Joshua Glover

Joshua Glover was a fugitive slave who escaped from the United States to Canada in the 1850s. His escape from recapture was part of the chain of events that led to the Civil War and the end of slavery in the U.S.

Originally from the state of Missouri, Glover escaped slavery in 1852 and sought asylum in Racine, Wisconsin.^[1][2] Two years later, upon learning his whereabouts, slave owner Benammi Stone Garland attempted to use the Fugitive Slave Act to recapture him.^[1] Glover was arrested and taken to a Milwaukee jail. Word spread of his capture, leading prominent abolitionists like Sherman Booth to galvanize popular support to free him.^[1] On March 18, 1854, Glover was broken out of prison by a crowd of more than 5,000 people, (according to the Sauk County Standard, March 1854) and was secretly taken back to Racine through the Underground Railroad.

From here he traveled by boat to Canada,^[1] where he spent the rest of his life. He settled outside the city of Toronto, in present-day Etobicoke.

The tale of Glover's dramatic escape spread in newspapers across the north, making him a local folk-hero. Historians^[1] today view his story from the perspective of the final decade of slavery in America, amid rising tensions between the north and south in the years leading to the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. The rescue of Glover and the federal government's subsequent attempt to prosecute Booth helped to galvanize the abolitionist movement in the state, and the event is seen as an important step in strengthening and legitimizing the northern abolitionist movement as a popular political force.^[3] After Glover's escape, the state of Wisconsin would go against the federal government and declare the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional, the only state to do so.^[4] It was in this context, some nine days after Glover's escape, that the Republican Party was founded, in Ripon, Wisconsin.^[5]