John A (54 page)

The appointment that took everybody by surprise was Macdonald's choice for the first premier of Ontario. A good deal more useful than being merely surprising, his selection involved one of the most adroit political seductions that Macdonald ever consummated. His choice for the post was his own namesake,
John Sandfield Macdonald. As the first Conservative premier of Confederation's largest province, “Little John” Macdonald harboured two substantial disqualifications: he was a lifelong Reformer (he had firmly rejected earlier attempts by Macdonald to seduce him), and he had been Upper Canada's best-known anti-Confederate. His compensating assets were yet considerable. As a former premier, he commanded credibility. As a Catholic, he brought Irish votes to the Conservatives, federally as well as provincially, along with the other Irishmen Macdonald had already bonded to the party by his alliance with the Orange Order. Most desirable of all, John S. Macdonald's appointment as Ontario premier not only infuriated the Liberals but divided them.

One other political matter needed to be sorted out. Back in London, the British had become convinced, for reasons difficult to comprehend, that when the new dominion was proclaimed officially, the document should include the names of all those who had won the ultimate Canadian lottery of appointment as senators—at that time a life appointment, unlike today's unkind cutoff at the tender age of seventy-five.
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Macdonald, looking ahead to the impending first election after Confederation, protested to Lord Carnarvon that “if the list were settled now, every man…who is omitted, rightly or wrongly, would vote against the Government.” The senatorial announcements were delayed until the fall, safely past the election's date.

The date for the Confederation celebrations was fixed for July 1. Macdonald would have preferred July 15, fearful that not all the preparations could be completed in time, but Monck
insisted on the earlier date. He quietly passed the word to Macdonald that he was to receive a knighthood, as Knight Commander of the Bath; the lesser honour of the Companion of the Bath would be accorded to Cartier, Galt, Tupper and Tilley, as well as to “house broken” Reformers like McDougall and Howland. Of all the people on Monck's list, the most conspicuous, by his absence, was George Brown, now back running the
Globe
and de facto leader of the Reform-Liberals. The list had been compiled on Macdonald's recommendations, and his choices showed him at his least gracious and most vengeful. A year later, Monck wrote to Brown apologizing with great grace: “I will confess to you that I was mortified and disappointed that circumstances rendered it impossible for me to recommend for a share in these distinctions
the
man whose conduct in 1864 had rendered the project of union feasible.”

Two of the others, Galt and Cartier, protested strenuously that they too should have been awarded knighthoods. Cartier declined the lesser honour on the grounds that it was an insult to French Canadians for their leader not to have been put in the front rank. Galt similarly refused his reward, telling his wife, “It is an ingracious and most unusual thing to refuse an honour publicly conferred, but if Lord Monck is an ass, I cannot help it.” Galt, and several of the others, eventually received the knighthoods they sought while Cartier was appeased with the higher honour of baronecy, although Galt, always hypersensitive, accepted only after writing to the colonial secretary that he actually opposed all titles and believed instead that Canada should become independent from Britain.

One story that went the rounds was that Macdonald learned from Monck only on Confederation Day itself of his own impending, solitary elevation to the knighthood. Very probably Macdonald was the source of this tale, letting it circulate in order
to distance himself from blame for the hurt the incident had caused several of his cabinet colleagues. It's easy to guess that the reason all of them learned of their rewards only at the very last moment was because Macdonald, foreseeing the outcome, had advised Monck to maintain secrecy to the end.

With the Confederation bandwagon now at high speed, more and more people clambered aboard. In June, four of Quebec's five bishops praised Confederation's virtues in pastoral letters that were read for two Sundays from all the pulpits they commanded. Montreal bishop Ignace Bourget, at this time quarrelling with Cartier over his support of the liberal Sulpicians, delayed his pastoral letter until after July 1; in it he enjoined “l'obeissance à l'autorité constituée,” a formula that avoided any praise of Confederation.

The most revealing pastoral letter was that of the bishop of Saint-Hyacinthe: he favoured Confederation, he told his flock, because “the fate awaiting us if God suffered us at some future date to enter the great American republic, would be exactly comparable to that of so many tributaries which have come to be swallowed up in the great St. Lawrence.” Cartier had made exactly the same point in his speech in the 1865 Confederation Debates: “The question is reduced to this: we must either have a British North American federation or else be absorbed into the American federation.” Canadiens had come to accept Confederation because, at the very least, it was better than the probably inevitable alternative of annexation, and at best could—just—prevent that national disappearance. If Macdonald understood this gut sense among French Canadians in a way that few other English-Canadian politicians then did, there was one obvious and decisive reason why: his own gut sense told him the same. Besides instinct, Macdonald by now possessed ample evidence of the United States' mood of expansiveness, northwards.

As Confederation approached, dramatic news came from Washington: the American government had just announced the takeover of a major piece of territory in North America. This territory was Alaska, whose Panhandle, stretching far southwards, cut off much of northern British Columbia from the sea. A steep purchase price of $7.2 million (U.S.) was agreed on between the territory's owner, Russia, and the United States, and the treaty was signed by President Andrew Johnson on March 29—by coincidence the same day that Queen Victoria signed the British North America Act. The New York
Herald
praised the purchase as “a hint” to England that it had “no business on this continent.” The New York
Tribune
described it as “a flank movement” on British Columbia by surrounding “a hostile cockney with a watchful Yankee on either side of him.” About Confederation itself, the
Tribune
said, “When the experiment of the ‘dominion' shall have failed, as fail it must, a process of peaceful absorption will give Canada her proper place in the great North American Republic.”

