Benjamin Drew, form The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada

What common experiences do both women report? In your opinion did most slaves share
these experiences?

In the article I read both women, Mrs. James Seward and Mrs. Nancy Howard come from
Maryland. They are both enslaved women who eventually escape to Canada. Both women are
experiencing similar abuse from their masters. They have been beaten until they bled and are
experiencing physical as well as verbal abuse. In one occasion Mrs. James Seward is even
locked up in a small cupboard for several hours. She witnesses her siblings as well as her father
being abused by the same master. I believe most slaves both men and women shared similar
experiences, being brutally beaten or whipped, verbally abused and overworked.

Why do you think both women finally settled in Canada? (Consider the year these
accounts were published)

Because of the timing on the publication of this document, which was in 1856, Mrs. James
Seward & Mrs. Nancy Howard most likely escaped around 1815 1860 which is around the
time that around 4 million slaves escaped the South and headed towards the North or Mexico
using the Underground Railroad (Brands, 250). Another reason may been because of The
Fugitive Slave Act law that the United States Congress passed in 1850, which was an agreement
between the northerners and southerners that all runaway slaves must be returned to their
masters. For many slaves back then Canada was the ideal place to be where there was freedom,
where slave catchers werent able to hurt them.