruthlessly whipped and banished from the county, and Warren and Brown had been hired to bring Anderson back to Missouri.
    With reports of Anderson’s new disappearance, the authorities of Howard County took the case to Missouri governor Robert Stewart. He wrote to Canada’s governor general, Lord Elgin, asking for his assistance. Haviland later wrote that a New Orleans attorney told her that, by that point, Anderson had become known across the South. He had become the symbol of all that was wrong with the lenient Northerners and Canadians who attracted and harboured criminals. He had told her: “We are going to have Anderson by hook or by crook; we will have him by fair means or foul; the South is determined to have that man.” 26
    Anderson fled again. He moved to Brantford and learned to be a mason and plasterer. With his work ethic, intelligence and new vocational skills, and ability to read, write and keep ledgers, he quickly set out on his own as a successful independent contractor. After four years, in 1858, he had saved enough to purchase a house. Those chasing him seemed to have forgotten him. But it would not last.
    While Anderson was hiding in plain sight, American slave interests became even more convinced that abolitionists and their Canadian accomplices were dangerous threats to their way of life. As the abolitionist movement grew more powerful on both sides of the border, more incidents of violence were sparked by slave catchers attempting to capture and return alleged fugitive slaves. A Democratic Mississippi congressman summed up Southern rage at the increasingly frustrating situation in a speech to the House of Representatives:
    Men cannot afford to own slaves when, by crossing an imaginary line, they fall into the hands of our enemies and friends who aid them in their flight.… Do you think, gentlemen, that we will remain quiet while this is being done? The south will never submitto that state of things. It matters not what evils come upon us; it matters not how deep we may have to wade through blood; we are bound to keep our slaves and their present condition. 27
    Letters from angry Southern governors demanding the return of slaves had been sent to Canadian political leaders as far back as the 1820s. Canadian replies were blunt. In an 1829 response to Illinois governor Ninian Edwards, for instance, Sir James Kemp of the Canadian Executive Council explained that the slave under discussion would not be returned: “The state of slavery is not recognized in the law of Canada nor does the law admit that any Man can be the proprietor of another.” 28 The case was closed.
    In 1833, the Canadian government had attempted to bring order to the cross-border problems with the passage of the Fugitive Offenders Act. It did little to placate Southern governors, however, for it stated in