Blood and Daring (46 page)

Fish told Thornton of Grant’s desire to settle the claims by trading for Canada, and noted that every cabinet secretary supported the president.
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Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Fish said that he believed the majority of the Canadians wanted annexation. Thornton finally balked and questioned the veracity of the American interpretation of Canadian public opinion.
⁴²
The talks were going nowhere. Canada refused to concede; Britain refused to push it. The three-nation joint commission that Fish and John Rose had discussed two years before
seemed to be the only way forward. Besides, the 1872 presidential election was coming up and Grant needed a foreign policy victory.

On February 2, 1871, Macdonald received an invitation to join a five-person British delegation as part of a Joint High Commission to meet in Washington to settle all claims outstanding from the Civil War. Macdonald pondered his participation, but decided he needed to be there to represent Canadian interests—compensation for the Fenian raids, protection of fishing rights and, above all, to ensure that Canada was not traded in whole or part for the
Alabama
claims.

Despite the simmering postwar tension with the United States, Macdonald had enjoyed a series of political triumphs since July 1867—but he had also suffered more personal tragedy. On April 7, 1868, his trusted friend and political ally Thomas D’Arcy McGee, having completed a late-night speech in the House, was enjoying a cigar as he walked a few blocks home to his Sparks Street boarding house. As he took out his key to unlock the door, he was felled by a gunshot. Word screamed through the city and Macdonald rushed to the scene in time to kneel on the cobblestones and hold his friend’s head in his hands. McGee was dead—Canada’s first political assassination.
^*
Hibernian Patrick Whelan was found guilty of the murder and hanged after uttering his final words: “God save Ireland and God save my soul.”
⁴³
Investigations were undertaken to determine if American Fenians had ordered the assassination, but no connections were found.

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 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:

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.

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.