Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada JULY 9-1793

Murphy Browne © July 1-2022 

On July 9, 1793, “An Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude” also known as the “Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada” was given Royal Assent.

 It is considered the first anti-slavery law in the British colonies.

The July 9, 1793 “Act” did not free any enslaved African in “Upper Canada/Ontario” it only “prohibited the importation of enslaved persons into Upper Canada.” As much fuss as is usually made, even that language was a farce because it did not prevent the sale of enslaved Africans across the border to the United States. Many slave holders in Upper Canada continued to sell enslaved Africans to buyers in New York State until 1799, when that state introduced a similar “gradual abolition law.” The 1799 gradual abolition law of New York State declared that children born after July 4, 1799, to enslaved mothers in New York would be born free. However, even though “free born” those children, would have to provide free services to the enslavers of their mothers until they reached 25, if female and 28 if male. The law applied only to those

born after 1799, so those enslaved Africans who were born before 1799 had no hope of freedom.

The Upper Canada/Ontario “Act” did not come from the goodness of any White slaveholder’s heart or a guilty conscience. That July 7, 1793 “Act to Limit Slavery in Upper Canada” was the result of the struggles of enslaved African woman, Chloe Cooley, to free herself from being sold. On March 14, 1793, Chloe Cooley, an enslaved African woman in Queenston, Upper Canada/Ontario was brutally beaten by three White men, (including Adam Vrooman, her enslaver and his brother Isaac Vrooman) thrown into a boat, taken across the Niagara River and sold in New York State. She was loud and physical in her resistance, but she was vastly outnumbered. Chloe Cooley did not go quietly. She resisted so fiercely that Peter Martin, a free African Canadian man took note of her screams and struggles and made an official report to Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe and the members of the Executive Council of Upper Canada. To his credit, on hearing of the atrocity, Simcoe made an “attempt” to abolish slavery in Upper Canada/Ontario. He was unsuccessful because many members of the “Family

Compact” including William Jarvis, Peter Russell, Alexander Grant, James Baby, Richard Cartwright and Robert Hamilton – were slave holders. In 1793 when Simcoe unsuccessfully attempted to end slavery in Ontario, he was blocked by powerful White men who were slaveholders. These powerful slave holders and politicians were members of the Executive Council of Upper Canada on March 21, 1793, when Peter Martin made his report about the brutalizing and sale of Chloe Cooley.

On July 9, 1793 “An Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude” was passed in the House of Assembly of Upper Canada. Simcoe had to make compromises to get the Act passed. Chloe Cooley was not saved from slavery, but her resistance was the catalyst that led to the first piece of anti-slavery legislation in Canada. The legislation did not free any enslaved African but at least it gave them hope that their descendants would one day be free. Life did not change for those enslaved Africans living in Upper Canada/Ontario, but the passing of the Act meant that any enslaved African who escaped slavery in the U.S.

and made their way to Ontario was a free person.

Chloe Cooley and other enslaved Africans were brought to Canada after the British were defeated in the American Revolution and were forced to retreat to British North America/Canada. The British slave holders brought the people they had enslaved when the British government in North America/Canada passed the “Imperial Statute of 1790,” which allowed United Empire Loyalists to bring in “negros, household furniture, utensils of husbandry, or cloathing” duty-free. Thousands of enslaved Africans were forcibly transported into British North America, to locations that included New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Québec.

It is ironic that when the history of slavery in Canada is told, complete with August 1, 1834, as Emancipation Day, the name of Chloe Cooley is hardly mentioned. Contrary to the popular narrative, there were American states where slavery was abolished before slavery was abolished in Canada. Seven years before Canada, on July 4, 1827, slavery was abolished in New York State. If Chloe Cooley was still alive 34 years after she was

sold from Queenston, Ontario to New York, she would have been free on July 4, 1827.

Murphy Browne © July 1-2022