Executive Summary
HENRY DUNDAS AND ABOLITION – THE MISSING PIECES
A false narrative has taken hold regarding the legacy of Henry Dundas, and his stance on the abolition of the slave trade. Activists have accused him of seeking to delay the abolition of the slave trade, and have ignored massive amount of evidence, produced over his entire political career, that he abhorred slavery and the slave trade.
As a young lawyer, Dundas represented Joseph Knight, an African brought to Scotland as a child from Jamaica who later decided to fight for his freedom. Dundas led his legal team and achieved a declaration from Scotland’s highest court that no man could be a slave on Scottish soil.
When the abolition movement emerged in Britain a decade later, Dundas frequently declared his support for the cause. He also argued, however, that abolitionists needed to go farther. Their sole focus was on the slave trade, and he urged them also to seek the abolition of slavery itself. Dundas argued that “justice and humanity” required that both slavery and the slave trade be abolished together.
Henry Dundas was the first parliamentarian in Britain to speak publicly in favour of the abolition of slavery and the slave trade.
Dundas also warned, however, that seeking “immediate and complete” abolition was too ambitious. Such a policy would simply drive the slave trade into the hands of foreign powers. He recommended a strategic and cautious approach. In 1792, William Wilberforce tabled a motion in support of immediate abolition. The motion was heading for certain defeat until Dundas proposed an amendment. Dundas proposed “gradual” abolition, rather than immediate. His amendment carried the day, and resulted in a decisive victory for abolition. For the first time in British history, Parliament voted in favour of abolition, and did so with a decisive majority of 230 votes to 85. It was a partial but irreversible step towards the ultimate goal of complete abolition of the slave trade.
Dundas was also the first and only MP in the 1790’s to advocate for the eradication of hereditary slavery – the practice of slave owners claiming ownership of the children born to their slaves. In addition, he proposed mandatory education for these children to equip them to become free and contributing members of society in the West Indies.
Abolitionists, however, refused to cooperate with any plan for gradual abolition. Thirty years later they came to regret their resistance and admitted that Dundas was right – gradual abolition, and abolition of both slavery and the slave trade together, would have been a better strategy for them to adopt.
Henry Dundas also deployed policies in Canada that supported equity and fairness to minorities:
· As Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Dundas ordered the governors of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to honour Britain’s commitments for land grants to former slaves who had fought for the British during the American Revolution. He also offered these veterans and their families passage son Royal Navy ships for repatriation to Africa. More than 1200 accepted this offer and travelled to Sierra Leone in early 1793.
· Dundas commissioned an avowed abolitionist, John Graves Simcoe, to be Upper Canada’s first Lieutenant Governor, and oversaw his successful campaign to legislate the end of slavery in what is now Ontario. By the time Britain got around to outlawing slavery throughout the British empire, slavery was virtually non-existent in Ontario.
· Dundas also gave instructions to Simcoe to ensure that the hunting grounds of indigenous nations were protected when the Americans were making military forays into Upper Canada.
· He told the governor with oversight of Lower Canada, now Quebec, to allow French-speaking parliamentarians to pass laws in French – a bitter point of dispute in the newly formed legislative assembly in Quebec City. Dundas thus became the first senior official to endorse a policy of bilingualism in Canada.
Dundas thus consistently supported recognition of human rights, and sought to protect oppressed minorities, at a time when the term “human rights” was not even known.