Slavery

The first movement to stop the European trade of buying and selling humans as slaves emerged in the British Parliament in the late 1700s. In 1793, Upper Canada, led by British colonial Loyalist governor John Graves Simcoe, became the first province in the British colonies to move toward abolition. In 1807, the British Parliament finally agreed to prohibit the buying and selling of slaves, and in 1833 it abolished slavery throughout its colonies, including Canada. When thousands of slaves escaped from the United States, they followed "the North Star" and settled in Canada via the "Underground Railroad".