The Odyssey of John Anderson: a book review

¶ … Odyssey of John Anderson

In November of 1860, John Anderson, an escaped slave who had been living in Canada for some years, was charged with murder. The murder had occurred seven years ago in Missouri during Anderson's escape; the victim was a white slave owner attempting to prevent Anderson from fleeing. Anderson's guilt was never in any serious question, but the case stirred up emotions and legal battles in three different countries, and for a brief time had an enormous impact on the slavery debate. In his book providing an account of the event, Canadian author and lawyer Patrick Brode explores the various legal angles of the Anderson case and the issues it touched during this highly volatile and transitional time in the legal and social development of the New World.

Brode's book the Odyssey of John Anderson quickly moves through Anderson's early life as companion and guardian for his master's two daughters and then the reputation he earned as a defiant and uncooperative slave, culminating in his sale from his lifelong master, Moses Burton, to the crueler Colonel Reuben Ellis McDaniel, with whom he would face "the harsher and more common face of slavery." Life as McDaniel's slave, separated from his wife and child, soon became too much for the free spirited Anderson, and he planned and executed an escape plan without raising any alarm. Bounty hunters were soon on is trail, however, and in a scuffle Anderson killed a man with his knife. He makes it to Canada and avoids detection despite the violent excitement and the fact that the bounty hunters are still on his trail, and basically disappears for six years.

It is here that Brode's story really takes off; it is the legal battle that took place regarding Canada's extradition of John Anderson, an escaped slave accused of murder in a country whose sympathies who were legally allied with the abolitionists in Britain and the United States but whose social sympathies were often far more racist than most cared to admit, that interest Brode. Fairness is paramount to this practitioner of the legal profession and recorder of history; he does not glorify John Anderson as many of his proponents at the time did, nor does he denigrate the judges who initially found his crime fully worthy of extradition. Instead, he attempts to peer back through a-hundred-and-thirty years of history and objectively rendered one of the most impassioned legal cases of its time. His thesis seems to be that fairness was not really in anyone's mind, except perhaps for a few of the judges who heard the various cases. The story of John Anderson, as Patrick Brode tells it, reveals that a media frenzy accompanying a court case where race is on the line is far from a modern phenomena, and that any man can become a symbol for more abstract concepts, but that in so doing their individuality and personal history may be lost.

The first three chapters of Brode's Odyssey cover the first thirty or so years of John Anderson's life -- from sometime around 1831 to 1860, when Anderson it is revealed to Canadian authorities that Anderson is wanted for murder back in Missouri, and he is arrested and jailed in Brantford. During this time, abolition was the hot button political topic. Slavery had been abolished in Canada shortly after Anderson's birth by the Imperial Act of 1833, and abolitionist groups during these three decades were popular in gaining in power in America and Britain, which still had heavy political and governmental influence on Canadian affairs. All three of these countries became involved in the struggle over the future of Anderson's life, both in the halls of government and on the level of citizenry.

Brode accurately reflects the many heated side of the slave and race question, which he stresses cannot be considered one and the same. Though Canada had banned slavery within its borders, there was still a large amount f animosity towards blacks, which was increasing during the time Anderson arrived in Brantford. Brode notes that of the three main segments of the population in Brantford, whites, native, and blacks, "the most recent presence in the country, and a presence that was frequently resented, was that of the fugitive slaves." Canadian sentiment towards blacks and escaped slaves was of paramount importance to the story of John Anderson, both in the various pressures and outcomes of the several legal battles that followed Anderson's arrest and in a larger sense as a reflection of the shifting landscape and national identity of America, Canada, and Britain.

One of the things Brode cites as causing so much uproar in the case of John Anderson -- much of it eventually in his opposition -- was the interference of a British court in the Canadian extradition proceedings. Brode's arrest was quickly discovered and trumpeted to various officials, which led to a review by a three-judge pane to determine whether or not John Anderson should and would be legally extradited to the United States on the charge of murder, despite the fact that Canada had for a long time been traditionally, and in some ways legally, a safe haven for fugitive slaves from the United States. Arguing before this panel on behalf of Anderson was Samuel Black Freeman, who according to Brode was eloquent but not actually skilled at arguing the legal aspects of a case: "Despite his ability to sway a jury, Freeman...was not renowned for his facility at arguing the fine points of law."

Unfortunately for Anderson, the case did not hinge upon the swayed hearts of a jury, but on the legal knowledge and expertise of three Canadian judges. One of these judges determined that Anderson should remain in Canada; the other two however, ruling correctly in Brode's opinion, determined that murder was an offense that according to Canadian and international law demanded extradition regardless of the circumstances, and that Anderson should be returned to Missouri to face trial for murder. This caused a public uproar with abolitionists in all three countries involved, but it also created a stir in the Canadian legal world and the stature and respectability of the Canadian judicial process. Brode notes that "in the minds of many of the people the objectivity of the courts was already highly suspect" and subject to political persuasions, and many saw this decision as caving to American desires. Others would have a chance to become even more annoyed when the British courts issued a writ that basically rendered the Canadian court's decision moot, to the pint that it began "to overshadow sympathy for Anderson." Eventually, Anderson was kept in Canada on a technicality; he then left for England and eventually Liberia, where all historical traces of him end. The impact of his life and legal battle extended much further than the few months of trials, writs, group rallies and journalism bonanzas that kept it in the public eye, however, and it is the long-term and far-reaching ramifications and implications of the Anderson case that Brode really contends with in Odyssey.

The main argument that Brode makes is that legal battles such as this one, which dealt not only with a complex moral question but also with the formation of a new body of law and standard of behavior, not to mention helping to define in a very real way the status and position of Canada as colony and country, is best looked at and decided with the only objective tool available -- a careful and thorough application of the current law. When sight of the individual case is lost under all of this external pressure and impact, as Brode's comment that "in all this controversy everyone seemed to have forgotten about the prisoner" suggests, a miscarriage of justice is the only possible outcome. In no way could Brode be considered a justifier of or apologist for slavery, but neither is he willing to condemn the judges who, as he indicates, stood up for the law the way it was written and they way they had sworn to do. As distasteful as it was in the public mouth, Brode contends that extraditing Anderson on the murder charge was the only legally justifiable choice, and that the British court should not have had -- and perhaps did not have -- the authority to reverse the decision of the Anderson when it was made by the Canadian panel.