Still Lessons To Be Learned

The older I get, the more I realize how little I know. And to me, that is a good thing, because there is something both grounding and humbling in realizing the extent of one's ignorance. And it is also an invitation to continue learning, right up to the end.

While I have always been an avid reader of fiction (what else would you expect from a retired English teacher?), over the last few years, I have found myself increasingly drawn to non-fiction. Two recent books in particular steered me in some new directions, one a well-considered biography of Abraham Lincoln, which incidentally taught me a great deal about present-day fractured America, and one on Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War which actually saw a regression of rights for Black people..

All of which is a roundabout way of telling you I just learned about a little-known and shameful chapter in Canadian history, one involving aid and succor to the Confederate South during the height of the Civil War. In an excerpt from his new book, North Star - Canada And The Civil War Plots Against Lincoln, Julian Sher discusses the nefarious link between Canadians and the Confederacy, in this one example a prominent Torontonian whose sensibilities and values would offend most contemporary Canadians.

It was as close as you could get to a Southern plantation home, considering it stood in the middle of a wooded estate in the 1860s on the western outskirts of Toronto.

It was called Heydon Villa, and its owner, a wealthy and powerful aristocrat named George Taylor Denison III, sought to emulate more than the architecture of the slave South — he was an avowed ally and supporter of the Confederacy.

“I was a strong friend of the Southern refugees who were exiled in our country, and I treated them with the hospitality due to unfortunate strangers driven from their homes,” Denison wrote.

The “refugees” Denison harboured and helped were hardly the poor victims of the bloody American Civil War that raged from 1861 to 1865. On the contrary, they were the cream of the slaveholding aristocracy that had started the war — the top Confederate leaders, generals and spies.

While our country was viewed by runaway slaves as a haven, it may surprise many, as it did me, that Canada harboured great sympathy for the cause of the Confederacy, the maintenance of slavery. While officially neutral, 

many among Canada’s elites in politics, business and the church played a darker role, supporting the slave South and in fomenting numerous plots against Abraham Lincoln.

Most newspapers here were more sympathetic to the Confederates over the “mad despot” Lincoln. Catholic church leaders praised the Southern rebellion and helped hide fugitive Confederates. Bankers allowed Southern conspirators to finance their plots and launder their money.

One man, the very wealthy Dennison, 

was in the perfect position the help the Confederates when, in 1864 — three years into a war that was beginning to look bleak for them — they made a desperate effort to surprise Lincoln with unexpected attacks, from north of the border. Confederate president Jefferson Davis set aside about $1 million (about $16 million in today’s currency) to set up a Secret Service operation in Canada, headed by a Southern politician named Jacob Thompson.

That operation was aided and abetted by Dennison, who devised a system of communication to evade detection by the Union. He even went so far as to front an attempt at raising marine aid for the South:

Jacob Thompson wanted to refit a streamer called the Georgian, turn it into a sort of warship and attack Northern cities. Denison fronted $16,500 for the scheme.

Authorities, though, grew suspicious about activity around the Georgian and had it seized in the Collingwood harbour.

In April 1865, an informant inside the Canadian Confederate ranks revealed more details of the plot. When police officers raided the house of one of Denison’s accomplices in Toronto, they found bullet moulds, cartridges and — rather startlingly — 26 torpedoes in a cellar he had filled with water.

To draw this post to a close, I'll add that Dennison hosted Jeffereson Davis, the CSA President, after the war. In a CBC interview I heard yesterday afternoon with the author Julian Sher, it appears that Davis, when he arrived, was greeted by thousands of hardy enthusiasts. The same was true of his visit to Montreal. 

I know it is not fair to judge earlier times by our own standards, but such behaviour by Canadian devotees of Southern repression, exploitation and cruelty strikes me as absolutely shameful and indefensible. 

At the same time, however, it does offer a painful and pungent lesson that should puncture our innate smugness.