Comments by circulation-chasing editors counted for relatively little. Quite different was the fact that the principal advocates of the Alaska purchase should have been the United States' two well-known annexationists—Secretary of State William Seward and Senator Charles Sumner, the chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. On April 7, during Senate hearings on the Alaska purchase, Sumner described the takeover as “a visible step to the occupation of the whole North American continent.” Seward, in a speech in Boston on the eve of Confederation, said, “I know that Nature designs that this whole continent, not merely the thirty-six states, shall be, sooner or later, within the magic circle of the American Union.”

At the same time, a U.S. agent in Canada, E.H. Derby, suggested in a report to Seward that Britain should be asked to cede its possessions in the far west—the then separate colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia—as payment for damages to the United States during the Civil War. This damage had been caused by Confederate raiders that had been built in and launched from British ports. From St. Paul, Minnesota, another agent, James W. Taylor, reported to Washington on the steady Americanization of the Red River region of Manitoba; he recommended that “events have presented to the people of the government of the United States the opportunity—let me rather say have developed the duty, of interposing an overture to the people of the English colonies…to unite their fortunes with the United States.”

These were private communications, about which Macdonald could have no knowledge, although he would have known about the judgment of the
Nor'Wester
newspaper in Red River that “Americanism has become rampant with all classes, ages and conditions.” Other private communications, had he been aware of them, would have worried him a good deal more. They would have revealed that similar opinions existed in high places on the far side of the Atlantic. Early in 1867 the foreign secretary, Lord Stanley, wrote to the British ambassador in Washington, Sir Frederick Bruce, to say that Confederation had made Canada even more of a risk to Britain: “Many people would dislike the long boundary line with the United States (they look now to an early separation of Canada).” In March 1867 Stanley wrote again to Bruce: “The Colonies will remain Colonies, only confederated for the sake of convenience. If they choose to separate, we on this side shall not object; it is they who would protest against this idea. In England, separation would be generally popular.”

Perhaps most disturbing of all to Macdonald, had he been
aware of it, would have been the private comment by C.B. Adderley, the junior minister for the colonies, who had steered the British North America Act through the Commons: he told some of his colleagues, “It seems to me impossible that we should long hold B.C. from its natural annexation.” Nor were these views wholly private. The authoritative
Times
broadcast them by its editorial comment (read, regularly, not just by Canadian officials but no less so by American ones): “We look to Confederation as the means of relieving this country from much expense and much embarrassment.” And of Britain's need to pull back its troops still stationed in Canada, the
Times
observed, accurately but embarrassingly, that these served only as “hostages…for British good behaviour.”

An indication of just how seriously Macdonald took this mood is contained in a letter he wrote shortly before leaving England. Dated April 9, 1867, it was addressed to a prominent English lawyer, Henry Maine, who had received an honorary doctorate from Oxford at the same time as Macdonald the previous June. “I sail in four days for Canada with the act uniting all British America in my pocket,” he wrote. “A brilliant future would certainly await us were it not for those wretched Yankees who hunger & thirst for Naboth's field—War will come some day between England & the United States.”

In facing this challenge, Macdonald could really count on only one influential political ally who thought as he did. Unexpectedly, that was Galt, highly intelligent but highly volatile too. (There was also the passionate nationalist McGee, except that his political career was now in steep decline because of his insensate drinking.) Back in January 1867, Galt, while still in London and working to get the BNA Act through Westminster, wrote a letter to his wife that indicates a great deal about the threat to Canada from the east as well as the south, or from Britain as well as the United States—at least as that threat was perceived. Galt's
letter reveals also an exceptional appreciation of Macdonald's determination to stand on guard for the Canada that was about to be born.

“I am more than ever disappointed at the tone of feeling here as to the colonies. I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that they want to get rid of us…and would rather give us up than defend us, or incur the risk of war with that country. Day by day I am more oppressed with the sense of responsibility of maintaining a connection undesired here, and which exposes us to such peril at home. I pray God to show me the right path. But I much doubt whether Confederation will save us from Annexation. Even Macdonald is rapidly feeling as I do.” He continued, “Except Macdonald, I know none of the Delegates who really think enough of the future that is before us, and he considers that our present immediate task is to complete the Union, leaving the rest to be solved by time.”

Galt had grasped the nature of the “long game” of national survival that Macdonald was playing. It's a shame, in hindsight, that the two never really became partners.

In fact, Macdonald was dead wrong about the readiness of the government of a war-weary America to risk a new conflict, even if against a lion now starting to show signs of its age. The vast armies mobilized during the Civil War had been demobilized down to a minimalist fifty thousand. He was right absolutely, though, that Canada was passing through a period of exceptional peril in which, at the same time that some American leaders were looking expectantly northwards, their equivalents in Britain were doing their best to look the other way. Among possible remedies, Macdonald possessed just one: Confederation itself, or, more exactly, making Confederation serve as a synonym for a nation's will to survive.