The Importance of the Border: Race and Nation

The national border marked by the Niagara River has meant many different things at different points in its history, but its most important role may well have been played out in the roughly seven decades between 1793 and the American Civil War.  In 1793 Canada abolished slavery, and while New York State was also slave-free since the early 19^th century, US law made escaped slaves fair game for headhunters even after they had reached free states.  This state of affairs eventually helped propel the nation into Civil War, but in the meantime it ensured that freedom’s true home lay across the Niagara in Canada.

Although reliable documentation is difficult to find for the American side of the river, it is clear that one of the two main branches of the Underground Railroad directed escaping slaves through the Niagara region and over the river to Canada.  Harriet Tubman, for example, crossed the Niagara River in 1851 and established a family home and base of operations among the thriving escapee community in St. Catherines.  She lived there for six years, working to finance her activities as a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad and attending the Salem Chapel BME Church on Geneva Street.

The role of Buffalo and other sites on the US side of the river in the history of race relations was a more complex and ambiguous one at best.  On the one hand, the underground railroad did undeniably pass through the region.  On the other hand, Buffalo was never too congenial a home for abolitionist activity in the 19^th century.  Racial tensions were excacerbated by a history of economic competition on the docks between white ethnics and African Americans, who, largely excluded from white labor organizations, often had little choice but to accept work as strikebreakers.  Like many other American cities, Buffalo endured draft riots during the Civil War.  Immigrants from Germany and Ireland saw little reason that they should fight for the freedom of the same African Americans who they felt threatened their livelihoods on the docks.  Perhaps for these reasons, or merely from the habit of secrecy, little in the way of reliable information about the underground railroad in the region survives.

The Civil War and its aftermath revealed that the border still mattered even during the heyday of the “borderland economy.”  While Canada maintained its neutrality during the conflict, at least some Americans did not return the favor.  The Fenians were a group of Irish immigrants centered in Buffalo who hoped to invade and capture Canada and then ransom it for Ireland’s freedom from Great Britain.  On June 2, 1866 they invaded their northern neighbor from Buffalo while the US Army turned a blind eye.  The fight was short and one-sided, as the Canadian Army quickly repulsed the invaders.  It would be the last skirmish along the Niagara border between the two nations, but it left a lasting imprint:  Canadian defenses would be designed to foil US attack until after World War II, nearly a century later.

The Civil War settled the matter of slavery in the States, but did not end the significance of the Niagara as a border for African Americans.  When W.E.B. DuBois brought together black activists in 1905 to start a more active, confrontational advocacy organization, he planned to hold the meeting in Buffalo.  But when the hotel DuBois had made arrangements with refused to deal with black patrons, he followed the old freedom trail across the river to Fort Erie, Canada, and founded the “Niagara Movement.”  In a decade, when it merged with white liberal activists, it changed its name to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and pioneered the powerful tactic of focusing on litigation and legal rights.