ople, at which
resolutions of sympathy were passed. Among those on the platform at
this meeting were L. H. Holton, afterwards a member of the
Brown-Dorion and Macdonald-Dorion administrations, and John Dougall,
founder of _The Montreal Witness_. At Chatham and other places in the
western part of the province similar meetings were held.

The slave-holding States were by no means blind to the amount of
support and encouragement that was coming from Canada for the
abolitionists.[6] They were quite aware that Canada itself had an
active abolitionist group. They probably had heard of the Chatham
convention; they knew of it, at least, as soon as the raid was over.
In his message to the legislature of Virginia immediately after the
Harper's Ferry incident Governor Wise made direct reference to the
anti-slavery activity in Canada. "This was no result of ordinary
crimes," he declared. "... It was an extraordinary and actual
invasion, by a sectional organization, specially upon slaveholders and
upon their property in negro slaves.... A provisional government was
attempted in a British province, by our own countrymen, united to us
in the faith of confederacy, combined with Canadians, to invade the
slave-holding states ... for the purpose of stirring up universal
insurrection of slaves throughout the whole south."[7]

Speaking further of what he conceived to be the spirit of the North he
said: "It has organized in Canada and traversed and corresponded
thence to New Orleans and from Boston to Iowa. It has established
spies everywhere, and has secret agents in the heart of every slave
state, and has secret associations and 'underground railroads' in
every free state."[8]

Speaking on December 22, 1859, to a gathering of medical students who
had left Philadelphia, Governor Wise is quoted as saying: "With God's
help we will drive all the disunionists together back into Canada. Let
the compact of fanaticism and intolerance be confined to British
soil."[9] _The New York Herald_ quoted Governor Wise as calling upon
the President to notify the British Government that Canada should no
longer be allowed, by affording an asylum to fugitive slaves, to
foster disunion and dissension in the United States. Wise even seems
to have had the idea that the President might be bullied into
provoking trouble with Great Britain over this question. "The war
shall be carried into Canada," he said in one of his outbursts.[10]

Sympathy for the South was