At a meeting called in Stimpson, Ontario, to hear a debate on annexation v. independence or continued dependence, a vote taken after the speakers had finished showed 418 for the annexation to 21 for the status quo. It seems almost incredible, but this meeting is a good indication of the rapid strides the annexation sentiment is making among the Canadian people. The Tories cannot keep Canada out of the Union much longer.
As I have never been able to discover any place of that name in Ontario, and as there is no such post office in the official list, it is evident that the dispatch was a pure invention for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States.
Another important indication of the feeling is shown in an article in the New York Daily Commercial Bulletin in November, 1888, referring to certain political considerations as between Canada and the States. It states:
What these are may be inferred from the recent utterances of prominent American statesmen like Senator Sherman and Mr. Whitney, Secretary of the Navy, just previous to the recent election, with reference to which the Bulletin has recently had something to say. Both are inimical to commercial union unless it be also complemented by political union; or, to phrase it more plainly, they insist that annexation of Canada to the United States can afford the only effective guarantee of satisfactory relations between the two countries, if these are to be permanent. These prominent public men, representing each of the great parties that have alternately the administration of this Government in their hands, we are persuaded, did not put forth these views at random, but that they voiced the views of other political leaders, their associates, who are aiming at making Canadian annexation the leading issue at the next Presidential election. As if speaking for the Republicans, Senator Sherman, as has already been shown, thinks the country is now ready for the question; while Secretary Whitney, as if speaking for the other political party, is not less eager to bring the country face to face with it, even at the risk of a war with England, though it is but justice to him to say that he is of the opinion that the Mother Country, if really persuaded that the Canadians themselves were in favour of separating from her, would not fire a gun nor spend a pound sterling to prevent it. . . . The whole drift is unquestionably in that direction (political union), and in the meantime we do not look for positive action on the part of Congress, on either commercial reciprocity or the fisheries, at this session or the next. These questions, in all human probability, will be purposely left open by the party managers in order to force the greater issue, which, as it seems to me, none but a blind man can fail to see is already looming up with unmistakable distinctness in the future.
The New York World in the early part of 1890 “instructed its correspondents in Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec to describe impartially the political situation in Canada in regard to annexation to the United States.” The report charges Premier Mercier with being “a firm believer in annexation as the ultimate destiny of the Dominion of Canada,” but he “is too shrewd a politician to openly preach annexation to his fellow countrymen under existing circumstances.” The report also quotes the Toronto Globe as saying that the Canadian people “find the Colonial yoke a galling one,” and that “the time when Canadian patriotism was synonymous with loyalty to the British connection has long since gone by.”
The concluding paragraph of the World’s article is the most suggestive and insolent:
Nobody who has studied the peculiar methods by which elections are won in Canada will deny the fact, that five or six million dollars, judiciously expended in this country, would secure the return to Parliament of a majority pledged to the annexation of Canada to the United States.
The leading men in this conspiracy in Canada were Edward Farrer, Solomon White, Elgin Myers, E. A. Macdonald, Goldwin Smith, and John Charlton, the two latter being the only men of any prominent status or position in the movement, and after a time Charlton left it. These men were avowed annexationists, while there were a great many in favour of commercial union who did not believe that it would result in annexation, or did not care, and there were numbers who were ready to float with the stream, and quite willing to advocate annexation if they thought the movement was likely to succeed. When the Continental Union Association was formed in 1892, Goldwin Smith accepted the Honorary Presidency in Canada, for the organisation had its principal strength in New York, where a large number of prominent and wealthy men joined its ranks, Francis Wayland Glen being the Secretary. Glen became angry at the defection of some Liberal leaders after they obtained office, and gave the names of the organisers in a letter to the Ottawa Evening Journal of the 13th September, 1904, as follows:
Charles A. Dana, Andrew Carnegie, John Jacob Astor, Ethan Allen, Warner Miller, Edward Lauterbach, Wm. C. Whitney, Orlando B. Potter, Horace Porter, John Hay, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Oswald Ottendorfer, Cornelius N. Bliss, John D. Long, Jno. B. Foraker, Knute Nelson, Jacob Gallinger, Roswell P. Flower, Joseph Jno. O’Donohue, Chauncey M. Depew, John P. Jones, Wm. Walter Phelps, General Butterfield, General Henry W. Slocum, General James H. Wilson, General Granville W. Dodge, Charles Francis Adams, Oliver Ames, Seth Low, Bourke Cochrane, John C. McGuire, Dennis O’Brien, Charles L. Tiffany, John Clafflin, Nathan Straus, and Samuel Spencer.
In the list we received in addition to these there were others, nearly 500 in all.