To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1783-1843

By Howard Jones

The Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, which led to the settlement of the Canadian boundary dispute, was instrumental in maintaining peace between Great Britain and the United States. Jones analyzes the events that aggravated relations to show the affect of America's states' rights policy, and he concludes that the two countries signed the treaty because they considered it the wisest alternative to war, not because of the often-claimed strategic distribution of money.

Originally published in 1977.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781469640228

Book preview

To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty

A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1783–1843

To The Webster-Ashburton Treaty

A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1783–1843

by Howard Jones

The University of North Carolina Press

Chapel Hill

Cartography on pages x, 99, 135, and 155

by Marcy Johnston and Dariel Mayer

Copyright ® 1977 by

The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN 0-8078-1306-0

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 76-58341

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Jones, Howard, 1940–

To the Webster-Ashburton treaty.

The Webster-Ashburton treaty: p.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Washington, Treaty of, 1842. 2. Northeast boundary of the United States. 3. United States—Foreign relations—Great Britain. 4. Great Britain—Foreign relations—United States. I. United States. Treaties, etc., 1841-1845. (Tyler). Boundary, slave trade, and extradition. 1977. II. Title. E398.J66 327.73’041 76-58341

ISBN 0-8078-1306-0

For Mary Ann, Debbie, Howie, and Shari

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. The Great Northeastern Boundary Gap

2. The Caroline Affair

3. The Aroostook War

4. The Case of Alexander McLeod

5. Slavery and National Honor

6. Prologue to Compromise

7. The Peacemakers

8. Completion of the Compromise

9. The Maintenance of National Honor

Appendix: The Webster-Ashburton Treaty

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Northeastern Boundary Problem, 1783–1842 | 4

Daniel Webster | 53

Alexander Baring, Lord Ashburton | 97

Alexander Baring’s Maine Lands | 99

Jared Sparks’s Map of Maine | 105

Fair Rosamond; Or, The Ashburton Treaty | 119

Northwest Boundary | 135

The Oregon Question | 155

The peace of the Country when I reached Washington, on the 6th day of April 1841, was suspended by a thread, but we converted that thread into a chain cable of sufficient strength to render that peace secure, and so enable the Country to weather the storms of faction by which it was in every direction assailed.

—JOHN TYLER to DANIEL WEBSTER, 12 Mar. 1846 (WP [F20/26772].)

Preface

The primary purpose of this study is to show how the United States and Great Britain used the tactics of compromise to negotiate the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 and thereby reduce the threat of a third Anglo-American war. The theme of peace has enduring appeal. For almost a century after the Congress of Vienna there was no major war in Europe. An indirect result of this uniquely calm period on the Continent was the development of one of the most unusual and important international relationships ever recorded—that between the United States and Britain. Torn between mutual interests and burning animosities, this shaky Anglo-American understanding almost collapsed by 1842 when the elements working for good relations seemed about to give way again to war. But this time the diplomats would win, taking advantage of the complementary nature of the two nations’ relationship, as well as their domestic and foreign troubles, to push them closer together after their last war in 1812–14.

Though the Webster-Ashburton Treaty was instrumental in maintaining peace between the Atlantic nations, there has been no full-scale, scholarly analysis of the settlement, and existing assessments are either incomplete or superficial. No historians have adequately placed the pact within the perspective of nineteenth-century Anglo-American relations, nor have they noted its effects on the international history of North America. Indeed, many have assigned the treaty to the background because of other important events during the 1840s, both domestic and foreign—in the United States, internal politics, Texas, Pacific coastal matters, the Mexican War; in Britain, internal political and economic problems, demands for social reform, Afghanistan, China, Egypt, France, Russia. Many writers seem to have overlooked the consequences of the treaty in their haste to move on to Oregon, Mexico, and the Civil War.

Close examination of the agreement shows that the crucial element lacking in Anglo-American relations after the War of 1812 was mutual trust, a deficiency that by the 1840s had increased the danger of war. If hindsight suggests no real threat of conflict in 1842, contemporary Anglo-American observers would not have shared this confidence. British and American documents reveal that each nation feared the other’s motives and made contingency preparations for a war neither side wanted. Anti-British and anti-American feelings still ran deep. Though forces were operating for pacific relations, many veteran political, diplomatic, and military figures regretfully believed there was no way short of war to uphold both nations’ prestige. The major personalities who virtually had at their command the decision for peace included Daniel Webster, John Tyler, Edward Everett, Lord Ashburton, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Aberdeen. They confronted serious questions involving national honor and for that reason the pact they helped to secure deserves more attention.

