John Graves Simcoe's Weird Relationship With Slavery

Meet John Graves Simcoe. Founder of Toronto. British veteran of the American Revolution. And an avowed abolitionist with a very weird and complicated relationship to slavery.

Simcoe hated it. Back home in England as a Member of Parliament, he gave anti-slavery speeches in the House of Commons. And when he was picked to be the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, he made it clear: he saw no place for the practice in his new province. "The principles of the British Constitution do not admit of that slavery which Christianity condemns," he wrote before he officially took his post. "The moment I assume the Government of Upper Canada, under no modification will I assent to a law that discriminates by dishonest policy between natives of Africa, America or Europe." 

And indeed, one of the very first things Simcoe did when he got to Upper Canada was to introduce a bill to end slavery in the province forever. In July 1793, his "Act Against Slavery" became the very first slavery-abolishing law ever passed anywhere in the British Empire. To this day he's celebrated as the man who ended slavery in Upper Canada — more than 40 years before it was abolished across the Empire and 70 years before the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States.

But things weren't quite as simple as that makes it seem.

For one thing, Simcoe's law wasn't nearly as groundbreaking as it sounds. By the time he came to Canada, there were no slaves in England — a court decision had freed them all fifteen years earlier. Compared to the Mother Country, the Canadian colonies were behind the times. Hundreds of slaves were "owned" by the colonists in Upper Canada, many of them brought north to the new province by Loyalist refugees as they fled the revolution in the United States. The British government had actually encouraged the practice, passing a law in Westminster that promised new Canadian settlers they would get to keep their slaves.

So while slavery in England was already over, if Simcoe wanted to get rid of slavery in Upper Canada, he was going to have to pass a new law to actively abolish it. And that wasn't going to be easy.

Simcoe would need support. The bill would have to pass through the Legislative Assembly and then through the Legislative Council. Both of those bodies were full of slave owners. And that, in part, was thanks to none other than John Graves Simcoe.

Peter Russell tries to sell
Peggy & Jupiter Pompadour

The Legislative Assembly was an elected body. But the members of the Legislative Council were hand-picked by Simcoe himself — it worked a bit like the Senate does today. And Simcoe packed his Council full of slave-owners. At least five of the nine members were either slave-owners or from slave-owning families. They formed a majority. Simcoe, determined to abolish slavery in Upper Canada, had made it almost impossible to do.

But he was still going to try. It was the resistance of Chloe Cooley that gave him the opportunity he needed. Cooley was a Black woman living in slavery at Niagara. When her "master" sold her to someone on the American side of the river, he tied her up with rope and forced her into a boat to be taken across the border. Cooley, like many slaves, had long resisted her captivity: refusing work, stealing, disappearing for periods of time, generally trying to disrupt the life of her "master" and ensure her enslavement was as much of an inconvenience as possible. Now, she resisted again. As she was unloaded and handed over to her new "owner," Cooley screamed and put up a fight.

When Simcoe heard the tale, he was appalled — and he saw his chance. During the next session of the legislature, he pushed a bill to abolish slavery.

 
But with his government full of slave-owners, he was forced into a compromise — the exact thing he had promised never to do. The new law didn't abolish slavery immediately; instead, it would be gradually phased out. No new slaves could be brought into Upper Canada, but any who were already here would spend the rest of their lives in slavery. Their children would be born into captivity, too; they wouldn't be free until they turned twenty-five. Finally, anyone who wanted to free a slave was discouraged from doing so: they would be forced to provide financial security to ensure the newly freed slave wouldn't be a drain on the resources of the state.

The bill was passed just a few weeks before Simcoe founded Toronto. And so, the foundations of our city were laid with the help of slave labour. During the early years of the new town, there were fifteen Black slaves within its borders — and another ten just across the Don Valley.

Some of Toronto's slave owners are still familiar names today. William Jarvis is remembered by Jarvis Street; James Baby's old estate on the Humber River is still called Baby Point. Peter Russell — a gambling-addict ex-con who Simcoe trusted as Receiver- and Auditor-General — enslaved a woman named Peggy Pompadour and her three children: Jupiter, Amy and Milly. Their acts of resistance were brutally punished by Russell: Jupiter was once bound and strung up in the window of a storehouse as a painful public humiliation. But Peter Russell is still remembered in the names of Peter Street and Russell Hill Road.

