The Path of Empire, A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power | Page 9

Lodges," were anxious for a war which would
unleash them for the conquest of Canada. Delay was causing all these
disputes to fester, and the public mind of the two countries was infected
with hostility.
Fortunately in 1841 new administrations came into power in both
England and the United States. Neither the English Tories nor the
American Whigs felt bound to maintain all the contentions of their
predecessors, and both desired to come to an agreement. The
responsibility on the American side fell upon Daniel Webster, the new
Secretary of State. With less foreign experience than John Quincy
Adams, he was more a man of the world and a man among men. His
conversation was decidedly less ponderous than his oratory, and there
was no more desirable dinner guest in America. Even in Webster's
lightest moments, his majestic head gave the impression of colossal

mentality, and his eyes, when he was in earnest, almost hypnotized
those upon whom he bent his gaze. A leading figure in public life for
twenty-five years, he now attained administrative position for the first
time, and his constant practice at the bar had given something of a
lawyerlike trend to his mind.
The desire of the British Government for an agreement with the United
States was shown by the selection of Washington instead of London as
the place of negotiation and of Lord Ashburton as negotiator. The head
of the great banking house of Baring Brothers, he had won his title by
service and was, moreover, known to be a friend of the United States.
While in Philadelphia in his youth, he had married Miss Bingham of
that city, and she still had American interests. In the controversies
before the War of 1812 Lord Ashburton had supported many of the
American contentions. He knew Webster personally, and they both
looked forward to the social pleasure of meeting again during the
negotiations. The two representatives came together in this pleasant
frame of mind and did most of their business at the dinner table, where
it is reported that more than diplomatic conversation flowed. They
avoided an exchange of notes, which would bind each to a position
once taken, but first came to an agreement and then prepared the
documents.
It must not be supposed, however, that either Ashburton or Webster
sacrificed the claims of his own Government. Webster certainly was a
good attorney for the United States in settling the boundary disputes, as
is shown by the battle of the maps. The territorial contentions of both
countries hung largely upon the interpretation of certain clauses of the
first American treaty of peace. Webster therefore ordered a search for
material to be made in the archives of Paris and London. In Paris there
was brought to light a map with the boundary drawn in red, possibly by
Franklin, and supporting the British contention. Webster refrained from
showing this to Ashburton and ordered search in London discontinued.
Ironically enough, however, a little later there was unearthed in the
British Museum the actual map used by one of the British
commissioners in 1782, which showed the boundary as the United
States claimed it to be. Though they had been found too late to affect
the negotiations, these maps disturbed the Senate discussion of the
matter. Yet, as they offset each other, they perhaps facilitated the

acceptance of the treaty.
Rapidly Webster and Ashburton cleared the field. Webster obtained the
release of McLeod and effected the passage of a law to prevent a
similar crisis in the future by permitting such cases to be transferred to
a federal court. The Caroline affair was settled by an amicable
exchange of notes in which each side conceded much to the other. They
did not indeed dispose of the slave trade, but they reached an agreement
by which a joint squadron was to undertake to police efficiently the
African seas in order to prevent American vessels from engaging in that
trade.
Upon the more important matter of boundary, both Webster and
Ashburton decided to give up the futile task of convincing each other as
to the meaning of phrases which rested upon half-known facts reaching
back into the misty period of first discovery and settlement. They
abandoned interpretation and made compromise and division the basis
of their settlement. This method was more difficult for Webster than for
Ashburton, as both Maine and Massachusetts were concerned, and each
must under the Constitution be separately convinced. Here Webster
used the "Red Line" map, and succeeded in securing the consent of
these States. They finally settled upon a boundary which was certainly
not that intended in 1782 but was a compromise between the two
conceptions of that boundary and divided the territory with a regard for
actual conditions and geography. From Passamaquoddy Bay to the
Lake of the