How the States Got Their Shapes Too_ The People Behind the Borderlines - Mark Stein [74]
Northern Maine: arbitration decision
Through the skillful intervention of U.S. General Winfield Scott and his British counterpart, no one died in what has come to be known as the Aroostook War (or, more incongruously, the Pork and Beans War). It did, however, result in two indisputable facts. First, a verdict on the boundary could no longer be postponed. Second, getting Maine to agree on a verdict would require a courtroom magician. The United States had one: Daniel Webster.
During the years that Maine’s boundary dispute had been simmering, Webster had been orating his way to an 1836 presidential bid. Americans found him spellbinding. “No man has been found tall enough to overshadow him,” Washington, DC’s National Intelligencer exclaimed. “No man has been able to attract or intercept from him the constant regard of the nation, for he has been so conspicuous, so prominent, that whatever he has done, and whatever he has said, has been watched and understood throughout the borders of the land.”
Webster’s flair for speaking, however, was a component of an exuberant personality that also resulted in rumors of excessive drinking, of large sums of money having been given to him by wealthy merchants and bankers, and of womanizing.5 Running in a field of five presidential candidates, Webster wound up with less than 3 percent of the vote.
In the next presidential election, candidate William Henry Harrison offered candidate Webster the vice presidency, in an effort to consolidate his bid. Webster declined, stating “I do not propose to be buried until I am really dead.”6 Still, rather than fruitlessly oppose Harrison in the 1840 election, Webster accepted the popular general’s alternate offer of secretary of state. (Had Webster accepted the vice presidency, he would have become the president when Harrison died thirty-two days after his inauguration.)
In the wake of the 1839 Aroostook War, Maine’s boundary with Canada became one of Secretary Webster’s top priorities. England, equally anxious to end the dispute, sent Lord Ashburton to Washington as its negotiator. It was as shrewd a choice on England’s part as Webster would prove to be on the American side. Lord Ashburton’s family owned Barings Bank. Webster had performed legal services for Barings. The two men knew each other and liked each other. So informally did they proceed that, when the treaty they created was sent to Senate for ratification, Senator Thomas Hart Benton complained that he had never before seen a treaty accompanied by so little documentation.7 The dearth of supporting documents, however, was not the result of a cozy relationship. Rather, it resulted from the fact that Webster was negotiating primarily with Maine—invisibly.
To tilt public opinion, Webster began with the press. The State Department budget set aside $17,000 for “secret service” regarding the boundary negotiations.8 The money was used to fund a public relations campaign aimed at placing stories in newspapers and other publications.
It worked. In December 1841, as the nation awaited the arrival of Lord Ashburton, the Christian Mirror proposed a possible compromise that was extraordinarily detailed. After laying out what was purportedly its own proposal, the article pointedly concluded, “Is there a citizen of Maine who will not, upon careful meditation, pronounce such a compromise honorable to both parties, advantageous to both parties, and founded in a just regard for the wants and rights of the respective parties?”
The National Intelligencer, whose coverage of political events in Washington was often picked up by newspapers nationwide, published numerous editorials favoring a compromise. These editorials were rumored to have been written by Webster himself, a close friend of one of the paper’s publishers. One such editorial, quite likely written by