Radio Script #758

Little Talks on Common Things

March 3, 1968

A number of times on this program I have referred to Maine’s Aroostook War of 1839. and in my book “Remembered Maine” I have a chapter devoted to that subject. Many of my listeners know that the bloodless conflict known as the Aroostook War concerned a long dispute between the United States and Great Britain concerning the exact location of the boundary line between Maine and Canada. Today I want to tell you more about that bitter dispute that finally ended with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty.

Very early in our colonial history, nearly a hundred years before the Revolutionary War that established a separate United States of America, the river St. Croix was recognized as the boundary between British and French possessions in this part of the world.

In 1688, when Sir Edmund Andros was sent from England to serve as the royal governor of Massachusetts, his commission read that he was to have jurisdiction over “all that tract of land in America from 40° NL to the river St. Croix eastward”.

Territory east of the St. Croix was recognized as French Acadia. But soon England was claiming old Acadia under the new name of Nova Scotia, and the new British charter of 1691 incorporated into Massachusetts “the colony of Massachusetts Bay, the colony of New Plymouth, the Province of Maine. the territory called Acadia or Nova Scotia, and all lands between Nova Scotia and Maine into one province to be known as the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England”.

Six years later in 1697 a treaty between England and France restored Nova Scotia to the French, but only five years after that, in 1702. the two nations were fighting what became known as Queen Anne’s War. Then in 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht restored Nova Scotia to England.

What our American histories call the French and Indian War ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763, and that treaty gave to England all the French possessions in North America, except the islands at the mouth of the St. Lawrence to be retained by France as a shelter for her fishermen. The St. Croix river was designated as the boundary between the old British claim of New England and the new territory now secured from France by the treaty.

When the American Revolution ended, the Treaty of 1783 more explicitly defined the boundary between the United States, now freed from British rule. and Canada that remained British. The treaty said the line ran “from the NW angle of Nova Scotia, which was the angle formed by a line drawn due north from the source of the St. Croix to the Highlands. then along the Highlands which divide those rivers that empty into the St. Lawrence from those that fall into the Atlantic Ocean, on to the northernmost head of the Connecticut River”. From the source of the St. Croix to the ocean, the line was the middle of the St. Croix River.

With a boundary so explicitly stated, why should there have been any dispute? Disagreement arose and continued for many years because the Treaty of 1783 actually was not explicit enough. It left unanswered two important questions: which of three streams was the ancient St. Croix referred to in many documents and what ridge or extent of hills was meant by the Highlands?

In 1784 a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature, after personal investigation of the St. Croix area~ reported that three sizable rivers emptied into Passamaquoddy Bay in that region: the easternmost was the Magagnadanic; the middle one was the Schoodic; and the westernmost was the Cobscook. The committee reported to their government in Boston: “From every information we could obtain, from the Indians and others, the easternmost stream is the original St. Croix.”

As early as 1785 the Governor of New Brunswick had announced the Canadian claim of the middle river. the Schoodic, as the true St. Croix. In 1794 Lord Grenville. the British Prime Minister, proposed a trade treaty that would consider, as part of its task, the establishment of which river was meant by the St. Croix in the ancient documents. There were three treaty commissioners, one selected by the King, another by the President of the U.S., and a third chosen by the two thus selected. The British and American Commissioners agreed on Egbert Benson of the New York Supreme Court as the third commissioner, thus placing two Americans on the commission.

The Commission consulted with Maine’s first historian, James Sullivan, whose “History of Maine” was published in 1796. Sullivan said that to him there was no doubt that the eastern stream, the Magagnadanic, was the ancient St. Croix. Sullivan relied heavily on a map made in 1755 by John Mitchell showing the British and French possessions in North America. On that map was a river marked St. Croix. which to Sullivan seemed to follow quite accurately the course of the Magagnadanic.

The commission published its decision in 1798 in these words: “The river named St. Croix in the Treaty of 1783 has its mouth in Passamaquoddy Bay at a point called Joe’s Point, about one mile north of the northernmost part of St. Andrew’s Island, in Latitude 45 degrees. 5 minutes, 5 seconds and Longitude 57 degrees, 12 minutes, 30 seconds; and the course of said river up from its mouth is north to a point of land called Devil’s Head, then west to where it divides into two streams, then up the north stream to its source, which is at Chibuitcook at a stake near a yellow birch tree. hooped in iron and marked ST and JH 1797, by Samuel Titcomb and John Harris, surveyors employed to survey the said stream.”

