by John Boyko
In January 1858, Brown had written a long letter to a political ally, saying that he believed the future lay in forging a federal union between Canada and the Maritime colonies. It would, he reasoned, solve the political and economic problems plaguing them all, and end the ethnic and religious bickering that had no place in the public sphere. And it would allow a strong base for expansion to the west. “No honest man,” he wrote, “can desire that we should remain as we are.… A federal union, it appears to me, cannot be entertained for Canada alone but when agitated must include all British America.”10 Shortly afterward, following the embarrassment of his two-day ministry, he stood apart from many in his party and spoke in favour of Galt’s Confederation motion. When Galt’s mission to London ended in a disappointing failure, Brown dropped the idea—but only for a while. Six months later, beginning on May 10, 1859, the Globe ran a three-month series of articles outlining the problems with the current political structure and reviving arguments for a new federal union.
Brown worked assiduously to convince Reform members of the need for a convention to adopt Confederation as party policy. On November 9, in Toronto’s cavernous but ornate St. Lawrence Hall, 570 skeptical and scrappy party members were gavelled to order. For two days motions came to the floor advocating a number of ideas, including inviting the Maritimes to join a British North American government, altering only the present Canadian political structure, and even dissolving Canada to create separate French and English governments. A compromise was finally approved whereby the party would support the creation of a new general government under what they called “some joint authority,” with details to be worked out later.
Everyone waited for Brown’s response. And he let them wait. Finally, with sunlight fading from the large windows, and gaslights creating golden shadows on the carved gods and gargoyles that glared down from massive crown mouldings, Brown rose to speak. The hot, crowded room fell silent.
He began slowly with innocuous remarks, and then, as his volume and pace increased, there were cheers as he announced support for the convention’s Confederation motion. He then played the note that resonated with so many Reformers and Canadians in general—anti-Americanism. He held up Confederation as a way to create a new Canadian system of government that would be loyal to Britain while avoiding what he called the fundamental errors at the heart of the American system. Those mistakes, he argued, had been played out over the past decade in the increasingly rancorous debates that were splitting the United States apart and had been seen particularly in Kansas, where Americans were killing each other over an inability to compromise. He said Canadians wanted a strong and British-style government and no part of the failing republic. “I have no fear,” he said, “that the people of Upper Canada would ever desire to become the fag end of the neighbour republic.”11 He concluded with a grand vision: “I do look forward with high hopes to the day when these northern countries shall stand out among the nations of the world as one great confederation!”12 The thunderous applause marked Reform Party unity and a hard-won triumph for Brown.
The Cartier-Macdonald administration had allowed the idea of Confederation to wither, but Brown had resuscitated it. Two months later, Conservative finance minister Alexander Galt returned to London to repeat his request for Britain’s support to begin Confederation negotiations. Lytton again said no. However, after discussions with his cabinet colleagues, Lytton told Galt that the official position of the British government had moved slightly, in that it would not promote Confederation but would no longer oppose it if there was an overwhelming desire on the part of Canadians to bring it about.13
In February 1860, George Brown took the train to Quebec City, ready to kick-start the Confederation debate. Governor General Head read a rather flaccid speech from the throne that ignored the issue altogether. The Conservative government had little to offer as it struggled to hold the confidence of the House in the face of a belligerent opposition and divisive forces within its own caucus.14
As the first opposition speaker responding to the speech from the throne, Brown announced his intention to move two resolutions based on the Reform party’s November convention agreements. His short speech was met by partisan laughter and hoots of derision from government benches, which included Premier Cartier, Galt and Macdonald.
On April 30, in a four-hour speech, Brown was finally able to present his resolutions to the House. The debate lasted several days. On May 7, 1860, a motion expressing the legislature’s desire to end the Canada East–Canada West union was defeated 66 to 27. A second motion, promoting the idea of a new federation, lost 74 to 32. With many of its members supporting the government on both resolutions, Brown’s party crumbled around him.
Confederation had lost again. The previous two years had seen Brown humiliated by what Macdonald repeatedly called his two-day “ephemeral government,” and then by the scuttling of Confederation and the splintering of his party. His personal life mirrored his political difficulties for, while the Globe remained strong, he had seen his many other business ventures suffer in the devastating 1857–59 recession. On top of everything, his health began to falter.
Brown was bedridden over the winter of 1860 and missed the entire 1861 session. In the June 1861 election, he lost his seat and with it the Reform party leadership. He turned his focus to the Globe and other business interests, with special attention to his growing Lambton County landholdings near Sarnia. Like the government and his party, Brown abandoned Confederation as an impossible ideal. He offered his still-influential public voice in opposition to Macdonald and his Conservatives and the power of railway interests. He also upheld Northern views in the arguments that were leading to war in America. His health continued to suffer as his days of public service seemed behind him. Brown did not realize in the fall of 1861 that events south of the border were already beginning to do for Confederation what he and Galt could not.
