Windsor

Windsor, at the terminus of the Great Western Railway, is in the township of Sandwich. It was incorporated January 1, 1854, with a population of 1000 souls. It is now estimated to contain one thousand four hundred inhabitants. There are settled in various parts of the village fifty families of colored people, some of whom entertain as boarders a number of fugitives from bondage. Assuming an average of five in a family, the colored population may be set down at two hundred and fifty. The general appearance of these is very much in their favor. There are many good mechanics among them: nearly all have comfortable homes, and some occupy very neat and handsome houses of their own.

Appearances indicate that the inhabitants of Windsor will unite in supporting good schools for the rising generation, without distinction of color. Where separate schools exist, the advantage in respect to buildings and teachers is for the most part on the side of the whites; and unless the separate schools are abolished, there is reason to fear that the progress of the colored people in education will be very much retarded in the greater part of the province. Mrs. Mary E. Bibb, widow of the late lamented Henry Bibb, Esq., has devoted herself to teaching a private school in Windsor, and with good success. During the last spring term, she had an attendance of forty-six pupils, seven of whom were white children.

A gentleman of Windsor who has long taken a deep interest in the welfare of the African race, is of opinion that immigrants who have been engaged in agricultural pursuits in Pennsylvania and other free States are more industrious and “more to be depended upon than those who come into Canada directly from a state of slavery.” The same gentleman assured me that the best and most dexterous blacksmith he had ever known was a refugee: he had not such tools as he wanted, nor would take good ones on credit, for fear he might not be able to pay: yet he would make or mend various utensils, while other smiths could not. He is now at Buxton.

While in Windsor, I was repeatedly informed by those who have the best means of knowing, that “there is no need of raising money to aid the colored people here, unless for a day or two when a fugitive family first comes in. Women get half a dollar for washing, and it is difficult to hire them at that.”

A circumstance which fell under my notice in this township of Sandwich,^[1] reminds me of what I might with propriety have said in referring to other parts of the province, that it is fortunate for some conscience-stricken slaveholders, that Canada affords a refuge for a certain class of their household victims—their slave-wives, or slave-children, or both. If it be a crime to assist slaves in reaching a land of freedom, it is not a crime of which those terrible fellows, the northern abolitionists, alone are guilty. Slaveholders may pour contempt on the names and the deeds of northern philanthropists: but these have no slanderous epithets to hurl back upon the southerner, who snatches his children and the mother of his children from the threatening hammer of the auctioneer, and hurriedly and tearfully starts them for the North with the parting injunction, “Stop not short of Canada!” We rejoice with him that England offers a place of refuge where his wife and his offspring may be free. Yet, of any head of such a family, a northern fanatic might be prompted to ask, Is this course honorable and manly? Do not these children need both parents to look after their interests? and does not this slave-wife, ignorant and among strangers in a strange land, need your presence, your counsel, your direction? He that provideth not for his own household is worse than an infidel, and almost as bad as an abolitionist: but your family are in arrears for board, and are quartered upon the charity of persons who are themselves poor refugees.

Mr. David Cooper, who lives on the lands of the Industrial Institution, has furnished a statement which will be found below, showing the position of affairs where he resides.