Several factors justify a careful study of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. In addition to the lack of a monograph on the subject, there is need to revise the harsh conclusions some historians have drawn about the treaty and the roles played in its negotiation by Secretary of State Webster and British Special Minister Ashburton.¹ This book attempts to show the importance of the settlement to Anglo-American relations, to establish the respectability of the two men’s performances during their talks in Washington, and to place the treaty within the context of North American developments. New evidence uncovered in American, British, and Canadian archives necessitates revisions in the traditional story of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. To cite examples, there was nothing discreditable about the red-line map controversy; the documents do not substantiate the charge that there was a private exchange of money between Webster and Ashburton; Webster did not sacrifice American interests for personal motives; his use of New England newspapers in arousing support for the northeastern boundary settlement was not a simple matter of propaganda; the agreement did not result entirely from open diplomacy. Webster and Ashburton signed the treaty because they considered it the wisest alternative to war—not because of the oftclaimed strategic distribution of money. In view of the adversity that confronted both men during the 1840s, an investigation into how they managed to resolve so many Anglo-American difficulties should tell us something about the peaceful settlement of international disputes.

There are other reasons for this study. An analysis of the treaty’s formation alters the usual characterization of early nineteenth-century American foreign policy as shirtsleeve diplomacy. The conduct of the negotiations and the reaction in the United States to the settlement show that some Americans had learned the value of compromise in diplomatic affairs. This study upholds the traditional view of isolationism during the nineteenth century—that the United States exploited Britain’s domestic and foreign problems in negotiating a treaty that protected America’s interests on this continent. It also illustrates that a major grievance by Americans throughout the period under consideration was their belief, however mistaken, that Britain refused to recognize the United States as a nation as worthy of respect as a European state. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty helped convince Americans that they had won British approval, and because of this it temporarily brought better relations.

If Britain and the United States after 1815 moved toward rapprochement, as several historians have argued, many issues still remained by the 1840s—some relatively minor in importance—that continued to provoke widespread anger on both sides of the Atlantic. Trust between nations should overcome differences by making negotiation the most feasible path to follow. But this was not always the case from 1815 to 1842. Some Britons, for example, countered Americans’ complaints about British arrogance with insults. A London journal acidly remarked that before America can deserve the name of a wise nation it must rid itself of its republicanism, its nationalistic ‘fourth of July harangues,’ [and its] nonsense about ‘flying eagles and never-setting stars,’ … and the infinite superiority of the Yankee over all mankind, past, present, and to come.² Each side was ready—almost anxious—to criticize and to believe the worst of the other, so that the slightest disagreement caused wrathful outbursts among both English-speaking peoples. This lack of trust forced the British to resort to a special mission.

In searching for forces pulling peoples and nations together, it is easy to ignore or to underestimate the power of issues driving them apart. No one can deny that by the middle of the nineteenth century social, political, and economic factors encouraged better Anglo-American relations; but too much emphasis on these elements obscures the fact that the growing connection was confined primarily to the Northern states and Britain. The South’s contacts were with the Tories, an English party in decline. Such a narrow approach also hides the important point that not all Atlantic spokesmen sought closer ties. One can argue that humanitarian reformers, for example, were sincere in their professed concerns, but he also can ask whether they were open to cooperation only insofar as this move aided their cause at home. The most significant reservation to the theory is that the complementary nature of the Atlantic relationship began to fade by the time of the American Civil War. During the 1840s the balance of trade shifted in favor of the United States; after the Civil War the Republic turned inward to reconstruct the nation and to experience its industrial revolution. In the meantime British skeptics sighed with relief that their reformers no longer could envy the United States, for it was becoming predominantly materialistic, and they declared with satisfaction that the United Kingdom had achieved what they considered to be the optimum social, political, and economic changes.³ These observations raise serious questions about whether this alleged movement toward each other was a genuine manifestation of Anglo-American friendship.

