A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 3, part 2: Martin Van Buren

by Unknown

To the Senate:

I transmit for the constitutional action of the Senate a supplemental article to the treaty with the Chippewas of Saganaw, which accompanied my communication of the 21st instant, and explanatory papers from the War Department.

M. VAN BUREN.

WASHINGTON, February 26, 1839.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

I lay before Congress several dispatches from his excellency the governor of Maine, with inclosures, communicating certain proceedings of the legislature of that State, and a copy of the reply of the Secretary of State, made by my direction, together with a note from H.S. Fox, esq., envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of Great Britain, with the answer of the Secretary of State to the same.

It will appear from those documents that a numerous band of lawless and desperate men, chiefly from the adjoining British Provinces, but without the authority or sanction of the provincial government, had trespassed upon that portion of the territory in dispute between the United States and Great Britain which is watered by the river Aroostook and claimed to belong to the State of Maine, and that they had committed extensive depredations there by cutting and destroying a very large quantity of timber. It will further appear that the governor of Maine, having been officially apprised of the circumstance, had communicated it to the legislature with a recommendation of such provisions in addition to those already existing by law as would enable him to arrest the course of said depredations, disperse the trespassers, and secure the timber which they were about carrying away; that, in compliance with a resolve of the legislature passed in pursuance of his recommendation, his excellency had dispatched the land agent of the State, with a force deemed adequate to that purpose, to the scene of the alleged depredations, who, after accomplishing a part of his duty, was seized by a band of the trespassers at a house claimed to be within the jurisdiction of Maine, whither he had repaired for the purpose of meeting and consulting with the land agent of the Province of New Brunswick, and conveyed as a prisoner to Frederickton, in that Province, together with two other citizens of the State who were assisting him in the discharge of his duty.

It will also appear that the governor and legislature of Maine, satisfied that the trespassers had acted in defiance of the laws of both countries, learning that they were in possession of arms, and anticipating (correctly, as the result has proved) that persons of their reckless and desperate character would set at naught the authority of the magistrates without the aid of a strong force, had authorized the sheriff and the officer appointed in the place of the land agent to employ, at the expense of the State, an armed posse, who had proceeded to the scene of these depredations with a view to the entire dispersion or arrest of the trespassers and the protection of the public property.

In the correspondence between the governor of Maine and Sir John Harvey, lieutenant-governor of the Province of New Brunswick, which has grown out of these occurrences and is likewise herewith communicated, the former is requested to recall the armed party advanced into the disputed territory for the arrest of trespassers, and is informed that a strong body of British troops is to be held in readiness to support and protect the authority and subjects of Great Britain in said territory. In answer to that request the provincial governor is informed of the determination of the State of Maine to support the land agent and his party in the performance of their duty, and the same determination, for the execution of which provision is made by a resolve of the State legislature, is communicated by the governor to the General Government.

The lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, in calling upon the governor of Maine for the recall of the land agent and his party from the disputed territory, and the British minister, in making a similar demand upon the Government of the United States, proceed upon the assumption that an agreement exists between the two nations conceding to Great Britain, until the final settlement of the boundary question, exclusive possession of and jurisdiction over the territory in dispute. The important bearing which such an agreement, if it existed, would have upon the condition and interests of the parties, and the influence it might have upon the adjustment of the dispute, are too obvious to allow the error upon which this assumption seems to rest to pass for a moment without correction. The answer of the Secretary of State to Mr. Fox's note will show the ground taken by the Government of the United States upon this point. It is believed that all the correspondence which has passed between the two Governments upon this subject has already been communicated to Congress and is now on their files. An abstract of it, however, hastily prepared, accompanies this communication. It is possible that in thus abridging a voluminous correspondence, commencing in 1825 and continuing to a very recent period, a portion may have been accidentally overlooked; but it is believed that nothing has taken place which would materially change the aspect of the question as therein presented. Instead of sustaining the assumption of the British functionaries, that correspondence disproves the existence of any such agreement. It shows that the two Governments have differed not only in regard to the main question of title to the territory in dispute, but with reference also to the right of jurisdiction and the fact of the actual exercise of it in different portions thereof.