Letters from Canada—No. IV.
Frederick Douglass: Dear Sir:—You are aware that our Anti-Slavery Society of Canada have no funds of their own, and so the movements of the society are such as to render a more thorough acquaintanceship with it, essential to its deriving much revenue from different portions of the province, and no anti-slavery labor is very much needed here, some (and Capt. Charles Stuart and Rev. Dr. Burns are of the number) have thought it advisable to apply to the British and Foreign, or the American and Foreign, Anti-Slavery Society, or both, for pecuniary aid to the prosecution of the work in Canada. Indeed, I do not know of a field demanding more attention than this. Ignorance, apathy and prejudice abound here, and there is not wanting some of the most diabolical forms of pro-slaveryism. The mass of Canadian population are utterly ignorant of slavery, and of the black race. They know almost nothing of the guilt of northern men touching that abominable institution. The blame, in their opinion, rests entirely with the South. You will estimate the importance of correcting this idea, when I tell you that in many portions of Canada, there are individuals, and some of them quite influential, who are in favor of our becoming independent of the British Government, and annexing ourselves to the United States.—Should this sentiment grow, as it does not, for the Fugitive Slave Bill revealed the real atrocity of American character to them in so strong and clear a light as to startle and disgust them, it would alarm all the black people here.
Well, anti-slavery discussions will, among other things, make known the fact, that Northern men, such as Cass, FillmoreFillmore, Millard

Millard Fillmore (1800-74), thirteenth president of the United States, represented the Buffalo region in the New York state legislature (1828-32) and in the U.S. House of Representatives (1833-35, 1837-43), where he generally voted with the Henry Clay wing of the Whig party. Defeated in the 1844 New York governor's race, Fillmore secured the Whig vice-presidential nomination in 1848 and assumed the presidency upon Zachary Taylor's death in July 1850. Fillmore vigorously advocated passage of the Compromise of 1850 and signed each of its measures into law. Denied his party's nomination in 1852, Fillmore ran for president on the American party ticket in 1856 and supported John Bell and the Constitutional Union party in 1860. NCAB, 6:177-78; DAB, 6:380-82. , Webster, Choate, Dickinson, Buchanan, Douglas, Winthrop and too many others, are they upon whom rests the chief guilt of slavery's present and future existence. It will be shown

by anti-slavery discussions, that the votes of Northern men have secured the passage of the accursed laws by which slavery has been perpetuated at the expense of the constitution; and that the beasts of the North, of the pro-slavery school, your Coxes, Bemans, Lords, Lathrops, Sayres, Springs and other pious slaveocrats, have blasphemed the name of God, and outraged the moral sense of man, by seeking to make it appear that our Heavenly Father, who gave us the eleventh Commandment, smiles upon and approves of an institution which entirely abrogates that commandment; and that when a woman has escaped form her brutal seducer and destroyer, it is Christian duty to return her to his lustful clutches.
Now, that the American and Foreign, and the British and Foreign, Anti-Slavery Societies should aid in the scattering of the truth as it is in the province, and by so doing, create a state of public sentiment that shall successfully rebuke these same Northerners, who are the guiltiest of all, would seem a very happy way of doing a greatly needed good. It will be bringing the truth to the very doors of the guiltiest and the most responsible of all slavocrats, those who live on our borders, with whom we have frequent intercourse, and whose association some of us so earnestly sought in the civil compact.
Anti-slavery investigations would bring out another fact, viz: that there are some men in Canada as guilty as any man in the U.S. touching slavery. I conversed, a day or two ago, with a gentleman who has a relative

residing not far from here, who justifies slavery with all his might. He has been a negro-driver, or something of that sort, down the Mississippi river. An anti-slavery lady was visited by her minister in this county not long since, and his priestship most earnestly remonstrated against her anti-slavery labors. He labored in vain, however, I am happy to say. A mulatto man in this city loans money, which he says he acquired by the sale of human beings. A prominent candidate of the conservative party for an office of some importance in this region, justified the capture of the unfortunate Daniel at Buffalo last fall, and he approved of all the bloody circumstances attending it. A Bishop of the Papal Church in this province, refused to give a copper in aid of destitute fugitives, with the remark that they ought to remain in slavery, and having escaped, they deserved no help. In the most westerly, and the very best portion of Canada for soil, climate, &c., social negro-hate is as prevalent as it is in adjacent portions of the Untied States. Then, there are black men here who act in such a manner as to justify the worst forms of pro-slaveryism. Some of them talk about how they wish they were again with their masters; others behave unbecomingly; our separate churches and our evil demeanor fill the mouths of our enemies here and elsewhere.
Mr. Thomas, your Corresponding Editor, has taken the Kossuth fever alarmingly.—One would supposed from his articles that Mr. Thomas was as ignorant of American history as Kossuth is. Judge Jay has called to mind some facts that one would think would bring Mr. Thomas back to sanity.—The miserable plea that if your country engages in war with Russia in behalf of Hungary, that the light flashing from that transaction will so reveal to Americans their view of slaveholding as to bring them to repentance,

