Swanstrom -- Maine Boundary

REMEMBER THE MAINE...BOUNDARY

- Presented at the Chicago Literary Club –

November 19, 2007

Thomas E. Swanstrom

I am a long-term book lover, partly explained by growing up in a bookstore during my

formative years in the north woods cultural nirvana of Green Bay, Wisconsin. However, I

should admit that my father had the only book store in a community of 60,000 people and since

he could not live by selling books alone, he also sold such other sundries as greeting cards,

jewelry and bar supplies. Bar supplies, in particular, were his strongest sellers in a town that, at

least at the time, had the highest per capita incidence of bars in the country. Anyway, an

experience with a book led me into the topic lying behind this talk.

A Persian fairy tale concerns the Princes of Serendip who whenever they were sent on a

mission found something that looked irrelevant but was actually quite meaningful. Their travels

led Horace Walpole to coin the term “serendipity” which is defined as “the faculty of finding

valuable or agreeable things not sought for”. I will give you an example of serendipity relating

to maps which, of course, are the subject of the Festival of Maps going on now in more than

thirty Chicago institutions.

One of the points I wish to make is that any early treaties or agreements that were based

on existing maps were probably not worth the paper they were written on. Mapmakers in

general were not explorers and most had never been to the areas covered in their maps. To get

around this lack of first-hand knowledge, many of these mapmakers took the easy way out of

simply copying the features put on maps by earlier cartographers. This is why California was

shown as an island on many maps for more than a century after Juan de Fuca in 1592 reported

the large opening at Baja. This rampant plagiarism is also why two large fictitious islands were

shown as being in Lake Superior for about a century. If you used these maps to navigate, in the

words of Satchell Paige: “If you don’t know where you are going, you may end up some place

else.”

In October 2005 I bought a number of books at an auction in Bloomington, Illinois.

Among them was a book by William Guthrie, entitled A New Geographical, Historical &

Commercial Grammar, published in 1777. It is not in perfect shape since it comes in two parts

without the author intending it to do so. But, then again, I only paid $14 for the book while the

prior owner bought it for $100. And, even though it is missing one map, it has 18 pretty decent

maps with some minor foxing. Many of the maps intrigued me but one of the most interesting

was not even part of the book. It was a map of northern Maine, obviously clipped from a

newspaper. This map shows northern Maine with three boundaries, that claimed by the United

States, that claimed by Great Britain and the one determined by the King of the Netherlands. On

the back of the map are ads for such things as Butler’s Indian Specific which cured colds,

coughs, consumption, spitting of blood, asthma, and all disorders of the breast and legs. Since

the book was dated 1777, I wondered if the inserted map was from the same time period. But,

here serendipity reared its beautiful head and led me in another direction.

This boundary dispute was one that I had never heard of. Most people have heard of the

controversy in the West concerning the boundary between the Oregon territory and Canada as

exemplified in the slogan: “54-40 or fight”. In 1818 the U. S. and Great Britain agreed on a

joint occupancy of the Oregon Territory which the British called the Columbia District, a fur-

trading division of the Hudson’s Bay Company. But, this didn’t end the dispute since Great

Britain wanted the area for its bounty of furs while the U.S. desired control of the Columbia

River so that it could have a deep water port on the Pacific.

In 1846 expansionism in the U. S. under the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny” led to

political clamoring for a resolution favorable to the U. S. The term “54-40 or fight” has been

mistakenly attributed to Polk’s 1844 presidential campaign but it was never mentioned then and

Polk was not much of an expansionist anyway. If the United States had achieved it’s 54-40

objective, the border would have been set at the southern limit of Russian settlement in North

America which was substantially north of Vancouver Island.[1]

However, Polk backed down and, in the 1846 Treaty of Washington, the border was set at

the 49^th Parallel extending all the way to the Lake of the Woods The westernmost boundary was

stated to be in a channel in the Juan de Fuca Strait but the treaty neglected to specify which

channel was involved. Since there are two channels in the area, the Haro and the Rosario, with

about 170 square miles of land between them, this created a boundary problem. The dispute was

not settled until 1872 when Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, as an arbitrator, decided that the

correct strait in the 1846 treaty was the Haro Strait which effectively gave the disputed area to

the United States.

By mid 1859 there were 16 American settlers and 18 Hudson’s Bay Company employees

living in the disputed area. This proximity almost led to a war in 1859 when an American

farmer, Lyman Cutlar, shot a Bay Company pig that was rooting in his garden. The pig belonged

to an Irishman named Griffin. As the story goes, the American Cutler told Griffin to “Keep your

pigs out of my potatoes”. Griffin was said to reply: “Keep your potatoes out of my pig”.

