The Nelson Hackett Project

An on-going project to explore the life and struggle of Nelson Hackett

Learn about a single man’s incredible struggle that activated a trans-Atlantic and biracial network of activists working to undermine the institution of slavery

Sometime in the middle of July 1841, Nelson Hackett fled both Arkansas and slavery, setting off an international dispute that would ensure that Canada remained a safe refuge for those escaping bondage in the United States.

Read more about the project

The Players

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Follow Hackett's Flight

A primary problem in trying to reconstruct Hackett’s flight is that there are few records of his words and thoughts. This problem is rooted in the racism that undergirded chattel slavery and created most of its archival record. Hackett’s flight is therefore reconstructed using other voices, including abolitionists (both white and black), journalists, colonial and elected officials, and slave owners and their apologists.

View the interactive mapView the full details of the journey

The Documents

“Address of the Colored People of Hamilton to Sir Allan Napier MacNab,” Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario.

“Address of the Colored People of Hamilton to Sir Allan Napier MacNab,” Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario.

We cannot refrain however from intimating to you one circumstance which has recently occurred of an unhappy kind to us as a people, one of our number, Nelson Hacket, has been taken from Sandwich by night and given up to the injustice of Slave claimers, the...

The-Arrest-Extract-from-a-Letter-Written-by-Mr-Work
“The Arrest: Extract of a letter written by Mr. Work,” in Narrative of Facts Respecting Alanson Work. Jas. E. Burr & Geo. Thompson, Prisoners in the Missouri Penitentiary, for the Alleged Crime of Negro Stealing (Quincy, IL: Quincy Whig Office, 1842), 6-7.

“The Arrest: Extract of a letter written by Mr. Work,” in Narrative of Facts Respecting Alanson Work. Jas. E. Burr & Geo. Thompson, Prisoners in the Missouri Penitentiary, for the Alleged Crime of Negro Stealing (Quincy, IL: Quincy Whig Office, 1842), 6-7.

THE   ARREST. Extract of a letter written by Mr. Work. DEAR   BROTHER:  "I am a prisoner in a land where to tell a mart born in the image of his Maker that he has a right to freedom, is a crime of the deepest dye. A brother from the institution having been in...

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