Part of the explanation for Britain’s watchful attitude toward the United States lay in its apprehension about the aggressiveness of America’s form of government. Many Englishmen by the 1840s demanded reform at home, and it is no surprise that conservative spokesmen frequently denounced America. The democratic example across the Atlantic was no comfort to a country threatened with violence at home. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine of London attributed America’s assumed inability to conciliate differences to its republicanism. According to the writer, the restlessness of that government placed the highest interests of the United States at the mercy of the multitude and generated an infantile approach to international affairs. John Croker, respected naval and political figure, warned of what happened to France when its so-called democratic revolutions rocked the country’s foundations. Reformers in Britain, he said, were wrong when they claimed that America had undergone successful democratic upheaval. No undermining of property rights and no major societal changes had occurred. In addition, Croker pointed out, Britain did not have the physical capacity to absorb dissidents. A democracy must have room for the discontented; otherwise it will fall victim to its factions. He concluded, as did many others of the Napoleonic generation, that it was not healthy to follow the democratic standard of the United States.⁴

Some political leaders in both countries, surveying the domestic and foreign dangers, saw the great risks involved in another Anglo-American war and resolved to work toward cordial relations. They faced serious obstacles—including America’s insistence upon states’ rights. Though the new, conciliatory atmosphere in London and Washington was conducive to compromise, a formal settlement of the northeast boundary and other issues depended almost as much on maintaining harmony between America’s state and federal governments. Negotiated agreements, the diplomats came to realize, were subject to approval of the American states directly involved in the particular question. At a time when few Americans considered the federal government the final arbiter of domestic disputes, presidential administrations often had to make policy according to wishes of states’ rightists. This situation should not surprise students of slavery, tariffs, land questions, the national bank, and internal improvement programs—but historians sometimes forget that the doctrine of states’ rights also affected America’s foreign policy.

Most Anglo-American issues by the 1840s involved policy disagreements between local and national levels of government in the United States. The northeastern boundary, the Caroline affair, the Aroostook War, the African slave trade and the attendant questions of impressment and the right of search, the Creole incident and extradition, the growing dispute over Oregon—all showed the danger in allowing local events to determine national policy. The people of New Brunswick and Maine risked forcing two nations into war because of a long-standing boundary dispute. The Caroline crisis, which caused some to speak of possible conflict between Britain and the United States, resulted from aid New Yorkers illegally gave to Canadians rebelling against crown rule and from a deep-rooted American desire for continental union. Three years later the Atlantic nations resumed their threats of war when Alexander McLeod, a British citizen arrested for suspicion of murder and arson during the Caroline attack, went to trial in New York because the federal government lacked authority to prevent a state from trying a case affecting international relations. The Aroostook War, an outgrowth of the northeastern boundary dispute, started as a lumberjacks’ brawl, but local events soon threatened to get out of hand. Slavery itself became entangled in foreign affairs. Southerners, already angry with Britain for claiming a right of search in suppressing the African slave trade, demanded a promise of noninterference with American shipping after Nassau authorities freed mutinous slaves of the Creole. And, though Oregon was not a serious issue in 1842, it had the potential to become one, if western migration continued. Handled one by one, these matters might not have become difficult. But they reached crisis stage in quick succession, so that, between 1837 and 1842, leaders of the two countries were almost never without problems.

In sum, Anglo-American relations were in deep trouble again by the 1840s. Mutual suspicions, America’s states’ rights doctrine, the uneasy political situation in the United States—all threatened to override the social, political, economic, and demographic forces encouraging conciliation.⁵ Evidence indicates that the Tyler administration wanted to act decisively toward Britain. But the peculiar position of Maine in the boundary controversy and the fight within the Whig party between the nationalistic forces of Henry Clay and the few states’ rightists following Tyler made it difficult to formulate policy. In a painstaking, almost desperate manner, the president sought to resolve his dilemma of having to please the states involved in the controversies, while acting resolutely toward the British government. When he threatened to revert to the shirtsleeve tactics of Andrew Jackson, Britishers saw consistency in America’s approach to foreign policy.

A study of Anglo-American affairs during the 1840s strongly suggests that the Tyler administration based much of its British policy upon power politics. Though the president and his secretary of state, Daniel Webster, might have wanted to adhere to party doctrine or to ideological persuasions, they were realists who knew that meaningful diplomacy derives from carefully balancing the nation’s priorities with its means of enforcement. It was doubtful that the United States could create an effective military barrier against British moves in North America; but it might secure a settlement favorable to American interests by taking advantage of the island kingdom’s domestic and foreign difficulties, as well as the recently developed connections between the Atlantic nations.⁶ Tyler and Webster at times only stumbled in this direction, but the outcome made it appear that they had carefully measured each step.

