A Resistance History of the United States by Tad Stoermer

Author:Tad Stoermer [Stoermer, Tad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2026-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Northern Star: How Canada Became Freedom

Understanding the Underground Railroad requires understanding its endpoint. Resistance networks only function when they can reliably remove people from the reach of abusive authority—not just relocate them within the same system of control. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 had already demonstrated that “free” states offered no real sanctuary; federal law enabled those entrusted with it, such as George Washington, to abuse their authority by reaching anywhere within American jurisdiction to drag people back into bondage. What transformed isolated escapes into a sustained resistance network was the emergence of a genuine terminus: British territory where American slave law held no power.

For clandestine networks to scale up, they needed more than individual courage—they required that fixed point beyond American reach. Without it, the Underground Railroad would have been merely an internal relocation system, moving people from one precarious situation to another within the same hostile jurisdiction. As Ona Judge’s interviewer reminded readers of The Liberator in 1847, she remained a fugitive in New Hampshire, forever under threat from Martha Washington’s heirs.

That destination began to take shape beyond the Northern border, where Canada emerged as a haven through three decisive moments: a legal breakthrough in 1793, wartime acceleration during the War of 1812, and legal ratification in 1819. Each step was driven by enslaved people themselves, whose resistance forced the law to catch up with the freedom they seized.

The first breakthrough came when one woman—Chloe Cooley—refused to submit.

What we know about Chloe Cooley has to be pieced together from what we know about her enslavers. She had been claimed as property by Benjamin Hardison, a patriot from Maine who was captured in the siege of Quebec at the end of 1775. Hardison liked Canada so much that he remained there after his release, becoming a major property owner—and an enslaver—in Fort Erie. At some point in the early 1790s, Hardison sold Chloe to Adam Vrooman, a white loyalist from New York. But Vrooman, like many enslavers in Upper Canada after the Revolutionary War, saw the beginning of the end of slavery there. Perhaps sensing that, too, Chloe had for some time engaged in day-to-day resistance, rendering her a troublesome property for Vrooman. So he decided to cash out to the only place that slavery’s future could be depended upon – across the Niagara River in New York.

Upper Canada’s 1793 Act to Limit Slavery emerged directly from Chloe Cooley’s refusal to submit to Vrooman.

On March 14, 1793, Vrooman and two men tied Cooley with rope, forced her into a boat, and began dragging her across the Niagara River to sell her in the United States.

Cooley fought back. Her screams echoed across the water and reached Peter Martin, a free Black loyalist veteran who had served with Vrooman in the war against the patriots. Martin took the incident straight to Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe—the same officer who had carried away Isaac Jefferson’s family during the Revolutionary War, the same commander who had witnessed free Black communities fighting the patriots.

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