KING FREES HIS SLAVES

By April 1848,  King headed north with his fifteen slaves, travelling 1,500 miles on the Mississippi in a steamer and switching to a freighter for the final 500 miles on the Ohio River, to the King farm in Ohio. As the news of William's intention to free his slaves (manumit) spread, his story was printed in several newspapers, making him a celebrity and awakening public attention to the hopeless conditions of fugitive slaves.

Once in Ohio, William freed his fifteen slaves and left them in Ohio with his brother, John King.  The former slaves learned basics of survival in the north - preserving food, building shelter, and farming. King realized that just 'freeing' slaves would make them victims.

King returned to Toronto in June 1848, reported to the Toronto Synod (Presbyterian) proposing the social and moral improvement of blacks in Canada. He presented a plan outline for a proposed mission settlement with the essential requirements for success: land, church, schools.

As he wrote in his autobiography, "I believe that these persons who had escaped slavery, when placed in favourable circumstances, were able and willing to support themselves and become respectable members of society; and to accomplish that I believe it was necessary to provide homes where parents could support themselves by their own industry and their children with the blessings of a Christian education."