One cannot understand America’s foreign policy during the 1840s without considering its domestic context. The State Department could not count on effective support from a national government too weak to control domestic concerns. Washington’s diplomats had to resort to secret means. Another factor was the differing political ideologies of America’s policy makers. Tyler’s states’ rights beliefs often ran counter to his secretary of state’s adherence to nationalism.⁷ Webster consistently disagreed with states’ righters in Maine and New York, a stance that must have been difficult for the president to accept. Yet Tyler agreed with his secretary that national concerns took priority over private or state considerations. The administration’s foreign policy was well conceived, but ineptly executed. As has been the case throughout America’s history, rational approaches to diplomatic problems often got entangled in domestic politics and emerged in different form. Tyler’s foreign policy was in large part the product of internal political factors that complicated and sometimes obstructed the decision-making and implementation processes.

In assessing America’s relations with Britain during the 1840s, it is important to note Webster’s influence on Tyler. If the secretary was not an avowed expansionist, he recognized the danger of having a potential enemy firmly established along America’s borders. If he was an Anglophile, he still was cautious about British aims in North America.⁸ Webster realized that the United States could not force Britain from the continent. Yet he understood that a military road in the north was important to London and exerted pressure at strategic points in securing a favorable settlement. Webster’s background as a lawyer convinced him that the United States had to base its foreign policy on sound, legally defensible grounds. Throughout the controversies with Britain, he stressed the importance of adhering to international law—admittedly because it sometimes was to America’s advantage. But Webster—and Tyler—knew that in dealing with Britain, a nation with a long legal tradition, their most effective weapon was a foreign policy guided by the national interest and supported by the laws among nations.

Thus this study offers a different perspective of nineteenth-century diplomacy between the United States and Britain. It is impossible to ignore the elements that led to division and ultimately could have caused war. Only by identifying the components of the derision that characterized much of Anglo-American history after 1815 can one determine the strength of the ameliorative factors. The hostility that can arise when two peoples know each other so well and associate so closely becomes plain from a study of the Atlantic nations’ common history. An abiding lack of faith in each other’s motives created a highly sensitive atmosphere that lasted throughout much of the early nineteenth century. At first glance the diplomats apparently achieved the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with little trouble—the natural culmination of a series of low-key talks that placed the stamp of placidity on the early 1840s. This assessment is inaccurate. The surface calm and apparent openness of their talks concealed shrewd maneuvering by both negotiators. Webster and Ashburton recognized the necessity of resorting to the ancient art of personal diplomacy in establishing mutual trust and bringing about more than the mere rhetoric of peace. More important than the public issues, they dealt with questions involving national honor and control of North America—vital interests that raised the specter of power politics. Recent events had reaffirmed the realization in British minds that in the future the United States intended to influence expansionist activities in North America. A major test of their rivalry over the continent was the northeastern boundary dispute.

Acknowledgments

I have incurred numerous debts in writing this book. Special appreciation goes to Maurice G. Baxter, Robert H. Ferrell, Irene D. Neu, and David M. Pletcher, who offered continuous advice and encouragement. Also important were the reassurances of Forrest McDonald and Grady McWhiney. The general tone of Anglo-American relations during the nineteenth century outlined here resulted in part from Frank Merli’s persuasive arguments; he also helped immensely with style and content. A steady inspiration during the early stages of this study was Thomas D. Clark. Others who read all or portions of the manuscript and made useful recommendations were Lloyd Ambrosius, John Braeman, Thomas H. Etzold, Robert Gunderson, William Harris, Duncan Jamieson, Robert Johnson, James Jones, James H. Madison, James Rawley, John Schneider, Jack Sosin, Tom Thompson, and Eileen Walters. In addition, I want to thank the editors of The University of North Carolina Press, Matthew Hodgson, Malcolm MacDonald (now with The University of Georgia Press), Trudie Calvert, and Gwen Duffey, as well as the unidentified readers of the manuscript, all of whom offered excellent suggestions on improving my work. I alone, of course, am responsible for errors in fact or judgment.

