by John Boyko
In February 1869, Macdonald and his wife, Agnes, had welcomed a beautiful baby girl they named Mary. By June, doctors diagnosed hydro-cephalus, a brain ailment that led to the enlargement of her head, crippled limbs, and a sad lack of intellectual development. Macdonald was unerringly gentle and loving. Every day he read Mary stories and rubbed her legs to ease her pain; or perhaps his.
Despite years of drinking too much, eating too little and never taking exercise, Macdonald had always enjoyed robust health. But on November 6, 1870, while in his office, he suffered a piercing pain and collapsed. He had passed a gallstone of such ghastly proportions that his life was in danger. For weeks, first his office and then the rooms normally reserved for the Speaker of the House, were his hospital. Newspapers prepared obituaries.44 But by July, he was well enough to be moved to Charlottetown for a recuperative holiday. For months he handled nothing but the most urgent matters. When he returned to work in the fall, Macdonald was stronger but not fully recovered.
Sadness and tragedy were not strangers to Macdonald. Somehow he was able to compartmentalize office pressures, personal heartache and physical discomfort, and he departed for Washington. He brought Agnes and the deputy ministers of fisheries and justice, but left his bottles behind. Throughout the negotiations he did not touch a drop. The little group of Canadians settled into the Arlington Hotel and prepared to save Canada from the Civil War’s last battle.
THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE
The conference began on February 27, 1871, with the five American and four British delages, and one from Canada, meeting at the State Department library. Fish led the American delegation, and the British group was led by a short, heavily bearded man with the long name, Lord De Grey and Ripon. First on the agenda was the fisheries question. Macdonald refused to compromise on every proposal the Americans made at the table and those that British delegates brought him in private. He insisted that the fisheries would neither be sold nor traded, regardless of the effect on the Alabama claims issue. Macdonald’s obduracy exasperated the British delegates, who had arrived believing that the Canadian prime minister would comport himself as British, or least an obedient colonial.45
It was estimated that, from 1854 to 1864, Americans had taken six million dollars’ worth of fish a year from Canadian waters.46 When the Reciprocity Treaty ended in 1866, a system of licencing American fishermen had been established, but it was all but ignored. In January 1870, Macdonald’s government had built six military cruisers, at a cost of a million dollars, to keep Americans out of Canadian inland fisheries and to enforce the three-mile off-shore limit.47 A number of American ships were stopped and their catches and nets seized. These facts led Macdonald to emphasize that the fisheries were economically important, and symbols of Canadian sovereignty that he simply could not deal away.48
On March 21, Macdonald was able to write home with the good news that De Grey and Ripon had conceded that any agreement made in Washington would need to be ratified by the Canadian Parliament. Fish was perturbed: he suddenly and unexpectedly had to deal with Canada as an equal. In a letter to Charles Tupper, Macdonald crowed about the concession that had just been won. Also, he could now offer a great incentive to Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, because if they wanted to enjoy the benefits of whatever fisheries agreement was made with the United States, they would need to join Canada.49
Day after frustrating day, the British delegates showed a united front. Night after infuriating night, those delegates badgered Macdonald to give ground. They grew desperate. In an act of astonishing diplomatic effrontery, Macdonald’s frequent letters home to his cabinet and to Governor General Lisgar were re-routed back from Lisgar to the British delegates.50 They thus knew the game Macdonald was playing, for they knew his fallback positions and that he had full authority to make independent decisions—but still they could not best him. The British delegates were reduced to threatening that if Macdonald did not act according to their interests, Britain might not offer military support in the future and Canada would be doomed to fall to America. They also tried to bribe him with an appointment to Her Majesty’s Privy Council, a powerful group of advisors to the Queen that, they expected, any British subject would be humbled and honoured to join.51
Meanwhile, America’s interest in Canada persisted. Days before the meetings had begun, Michigan senator Jacob Howard had introduced a motion stating that the United States should annex Canada, from Sault Ste. Marie to the Pacific. On March 15, Fish told the British delegation of Seward’s old idea to take British Columbia in compensation for the Alabama claims. Later, Fish met privately with De Grey and Ripon to see about reducing Alabama payments for whatever part of Canada he was willing to give away.52 Howard’s motion did not come to a vote and neither of Fish’s proposals was seriously entertained—but the pressure remained.