The decision of the commission was not satisfactory to people living in eastern Maine, because it made the Schoodic, rather than the more eastern Magagnadanic the St. Croix of the treaty. But the U. S. Government accepted the decision. Not so easily settled was the dispute as to the location of the Highlands mentioned in the treaty. The historian Sullivan assumed that “Highlands” meant a ridge or water shed. because the treaty said clearly that the Highlands separated the rivers into the St. Lawrence from those into the Atlantic. The British claimed the Highlands were near Mars Hill, but the United States claimed a line farther north because there was no evidence that rivers divided at Mars Hill, as stated in the treaty.

The dispute dragged on through the years. In 1820, when Maine became a separate state, the boundary was still not agreed upon. Previously Maine people had to depend on the Massachusetts Government in Boston to press Mainers claim in Washington.

Now an independent state, Maine could take a more active part.

In 1821 the U.S. Department of State upheld Mainers contention that Mars Hill was at least a hundred miles from the source of any river that drained into the St. Lawrence, that the only two streams divided by the hill were both tributaries of the St. John to the Bay of Fundy. The American Department of State then agreed that the dispute should be arbitrated by some neutral sovereign. The British also agreed, and the King of the Netherlands was chosen.

Meanwhile tempers began to flare in the disputed area. In 1822 Mainers first governor, William King, reported to Washington that British subjects from New Brunswick were cutting valuable timber in Aroostook on lands claimed by Maine. Three years later, in 1825, Gov. Parris made a similar complaint of depredations on the Aroostook and Madawaska Rivers. He went further than had Gov. King, and declared that the depredations were approved by the New Brunswick government.

Then the Maine Legislature got actively into the scene. In 1826 it authorized the State Land Agent to issue deeds to American settlers along the St. John and the Madawaska, pointing out that many of those settlers had been there for at least thirty years. The Land Agent then gave deeds of 100 acres each on the St. John to John Baker and James Bacon. There was then no other settlement within several miles of their lands.

At this point Maine failed to secure needed support from Washington. The Governor of New Brunswick declared the deeds to Baker and Bacon invalid and those men as squatters on British soil. Washington, instead of strongly supporting the Maine action, stated that the whole matter of the boundary would soon be settled by decision of the King of the Netherlands. The New Brunswick government was quick to act. John Baker was arrested and jailed at Fredericton. Maine protested vigorously. Then Washington did act. the Secretary of State authorizing the U.S. Minister in London to demand the release of Baker. since the U.S. could not agree to British jurisdiction over the territory, but the London government held that Baker’s arrest had been entirely legal.

For more than two years Baker was held in the Fredericton jail without trial. At last in 1829 he was tried by a New Brunswick Court, which found him guilty of conspiracy and sedition by raising an American flag over British land. He was sentenced to two months in jail and a fine of 25 pounds.

How long Baker served in prison is not surely known. At any rate within a short time he had been freed and had returned to his home near Madawaska.

The U.S. position, at last coming to substantial defense of the Maine claims, was presented to the Netherlands arbitrator by Secretary of State Gallatin, with the assistance of Wm. Pitt Preble of Maine. The U.S. insisted that the term “Highlands” did not necessarily mean a mountainous country, but applied to any ground along which the rivers divided as stated in the treaty. The British held out for the Mars Hill boundary, pointing out that the rivers divided at the boundary claimed by the U.S. flowed respectively into the Bay Chaleur and the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the one hand and into the Bay of Fundy on the other. The U.S. had made so much of the Mitchell map that the British turned to that same map to show that on it the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of Fundy were both carefully distinguished from the Atlantic Ocean.

Both the American and the British detailed statements were presented to the King of the Netherlands on January 10, 1829.

We have used up our broadcast time for today, but next week we shall tell you about the decision made by the arbitrating King of the Netherlands, how it was greeted in Maine, and what happened thereafter before Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton finally settled the long-lasting controversy.

Year: 1968