Griffin was offered $10 for the pig but refused it, asking for $100. The deepening crisis led to

General Winfield Scott being sent to negotiate with the British. This one-shot war went down in

history as the Pig War and was settled by an agreement for joint occupation of San Juan Island.

To this day at the location of the former British camp on the north end of this island the Union

Jack is still raised daily by U. S. government employees.[2]

There also was the possibility of border problems relating to the purchase of Alaska from

Russia. This mainly stemmed from the part of Alaska that thinly stretched down the coast. To

counteract any problems in this area, Teddy Roosevelt set up a biased panel to decide on the

boundaries and, speaking loudly with a big stick, said that if he didn’t agree with the panel’s

findings, he would send troops into the area to enforce his view of where the boundaries should

lie. As Al Capone once said: “You can get much further with a smile, a kind word and a gun

than you can with a smile and a kind word.” Or, in the words of Charles Colson of Watergate

fame,: “If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”

Another disagreement related to the boundary of Minnesota and the settlement of this

dispute explains why the northern boundary of Minnesota is not a straight line but at one point

juts up into Canada. This deviation from a straight line occurred because the 1783 Treaty of

Paris set the boundary as going from the northwest point of the Lake of the Woods to the source

of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, the Mitchell map used inaccurately showed the Mississippi as

stretching too far north. Thus, the border line couldn’t go directly west to the Mississippi but

instead had to go south to meet it. This created an area called the Northwest Angle which

consists of 596 square miles, only 123 of which are land.

The Northwest Angle is notable for a number of reasons. One is that it is the only part of

the U. S. that is above the 49^th Parallel; on many maps it appears that Maine is further north but

this is simply an optical illusion stemming from the type of map projection used. Another

anomaly is that the Northwest Angle is a peninsula and thus is the only part of the United States

that is completely surrounded by Canada. There is a customs house at the border but it is

unmanned; you make your customs declaration by phone from there to the U. S. or Canada.

Most of the area is part of the Red Lake Indian Reservation but, according to the 2000 Census,

apparently no Indians live there since the 152 inhabitants are all listed as white except for one

Hispanic. It also has the last one-room school house in Minnesota and, in the late 1990’s, was a

hotbed of secessionist sentiment due to the border crossing rules and laxer fishing regulations in

Canada.[3]

But, this talk mainly concerns the Maine boundary. When I saw the 1831 map, I

wondered two things; the date of the map and why the King of the Netherlands was deciding a

U.S. boundary. Doing some research, I found that the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812,

put a decision as to the boundary in the hands of “some friendly sovereign of state”. Since we

were never at war with the Netherlands, obviously the King of the Netherlands was a friendly

sovereign. Seventeen years later in 1831 the King of the Netherlands made his recommendations

as to the boundary. Thus, the small map in the book can be dated as being from about 1831.

The dispute stemmed from grants and treaties dating back more than 200 years. It all

started in 1621 when James I granted his tutor, William Alexander, all of what is now Nova

Scotia and New Brunswick as well as part of Quebec – an area larger than Great Britain and

France combined and the first such grant in the New World.[4] At the time of this grant, however,

much of the territory was still in French hands. To make money on the property, William

Alexander sought settlers by making them baronets and selling each 6 square miles of land for

the paltry sum of 150 pounds. Few took advantage of this scheme and those that did were

mainly from the lowest classes. In 1629 Alexander did bring settlers to the grant area but they

had to leave in 1632 when the entire area was returned to France.

In 1743 a proclamation by King George II set the boundaries between the colonies but,

on purpose, left the wording vague because the area was all wilderness and both colonies would

eventually belong to the British so who cared. In 1763 at the end of the Seven Years War, Great

Britain finally got possession of the entire east coast except for a group of islands left to the

French for fishing purposes. The inhabited islands in this group, called Saint Pierre and

Miquelon, are still part of France and had a thriving alcohol-smuggling industry during

Prohibition.

In the original grant and later treaties the boundaries were defined as going due north

from the source of the St. Croix River to the highlands where the boundary would be the 45^th

Parallel going east. The 45^th Parallel is thought to be halfway between the equator and the North

Pole but it is off by about ten miles since the earth is not a perfect sphere but bulges at the

equator. Boundary surveyors were dispatched by both the Americans and the British with the

Americans becoming renowned for their liquor capacity and ability to move the line northward[5]

while the British would only work if they got a pint of bitters each day.[6] The sobering result

was that the 45^th Parallel Line set by the surveyors was actually off by about a mile, leaving

two American forts in British territory.

Of course, at the time of the original grant, the area had not been mapped and was

completely unexplored. The later treaties had the advantage of being able to use a 1755 map by

John Mitchell as a guide. However, this map was completely inaccurate and only showed two

rather than the actual three rivers in the area. Mitchell himself was a physician and botanist, not

a mapmaker and, in fact, made only one map during his lifetime. His commission appeared to be

to simply copy other maps. Apparently, his map was chosen for its large size with the resulting

comprehensive detail as well as Mitchell’s propensity to interpret conflicting claims in favor of

the British position, partially by assuming all Iroquois land to be British.