Simcoe's relationship with slavery only got weirder and more conflicted after he left Toronto. In 1796, ill-health forced him to sail home to England. Just a few months later — while still officially serving as Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada — John Graves Simcoe was sent to Haiti. There, the avowed abolitionist was asked to put down the biggest slave uprising since Spartacus.

Haiti was a French colony back then; they called it Saint Domingue. The leaders of the French Revolution had abolished slavery, but French royalists still controlled Haiti — and they had no intention of giving up their half a million slaves.

Toussaint L'Ouverture

When the slaves rose up in a revolution led by François Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture, the French royalists asked the British for help. Thousands of British troops were sent to the island, hoping to crush the uprising, restore slavery, and secure the island's sugar riches for themselves. By the time Simcoe arrived, they'd been fighting for years without making any real progress. His job was to turn things around. He was appointed as commander of the British forces in Haiti — a man who hated slavery fighting a bloody war to preserve it.

The Haitian Revolution was a long and brutal struggle. It raged for thirteen years and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Countless atrocities were committed. Simcoe's attempt to keep his own men in check — an order to halt all "cruelties and outrages" — was ignored. His army pushed Toussaint's forces back, but were stalled by a counterattack. His men were dying by the thousands: some in bloody battles, still more of yellow fever.

Simcoe only lasted a few months before he got sick of fighting for a cause he didn't believe in. He was sick of the war, sick of a lack of support from his superiors, sick of literally being sick. He left Haiti and sailed home to England, where he tried to convince the government to withdraw from the war; he was nearly arrested for desertion. The British kept fighting for a year after Simcoe left Haiti, and the French kept fighting long after that. In the end, the Haitian Revolution was successful — it led to the establishment of a new, independent, slave-free country in 1804.

But while slavery was now over in Haiti, it was still part of life in Toronto. It would take many years before it gradually dwindled out: one by one the city's slaves died or were freed by their "masters." There's no record of when the practice finally ended in Toronto, but there were no slaves left in the city by the time the British abolished slavery across the Empire on August 1, 1834.

By then, Toronto was beginning to gain a very different reputation. Black families like the Abbotts, the Blackburns and the Augustas — some of them former slaves themselves — worked with White allies like George Brown to make Toronto a relatively safe haven for those fleeing slavery in the United States. They organized anti-slavery societies, secured lodging for refugees, and raised funds to help the new arrivals get started in their new home. They struggled every day to make Toronto a more welcoming place for those fleeing racial persecution.

Half a century after Simcoe's chilling compromise, Toronto had become an important stop at the end of the Underground Railroad.

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A version of this story will appear in The Toronto Book of the Dead Coming September 2017 Pre-order from Amazon, Indigo, or your favourite bookseller

This post was based in part on a Twitter essay I tweeted out on Simcoe day last year, which you can find here.

You can learn more about John Graves Simcoe from "John Graves Simcoe, 1752–1806: A Biography" by Mary Beacock Fryer and Christopher Dracott (which is available from Amazon here or the Toronto Public Library here), from his entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography here, and from his entry entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia here. And you can read his letters in "The Correspondence of Lieut. Governor John Graves Simcoe" which you can find at the Toronto Public Library here.

Learn more about slavery and resistance in Upper Canada from Natasha Henry's "Talking About Freedom: Celebrating Emancipation Day in Canada" (Amazon here, Toronto Public Library here), from Robin Winks' "The Blacks in Canada: A History" (Amazon here, Toronto Public Library here), from "The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto!" by Adrienna Shadd, Afua Cooper and Karolyn Smardz Frost (Amazon here, Toronto Public Library here), from William Renwick Riddell's 1923 article in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology here (that's a PDF), or from the Canadian Encyclopedia here. The Encyclopedia also has an entry about Chloe Cooley and Simcoe's law here. 

You'll find the Wikipedia entry for the Haitian Revolution here. And a timeline of the history of Haiti here.

