To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1783-1843 (review)

184CIVIL WAR HISTORY in the United States." In a chapter entitled "Hall and the American System," the author argues convincingly that Hall played a major role in the initial stages of the industrial revolution in the United States. The book is well researched and written and fully deserves the Frederick Jackson Turner award for the year's best book-length manuscript in American history which it received in 1977. William N. Still, Jr. East Carolina University To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in Anglo-American Relations , 1783-1843. By Howard Jones. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1977. Pp. xx, 251. $15.95.) A controversial episode for over a hundred years, the Webster-Ashburton treaty has drawn inordinate scrutiny and criticism from contemporaries and scholars alike. No less than the dean of diplomatic historians, Samuel Flagg Bemis, once accused Daniel Webster of laundering British bribe money destined for Maine journalists (which the author denies) and winning a victory for Britain, while chauvinists in both nations called the agreement a sell out. Complicating a resolution of the Maine boundary dispute was a heritage of transatlantic fear and distrust exacerbated by domestic politics, the Caroline affair, the Creole incident and extradition procedures, the war of Maine "Red Shirts" and New Brunswick "Blue Noses" over the Aroostook, the Washington government's clumsy handling of the McLeod case, not to mention Lord Ashburton's low opinion of the "weak & timid & irresolute" Secretary of State and the American people, a "Mass of ungovernable and unmanageable anarchy" (p. 118). To resolve all the irritants threatening the Anglo-American relationship any treaty necessarily had to be a "package agreement." Drawing on copious research in British and American archives as well as a comprehensive bibliography, Professor Jones has written an absorbing, perhaps definitive, account of a complicated subject. The United States, especially Maine, he argues, had been the major obstacle to early solutions proposed by joint commissions and the King of the Netherlands, but, later, Ashburton nearly wrecked negotiations by unexpectedly adopting New Brunswick's demand for the entire Madawaska region. Clearly, both Great Britain and the United States stood to gain from a boundary settlement though the author believes that Washington secured a "position of strength" along the new border regardless of the long-cherished military route finally won by London. The final agreement incorporated a new northern boundary, a cruising convention for discouraging African slavers, and an extradition agreement to satisfy the Southern slavocracy. BOOK REVIEWS185 The author attributes the successful negotiation to several factors: Ashburton's willingness to back down on Madawaska when he realized that Maine would not yield the southern portion; John C. Calhoun 's crucial support in the Senate; fear of war with Great Britain; Webster's editorials; ignorance of iron ore deposits in the Mesabi and Vermilion Ranges of present Minnesota; adoit newspaper campaigns by both governments; and nimble usage of seemingly limitless varieties of eighteenth-century maps purporting to prove how the other side had been outfoxed (Jones's thorough discussion of the "red line" map controversy should quicken the pulse of any cartophile ). Although a vociferous minority in Britain and the United States denounced the treaty and its negotiators, their awkward opposition was overcome. Believing that the treaty not only "possibly prevented an Anglo-American conflict" (p. 138) but also improved the prospects of better Franco-British relations, a point which needs fuller exposition, Jones sees the negotiation as proof that "the strength of personal diplomacy still can override the seemingly irreversible elements of discord" (p. 180). But, he might have added, only when all parties desire peace and have grown weary of the subject . Gordon H. Warren Central Washington University Correspondence of James K. Polk, Volume IV, 1837-1838. Edited by Herbert Weaver and Wayne Cutler. (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1977. Pp. xxxvi, 692. $25.00.) It is always good to be able to report that a long-term venture in publishing the papers of an individual maintains, as it reaches midpoint , the high standards with which it began, in spite of changes in editorial direction and staff. Such is the case with the correspondence of James K. Polk. This volume marks the retirement of Herbert...