Despite its inaccuracies, this large Mitchell map became the standard reference for most

treaties. This 1755 map was still being used as recently as 1932 to judge legal disputes between

eastern states and remained an important source of information for fishery disputes well into the

1980’s.[7] So, it’s apparent as Dr. Lawrence Peter (of the Peter Principle fame) stated: “If you

don’t learn from your mistakes, there isn’t much sense in making them.” Or, as stated by the

noted philosopher, Casey Stengel: “If we don’t make too many of the wrong mistakes, we will

win this game.”

One problem was that there was no St. Croix River in the area even though it was shown

on a Champlain map as early as 1613. There is actually a St. Croix River but it is located further

west.

Another problem with the wording of the various treaties was that they said the northern

dividing line between the United States and Canada should be the “highlands”. Unfortunately,

there really aren’t any highlands in the area, as in Scotland, so the U.S. and Britain could choose

different “highlands” as the boundary. The nearest highlands were actually far to the north

which the British believed could easily be used for U. S. invasions of Canada. As Confucius

said: “Men do not trip over mountains. They trip over molehills.” With the lack of highlands,

the decision had to fall back on the treaty definition of the highlands as being the points where

westward-flowing rivers emptied themselves into the St. Lawrence and eastward-flowing rivers

emptied into the Atlantic. The problem with this was that many of the rivers flowed into neither

body of water. And, Great Britain confused the issue further when it concluded in 1828 that the

Bay of Fundy was not part of the Atlantic Ocean – even though on maps it looks to be obviously

part of the ocean and, in fact, has the greatest difference between low and high tides of any spot

on earth.

During the War of 1812 the British took control of eastern Maine with the support of

residents who wanted to benefit from trade. But, they had to give it back in line with the Treaty

of Ghent in 1814; if they had kept it, there wouldn’t have been a boundary problem later. Of

course, British attitudes toward Americans had changed little from the period just prior to the

Revolution, when Samuel Johnson defined Americans thusly: “They are a race of convicts and

ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.”[8]

The disputed area is known as Madawaska which means “Land of the Porcupines” in

Algonquin.[9] Madawaska consists of the northwest corner of Madawaska County, New

Brunswick and adjacent areas of Quebec and Maine. It is about three times the size of Rhode

Island and was first granted to one Sieur Charles Aubert de la Chesnaye by France in 1683[10] but

the area was not settled until 1785 when a group of Acadians moved in. Among the first

American settlers in the area was John Baker, described as having a heavy chin and a big nose

and his wife, Sophie Rice, who had earlier been the wife of John’s deceased brother. Being a

headstrong man, Baker tried to get the French residents to rebel against the British and he

attempted to stop the delivery of mail from Madawaska to Quebec On July 4, 1827 Baker and

Rice dared to raise a flag showing an eagle partially surrounded by stars. [11] For this offense they

were fined 25 pounds by New Brunswick. A little over a month later they declared the

independence of the Republic of Madawaska but were arrested 45 days later. Baker was

sentenced to two months in jail but was allowed to serve his sentence walking around town while

his fine was paid by the state of Maine and he was supported in Washington by Henry Clay.[12]

I should note that the Republic of Madawaska still exists, at least in sentiment, and the

mayor of the largest town in the area, Edmunston, New Brunswick, also has the honorary title,

“President of Madawaska” In the U.S. part of Madawaska, the republic’s flag is a French tri-

color with a gold star on one of the bars. In the Canadian part, the Madawaskan flag features an

American eagle on a white background, surrounded by a half circle of red stars. The eagle

represents the United States. The white background stands for the purity of the Madawaskan

scenery and its people. The stars stand for six groups of natives, including Acadians and Indians

while the red color represents the blood shed by the founders in clearing the dense forests. Thus,

the Canadian part of Madawaska has an American-type flag while the American section of

Madawaska has a French-type flag. There is also a coat of arms for Madawaska showing two

hands clasped together with a torch rising out of them.[13]

In 1831 the state of Maine grabbed the bull by the tail when it voted to incorporate the

territory of Madawaska into the town of Madawaska, Maine even though nearly 90% of the

territory’s inhabitants were French or Acadian who were not really pro-American but simply

wanted to be left alone. This action brought the dispute to the attention of Great Britain, New

Brunswick and the United States.

