Oldal 148 [148]
OCR
CANADIAN LANDSCAPES/ PAYSAGES CANADIENS In 1838, the paper castigated those Americans who sided with the rebels "for what is called liberty," echoing Garrisons characterization ("Canadas"). Besides deploring the harm of the unrest to lives and property, this editorial presents its readers with the most persuasive reason to support the British: i.e. “(The Canadas are] the only spot on the continent upon which the fugitive slave can find a place to rest the sole of the foot, and should these ‘patriots’ succeed, the Canadas would soon be converted into a hunting ground for the slaveholders of the United States” (“Canadas”). Once active hostilities commenced, Thomas Van Rensellaer, the newspaper’s sales agent and himself a former slave, penned an editorial. “T.V.R,’ as he signed his name, cautioned his ‘colored’ brethren north of the border against jumping into the fray. He wrote: “The American feeling of Independence has gone over into Canada, and broke out in a bloody insurrection. We hope our colored friends in that quarter will continue, on this occasion, as they have been heretofore, loyal subjects” (“Insurrection in Canada”). Any disruptive opposition to the Crown in which Black Canadians might participate threatened the positive portrayal of Black deportment by the Antislavery Society and other abolitionists, a portrayal that could enhance the prospects for Black integration in the states. At risk was not just the Canadas as refuge for the escapees, but the possibility for full acceptance into United States civil society. This would be an important concern of free blacks. If whites could see them as model citizens, the ‘reflective influence’ of Canadian society might thereby allow blacks to move from the margins of American society into its center (“Mistake Corrected”). Another editorial projected an additional consequence of the expulsion of British rule from the Canadas for free Black readers. In our humble opinion, the emancipation of the Canadas from British control would be fatal to the peace and solidity of the United States. We can hardly keep peace with the provinces now... our boundary lines, and such like things, would be a bone of constant contention, could not peace and amity in these matters be legislated across the waters. Make the Canadian independent government, and America will be the seat of eternal republican wars. But unite the Canadas and Texas to the United States, and the whole government will be as a sheet of rotten ice, upon the surface of angry waters (“Canadas”). This author was clearly aware of the ongoing, violent, boundary controversy, called the Aroostook War, between Maine and New Brunswick in the 1830s. Free blacks, some of whom did own land and many more who wished to acquire it, could not help but understand that stability of territorial borders would be more congenial to farmland acquisition and secure title than a republican Canada. ‘Black agrarianism,’ an important movement of the time, was supported particularly by editor Ray, who urged free blacks to move to the + 146 +