Read some my previous posts about the Simcoes:
The story of John Graves Simcoe's vision for Toronto (a city so awesome it would undo the American Revolution)
The story of Elizabeth Simcoe's 1794 nightmare 
The story of their dog, Jack Sharp 
The story of their cat 
The story of how they fell in love and the magical hills where it happened 
The story of their summer home in Budleigh Salterton 
The story of their connection to Samuel Coleridge and his family 
The story of the Simcoe family and Exeter and death

This post is related to dream 01 Metropolitan York John Graves Simcoe, 1793

This post is related to dream 18 Russell Creek Peter Russell, 1799

Dream 18 "Russell Creek" (Peter Russell, 1799)

Peter Russell dreamed that his sister Elizabeth had fallen ill. She’d taken a drink from the creek that ran through their property at Petersfield and within moments it seemed like her mind was failing her. She went quiet; stared at him blankly. When he asked, she couldn’t even remember his name.

Russell was in a panic. With his heart hammering in his chest, he hurried off to look for help, sprinting down the path of the creek toward the town below. He met plenty of people along the way — and they all agreed to help. But every time, they paused first for a drink. And as soon as the creek water touched their lips, they forgot who Russell was and what he’d asked of them. By the time he reached the outskirts of the town, there didn’t seem to be anyone left in York who remembered anything about him at all.

He collapsed — out of breath, dejected, exhausted — in the middle of the road. And when the new Lieutenant Governor came to him with a cup and suggested that a drink might do him good, Russell didn’t fight it. He just dipped the cup into Russell Creek and drank deep until he forgot who he was.

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Peter Russell was a slave owner, a gambling addict and Toronto's first truly terrible leader. He temporarily filled in as the head of the province while John Graves Simcoe, the Lieutenant Governor who founded our city, was sick at home to England.

You can read more about Russell's life on Spacing here. Explore more Toronto Dreams Project postcards here.

And We Think Rob Ford's An Asshole; Meet Peter Russell

Peter Russell, asshole

Here's how they tell his story: In 1796, Lieutenant Governor John Simcoe, the man who had founded Toronto just three years earlier, was sick. So sick, in fact, that he headed back home to England with his family, never to return. In his absence, he left Peter Russell in charge, one of the city's most illustrious douchebags.

Russell had been born in Ireland, moved to England, and went to school at Cambridge for all of six months before he'd lost so much money playing poker that he was forced to drop out and join the army. In the army, he kept gambling; his next twenty years or so were mostly spent traveling around the world: sometimes fighting wars and sometimes running away from the people he owed money to. When they finally did catch up with him, he even spent a little time in prison. But none of that seems to have kept him from making a good impression on John Graves Simcoe. They had both fought for the British during the American Revolution and when Simcoe became the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, he invited the desperate, debt-ridden Russell to help run the brand new town of York.

In return, he got a crapload of free land. His first house, Russell Abbey, was built on a spot in town overlooking the lake (near Front and Princess where Abbey Lane is now). His second home was at his farm, Petersfield, a long strip of land running north from Queen to Bloor just west of the Grange. And on top of that, he had hundreds of acres on the hill above Davenport Road around the area where the not-so-coincidentally-named Russell Hill Road runs today.

And he'd get more. Once Simcoe was gone, Russell found new ways to take advantage. He discovered a law that allowed him to seize land from foreigners who hadn't lived in town for at least seven years and he used it.  He appointed himself as a judge, despite the fact that he had no legal experience, so that he could collect the salary. And when it came time to make civic improvements, he was a cheap bastard; on at least one occasion he just plain refused to pay, shocked that in a tiny, isolated town in the middle of a thick forest, with barely any people in it, the cost of labour was rather high.

It seems that even the improvements he did make, he made with a prickish flair. Russell was the one who built the city's first jail, a log hut on King Street where the King Edward Hotel is now, but he didn't bother to include any beds or blankets or stoves to keep it warm during the winter. He extended the town westward out to Peter Street, but couldn't resist naming the street after himself. And when he hired Asa Danforth to spend months in the woods building Kingston Road out toward, um, Kingston, Russell figured he was the hero. "I expect the Gratitude of the People will erect a Statue to my memory for it," he declared.

But all of that is nothing compared to the real reason he stands apart from most of the other corrupt, pompous, self-serving, political assholes this city has seen: this asshole owned slaves.