A CHANGED MAN, AN OLD IDEA AND NEW THREATS
The Civil War began in April 1861. By December’s Trent crisis, even sceptical Canadians and Maritimers realized that the war involved and threatened them. Their political leaders, however, recognized their inability to act quickly or decisively in the face of those threats. Palmerston had become Britain’s prime minister again in 1859, and this time with Little Englanders such as William Gladstone at his cabinet table.
In May 1862, in reaction to American threats and British encouragement, the Cartier-Macdonald government introduced the Militia Bill. It was intended to raise fifty thousand men and augment Canadian defence capability with fortifications and arms. The Reform opposition had attacked its enormous expense. The bill, after all, represented about 10 percent of the government’s annual budget. The government could not say if the shocking cost would necessitate increased taxation. In fact, it could not even be specific about how the money would be spent. Many who represented French ridings shouted the bill down for its plan to conscript recruits if there were insufficient volunteers. The government’s faltering efforts to pass the bill were not helped by the fact that Macdonald chose the middle of the debate to fall into a week-long drinking binge.
The Militia Bill was defeated with a vote of 61 to 54. Fifteen Conservative members had defected, and with them gone, the Cartier-Macdonald coalition had dissolved. The party that had held power since 1854 by managing shifting loyalties and clever political manoeuvring was forced to resign. Sandfield Macdonald, who had assumed the leadership of the Reform party after Brown’s defeat in 1861, formed a government with his Canada East lieutenant, Louis-Victor Sicotte. Sandfield Macdonald was opposed to Confederation. Far from a visionary leader, he was a manager and technocrat of average skill who filled his cabinet with equally uninspired and uninspiring men. Governor General Monck recognized the limitations of the new administration and in a dispatch to London called it “a wretched lot … incapable of rising above the level of a parish politician.”15
The British and American press heaped scorn on the Canadian gover
nment for the defeat of the Militia Bill, arguing that Canadians simply did not have the strength or stomach to defend themselves.16 Little Englanders such as Gladstone, John Bright and Richard Cobden had a field day, as the troublesome, expensive and unreliable colony looked as if it might yet drag Britain into a war with the United States. They called for British North America to be set adrift.17 Even those who supported Canada found it difficult to remain sanguine. The Duke of Newcastle, for instance, wrote a long letter to Monck expressing tremendous frustration and foreboding: “Everybody in the States will look upon it as little less than an invitation to come and annex it. The event will create as much joy in New York as it has caused concern in London.”18
The Sandfield Macdonald–Sicotte government was shamed into action and tripled the defence budget so that some work could be done, but it was not nearly enough. There were still far too few troops, forts and weapons. A Maritime intercolonial railway, which could move men and equipment quickly in a time of crisis, remained a dream.
George Brown missed it all. His tenuous health led to the first extended holiday of his life. In July 1862, he arrived in Britain, where he enjoyed a leisurely time in London and Edinburgh. While there, Brown met Anne Nelson, the attractive, charming and highly intelligent daughter of a wealthy Scottish publisher. He was smitten. Thirty-three-year-old Anne was well educated, well read and articluate. She had lived in Germany and France, and enjoyed debating political matters from a decidedly liberal point of view. The two were married at a lavish ceremony, and set out for Canada in December. Even the mammoth swells of the frigid North Atlantic could not diminish the happiness they found with each other.
The forty-three-year-old Brown came home a changed man. He returned to the Globe and to his growing Bothwell estate and related businesses with a temper less quick and a disposition more tolerant. He found in Anne a confidante who persuaded him to put aside personal affronts and quick, cheap victories in favour of steady long-term progress. In March 1863, he was back in the legislature after easily winning a by-election in South Oxford. Brown bided his time on the government’s back benches. He did not ask for a cabinet post; nor was one offered.
Three months later, Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg altered the trajectory of the Civil War. Lincoln still faced tremendous and competing challenges, but Jefferson Davis was juggling even more problems. So many Southern troops were deserting that on August 1 Davis issued an order offering amnesty to any soldiers who returned to duty. Slaves were taken from plantations to do construction work and other jobs that soldiers had previously done. Across the South, food shortages were being felt and in Mobile, Alabama, troops had to quell a food riot. The Confederate currency was devaluing rapidly and Confederate bonds were becoming harder to sell. North Carolina farmers were having their property confiscated in an attempt to collect desperately needed tax revenue.
By the fall of 1863, the war’s outcome was still far from certain, but the South’s declining morale and rising financial, human and physical costs revealed a discernible trend. The increasing likelihood of a Northern victory caused great consternation in Canada and the Maritimes, for it was becoming clear that the United States would emerge from the war stronger than it had ever been. The Northern economy would be richer and more technologically advanced thanks to the impressive manner in which it met its need for war matériel. More rail had been laid and telegraph lines strung; harbours had been enlarged. The agricultural capacity of the North would also be greatly increased by Lincoln’s 1862 Homestead Act, which was opening vast swaths of fertile land in the west to the plows of thousands of immigrants. And the United States would emerge from war with the largest, most advanced, best-trained, and most battle-hardened military the world had ever seen. Canadians and Maritimers were justifiably concerned that an angry behemoth of a country would have the ability to easily right past wrongs and pursue its old dreams of Manifest Destiny.
