The Light of Nature and the Law of God: Antislavery in Ontario, 1833-1877

Author: Allen P. Stouffer
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Abolitionism, one of the major nineteenth-century reform movements, has received little attention from Canadianists. Those few scholars who have looked at the antislavery movement in Canada have generally concluded that its origins and tone came more from the proximity of Canada to the United States than from any indigenous belief in the rights of blacks. In The Light of Nature and the Law of God, Allen P. Stouffer reexamines the antislavery movement in central British North America from 1833 to 1877.
Utilizing sources in Canada, the United States, and Britain, Stouffer argues that the proximity factor was only one element in Canadian abolitionism. More important, he maintains, was the influence of British institutions and ideals brought to Canada by the constant stream of British settlers and by the provinces' dependence on the mother country. Stouffer traces the decline of slavery in the provinces during the Loyalist generation and the faltering rise of Canadian abolitionism in the 1830s with the organization of the abortive Upper Canada Anti-Slavery Society.
According to Stouffer, abolitionists in Ontario, where Canadian opposition to slavery was centered, undertook a two-front campaign. By organizing antislavery societies, they sought to enlist public opinion in the growing international crusade against slavery, hoping this agitation eventually would shame planters in the southern United States into freeing their slaves. In addition, by forming the Elgin Association, provincial abolitionists responded to the immediate needs of the often destitute fugitive slaves who escaped across the border. Important as these institutional contributions were in advancing the antislavery cause, Stouffer shows that individuals also played critical roles, particularly during the hiatus between the Upper Canada Anti-Slavery Society's collapse in the late 1830s and the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society's appearance at midcentury. Stouffer explores the diverse reactions to abolitionism of Canadian churches and employs cliometrics to draw a socioeconomic profile of the leaders and followers of the provincial antislavery movement. Finally, in an analysis of Ontario's response to the freedmen, he reveals a virulent strain of racism that retrospectively helps to explain why British North Americans were slow to adopt antislavery sentiment.
Stouffer provides new insight into the motives behind the antislavery movement in Canada in this first book-length study of the topic. The Light of Nature and the Law of God is an important addition to current abolitionist scholarship.