is ridiculous enough. Your guilty nation fought the battle of the revolution.—Black men aided in it. But no such light as Mr. Thomas dreams of, flashed upon the American conscience there. So in the late war with Great Britain. Blacks aided Jackson in defeating Sir Edward Packenham.—These wars were professedly for liberty, not in aid of another nation, but in defense of your own; but Mr. Thomas' light has not yet flashed upon your guilty government in regard to the rights of black men. A nation that can receive the aid of men to fight its battles and achieve its victories, and establish its liberty and independence, and meanwhile, and for seventy years after, can enslave these very aiders, may not be expected to learn repentance from the aid they extend to another people. Be it borne in mind, too, that what Kossuth, Mr. Thomas' "second Messiah," gets from Americans, he gets upon the express condition that he takes the aide of American oppressors.

But you know, Mr. Douglass, that your nation has intervened in behalf of people oppressed heretofore. Judge Jay has shown you cases of intervention in behalf of slavery. Let me remind Mr. Thomas and your readers of some American intervention in behalf of freedom. The Turks oppressed the Greeks something more than a quarter of a century ago. Abundant was the sympathy expressed in behalf of the latter, and many Americans went to Greece and drew the sword in behalf of her liberty. The whole nation applauded, almost worshiped, these heroes. Light came to the American mind through the sarcastic words of John Randolph. But the nation would not see. Col. Miller, one of the heroes of the Greek war, has since been obliged to labor hard, long, and in vain in behalf of the oppressed of America. Sympathy for the Poles, oppressed by the Russians, has been expressed more than once by the great mass of your countrymen. The Irish desired to free themselves from the oppressions of our govemment.—Abundant was the American disposition to intervene. Meetings were held, money raised, speeches made, everything done. But not a single flash of light came to the American mind touching the oppressions of Americans. When Ireland famished for want of bread, Americans intervened against hunger, while they drove the slave to starvation or stealth. So when Lamartine freed the French from the despotism of the tyrant, Louis Phillippe, who rejoiced more loudly than these same Americans? Several, some seventy, slaves took the hint and started on board of the Pearl, in quest of freedom.—They were overtaken by some of these sympathizers with French freedom, and consigned to interminable slavery. Yes, and Drayton and Sayre were in their gloomy dungeon for aiding these poor slaves, while the "Democrat" Kossuth was "fulfilling prophecy;" by glorifying your nation on account of her freedom, and kept his mouth closed about the enslaved. But I must stop.
More anon,
S. R. W.Ward, Samuel Ringgold

Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817-c. 1866) was a Congregational minister, abolitionist, editor, and orator. His parents carried him along on their escape from slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore in about 1820. The family settled six years later in New York City, where young Ward received an elementary education. In 1833 he embraced religion and received ordination in 1839. His two New York congregations, at South Butler (1841-43) and Courtland (1846-51), consisted mostly of whites, but Ward vigorously agitated for the rights of both slaves and free blacks. The American Anti-Slavery Society appointed Ward a lecturing agent in 1839. As one of the earliest black supporters of political abolitionism, Ward acted as spokesman for the Liberty party after 1844. Ward studied law and medicine briefly, and also tried his hand at editing during the late 1840s. His Impartial Citizen, published from Syracuse, and another newspaper venture both failed financially. In 1851 Ward's leading role in the Jerry Rescue caused him to fear arrest and to emigrate to Canada. There he launched the Provincial Freeman in 1853 and acted as agent for the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. In the latter capacity, Ward journeyed to Britain in 1853 on a fundraising tour. In 1855 Ward published his Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro and accepted a British Quaker's gift of fifty acres of land in Jamaica. He lived his last decade on that island, farming, writing, and ministering to a small Baptist congregation. Ward’s involvement in abolitionist activities necessarily brought him into close contact with Douglass, who remarked that “as an orator and thinker he [Ward] was vastly superior . . . to any of us,” and that “the splendors of his intellect went directly to the glory of his race.” Douglass, Life and Times (1881), 284; Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada and England (1855; New York, 1968); NS, 2 February 1849; Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History, 2d ed. (New Haven, Conn., 1997), 206-08, 227, 265-66, 361,395; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 79, 98, 133, 138, 210.
Toronto, Feb. 6, 185[2].