The Road to Ferguson and The Road Not Taken

Today, even though it is American Thanksgiving Day, I want to give thanks for an historical figure who is currently being portrayed as a dastardly villain on a popular American television series: John Graves Simcoe.

Simcoe fell from grace in Hollywood because he was a successful British military commander whose infantry regiment fought to suppress the American Revolution.

But a few years after losing that war, Simcoe returned to North America as the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, where he provided leadership that was truly steadfast, and even visionary.

For some reason Simcoe was that rare creature: a privileged white Englishman who early saw slavery for the evil abomination it so truly was.

On the AMC network series Turn Simcoe is portrayed asthe effete, almost depraved, military commander of an occupying army. While the nature of his true character may be lost in the mists of time, it is a matter of historical fact, conveniently overlooked by Hollywood screenwriters, that John Graves Simcoe was a man ahead of his time.

Way, way ahead of his time: when he was stationed in the eastern English colonies Simcoe saw the potential of turning freed black slaves in Boston into fighting men to aid his cause. In fact, he petitioned his British commanders to do just that. The request, however, fell on deaf ears and was denied in 1777, ninety six years before the raising of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first all-black Regiment created at the height of the Civil War, whose