The Story of an Illusion: The Plan to Trade the Alabama Claims for Canada

THE STORY OF AN ILLUSION: The Plan to Trade the Alabama Claims for Canada Doris W. Dashew The spirit of manifest destiny which swept the United States in the 1840's did not die with that decade. Submerged below the rising tide of sectional conflict, it rose to the surface again as the Civil War ended. Talk of acquiring Cuba, Santo Domingo, the Bahamas, and the Virgin Islands abounded. But, as ever, attention focused chiefly upon Canada . Wartime events stimulated the old dream of northward expansion and seemed to provide a means by which it might be realized. British actions during the Civil War had left the United States with monetary claims as well as bitter feelings against that country. Hardily resistant to settlement, these claims became the basis for the most explosive dispute between the two nations in the half decade after Appomattox . The idea of exchanging the claims for Canada slowly took seed and grew. Fantastic as it now seems, for a brief time, at least, the hope of carrying out this plan was strong enough to deter the United States from considering other modes of settlement. Because it appears so incredible few historians have taken it seriously or tried to understand and explain how responsible Americans could have embraced such an idea.1 The answer lies in an examination of certain events in Canada, Great Britain and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and in an appreciation of their interaction. During the war Canada had provided a convenient haven for Confederate agents and served as a base of operations for a number of feeble but galling Confederate raids. Angry Americans thought that future irritations of this sort could be avoided by removing the irritant , hence, the numerous letters to the State Department urging tlie 1 Allan Nevins' Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration (New York, 1936), contains scattered references to the plan, but Nevins gives no systematic study to it and from the tone of his discussions the reader may infer that it was not a significant issue. H. C. Allen mentions the scheme briefly in Great Britain and the United States: A History of Anglo-American Relations (New York, 1955), p. 509, commenting, ". . . Americans, even those as sane as C. F. Adams, had become obsessed with tlie idea that Canada might still be annexed as a kind of recompense for damage inflcted by the Alabama, a quid pro quo in settlement of American claims." He makes it clear that lie believes tlie plan was a serious deterrent to an Anglo-American agreement, but explains nothing more about it. 332 acquisition of Canada. The New York Times reported a nationwide upsurge in annexationist sentiment.2 A host of other issues became connected with it and in turn added momentum to the expansionist drive. Proponents of the Alaska Treaty hailed the purchase as a step toward gaining Canada.3 Those who wished to end the arrangement set up by the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 argued that if Canadians wished the benefits of free trade with the United States they ought to join the Union.4 Many people speculated, in print, about how the tariff and the possession of Alaska might be used to accelerate the inevitable drift of British North America toward eventual incorporation within the United States. Such talk drew attention to Canada and helped produce a more receptive audience for more audacious , less time-consuming plans for acquiring the territory. Among Americans with annexationist leanings were men in positions of power, many of them responsible for the formation of national policy. The State Department, under both William H. Seward and Hamilton Fish, sent agents to Canada to further United States interests . Not only were these agents to collect information concerning provincial dissatisfaction with England, but they were also to encourage these feelings and to work with organizations, some of them secret and revolutionary, which sought to achieve Canadian independence and union with the United States. In 1866 Seward sent propagandists to persuade the Canadians that without reciprocity their only course was to join the Union. Senator Carl Schurz had his own agents in Canada and his own plans for...