How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [72]
Nothing … until the War of 1812 caused England to rethink the line. The narrow strip of land it left between the American border and England’s primary route into Canada, the St. Lawrence River, was highly vulnerable to attack—particularly in the winter when the river froze, closing off navigation.
Daniel Webster was a rookie congressman when England first sought to redefine Maine’s boundary. In 1814, during negotiations to bring the War of 1812 to a close, British negotiators complained:
With respect to the boundary of the District of Maine … [we] regret that, although the American plenipotentiaries have acknowledged themselves to be instructed to discuss a revision of the boundary line, with a view to prevent uncertainty and dispute, yet by assuming … an exclusive right to determine what is or not a subject of uncertainty and dispute, they have rendered their powers nugatory.
It being wartime, the British had called Americans all kinds of things. But “nugatory” was below the belt, and the Americans let them know it:
The proposal of the British plenipotentiaries was not to ascertain, but to vary those lines in such a manner as to secure a direct communication between Quebec and Halifax, an alteration which could not be effected without a cession by the United States to Great Britain of all that portion of [Maine] … intervening between the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec, although unquestionably included within the boundary line.
1783 treaty: border of Maine
The Americans allowed that, if the British wanted the two nations to survey the as-yet-unmarked line through the sparsely settled forests, any discrepancies could then be negotiated. Consequently, the line was surveyed in 1817, and indeed a discrepancy surfaced. The United States interpreted the 1783 treaty’s phrase “highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic” as the ridge separating the two watersheds. England interpreted the preceding phrase leading up to the word “highlands”—“a line drawn due north from the source of St. Croix River to the highlands”—as meaning a line due north to the highest land.2
The treaty ending the War of 1812 stipulated that boundary disputes could be arbitrated by a third nation agreeable to both sides. Most likely, the United States would have prevailed in arbitration, but it suddenly had cause to hesitate, owing to another glitch recently discovered elsewhere along the U.S.-Canadian border. “The line between New York and Canada on Lake Champlain,” the National Intelligencer reported, “will leave Rouse’s Point, on which the United States have expended between two and three hundred thousand dollars in fortifications, within the British province.” The fort being built was located on a site long accepted as being on the south side of New York’s border with Canada. But the surveys that followed the War of 1812 revealed the fort was actually on the border’s north side.
“Fort Blunder,” as it came to be called, was no minor military outpost. It commanded the northern entrance to Lake Champlain, a lake that extends far into New York and Vermont. The fort’s importance for defense was equaled only by its importance as a danger if it were to end up in British hands. The Maine boundary negotiations were now profoundly changed. “A proposal has been discussed,” the Intelligencer reported, “that the territory that would accrue to Maine be given