Beschreibung:

(African American, 1851) Michigan timber merchant’s letter to his brother in New England about Black Walnut logging by ex-slaves in Canada Author: Hadley, Clark Place Published: St. Clair, Michigan Date Published: June 8-15, 1851 Description: Autograph letter Signed, 3 pp.+stampless address leaf. To his brother George P. Hadley, Goffstown, New Hampshire. In a letter detailing his lumber business and the perils of life in pioneer Michigan, Hadley’s comments about the logging of valuable Black Walnut across the Canadian border offer important details about fugitive slaves in Canada. “In Canada about five miles East of us on Bare Creek, a steam running parallel with this river St. Clair, there is as handsome Black Walnut as there is in the world, it is owned by Negroes and indeans, the Negroes work some in the Business getting out Branches. I expect some indeans over here this summer to sell us some ot their lands as we have a man negotiating with them, or rather trying to have them sell. They say they will come over this summer but I don’t expect much from an Indean, he is Indean and will live Indean still, if you should see as many of them as I do you would not think much of them. They are Lazy set of humanity…” Twenty years before, Josiah Henson had escaped from horrendous enslavement in Maryland, becoming a prosperous merchant in Ontario, where he organized a community of escaped slaves, trained to process Black Walnut. The joint Black Walnut venture of which Hadley writes was undoubtedly connected to Henson’s saw mill and logging operation. This may be the first suggestion that it involved a partnership of African-Americans and the “lazy” Native Americans ironically disparaged by Hadley. Henson was one of the most famous liberated Blacks in America after publishing his memoirs two years before – later claiming that he had inspired the title character of Harriet Beecher’s Stowe impending classic novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Condition: Very good. Item#: 347021 Headline: Escaped slaves, Indians and the ‘real’ Uncle Tom in Canada