Henry Dundas: Protecting rights of minorities in Canada
From appointing an abolitionist to run Upper Canada, to ordering support for “Indian Nations” Dundas had a positive impact on Canada
Based on research of the Henry Dundas Committee for Public Education on Historic Scotland
1. Dundas’s support for John Graves Simcoe in the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada
Before he set foot in Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe left no doubt about where he stood on the issue of slavery:
The moment that I assume the government of Upper Canada under no modification will I assent to a law that discriminates, by dishonest policy, between the natives of Africa, America, or Europe.[1]
This was the man that Henry Dundas commissioned to be Upper Canada’s first lieutenant-governor, in September 1791.[1a] Simcoe was a dedicated abolitionist, celebrated former officer in the British Army, Member of Parliament, and friend of William Wilberforce.
Upon his arrival in Upper Canada in the spring of 1792, one of Simcoe’s first acts was to propose the immediate abolition of slavery. The Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, then dominated by slave owners and their friends, defeated his efforts. In 1793, Simcoe tried again, and this time persuaded the Assembly to accept a plan for gradual abolition.[2] Upper Canada became the first British territory to adopt legislation to abolish slavery.[3]
The resulting bill banned the importation of slaves by providing that anyone newly arrived in Upper Canada was a free person. Slaves already in the colony, had to be registered for an owner to assert a claim. Emancipation was made possible through recognition of manumission, or payment for freedom. The bill also abolished hereditary slavery by gradual means — a concession needed to get majority support in the Assembly. Children born of slaves achieved their freedom at the age of 25, and the grandchildren were born free. [4]
Ownership of slaves began to decline more quickly than required by strict application of the legislation. The trek to government offices to register slaves became a de facto barrier to continued enslavement. Importantly, the Act had the apparent effect of intensifying the social stigma associated with slavery. Newspaper ads and records of sales in Upper Canada became rare after 1806. By 1830, only two people are known to have had the status of slaves.[5]
The new law in Upper Canada also laid the groundwork for the Underground Railroad. After the bill became law, more than 30,000 Black freedom seekers who were slaves in the southern US entered Upper Canada through lakeside and border communities. They settled in communities scattered throughout what is now southern Ontario, often making their way into the interior of the province by using Dundas Street.
Dundas’s role, as the Home Secretary, was essential to the enactment of Upper Canada’s anti-slavery legislation — the first of its kind in the entire British Empire. Under his commission, Simcoe was answerable to Dundas. It was Dundas who gave him his instructions, and approved his legislative agenda. When Simcoe proposed legislation, he needed Dundas’s approval.
The Simcoe Papers, mysteriously, do not include Dundas’s instructions to Simcoe concerning the Anti-Slavery Bill. The only surviving record of their communication came from the Home Office, which preserved Simcoe’s report back to Dundas on the enactment of the bill, with Simcoe’s description of the compromises he had to make to get majority support in the Assembly.
Dundas’s influence, however, appears in the provisions of the bill, which were remarkably similar to the plan that he had proposed in the British Parliament. One year earlier, Dundas had called for the gradual emancipation of slaves in the West Indian colonies — also through the abolition of hereditary slavery.[6] As well, the legal effect of Upper Canada’s new law was similar to the decision of the Scottish Court of Session in Knight v. Wedderburn, in which Henry Dundas was lead counsel for a slave brought to Scotland from Jamaica, who was fighting for his freedom. Dundas convinced the Court to declare that no one could be a slave on Scottish soil. Simcoe’s bill declared that no one who arrived in Upper Canada was a slave.
Within weeks of passage of the abolition bill, Simcoe turned his attention to protecting the southern border of Upper Canada from American aggressors. He put together a military party to chart an inland east-west military road from the fledgling town of York (now Toronto) that would link it with settlements to the west. First named Governor’s Road, a few months later Simcoe renamed it after Henry Dundas.
Dundas Road became the main east-west corridor through the southern part of Upper Canada. It enabled Black freedom seekers who arrived in York (now Toronto) and St Catharines to travel inland, and find communities where they could make a home. Dundas Road also helped to ensure victory for the colony and the protection of Indigenous lands in the war of 1812.
To this day, the man who sponsored the law for gradual abolition in Upper Canada is honoured as the man who ended slavery in what is now Ontario.
2. Dundas’s defence of Indigenous rights
Staff at the City of Toronto claim that Dundas was responsible for the “continued subjugation” of indigenous peoples, but the historical record shows the opposite.
From the 1780’s until the onset of the war of 1812, United States’ armed forces were engaged in hostile forays into certain regions of what are now Ontario and Quebec, often seeking control over indigenous-controlled lands. Dundas as Secretary of State for Home Affairs, directed Governor Dorchester in September of 1791 to effect “a speedy termination of the war.” He also ordered him “to show every consistent mark of attention and regard to the Indian Nations.”
