Free Blood and Daring by John Boyko Page B

a dispute between this country and Canada seems inevitable.” 73 Canada’s governor general, Sir Edmund Head, had seen the whirlwind coming too. He had warned his British superiors against intervention, saying, “Self Government, which is only to operate when its acts agree with the opinions of others, is a contradiction in terms.” 74
    Canadian reaction was indeed hostile. Established enemies came together against a common threat: imperial overreach. The
Globe
called the writ an “arrogant claim” and demanded it be rescinded. 75 The
Globe
‘s great rival, the conservative
Toronto Leader
, took the same stand. It wondered whether the infringement on the rights and powers of the Canadian judiciary might soon be followed by Britain’s overriding decisions of the Canadian executive and legislatures as well. 76
    Thomas Chandler Haliburton, who had enjoyed a career as a legislator and judge in Nova Scotia before moving to England and becoming a Tory member of the British House of Commons, denounced the Cockburn decision and Palmerston’s support for it. In Canada, he argued, the courts are as independent of Britain as the governor general, who is responsible to the government of Canada and not to the whims of Westminster. 77
    Macdonald kept his anger private. He wrote to the governor general, stating that what was at stake was the independence not just of the Canadian courts but of the Canadian people. Macdonald wrote: “In the case of Anderson the writ of
habeas corpus
was without doubt, sued out from praiseworthy motives, but it may hereafter be applied for … the withdrawal of Criminals from the control and jurisdiction of our Courts, and perhaps for the oppressive removal of individuals from their owncountry to a distant one.” 78 He urged the governor general to press the British government to pass a law in the next session of its Parliament rendering it illegal for British courts to issue writs in Canada. The language was tough, perhaps treasonous, and perhaps revolutionary. America was inspiring Macdonald to become a little less British and a little more Canadian. The man who took such tremendous pride in being British, and had until that point largely rejected notions of Canadian independence, was being pushed by the Anderson case to rethink his most fundamental political beliefs.
    American reaction to the British attack on Canadian sovereignty, and Britain’s desire to save Anderson, betrayed a residue of the moral and ideological outrage from the American Revolution, as well as blatant self-interest. George Dallas, the American ambassador in London, had attended the Cockburn court and cabled his notes to Washington. He told President James Buchanan that the significant and widespread British opposition to slavery was at the heart of the case and was revealed by the positive public reaction to the decision to issue the writ. 79
    Britain’s actions brought the Anderson case again to the front pages of a number of American newspapers. The
New York Times
, for instance, recognized that the case was accumulating attention throughout the American south and that Canadians were, from the Southern view, insultingly claiming the moral high ground in their refusal to release the fugitive slave. The case, the paper stated, had become a
cause célébre
and an element of the struggle that was tearing the United States apart. 80 The
New York Herald
was among many papers that reprinted Canadian stories and supported them with interpretations that were sometimes wildly off-base. The
Herald
, for instance, predicted a Canadian revolution and the likelihood that Canadians would soon ask to join the United States. The gain of Canada, it argued, would more than compensate for the possible loss of any Southern states. 81
    More attention in American papers came when famed New York abolitionist Gerrit Smith spoke at Toronto’s St. Lawrence Hall. Before a crowd of hundreds, he attacked the Canadian courts for the decision