Little progress would have been possible without the aid of the following archivists. Those in Britain who performed several tedious tasks included Tom L. Ingram of Baring Brothers in London, who read sections of the manuscript, and who also assured me there were no items relating to the treaty in the Baring family archives; R. A. H. Smith of the British Museum; Margaret Cash of the Hampshire Record Office; John L. Walford of the Public Record Office; Carole Rawcliffe of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, who confirmed my suspicions that there were no records of any collections of Lord Ashburton’s papers in the United Kingdom except those in the Public Record Office. Patricia Kennedy and C. MacKinnon in Ottawa gave valuable help on the holdings in the Public Archives of Canada. In the United States I received assistance from John J. McDonough of the Library of Congress; Albert H. Leisinger, Ralph E. Ehrenberg, and Bob Richardson of the National Archives; William R. Erwin, Jr., of the William R. Perkins Library, Duke University; John D. Cushing of the Massachusetts Historical Society; John C. Dann of the William L. Clements Library, the University of Michigan. Also of great assistance were the library staffs of Indiana University and the Eli Lilly Library, both in Bloomington, the University of Nebraska, and the University of Alabama. Thanks go to the custodians of the Lord Palmerston papers and to the holders of the Edward Everett manuscripts in the Massachusetts Historical Society for allowing me to quote from their collections.

Others made vital contributions. Especially significant was the typing of Ruth Kibbey, Ellie Love, and Kitty Sassaman. Boyd Childress helped locate the illustrations, while my wife Mary Ann, daughter Debbie, and mother assisted me in reading proof. I also am indebted to Charles M. Wiltse, editor of the Papers of Daniel Webster, who allowed me to read a paper in manuscript on Webster which later appeared in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In addition, his superb microfilm edition of the rich collection of Webster papers provided the primary source of American material comprising this work. I am grateful to the editors of the following journals for permission to use materials previously published as articles: Capitol Studies, Civil War History, The Historian, and The New England Quarterly. Financial assistance from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Indiana University, and the University of Alabama allowed completion of this study.

Finally, and most important, sincere gratitude goes to my parents, my wife Mary Ann, and my children, for they alone understand what went into this project.

To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty

A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1783–1843

1. The Great Northeastern Boundary Gap

Americans saw the dispute over the northeastern boundary of the United States as a major British challenge to their sovereignty because it foreshadowed certain Anglo-American rivalry over North America. Though most observers in the 1790s did not consider the boundary an important issue, the ensuing debate over its location highlights the fragility of the republic’s first decades. Despite the brave words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the grand philosophies of the first officers of the government, and the optimism among Americans in general, the experiment in New World republicanism might not have succeeded. Domestic opposition to the new national government is familiar to any student of American history. The opposition of foreign governments, especially that of Britain, has had less attention, perhaps because Americans have regarded their experiment in liberty as an internal proposition, unaffected by foreign nations. For years few European regimes looked upon the American government with respect, but the open disdain of the British was especially irritating. Americans believed, with little evidence, that London officials refused to consider either the Treaty of Paris of 1783 or the Treaty of Ghent of 1814 as a basis for good relations, and as a result did not move decisively to resolve the boundary.

Contentions between Americans and Britishers over the international boundary went on for more than a half century, and it is revealing to trace the course of the dispute as a case study of Anglo-American difficulties. From the end of the Revolution until the 1840s, the British seemed purposely to avoid a large view of the subject. The wording in the northeast boundary article of the Treaty of Paris was specific: From the North West Angle of Nova Scotia, viz. That Angle which is formed by a Line drawn due North from the Source of Saint Croix River to the Highlands along the said Highlands which divide those Rivers that empty themselves into the River St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to the northwestern-most Head of the Connecticut River. But instead of resolving the question, the certainties of treaty language masked the uncertainties of North American topography, with long-lasting results. Indeed, these differences between Britain and the United States were not to be resolved until the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842 finally ended the boundary dispute unwittingly created in the peace treaty of 1783.¹

John Mitchell’s Map of North America (1775)