Brown was among those who realized that in order for the United States to wreak havoc on Canada, an American military invasion might not even be necessary. The American-Canadian Reciprocity Treaty was soon due to expire. At the outset of the war, Lord Lyons had worried about the treaty becoming one of its victims. Lyons and Monck exchanged a number of letters about the treaty’s importance and agreed that the best way to keep it in place was to remain quiet about it.19 In February 1862, Congress had created a three-man commission to examine the treaty question, and by June Lyons was warning Monck that Canada should be prepared to see it abrogated.20
The economic effects of the treaty’s repeal would damage Canada’s nascent industrial development. But there were other concerns. British investors controlling Hudson’s Bay Company stock still claimed ownership of the vast swathe of territory called Rupert’s Land. Brown knew that the land was ripe for development and that if Canadian interests did not quickly exploit its potential then Americans certainly would. He editorialized in the Globe, “Cooped up as Canada is between lake, river and the frozen North, should all the rest of the continent fall into the possession of the Americans, she will become of the smallest importance … nothing more or less than the handing over of the vast North West Territory, not only commercially but politically, to the United States.”21 He believed that American annexationists were biding their time and would pounce when the war ended.
By early 1864, the only Canadians who were not afraid were not paying attention. While Confederation had been a good idea before, the war had rendered it an imperative. Canada’s constitutional questions needed to be solved once and for all; further delay would be suicidal. It was in this charged atmosphere that the Canadian Parliament convened in February.
Jammed in the gridlock that had paralyzed the Sandfield Macdonald administration throughout the previous session, the government proposed little and did less. Brown was silent and spent most of his time at his desk writing to Anne, who had just given birth to a healthy girl. Finally, on March 14, he interrupted one of the House’s endless arcane debates by suddenly rising to propose a startling resolution. He proposed that a committee made up of members from both parties be formed to investigate the possibility of constitutional change: “I simply ask the House to say that a great evil exists, that a remedy must be found, and to appoint a committee to consider what that remedy should be.”22
A spontaneous and shouting debate erupted, in which Galt, John A. Macdonald and Cartier all derided not what Brown had actually said but things he had said in the past. They accused him of having the wrong idea, an anti-French idea or a self-serving idea regarding federation. The debate raged on, with Brown making his final point two weeks later. Referring to military, economic and territorial threats from the United States, he thundered that Canadians needed to “stand shoulder to shoulder to fight their own battle for progress and prosperity, and if need be, to meet and do their best unitedly to repel a common foe.”23
The debate reached a climax, but then events suddenly caused it to fizzle. In late March, an unrelated shift of political support in Canada East led the Reform government to resign. John A. Macdonald quickly hammered together a Conservative coalition and then the House rose so that cabinet ministers could seek re-election. The whole messy affair was proving Brown’s point about Canada’s dysfunctional political system.
While the Canadians dithered, the Civil War continued on toward its inexorable end. In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant had been placed in supreme command of the Union forces. Lincoln finally had a general who agreed with him that the strategic objective of the Army of the Potomac should not be the capture of Richmond but the destruction of the Southern armies. Grant began reorganizing his army. He announced an end to prisoner exchanges, dealing a blow to the South, which already could not refill its diminishing ranks. The order also inadvertently led to the inhumane treatment of prisoners on both sides, with men suffering from disease and deprivation, and at places such as Georgia’s hellish Andersonville, starvation.
When Grant put his plans into actio
n, the battered and shrinking Army of Northern Virginia was forced to manoeuvre with the wile and fury of a cornered beast. In May, it drew Grant into one of the bloodiest battles of the war: The Wilderness. Two days of chaotic fighting in dense woods saw some men burned alive in forest fires that the battle had ignited. It ended in a draw, with more than 17,000 Union and nearly 8,000 Confederate casualties. Grant did not recoil or regroup as his predecessors would have done, but kept coming. Before the Union attack at Cold Harbor, many of Grant’s men pinned notes on their backs stating, “Here lies the body of.…” The carnage on both sides reached proportions that were horrifying even to war-weary Americans numbed by over three years of staggeringly large casualty lists.
While Grant moved in America, Otto von Bismarck moved in Europe. The ambitious and charismatic Prussian had become ministerpresident in 1862 and immediately began preparing military, diplomatic and economic means to unify Germany. In the spring of 1864, the first of Bismarck’s territorial conquests began with a Prussian-Austrian attack on Denmark. Palmerston recognized the danger that a strong and unified Germany would pose to Britain, but made the tactical error of announcing that his government would stand by Denmark. It did not. Bismarck’s belligerence led to a reassessment of British military preparedness and the realization that the 14,500 troops spread thinly along the American border protecting colonies that seemed unwilling to defend themselves might soon be needed elsewhere. Little Englanders such as Robert Lowe insisted that all British troops be immediately withdrawn from Canada and the Maritimes to prepare for deployment in Europe. 24 Palmerston refused to consider such a drastic action, but the undeniable strength and potential of Grant’s and Bismarck’s forces was altering the way in which Britain saw the world and, in consequence, its view of Canada.