Simcoe had wanted to abolish slavery right from the very beginning, but slave owners in the legislature—including, it seems, Russell—fought against it, forcing a compromise: they could keep the slaves they already had in town, but it would be illegal to bring in any more, and the children would be freed when they turned 25. They say it was the first legislation to actively limit slavery in the history of the British Empire.

From what I've read, there were 15 slaves in York (though there were ten more just outside of town), and the majority were owned by Russell and his fellow jerkface, William Jarvis. They had six each. Russell enslaved Mr. Pompadour, his wife Peggy and their four children. And he wasn't happy with them. His sister called them "insolent" and "pilfering". And after Peggy tried to run away yet again, Russell decided to split the family up. He placed this ad in the Upper Canada Gazette:

The ad didn't turn up any buyers or win Russell many fans in the anti-slavery crowd. And those folks weren't his only enemies. There was even a new saying in town, poking fun at his corruption: "I, Peter Russell, convey to you, Peter Russell." So when Simcoe officially resigned, Russell was passed over for the promotion and lost most of his power. Once he'd been overlooked for a second time, he was pissed off enough to announce that he intended to move back to England. But by that point, he owned 75,000 acres of Upper Canada and he couldn't find anyone to buy it. He was stuck here. And in 1808, he had a stroke. The cure—a mustard plaster and a quart of wine laced with crushed deer antler—didn't work. He died.

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A version of this story will appear in The Toronto Book of the Dead Coming September 2017 Pre-order from Amazon, Indigo, or your favourite bookseller

After Russell's death, the Pompadours were passed down to his sister, Elizabeth, who gave away one of the daughters as a gift. After that, people aren't sure what happened to them. There's a photo of Peggy and some more info about the family here. 

One of the foreigners Russell screwed over was William Berczy, who built Yonge Street, will get his own blogpost eventually, and was also hired to build Russell Abbey. You can see a drawing of the house here. It eventually ended up being owned by another one of the city's most blogpost-worthy citizens, Robert Baldwin, who helped bring responsible government to Canada.

Oh and there's also Russell Creek, one of our buried underground streams, named after him. And Bedford Road is called Bedford Road because he wanted to honour the Duke of Bedford, a man his father dubiously claimed they were related to. 

This post is related to dream 18 Russell Creek Peter Russell, 1799

The T Dot's First Hanging

It seems that sometime around the turn of the 1800s, when our city was still just a town only a few years old, John Sullivan and Michael Flannery went out one night and got drunk together. Sullivan was an Irish tailor and they called Flannery "Latin Mike" because he liked to recite Latin proverbs, which I guess was a thing back then. At some point their drunk asses must have run out of money, because Latin Mike decided to forge a bank note worth about three shillings so that Sullivan could use it to buy more booze. Shockingly, their plan backfired and while Latin Mike managed to escape and fled to the States, Humphrey Sullivan landed in Toronto's first jail, sentenced to death. Which, you know, seems a little harsh.

The jail was brand new, built on the orders of the slave-owning gambling addict/politician, Peter Russell, who was running the young town while Lieutenant Governor John Simcoe (the dude who founded Toronto) was back in England, slowly dying. The "gaol" was built on King Street, where the King Edward hotel is now (there's a plaque) and as you may have guessed from the drawing above, it was a little wooden building with a log fence. Inside, there was just enough room for three prisoners and it seems that while Sullivan was there it was filled to capacity. Next door to him was John Small, on trial for having recently killed the Attorney-General in the city's first duel. And in the other cell was a Mr. McKnight. When the officials running Sullivan's execution ran into trouble finding someone willing to do the actual executing, it was McKnight they convinced to do it in return for $100 and a pardon.

McKnight, however, was not awesome at hanging people. He screwed up the first attempt. And then the second. By the third, even Sullivan was getting impatient, saying something along the lines of: "McKnight, I hope to goodness you've got the rope all right this time."

He did.

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A version of this story will appear in The Toronto Book of the Dead Coming September 2017 Pre-order from Amazon, Indigo, or your favourite bookseller

There seems to be some confusion about a few of this story's details, like whether John Sullivan's real name might have been Humphrey, but I've mostly cobbled that all together from The Toronto Story and Jarvis Collegiate's startlingly informative website, which are both fantastic. They've also got lots more about Peter Russell and John Simcoe and the city's first duel, which are all so getting their own posts sometime. (Update: I've written the Peter Russell post here.)