Dundas emphasized that Dorchester’s diplomatic overtures should protect the land interests of the “Indian Nations”:
“…securing to them the peaceable and quiet possession of the Lands which they have hitherto occupied as their hunting Grounds, and such others as may enable them to procure a comfortable subsistence for themselves and their families.”[7]
Dundas’s directive encompassed not just the designated lands, or specific lands then being occupied, but also “such others as may enable them to procure a comfortable subsistence.” In another part of his letter, he also referred to lands controlled by indigenous peoples as “their countries” — an implicit acceptance of sovereign interest in the land
Dundas’s order, 240 years ago, shows him to be a man who was ahead of his time. He respected indigenous peoples as “nations” and believed they held sovereign rights to their land. After his death, later governments abandoned this respectful approach.
3. Respect for francophone rights
After the division of Upper and Lower Canada, the French majority in the Legislative Assembly pressed for the right to enact laws and record proceedings in French. The English minority insisted that British subjects had the right to be governed in English.
in 1793, Henry Dundas resolved the impasse. He directed Governor Dorchester to institute a permanent rule that would accommodate both sides, ordering that:
…bills relative to the laws, customs, usages and civil rights of the province be introduced in French, ‘to preserve the unity of the texts,’ as long as the laws proposed were also drafted in English; conversely bills tabled in English could be accompanied by a French translation.[8]
Bilingualism may have been the obvious solution, but France had declared war on Britain just a few months earlier. Many would have been tempted to adopt a hard line against Francophones living in British territories. France had, after all, bargained away its interest in what is now Quebec under the Treaty of Paris with Britain in 1763. The Francophone members of the National Assembly had no constitutional authority on which to press their cause.
Dundas’s decision to respect French language rights was a critical turning point in the preservation of French language and culture in Canada.
4. Dundas defends Black Loyalists
While the abolition debate was raging, Dundas quietly showed a commitment to fair treatment of Africans in another area that has drawn little attention.
During the American Revolution, British battalions included thousands of former slaves whose freedom had been purchased by the British, or who had been recruited from the rebels. They were known as the Black Loyalists. In return for their military service, they were offered the opportunity to settle in British colonies, including Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, as well as Sierra Leone.[9] Britain promised them land, freedom, and equal rights. After Britain lost the war, nearly 4000 Black Loyalists traveled north to live in the Canadian colonies.
The lieutenant-governors of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick refused to respect Britain’s promises. They denied the Black Loyalists the land that was their due, and refused them the right to vote or to receive equal justice. They stood by passively while white settlers shamelessly exploited the Black Loyalists as cheap labour.[10]
Dundas learned of the plight of the Black Loyalists in 1792, after they sent an emissary to Britain present a petition. He ordered his governors to honour Britain’s promises and to provide the Black Loyalists with good land as soon as possible. He specifically ordered them to ensure that the land grants were supplemented to compensate the loyalists for the delay.[11] Dundas also offered the loyalists the alternative of passage to British controlled territory in Sierra Leone, where they were to be given land, citizenship on equal footing as other citizens, and equal status in the justice system. Some 1200 accepted and made their way back to Africa.[12]
This is not to suggest these events led to a happy ending for all concerned. What these events reveal, however, is that when Dundas learned that former slaves had been treated unfairly, he sought to rectify the situation. He also committed British naval resources to achieving a just solution by offering passage halfway around the world to more than a thousand former slaves and their families.
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The “long version” of our research into Henry Dundas is available here.
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[1] The Simcoe Papers, i. p. 497
[1a] Commission to John Graves Simcoe as Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, September 12, 1791, (per Henry Dundas) Document 55, Dominion of Canada, “Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada 1791–1818”, Sessional Papers [№29c] (1914) https://primarydocuments.ca/documents-relating-to-the-constitutional-history-of-canada-1791-1818/
[2] https://www.heritagetrust.on.ca/en/pages/our-stories/exhibits/john-graves-simcoe https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/john-graves-simcoe
[3] Riddell, William Renwick. “Upper Canada-Early Period.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 5, no. 3, 1920, pp. 316–339. www.jstor.org/stable/2713625 The specific provisions of the bill are described at pp 319–320.
[4] Riddell, supra
[5] Riddell, supra
[6] Cobbett’s Parliamentary History, Vol 29 at p. 1106: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/6dbc262d-083a-43ca-9d49-fec09c34825b
[7] ”Right Hon. Henry Dundas to Lord Dorchester“ #36. (Canadian Archives, Series Q., Vol. 52, p. 206.) (№1.) Whitehall, 16th Sept. 1791.
[8] Dorland, Michael and Charland, Maurice René , Law, Rhetoric and Irony in the Formation of Canadian Civil Culture, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2002, p. 102
[9] James W. St. G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, (“The Black Loyalists”), at p. 57 and following. http://www.jstor.com/stable/41298659
[10] The Black Loyalists, supra, at p. 65
[11] Ibid., p. 66
[12] Ibid. See also: St. G. Walker, James W. “Blacks as American Loyalists: The Slaves’ War for Independence.” Historical Reflections, vol. 2, no. 1, 1975, at p. 66. www.jstor.org/stable/41298659.