Finally, after thirty-seven meetings held over nine weeks, the Washington Conference was over. On May 5, 1871, the delegates met to sign the Treaty of Washington. It had been agreed that two international tribunals would be established. One would rule on the Alabama claims made by the American government and the other on claims made by individuals. Britain agreed to express regret for having involved itself in arming the Confederacy but would not suffer the diplomatic humiliation of an apology. Canada was not asked for an apology and did not offer one. Canada would receive $5.5 million for ten years of access to its inland fisheries and enjoy the elimination of duties on many Canadian products entering the United States, including wood, fish oil, bait, salt and coal. Most important, Canada remained Canadian with no mention made of land swaps or annexation.
Macdonald had reason to be proud of what he had won and of having averted the catastrophe. He knew he had pushed the British as far as they could go and the Americans further than they wished. He wrote to Tupper, “The expectations by the American people of a settlement of these matters have been strung to a very high pitch, and the disappointment, in case the negotiations end in nothing, will be very great. If this attempt to settle the Alabama question should fail, no peaceable solution of it is possible, and the war cloud will hang over England and Canada.”53
When Maritime political leaders and fishermen expressed happiness that the agreement had finally set new rules that, with any luck, would be obeyed, Macdonald was even more upbeat. Upon his return to Ottawa, he spoke of the Washington Treaty as a Canadian victory. In a speech to the House of Commons on May 3, 1872, which lasted four and a quarter hours, Macdonald detailed what had been at stake, what could have been lost, and what had been won. He began by noting the significance to Canada’s nationhood; it was now firmly established, in that the agreement needed to be ratified by three bodies: the American Congress, the British Parliament and the Canadian Parliament. He returned to that point several times.54
He explained that the negotiations had led to an agreement between Canada and Britain that they would not press the Americans to apologize for the Fenian raids and compensate Canada. Instead, there had been a deal whereby Britain would pay Canada’s Fenian losses of four million pounds and the funds would be used for railway construction. As part of the agreement, he continued, Britain promised to come to Canada’s aid in the event of another invasion from America.
Macdonald spoke of the American duties that would be removed on a number of Canadian products, representing a re-introduction of the Reciprocity Treaty by degrees. He also talked of the Washington Treaty’s bonding agreement, which would allow freer transport of American and Canadian goods to each other’s markets, and overseas.
Finally, Macdonald reiterated that the Washington Treaty had finally ended Civil War irritants, established Canada as a fact, and rendered its border safer:
But I say that this Treaty which has gone through so many difficulties and dangers, if it is carried into effect, removes almost all possibility of war. If there was ever an irritating cause of war, it was from the occurrences arising out of the escape of those vessels, and when we see the United States peopl
e and Government forget this irritation, forget those occurrences, and submit such a question to arbitration, to the arbitration of a disinterested tribunal, they have established a principle which can never be forgotten in this world.55
The international Alabama claims tribunal met the next year in Geneva, with the United States represented by Charles Francis Adams, Jr., called out of retirement to serve. In September 1872, it was agreed that Britain would pay the United States $15.5 million plus interest for the damage caused by the British-made Confederate ships. As per the Washington Treaty agreement, there was no talk of trading all, or even part, of Canada.
The Alabama claims tribunal and the Treaty of Washington ended the American Civil War. Britain’s long decline from its period of global dominance was underway and the growth of the German military machine would, in a few decades, invite the final phase of that process. The United States emerged from the Civil War scarred and broken, but its industrial might, supported by the strength of its fleet and fuelled by the wealth of its resources and the ingenuity of its people, could be felt around the world, even throughout its long and painful period of reconstruction and redemption. Its era of global domination had begun.
