A Plea for Emigration by Mary Ann Shadd (review)

Almost twenty years have elapsed since Richard Almonte's critical edition of Mary Ann Shadd Cary's A Plea for Emigration; or, Notes of Canada West (1998) made the work central to the study of nineteenth-century black Canadian studies. The new Broadview edition, produced under advisory editor Phanuel Antwi, will be celebrated for making the text readily available to a new generation of students and scholars.

Shadd Cary's 1852 work, composed as its extended title states "for the information of colored emigrants," provides an overview of living and working conditions in Canada, covering a variety of social, economic, legal, and environmental matters of interest. Hardly impartial, Shadd Cary stages a reasoned argument for the superiority of Canada over other possible sites of emigration including Mexico, South America, the West Indies, and Africa. While popular mythology forwards a narrative of black Canadian settlement by destitute refugees from slavery, Shadd Cary's publication draws attention to those settled African Americans in the North who, post–Fugitive Slave Law, might arrive under different circumstances. While most contemporary readers are probably less interested in soil quality and crop yields in Canada, it is noteworthy that Shadd Cary expected her readers to study this information and weigh it against their existing knowledge of US agriculture and costs. Indeed, her thorough delineation of Canadian conditions highlights the seriousness with many such individuals, families, and communities researched and debated relocation and its potential benefits and drawbacks. Humorously, Shadd Cary is not above countering the misinformation about Canada spread in southern states with statements equally driven more by ideology than exactness—I doubt many natives of Virginia, having survived a winter in the Dawn Settlement, would agree with her claim that the "climate is healthy and temperate."

The edition includes a short unsourced introduction, providing a brief biographical sketch of Shadd Cary, touching on her career as publisher and editor of the Provincial Freeman. Her text itself is positioned within the genre of settler guides, highlighting the historical circumstances that made a pamphlet explicitly directed to African Americans a viable prospect. The author has chosen to avoid the impassioned debates of the period that weighed Canada as a space for black settlement against other possible locations, instead letting Shadd Cary's own words on the matter stand. Her conflicts with other black Canadian leaders, which motivate some of her commentary, are referenced in the introduction, though not expanded on significantly. Crucial supplementary information about Shadd's contemporaries and debates is also glossed in the footnotes. However, an overview of the wider black population in Upper Canada and its operations is absent, with the edition again defaulting to Shadd Cary as the expert on such matters.

Secondary materials are organized in the "In Context" section, including accounts of African American life in the United States by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Martineau, demonstrating why Canadian emigration might be desirable. A section of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, without which Shadd Cary's pamphlet would not have been produced, is also included, inviting readers to reflect upon the stakes for many of those whom Shadd Cary is addressing. Excerpts from the Provincial Freeman usefully document Shadd's editorial stance on a variety of issues. That the Provincial Freeman is now open access might facilitate additional teaching and learning activities for those wishing to further position the text within Shadd Cary's oeuvre.

There's no doubt that Shadd Cary's text is important, imagining Canada as a space of ongoing black settlement, and attempting to articulate what black Canada might be beyond a space of refuge. This idea of Canada as a home complicates many understandings of the nation as simply an antechamber for African Americans, and should resonate with those students and scholars interested in transnational black studies and migration. Shadd Cary's discussion of education, discrimination, and various settlements of African Americans will be of interest to historians, while scholars of print culture will appreciate renewed attention to Shadd Cary's career. [End Page...