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By Root 466 0

S. Harney as the new commander of the U.S. military in the region. General Harney had shown himself to be effective in war, but, as an earlier news report illustrates, he was not a man disposed to calm down. “A fellow by the name of Harney … murdered a Negro woman [his slave, Hannah] by whipping her to death in St. Louis,” the Boston Liberator reported in September 1834. “It has been stated by … the coroner’s inquest that, from the circumstantial evidence and the testimony of individuals to Harney’s own confessions to them, that this horrible act was committed … for successive days.… Harney is … an officer connected with the army and has fled to Washington.” Over the course of his military career, Harney was court-martialed four times: twice for insubordination, once for refusing to return a stolen horse, and once for maliciously flogging a soldier.4

General William S. Harney (1800-1889) (photo credit 32.2)

Harney learned of the pig incident three weeks after it had happened and even then by chance. In early July 1859, having paid a courtesy call on Governor Douglas at Vancouver Island, Harney noticed an American flag flying on nearby San Juan Island. Knowing the island’s possession to be under dispute, he went to investigate. It turned out that the flag had not yet been lowered from the American residents’ Fourth of July celebration—but not entirely by accident. There was considerable excitement among the islanders, Harney discovered, about a recent dustup over a pig. Harney was told about Cutler, the produce-poaching pig, the confrontation with Griffin, and the Hudson’s Bay Company bigwig who had threatened to have Cutler arrested and put on trial.

Harney knew that such a trial, if it took place uncontested by the United States, would undermine American claims to the San Juan Islands. He therefore issued orders to his aide, Captain George Pickett, stating that he was to land a company of men on San Juan Island:

First: to protect the inhabitants of the island from the incursions of the northern Indians.… Second: … [T]o afford adequate protection to the American citizens … and to resist all attempts at interference by the British authorities.… This protection has been called for in consequence of the chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Mr. Dallas, having recently … threatened to take an American citizen by force to Victoria for trial by British laws.

On July 27 Pickett landed on the island with sixty men. But Harney’s orders hadn’t stopped there:

The steamer Massachusetts will be directed to transport your command.… [T]ake into consideration that future contingencies may require an establishment of from four to six companies retaining the command of San Juan harbor.

Meanwhile British Governor Douglas also knew that, if no effort were made to prosecute Cutler or to object to the presence of American troops, it would undermine Britain’s claim to the San Juan Islands. He therefore issued orders to his aide, John de Courcy, to arrest Cutler.

Upon Courcy’s arrival on the island, he and Pickett drew their lines in the sand and reported back to their respective superiors. This time Governor Douglas did not calm down, most likely because, this time, the USS Massachusetts was lurking in the harbor with additional troops. Consequently, Douglas matched that move and upped it. He ordered the arrival of two warships, with a combined total of fifty-two guns, and a third ship with a detachment of troops.

General Harney responded by ordering the arrival of additional American ships and troops. Within eight weeks, one man’s shooting of a pig had escalated to sixty heavily fortified American troops, backed by 400 offshore reinforcements, facing British battleships aiming 167 cannons at them and transporting some 2,000 troops.

Hotheadedness, however, was only one of the elements that had turned Cutler’s bullet into a diplomatic bomb. Another difference between the 1854 and 1859 incidents was that in 1859 the United States was on the verge of its Civil War. Though General Harney was a slave owner, and a brutal one at