Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies

2. Canada in the Shadow of Industrial America, 1871-1903

41 2 Canada in the Shadow of Industrial America, 1871–1903 The triumph of Union nationalism and industrialism over Confederate decentralization and agrarianism in the United States coincided not only with the Canadian Confederation but also with movements of national unification elsewhere in the world. Germany, Italy, Argentina, and—most significant to the United States and Canada— Mexico all emerged from mid-nineteenth-century turmoil as unified nation-states and passed into periods of rapid economic growth and development. Confronted in Europe, Africa, and Asia by Germany as a rival imperial power, Britain disengaged from the Western Hemisphere. The Treaty of Washington signaled the withdrawal of the Royal Army from North America, despite Canadian protests. By 1872, the only red-coated regiments left in Canada were the garrisons at the naval bases of Halifax and Esquimalt, British Columbia. The United States was suddenly close to the principal objective of its Canadian policy: it no longer needed to actively fear British military power on its northern border. Britain remained the ultimate guarantor of Canadian security, however. “The true defence of our colonies,” Colonial Secretary Edward Cardwell warned the world, was “that war with them is war with England.” But if Canada was any less a hostage in Anglo-American relations, Canadians felt that they had not been released so much as abandoned to their own resources in North American relations.1 Canada’s view of “the Great Republic” was encapsulated in the Canadian editorials recognizing America’s centennial in 1876. “Every well-wisher can rejoice in progress as steady as it has been remarkable ,” began the Toronto Globe, “even though he may hold by a very different political system, and may render allegiance to a very differ- 42 canada and the united states ent, and in his estimation greatly preferable, political power.” “Let us rejoice that so much good has been accomplished, not that so much evil is still manifest.” A list of “symptoms of degeneracy among our neighbors” followed, little changed from Loyalist critiques: “the increasing unscrupulousness of public men, . . . the murders, the frauds, the failures, the falsehood, the immoralities.” Comparing the speeches on Dominion Day—July first—with the “spread-eagle” rhetoric on the Fourth of July, the editor noted that Canadians “may have little talk about fighting and dying for the Dominion, but let them be put to the test and they will show satisfactorily what they are able to do.” The Globe was among the least anti-American newspapers. The almost universal Canadian assumption was that the United States coveted its northern neighbor and plotted annexation. In Canadian political caricature , the United States was “Brother Jonathan,” a skinny, avaricious version of Uncle Sam who invariably pressed his unwanted attentions on fair “Miss Canada.”2 No corresponding caricature of Canada ever appeared in political cartoons in the United States: in fact, few Americans paid much attention to Canada at all. After a visit to Washington, a Canadian cabinet minister was shocked by “the crass ignorance of everything Canadian among leading public men.” Who would want to know anything about a “bleak, arid and provincial . . . frigid colony?” asked Henry James. President Andrew Johnson had pointedly not congratulated Canada on the first Dominion Day; on the Confederation’s birthdays thereafter , U.S. editorialists continued the tradition. “The average American,” writes historian Lester B. Shippee, “ignored the fact that a colony was disappearing and a nation was rising in its place.” Active annexationism was passé, replaced by the assurance that the continental fulfillment of America’s Manifest Destiny would not require recourse to arms. As Representative William Munger of Ohio told the House in 1870, now that “England’s star has passed its zenith, . . . Canada will fall into our lap like a ripe apple.” To help shake the tree, throughout the late nineteenth century the United States tested Canadian national sovereignty in boundary, fisheries, and sealing disputes. Important as these issues were—especially to Canada—they were matters of local 43 In the Shadow of Industrial America rather than national interest to the United States and of indifference to Britain, until the Venezuela and Alaska boundary disputes at the end of the century. No one yet spoke of an “undefended border” between Canada and the United States, and each country planned for the possibility of war with the other. But by century’s end, armed conflict “Coming Home from the Fair,” Canadian Illustrated News (1876). Courtesy Metropolitan Toronto Reference...