The war that had threatened to crush Canada and the postwar machinations that could have kidnapped it from the road upon which it was embarked were finally over. There were still harsh words, accusations that demanded apology, and hatred and suspicion that needed reconciliation. But there was hope. The Canadian experiment, with its unique centralized parliamentary democracy governing a bilingual, multicultural, tolerant country with too much geography and too few people, was underway. Canada emerged from the war unified in its un-American political and social values, led by a determined and visionary leader, secure in its heritage and bristling with the power of its potential.
POSTSCRIPT
And what of our guides, those six people whose lives led us on our journey of understanding? After disappearing into Africa, John Anderson never reappeared. The inauguration of President Grant put William Seward into retirement. He enjoyed a trip around the world and then settled into his Auburn, New York, mansion. Seward died in October 1872, a month after the announcement of the Alabama claims tribunal.
Jacob Thompson eventually returned to Mississippi to find that his three estates had been destroyed by Union marauders. He moved to Memphis, where his personal fortune, or perhaps his wife’s dowry, or maybe money he had taken from his Canadian adventure, allowed him to live in ostentatious comfort. The Grant administration filed a two-million-dollar law suit against him, but it was quietly dropped after the 1876 election. Thompson died with his papers burned and secrets secured in March 1885.
George Brown never returned to politics. He focused on his impressive land holdings and other investments, while his Globe remained the most widely read newspaper in Canada. In March 1880, Brown was shot by a disgruntled Globe employee and died of his wounds two months later.
Except for a brief stint in opposition, Sir John A. Macdonald remained the prime minister of Canada until his death in office in 1891. Without his skills, determination and vision, it is quite likely that Canada would not have been created or survived. Macdonald’s legacy is Canada itself.
A month after the war ended, Sarah Emma Edmonds left the service and returned home with fellow New Brunswicker Linus Seelye. They were married two years later and had three children and adopted two more. Edmonds wrote a book entitled Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: Comprising the Adventures and Experiences of a Woman in Hospitals Camps and Battlefields. It was a smashing success, selling 175,000 copies. In 1884, Edmonds attended the reunion of the 2nd Michigan Volunteers. Her comrades in arms convinced her to ask that the charge of desertion be dropped and that she apply for a veteran’s pension. Many wrote letters detailing her contributions and supporting her claim. It took a House bill, signed by President Arthur, to make it happen. Edmonds was granted an honourable discharge and a pension of twelve dollars a month.
In obtaining her pension, Edmonds joined many other Canadians who had earned theirs. It is impossible to quantify how many Canadians were also drawing pensions, Canadians who, like Edmonds, had joined one army or the other when they were already in the United States and then remained there after the war’s end. However, by 1883 the American government was mailing 615 monthly pension cheques over the border to veterans who had returned to their Canadian homes.56
In 1893, Edmonds and her husband moved to the home of their adopted son George in LaPorte, Texas. Edmonds died on September 5, 1898, and was buried with full military honours in a Grand Army of the Republic portion of a Houston cemetery beneath a headstone that reads, with deceptive simplicity, “Emma E. Seelye, Army Nurse.” How modest. How Canadian.
* Davis was never tried. A motion to restore his American citizenship was approved by Congress in 1976 and signed into law by a president born in Georgia. Davis may have enjoyed the irony.
* Bulloch’s nephew would later be president: Theodore Roosevelt.
* McGee is the only Canadian political leader to have been assassinated. There has never been an attempt on the life of a Canadian prime minister.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION: BAD NEIGHBOURS IN A DANGEROUS NEIGHBOURHOOD
1 Adams to Warren. June 7, 1775. Cited in Murray Lawson, “Canada and the Articles of Confederation,” p. 43.
2 William Renwick Ridell, Benjamin Franklin and Canada, p. 39.
3 Cited in Lawson, “Canada and the Articles of Confederation,” p. 47.
4 Ibid., p. 49.
5 Ibid., p. 50.
6 J.M.S. Lawless, Canada, p. 110.
7 Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812, p. 128.