The many technicalities in plotting the northeast boundary generated the most serious Anglo-American arguments. The negotiators at Paris had used a 1775 impression of John Mitchell’s famous Map of the British and French Dominions in North America (1755), the best map of its time, but the lack of surveys had forced the cartographer to guess at the location of many rivers and to omit important mountains and other land features. The Paris delegates had started their boundary at the St. Croix River—but no waterway of that name existed on the east coast of North America. A dispute developed over which of the region’s rivers fitted the description of the St. Croix outlined in the treaty: the Schoodic in the west (the British claim), or the Magaguadavic in the east (the American). Title to some seven to eight thousand square miles of territory stocked with valuable timber and rimmed by a coastline allowing access to rich fisheries and vital waterways depended upon resolution of that problem.²

The Treaty of Paris created other cartographical problems as well. One concerned the northeast boundary’s highlands. Twenty years earlier the British government had used these slightly known ridges to divide the province of Quebec from Nova Scotia and New England, but they never had been surveyed. The treaty of 1783 specified a boundary that followed the highlands separating the flow of the waters of the St. Lawrence from those of the Atlantic. Did highlands mean mountains or only a watershed? This uncertainty caused another. The highlands formed the boundary to the northwesternmost head of the Connecticut River. No one afterward could determine which source of that river the negotiators meant. When Britishers contended for Indian Stream and Americans for Hall’s Stream, the disputation added 150 square miles to the boundary argument.

There were still other difficulties. One arose from an erroneous survey of the forty-fifth parallel, the boundary along the top of Vermont and New York westward to Lake Erie; during the War of 1812 the United States unknowingly constructed a fort at Rouse’s Point in British territory. Another question developed from the uncertainty of the international border running through the Great Lakes and to the Lake of the Woods.

Taken by themselves, these problems might have been susceptible to rapid solution; but they became intertwined with other matters to pose major obstacles to the establishment of harmonious Anglo-American relations.

In the period after 1783, Loyalists from Nova Scotia settled in the area between the Schoodic and the Magaguadavic and set off a dispute over the St. Croix that took a dozen years to resolve. The secretary for foreign affairs under the Confederation, John Jay, proposed a joint commission to settle the matter. Yet the British government rejected his overture—probably because it considered the entire subject relatively unimportant. Jay believed the situation was growing increasingly precarious and recommended that Massachusetts fortify key areas under select and discreet officers until Continental soldiers could take their place. Then, after adoption of the Constitution, the Massachusetts General Court in 1790 informed President George Washington that the British were encouraging settlers to occupy American territory. The president referred the question to the Senate, which soon repeated Jay’s earlier proposal of a mixed commission.³

But European affairs intervened. When the British and French governments went to war in 1793, new, more pressing problems arose. John Jay, by this time chief justice of the Supreme Court, sailed for London the following year to defuse an explosive quarrel that had arisen from British interference with American commerce. The northeastern boundary question remained at best a secondary concern of both governments, but the European situation pressured William Pitt to settle some of his problems with the United States. Jay, however, failed to exploit his momentary advantage. He was surprised to receive a warm welcome from the king and queen, who were so cordial that the envoy decided not to mention his reception to the administration in Philadelphia for fear that Anglophobes might think the British government sought only to deceive him.⁴ Southerners and Westerners remembered how willing he had been to forego navigation of the Mississippi River during the abortive negotiations with Spain in 1785–86. What could prevent him from giving up even more to win the favor of Britain, a country everyone knew Jay admired?

A small consequence of this British interest in rapprochement with the United States was a plan for settling the boundary, but even the business of resolving only a section from the Atlantic inland proved difficult. Jay’s Treaty of 1794 marked the beginning of the modern history of arbitration when it provided that a three-member joint commission determine which river flowing into Passamaquoddy Bay was the St. Croix. Each government would name a commissioner, and these two men would choose a third. Two Americans and a Loyalist residing in Nova Scotia began work in the autumn of 1796.⁵ Then the complications arose.

Almost immediately the Americans found themselves embarrassed, for they learned that the negotiators of 1782–83 had used a Mitchell map brought to Paris by the British representatives, a fact the American commissioner himself now uncovered by referring to letters written from Paris by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. When the commission met in August 1797 at Adams’s house in Quincy, the former diplomat, now president of the United States, stated that the Americans had consulted other maps in their quarters, even though he admitted that in drafting Article 2 he recalled using only a Mitchell. When the commissioners asked Jay (who also had been in Paris) about the matter, he agreed. The American side made another damaging admission.