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

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Hence, the Black settlements in the Canadian (West) Canaan represent a fertile ground to investigate the crucial role of Canada’s Black communities in a wider and transnational context. For the Black fugitive slave, now turned into a Black Canadian, they are nothing less than the living proof of the rich potential of free Black communities, denied by the pro-slavery forces that kept the United States in their oppressive thrall. As he vehemently asserts: “The coloured people of Canada, as a whole, are the most moral and upright of our race in America” (222). Despite his triumphalist (over)statement, Ward signals the direction that abolitionist thinking was pointing to with regard the Black North American population. In this valuable window of Canada West, taken in the years before 1855 and some time before Drew’s account of fugitive slaves, Ward suggests that the importance of Canada’s Black population as a model ought to make it a central concern for abolitionists because it strengthens their claims and gives rise to a global and more humanitarian defense against the ills of slavery.