APRIL 25-1858 JAMES DOUGLAS
Murphy Browne © April 21-2022
On April 25, 1858, a group of 35 African Americans from San Francisco arrived in Victoria, British Columbia. They had been invited by Governor James Douglas. Reportedly some members of the scouting party were so impressed that on returning to San Francisco they said, "The climate is most beautiful; the strawberry vines and peach trees are in full blow... All the colored man wants here is ability and money... It is a God-sent land for the colored people." Following this glowingly optimistic description, approximately 800 African Americans later moved to British Columbia.
The exodus of African Americans who accepted Douglas’ invitation were fleeing the California Fugitive Slave Act of April 1852. In 1850 California joined the Union as a state free of slavery. In 1852, the state legislature passed the California Fugitive Slave Law, legalizing the re-enslavement of those who arrived with their enslavers before statehood. The California Fugitive Slave Act in 1852, mandated that government officials and ordinary White citizens help slaveholders recapture people who escaped. This led to widespread abuse where any African American man, woman or child (enslaved or free) could be seized by any White person and be enslaved or re-enslaved because African Americans could not testify against White people in court. Longing to live as free people, members of the African American community began exploring opportunities to move from California.
Governor James Douglas was aware of the plight of the African American community in California and wanting to increase settlement in B.C to discourage a possible U.S. annexation, he sent an invitation to the African American community of San Francisco in 1858. On April 25, 1858, a scouting party of 35 African Americans from San Francisco arrived in Victoria harbour on the steamship Commodore. A plaque was installed on August 18, 1978, to commemorate the arrival of this pioneering group. The plaque reads: “In commemoration of the arrival in 1858 of the first group of Black settlers to the Colony of Vancouver Island.”
The scouts returned to San Francisco and confirmed that living in the British colony of British Columbia, African Americans would have political and economic rights once they became British subjects. Approximately 800 African Americans settled throughout Victoria, Saanich, and Saltspring Island following the April 25, 1858 expedition. Many of these settlers were free men and women from the northern and southern U.S., while others had fled slavery from various areas in the US.
Douglas had some idea of slavery because some of his ancestors were enslaved Africans. He was born (August 15, 1803) in Mahaica, East Coast Demerara, British Guiana (Guyana) during slavery in the British colony. He was the second of three children born to Martha Ann Ritchie, an African Caribbean woman and John Douglas, a Scottish plantation owner in British Guiana. John Douglas did not marry the mother of his three children because she was not a White woman. The first child, Alexander was born in 1801 and then James two years later. John Douglas returned to Scotland and on January 15, 1809, he married Jessie Janet Hamilton, daughter of a prominent Scottish merchant. In 1811, John Douglas returned to British Guina. During the year he spent in the country Martha Ann Ritchie gave birth to his daughter, who John Douglas named Cecelia after his mother and sister. When John Douglas returned to Scotland in 1812, he took 9-year-old James and 11-year-old Alexander with him. It seems that their mother had no choice in the matter and she never saw her two sons again.
In Scotland, Alexander and James were not allowed to live with their father and his family. They were boarded out to a Scottish family (Mrs. Glendenning in New Lanark) and attended Lanark Grammar School. They soon learned that they could not live with their father because they were not White and their existence was not acknowledged by any family members except their father who visited occasionally. James adapted to their new life, while Alexander languished. Eventually they were both apprenticed to the North West Company, (Alexander in 1818 and James in 1819) a fur trading business in Montreal (1779 to 1821) and rival of the Hudson's Bay Company. On March 26, 1821, the two fur trading companies were forced to merge. In 1824 when his contract with the fur company was fulfilled Alexander Douglas was happy to leave Canada and returned to Britain. James Douglas remained with the company and thrived becoming chief trader in 1835. Douglas, a dedicated Company man loyal to the British crown was made governor of Vancouver Island in 1851. In 1858, he became Governor of the British Colony, British Columbia. During the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, there was fear that the colony could become an American state, but Douglas asserted the authority of the British Empire. He remained governor of both colonies until his retirement in 1864.
Douglas encouraged the African Americans to settle in B.C because he wanted people who would be loyal to the British Empire and resist US colonization. The British had abolished slavery in 1834 and African Americans felt safer living in a British colony.
Living in the relatively free British colony did not protect the African American pioneers from racism. In 1859, when the volunteer Fire Department was being created in Victoria, the White organizing committee refused to admit African Americans. The rejected volunteers met with Governor Douglas to offer their services as a volunteer militia unit. A war between the United States and Canada over ownership of San Juan Island seemed imminent so Governor Douglas allowed the formation of the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Company also known as the African Rifles.
James Douglas transitioned to the ancestral realm on August 2, 1877 and is buried at Ross Bay Cemetery on Vancouver Island, B.C. In the 21st century, two matching statues were unveiled in honour of James Douglas; one in B.C, Canada and the other in the village where he was born, Mahaica, Guyana.
Murphy Browne © April 21-2022
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