In the late 1700s, there were rumblings in the Canadian colonies that slavery might soon be abolished. The British crown had allowed loyalists escaping the United States, after the Revolutionary War, to bring their slaves with them, and thousands of enslaved people came across the border in the years immediately following the war.
Fearing that slaves might be granted freedom by the government, slave owner Adam Vrooman decided he would try to sell the people he had enslaved so as not to lose his property rights. One of those people was a young woman named Chloe Cooley, who resisted being put in a boat and shipped across the Niagara River to be sold in America. Enraged by her resistance, Vrooman beat her, tied her up, and forced her into the boat. Chloe screamed during the entire trip across the river.
While Vrooman was briefly charged with disturbing the peace, the charges were soon dropped as Chloe was still considered property. But the brutality of the scene shocked the conscience of observers, so much so that dozens of them petitioned the Executive Council of Upper Canada, leading to the passage of the 1793 Act Against Slavery, which prohibited the importation of slaves into the province. It was the first small step toward the eventual abolition of slavery in Upper Canada by 1824.
Emotional contagion theory suggests that people converge emotionally with those around them. When one person expresses outrage, those around them are more likely to feel that same outrage. Like outrage or revulsion, courage can also be contagious. It’s one of the reasons resistance works. Sadly, Chloe Cooley was a martyr in this respect. Nobody knows what happened to her once she was delivered across the Niagara River. But her resistance put the evils of slavery in plain view, forcing people around to confront their feelings about it. Those feelings of horror, or at least profound discomfort, were enough to spark, and accelerate, an important change.