Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources / Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"

by Sir William Howard Russell

Mr. Grattan, who was actually invited to assist at the negotiations by the American Commissioners, and went to Washington as amicus curiæ, gives a most minute and interesting account of the whole of the proceedings, and states positively that Mr. Webster sent a confidential agent to the Commissioners, proposing a line far south of the St. John’s River, before they had got further than New York, which gave great offence to Mr. Preble, by whose influence it was rejected. His pertinacity and the pomposity of Lawrence, with which we are well acquainted in England, were obstacles in the way of a calm discussion of adverse claims, but the other Commissioners are described as exceedingly forbearing, unassuming, and well-behaved.

At first Lord Ashburton seemed to make way with Mr. Webster, and to be on the point of obtaining a more favourable line than that proposed by the Netherlands compromise, but the British Commissioner had no special proof or absolute document to show that the highlands south of St. John indicated the boundary meant by the treaty of 1783. It was known that Dr. Franklin sent from Paris to Washington, at the time of making the treaty, a map on which was drawn a red ink line to show the boundary to Mr. Jefferson.

It is strange enough that, in the state of confusion caused by conflicting statements and contradictory documents, it should not have occurred to Lord Ashburton or to Mr. Grattan, who records his own anxious searches after Dr. Franklin’s map, that a counterpart might have been readily found in Paris in the archives of the Foreign Office; but the fact was, Franklin’s map could nowhere be found in the State Paper Department of Washington.

The production of that map with the red ink line must have placed the boundary question beyond the reach of controversy; in fact, the map of De Vergènnes could have been consulted at Paris, and the same red line might have been seen on it as that which was seen in Franklin’s. Lord Aberdeen had for some inscrutable reason resolved that the boundary should be drawn so as to include the settlement of Madawaska on the St. John, within the British possessions, whilst the Commissioners were equally resolute not to except an inch south of the St. John itself; and the arrangement proposed by a small European monarch was regarded by the Americans as a proof that they were entitled to all that they had asked, and that the compromise was suggested to propitiate England.

The expectations which had been entertained of an immediate adjustment were followed by a renewal of angry feeling and political commotion. Lord Ashburton, after an unequal struggle with Webster and the Commissioners, in a controversial correspondence on which he had not very wisely entered, yielded in a spirit of honourable concession the claim of Great Britain to the southern line of highlands. He was impressed somewhat, no doubt, by the vehemence and force of unanimous public opinion in America respecting the justice of their claim, the strong and general conviction felt that the country was in the right. Extended and accessible on every side, his mind could not resist the constant pressure of the audacious and penetrating weight of Webster’s intellect, and he gradually gave way like a crumbling wall to the flood-tide of intense determination by which he was assailed. The middle of the St. John was accepted as the boundary, but instead of following the highlands overlooking the valley of the St. Lawrence, a line was determined upon sixty miles more to the south, which thus removes the United States frontier to a tolerable distance from the navigation of the river and the military control of the banks.

On both sides of the Atlantic this compromise was received with expressions of disgust and anger. The Americans, knowing themselves very well and Englishmen very little, declared that Daniel Webster had been bought.

In the land of liberty it is the custom of the representatives of the people to conduct their debates in secret whenever any question of public interest arises, and the Senate ratified the treaty by a large majority, after a long debate carried on with closed doors for several days.

Some time after the treaty had been signed, it turned out that Mr. Webster had all the time possessed a map on which Franklin’s red line, tracing the boundary of 1783 south of the St. John, was distinctly marked.

The map in question was an authentic copy of one which was given to De Vergènnes by Dr. Franklin himself when the treaty was made. Its existence had been made known to the President, to the Senate, and to all the Americans engaged in the negotiation. This map was no doubt the same as that which had disappeared from the State Department. Its existence was known to many people. It appears that Mr. Jared Sparkes, of Boston, found in the archives at Paris the following letter.