Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman Embracing a Correspondence of Several Years, While President of Wilberforce Colony, London, Canada West — Text and Context

A Life in Two Halves

The title itself announces a stark division: twenty-two years enslaved, forty years free. But the excerpts show that the boundary is not clean. Steward's freedom is repeatedly tested by legal and financial entanglements that reach back into his servitude. The recommendatory letters, for instance, recall his 'commencement in business' and the 'outrage and indignity offered you in Rochester, by white competitors on no other ground than that of color.' The reader is thus primed to see freedom not as a single event but as a contested status that requires constant defense. Steward's voice emerges through the documents he includes—letters, contracts, and legal complaints—rather than through dramatic scenes of escape or punishment. This documentary approach gives the narrative a forensic quality, as if Steward is building a case for his own life.

The Wilberforce Colony as a Legal Battleground

Once Steward reaches Canada, the narrative shifts from personal recollection to institutional history. The excerpts detail the founding of the Wilberforce Colony, a settlement for Black refugees from Cincinnati. Steward's role as president involves not just leadership but constant litigation. He describes a dispute with a man named Lewis, who 'had dealt somewhat extensively with Mr. Jones, who was the principal agent for the Canada Company.' When Lewis fails to pay for land, Jones refuses to sell to any Black person, and Steward must navigate the consequences. The language is precise and legalistic: 'I paid the demand; took an assignment on the back of the receipt, and passed into immediate possession of the land.' The reader watches Steward use written documents—receipts, assignments, contracts—to secure his footing in a society where his race is used against him.

The Canada Company and the Quaker Intervention

Steward's account of the Canada Company reveals the economic forces that shaped the colony. The company, 'an association of wealthy gentlemen, residing in England,' controlled the Huron Tract and initially refused to sell land to Black settlers because of Lewis's default. The Society of Friends then raised money to purchase eight hundred acres, placing the funds with agent Frederick Stover, who 'settled colored people upon it, which comprised nearly all of the Wilberforce settlement.' Steward presents this as a turning point, but he also notes that when he arrived later, 'none could be obtained.' The narrative thus documents a pattern: white benevolence is real but limited, and Black self-sufficiency is constantly undermined by the actions of a few. Steward's own purchase of a lot from Lewis—paying twenty-five dollars and taking up a note—shows how he pieced together land ownership through personal deals, not institutional support.

The Texture of Daily Struggle

Amid the legal and financial details, Steward includes moments of personal reflection that reveal the emotional cost of his position. He writes of Lewis: 'How much harm can one wicked man do! and yet it cannot be right to judge the character of a whole class or community by that of one person.' This sentence, placed after a description of Lewis's deceit, shows Steward struggling with the temptation to generalize from a single bad actor. The reader sees a man who has been burned by one member of his own community but refuses to let that experience harden into prejudice. Similarly, his account of the Quaker intervention is matter-of-fact, without sentimental gratitude. Steward's tone throughout is measured, almost judicial, as if he is aware that his words will be scrutinized by both supporters and opponents of Black settlement.

Because the excerpts focus on Steward's later years and the Wilberforce Colony, the reader should be aware that the first half of the narrative—the twenty-two years of slavery—is not represented here. The book's structure, however, suggests that Steward intends the earlier chapters to provide the foundation for the legal and economic struggles that follow. A first-time reader might benefit from noting how Steward uses documents not just as evidence but as a narrative device, turning his life into a case study of the obstacles facing free Black communities in the mid-nineteenth century.

Fifteen years ago Wilberforce filled my mind—the quiet dignity of Austin Steward’s letters felt almost devotional, how freedom required such patient documentation. I thought of that same steady longing while flipping through The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne — Story, Setting & Ideas last winter. Both men kept records like prayers, marking every small mercy. Strange, how different lives can share such a similar heartbeat.