The Canadian Dominion [13]
was sailing up the mighty Columbia, and Captain Vancouver was charting the northern coasts for the British Government, a young North-West Company factor, Alexander Mackenzie, in his lonely post on Lake Athabaska, was planning to cross the wilderness of mountains to the coast. With a fellow trader, Mackay, and six Canadian voyageurs, he pushed up the Peace and the Parsnip, passed by way of the Fraser and the Blackwater to the Bella Coola, and thence to the Pacific, the first white man to cross the northern continent. Paddling for life through swirling rapids on rivers which rushed madly through sheer rock-bound canyons, swimming for shore when rock or sand bar had wrecked the precious bark canoe, struggling over heartbreaking portages, clinging to the sides of precipices, contending against hostile Indians and fear-stricken followers, and at last winning through, Mackenzie summed up what will ever remain one of the great achievements of exploration in the simple record, painted in vermilion on a rock in Burke Channel: Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three. The first bond
had been woven in the union of East and West. Between the eastern provinces a stronger link was soon to be forged. The War of 1812 gave the scattered British colonies in America for the first time a living sense of unity that transcended all differences, a memory of perils and of victories which nourished a common patriotism.
The War of 1812 was no quarrel of Canada's. It was merely an incident in the struggle between England and Napoleon. At desperate grips, both contestants used whatever weapons lay ready to their hands. Sea power was England's weapon, and in her claim to forbid all neutral traffic with her enemies and to exercise the galling right of search, she pressed it far. France trampled still more ruthlessly on American and neutral rights; but, with memories of 1776 still fresh, the dominant party in the United States was disposed to forgive France and to hold England to strict account.
England had struck at France, regardless of how the blow might injure neutrals. Now the United States sought to strike at England through the colonies, regardless of their lack of any responsibility for English policy. The "war hawks" of the South and West called loudly for the speedy invasion and capture of Canada as a means of punishing England. In so far as the British North American colonies were but possessions of Great Britain, overseas plantations, the course of the United States could be justified. But potentially these colonies were more than mere possessions. They were a nation in the making, with a right to their own development; they were not simply a pawn in the game of Britain and the United States. Quite aside from the original rights or wrongs of the war, the invasion of Canada was from this standpoint an act of aggression. "Agrarian cupidity, not maritime right, wages this war," insisted John Randolph of Roanoke, the chief opponent of the "war hawks" in Congress. "Ever since the report of the Committee on Foreign Relations came into the House, we have heard but one word--like the whippoorwill, but one eternal monotonous tone--Canada, Canada, Canada!"
At the outset there appeared no question that the conquest of Canada could be, as Jefferson forecast, other than "a mere matter of marching." Eustis, the Secretary of War, prophesied that "we can take Canada without soldiers." Clay insisted that the Canadas were "as much under our command as the Ocean is under Great Britain's." The provinces had barely half a million people, two-thirds of them allied by ties of blood to Britain's chief enemy, to set against the eight millions of the Republic. There were fewer than ten thousand regular troops in all the colonies, half of them down by the sea, far away from the danger zone, and less than fifteen hundred west of Montreal. Little help could come from England, herself at war with Napoleon, the master of half of Europe.
But there was another side. The United States was
had been woven in the union of East and West. Between the eastern provinces a stronger link was soon to be forged. The War of 1812 gave the scattered British colonies in America for the first time a living sense of unity that transcended all differences, a memory of perils and of victories which nourished a common patriotism.
The War of 1812 was no quarrel of Canada's. It was merely an incident in the struggle between England and Napoleon. At desperate grips, both contestants used whatever weapons lay ready to their hands. Sea power was England's weapon, and in her claim to forbid all neutral traffic with her enemies and to exercise the galling right of search, she pressed it far. France trampled still more ruthlessly on American and neutral rights; but, with memories of 1776 still fresh, the dominant party in the United States was disposed to forgive France and to hold England to strict account.
England had struck at France, regardless of how the blow might injure neutrals. Now the United States sought to strike at England through the colonies, regardless of their lack of any responsibility for English policy. The "war hawks" of the South and West called loudly for the speedy invasion and capture of Canada as a means of punishing England. In so far as the British North American colonies were but possessions of Great Britain, overseas plantations, the course of the United States could be justified. But potentially these colonies were more than mere possessions. They were a nation in the making, with a right to their own development; they were not simply a pawn in the game of Britain and the United States. Quite aside from the original rights or wrongs of the war, the invasion of Canada was from this standpoint an act of aggression. "Agrarian cupidity, not maritime right, wages this war," insisted John Randolph of Roanoke, the chief opponent of the "war hawks" in Congress. "Ever since the report of the Committee on Foreign Relations came into the House, we have heard but one word--like the whippoorwill, but one eternal monotonous tone--Canada, Canada, Canada!"
At the outset there appeared no question that the conquest of Canada could be, as Jefferson forecast, other than "a mere matter of marching." Eustis, the Secretary of War, prophesied that "we can take Canada without soldiers." Clay insisted that the Canadas were "as much under our command as the Ocean is under Great Britain's." The provinces had barely half a million people, two-thirds of them allied by ties of blood to Britain's chief enemy, to set against the eight millions of the Republic. There were fewer than ten thousand regular troops in all the colonies, half of them down by the sea, far away from the danger zone, and less than fifteen hundred west of Montreal. Little help could come from England, herself at war with Napoleon, the master of half of Europe.
But there was another side. The United States was