8 Lawless, Canada, p. 133.
9 Léopold Lamontagne, “The Ninth Crusade,” p. 222.
10 Montreal Gazette, April 1, 1863.
11 Robin Winks, The Civil War Years, p. 20.
12 Globe, July 29, 1861.
13 Winks, The Civil War Years, p. 223.
14 Ibid., p. 220.
15 Ibid., p. 59.
16 Preston Jones, “Civil War, Culture War”; and Winks, The Civil War Years, p. 135.
17 Wade to sister, December 29, 1861. Cited in Leone Cousins, “Letters of Norman Wade,” p. 123.
18 Wade to father, November 26, 1861. Ibid.
19 Wade to brother, March 5, 1862. Ibid., p. 124.
CHAPTER ONE : JOHN ANDERSON AND THE RAILROAD TO FREEDOM AND WAR
1 Anthony Burton, The Rise and Fall of King Cotton, pp. 57–58.
2 John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves, p. 282.
3 David Williams, A People’s History of the Civil War, p. 17.
4 Larry Gara, The Liberty Line, p. 6.
5 Fergus Bordewich, Bound for Canaan, p. 64.
6 James Walker, A History of Blacks in Canada, p. 80.
7 Michael Wayne, “The Black Population of Canada West on the Eve of the American Civil War,” p. 476.
8 Walker, A History of Blacks in Canada, p. 161.
9 Fred Landon, “The Negro Migration to Canada After the Passing of the Fugitive Slave Act,” pp. 22–36.
10 Bordewich, Bound for Canaan, p. 342.
11 David W. Blight (ed.), The Underground Railroad in History and Memory, p. 137.
12 Bordewich, Bound for Canaan, p. 342.
13 Karolyn Frost Smardz, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, p. 7.
14 Ibid., pp. 283–84.
15 Ibid., p. 262.
16 Globe, March 1, 1851.
17 Robin Winks, The Blacks in Canada, p. 257.
18 Winks, The Civil War Years, p. 9.
19 Fred Landon, “Canadian Negroes and the John Brown Raid,” p. 177.
20 Globe, October 19, 1859.
21 Ibid., November 19, 1859.
22 Landon, “Canadian Negroes and the John Brown Raid,” p. 178.
23 New York Herald, October 28, 1859.
24 The Southern Review, March 21, 1861. Cited in Robert C. Reinders, “The John Ander
son Case 1860–1,” p. 259.
25 Wayne, “The Black Population of Canada West on the Eve of the American Civil War,” p. 469.
26 Laura Haviland, A Woman’s Life-work, pp. 206–07.
27 Robard Singleton, “Resistance to Black Republican Domination,” p. 20.
28 Smardz, I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land, p. 206.
29 Globe, April 9, 1860.
30 William Teatero, John Anderson Fugitive Slave, p. 64.
31 Macdonald to Freeman, December 27, 1860. LAC. Macdonald Papers. Vol. 673.
32 Richard Gwyn, John A, p. 151.
33 Macdonald to Matthews, August 3, 1859. LAC. Macdonald Papers. Vol. 673.
34 New York Times, December 21, 1860
35 Ibid., January 4, 1861.
36 Teatero, John Anderson Fugitive Slave, p. 74.
37 Freeman to Macdonald, October 6, 1860. LAC. Macdonald Papers. Vol. 540.
38 Macdonald to Freeman, October 18, 1860. LAC. Macdonald Papers. Vol. 540.
39 Province of Canada Sessional Papers. Vol. 19, no. 4.
40 Ibid.
41 Toronto Leader, November 24, 1860.
42 Globe, November 28, 1860 and Hamilton Daily Spectator, November 29, 1860.
43 Ibid., November 14, 1861.
44 Ibid., November 30, 1860.
45 Patrick Brodie, The Odyssey of John Anderson, p. 49.
46 Ibid., p. 50.
47 Detroit Daily Advertiser, December 5, 1860. Cited in Brodie, The Odyssey of John Anderson, p. 52.
48 Ibid., p. 53.