1842 Anglo-American treaty deserves its due
Without peaceful co-existence with the United States, there could be no Canada, Patrick Lacroix writes.
Canada 150 festivities suggest that Confederation is the nearest thing to a founding moment that our country’s slow emancipation will allow — or that Canadians can largely agree to celebrate. There is, however, cause to challenge the significance of the British North America Act.
Canada’s path to independence was not simply a gradual assumption of powers formerly exercised in London. It also involved a conscious rejection of the American experiment and Americans’ recognition of British North America as a legitimate polity in whose affairs they would not meddle. In short, there could be no Canada until peaceful coexistence with the United States was achieved. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 affirmed the shared benefits of peace between the British Empire and the Great Republic.
Two potentially devastating issues brought British and American diplomats to the negotiation table in April 1842. In the 1830s, colonial authorities’ intransigence produced rebellion in Upper and Lower Canada. Defeated insurgents fled to American soil, where they found citizens eager to turn Britain out of North America. Farther east, too, conflict was brewing. Along the ill-defined boundary between Maine and New Brunswick, the competing land claims of British subjects and American citizens led to military escalation.
Many contemporary observers believed some conflagration to be inevitable. The treaties that ended the American War of Independence and the War of 1812 had signalled that Britain and the United States would have to share North America — until one definitively prevailed over the other. It was in the nature of international politics that great powers warred with one another, after all. A rare sort of statesmanship was needed to overcome inflamed passions.
On both sides, far-sighted political and military leaders restrained war cries and would-be soldiers. They condemned unsanctioned hostile acts, treated borderland raids as matters of domestic law enforcement and engaged in extensive correspondence, which pointed to areas of common concern and potential co-operation.
Such was the spirit that animated Lord Ashburton and Daniel Webster, the diplomats appointed to resolve outstanding differences. Ashburton, scion of wealthy financiers, had done business in America and married an American. Webster, the U.S. secretary of state and a distinguished orator, hoped, like fellow Whigs, to improve relations with Britain.
The emissaries delineated the northeastern boundary with new precision and then went further. Reacting to recent slave revolts on ships, they proposed joint Anglo-American efforts to suppress the Atlantic slave trade on humanitarian and economic grounds. An extradition agreement also emerged, preventing one country from becoming a refuge for the other’s criminals. Expressing common revulsion of certain crimes, the two governments sought to create a civilized sphere transcending political boundaries.
Negotiations concluded with an exchange of diplomatic notes regarding the American ship Caroline, which British forces had seized and burned in December 1837 to halt raiding. Ashburton expressed regret that U.S. territory had been violated. He emphasized British commitment to the inviolability of U.S. sovereignty and to harmonious relations with the Republic. With president John Tyler’s blessing, Webster accepted to lay the controversy to rest.
On Aug. 9, 1842, the diplomats signed the draft treaty, appended their correspondence, and sent the document to their respective governments for ratification. Webster and Ashburton thus pulled Anglo-American relations away from mutual suspicion. Specific measures were contested, but a new course was definitively charted.
High-profile incidents again tested the peace during the U.S. Civil War. These challenges and the enactment of Canada’s Confederation helped to conceal the breakthrough of the 1840s. Quasi wars along the border had forced both parties to identify the cost of renewed military struggle, their common interests on the continent and elsewhere, and the importance of diplomacy in affirming national sovereignty.
As Canada celebrates a milestone as a semi-autonomous and then independent federation, it is worth remembering that before there could be good government, there had to be peace and order in North America.