Preservation of the TRUE Henry Dundas Legacy

The legacy of Henry Dundas has been distorted and attacked. The true story of Dundas’s record on slavery and the slave trade is being buried. We hope to change that.

We are raising funds to cover the costs of launching a media campaign to raise awareness of the true Henry Dundas legacy. We will advertise, publish a website, conduct outreach and related actions to ensure the truth about Henry Dundas is shared. 

 

The truth is: Henry Dundas opposed slavery. He described it as “unjust” and “immoral” as early as 1776 during his successful pro bono defence of a Jamaican slave, Joseph Knight. Dundas won freedom for Knight, arguing that slavery was “unjust” and “immoral.” He said: “no man is by nature the property of another.” The court agreed, and declared that no one could be a slave in Scotland.

 

Henry Dundas opposed the slave trade. By seeking a practical solution to a political impasse in 1792, he convinced the British Parliament to vote to abolish the slave trade for the first time in its history. Later, he gave abolitionists advice about how to achieve their goals. The same abolitionists later regretted rejecting his advice.

 

Henry Dundas commissioned an avowed abolitionist, John Graves Simcoe, to be Upper Canada’s first Lieutenant-Governor. Simcoe went on to ensure passage of the first anti-slavery legislation anywhere in the British Empire.

 

Dundas took a progressive approach on other issues as well. He ordered Canadian officials to respect Indigenous land rights, to adopt official bilingualism, and to respect the rights of Black soldiers who had fought for Britain. In the UK he defended religious freedom, opposed the wholesale colonization of India, and fought for the return of land seized from the families of Jacobites.

 

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