Читать книгу Benjamin Drew. The Refugee. Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada онлайн

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Another relevant publication that Shadd undertook was the foundation, in 1853, of an anti-slavery paper, called The Provincial Freeman. The paper’s slogan was “Devoted to antislavery, temperance and general literature” and it encapsulates the ideological messages it conveyed and spread. Shadd’s editorship of the periodical alone became a milestone as it cued change, marking an important moment in publishing and Black representation in the mid-nineteenth century. In all certainty, “Shadd’s irrepressible drive for freedom and active black self-transformation finally also produced a kind of ideologiekritik that reflected on the mental barriers to freedom among free blacks in Canada” (Siemerling 113). The Provincial Freeman needs to be praised also because it stood for the reality and adversities of Blacks whilst it offered an influential stage for reflection on Black specificity and transformation under the conditions of freedom in Canada. The periodical touched upon the issues that were relevant for the daily lives of Black people in Canada (West) and for the cross-border abolitionist movement. Among them, temperance was a leading one. In fact, from the beginnings of abolitionism, temperance was a required practice and disposition and that is why Shadd explicitly advocated: “The planned black settlements in the province either required or recommended temperance. In communities throughout Canada West, local blacks formed societies, like the African Temperance Society of St. Catharines, to promote abstinence from intoxicating beverages” (qtd. in Stewart 46). These Black communities draw this influence from the importance that African American leaders gained in the fight for temperance which, in due course, “helped the emergence of an independent black nationalist movement, and also that Black leaders joined this cause in support of principles such as industry and economy designed to uplift the race” (Bridgen 66). In other words, the temperance movement in the Black Canadian (West) communities adopted and fervently upheld the reformist drive of the temperance movement attached to abolitionism as a way to legitimize their members as proper citizens. As will be exposed later, Benjamin Drew’s collection, following Shadd’s writing and as an example of transnational abolitionist literature, also taps into this important issue as one of the most remarkable goals of the reformist movements that were active in nineteenth-century Black Canada.