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

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A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada emerges thus as more than “Anglo-Canadian anti-American and pro-British propaganda” (Clarke, “Introduction” 14), and resolves into a compendium of the transnational abolitionist movement’s political agenda containing the cultural and ideological preoccupations of the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover, by anchoring its messages in the brand new African Canadian reality and testimony, the collection plays an important and active part in the literary movement that pushed forth towards the recognition of a Canadian identity and the eventual creation of the nation-state.

Tellingly, the collection of testimonies was aimed to look at the future for it provided evidence to those concerned and wary of the African Americans’ emancipation, economic opportunity and racial acceptance. This was ratified when a sequel to Drew’s book was published in 1864 when the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission issued the Canadian report soon after the Emancipation Proclamation. The Commission was intent in investigating the conditions of emancipated African Americans simply to cater for their possible needs. The result was the appearance of Refugees from Slavery in Canada West that very same year, which revolved around the themes that Drew had already tackled in his book. A few years earlier, in 1859, another book similar to, if not based upon, Drew’s appeared. It was titled The Roving Editor or Talking With Slaves in the Southern States and followed the same procedure that Drew utilized in his oral recollection.