Anderson Case and Rights in Canada and England (From Law, Society, and the State: Essays in Modern Legal History, P 37-72, 1995, Louis A Knafla and Susan W S Binnie, eds. -- See NCJ- 166852)

• NCJ Number: 166853
• Author(s): P Finkelman
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 36 pages
• Sale Source: University of Toronto Press
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Canada

Annotation

In the mid-19th Century, legal relations between Great Britain, post-colonial United States, and the Province of Canada are examined in the context of common law systems in a legal dispute over the fate of escaped slave John Anderson.

Abstract

In 1860 Canadian authorities arrested Anderson, a fugitive slave, on a charge that he had killed a white man while fleeing from bondage in Missouri. This set the stage for the last attempt to remove a fugitive slave from Canada. In 1860-61 Canadian abolitionists litigated Anderson's incarceration in three different courts; British abolitionists brought the case to the Court of Queen's Bench at Westminster; politicians discussed the case in Parliament; and diplomats in Washington and London argued over Anderson's status. Ultimately, a Canadian court released Anderson on a technicality. The Americans never officially requested Anderson's extradition, and the case faded away. Despite its anticlimactic ending, the Anderson case briefly threatened to bring a confrontation between Great Britain and the United States. Coming at the end of the antebellum period, however, it was quickly overshadowed by the secession crisis. In Canada and Great Britain its significance lasted longer, causing, according to one scholar, "a rethinking of the rights of Canadians within the British empire." Further, Anderson's case reveals how slavery shaped 19th-century diplomacy. 128 notes