But, the King of the Netherlands ingeniously solved the boundary problem in 1831 by

determining that the “highlands” in the treaties lay on the bottom of the St. John River. In

coming to this decision the king apparently looked at who lived where in the area even though he

was told to ignore this. He also was apparently influenced by his perceived need for British

support in his effort to suppress a revolt by his Belgian subjects and also by the fact that the King

of England was his cousin; in fact, at one time, the King of the Netherlands had been an honorary

general in the British Army.[14] To his critics, the king did not do his job since his original

mandate was to choose one claim over the other and not offer a compromise. Some Americans

were particularly incensed since the American argument appeared stronger.

As for the king’s “highlands” boundary, the criticism and spoofing intensified. In 1846

Henry David Thoreau, as mentioned in his book, The Maine Woods, came to the “highlands”

boundary which he said was level, stagnant and watery. He termed it an “interesting spot to

stand on...though you could not sit down there.” To Thoreau, if the King of the Netherlands had

come to the “highlands” boundary spot, he would have been in his element since it was all

water.[15] This view was seconded by John Deane of the Maine legislature who said that “No

person but a Dutchman who had lived among bogs and dikes could possibly come to such a

result.”[16]

Even though the king’s decision gave about two-thirds of the area to the United States,

Great Britain was willing to accept it, a move that many Canadians still consider a disgrace.

From the U.S. side, President Jackson reluctantly rejected the king’s decision, under pressure

from Maine which said that the Netherlands were no longer important since they had lost half

their kingdom in the Belgian revolt. Maine later yielded its claims to the U.S. government after

its legislature secretly accepted a $1,250,000 bribe of undivided lands in the territory of

Michigan. But, in line with the old Scottish proverb: “A man convinced against his will is of the

same opinion still” and the dispute continued.

In 1839 conflict began in what was called the Aroostook War but also known as the Pork

and Beans War, the Coon-Canuck War and the Lumberjack War.[17] “Aroostook” means

“beautiful river” and today Aroostook County is the largest U. S. county east of the Mississippi.

The war started in 1839 when New Brunswick sent lumbermen to log in the Aroostook Valley.

The valley was very important to Britain since in the winter its communications went through the

area, a military road there could be used in the case of American expansionist moves and it

contained the only remaining stands of white pines that could be used for Royal Navy mast poles

Trees at least 24 inches in diameter were marked with a crow’s track called the “Broad Arrow”

and reserved for the king’s exclusive use.[18] During the American Revolution one reason why the

British navy was battered by the French at the end was because most of their masts were worn

out and affected by dry rot. To the U.S., the area was of marginal strategic value although there

was also interest in the vast stands of virgin growth pine, the rivers that provided transportation

to mills and markets as well as fertile farmland.

Maine and New Brunswick each mobilized about 10,000 troops while 50,000 U.S.

Federal troops were sent in. On both sides, however, the troops were poorly equipped and had

poor morale despite Maine’s claims to valiantly send its “Red Shirts” against the “Blue Noses”

of New Brunswick.[19] But, this potential conflict was well covered by the press of the time, again

illustrating Ambrose Bierce’s principle that “War is God’s way of teaching Americans

geography.”

The war was unique in that no shots were fired, and the only battle was a bar fight in a

Houlton tavern where Maine and New Brunswick militiamen were drinking together when a

Maine militiamen tried to toast Maine, resulting in a few bloody noses and one broken arm.[20]

This altercation supported George Bernard Shaw’s definition of patriotism as being “your

conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.”

General Winfield Scott again peacefully ended a war with only one proven military casualty – a

Canadian pig that wandered from New Brunswick into Maine and was bravely captured and

eaten by Federal troops. One civilian also was killed when a bullet ricocheted off a rock during a

peace celebration.

Maine was a continual thorn to the U. S. government; in 1831 President Jackson had

ordered the Maine legislature to do nothing that could interrupt or embarrass the U. S.

government. By 1840 both the Democrats and Whigs stressed foreign problems to get the

electorate to forget the politicians’ ineptitude on local issues. In this regard, they were not alone

in the U. S. since “twisting the lion’s tail” was considered a national sport as most politicians

espoused expansionism. The British, for their part, often got back by “pulling Uncle Sam’s

beard”.[21]

The boundary dispute was finally settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 which

generated its own share of controversy. On the British side, 67-year old Lord Ashburton was the

son of Sir Francis Baring, the head of the Baring banking house, and a man who had financially

bailed out William Bingham, one of the largest investors in Maine lumber land, an American spy

in Martinique during the war and subsequently the richest American after the Revolution. As it

turned out, both Lord Ashburton and his younger brother married daughters of the Maine

investor, Bingham, and were not considered objective by New Brunswick since their land

holdings in Maine may have been affected by the American claim. Bingham had long been

considered a friend of the United States and his employer had helped negotiate the financing of

the Louisiana Purchase.[22] For his part, Lord Ashburton thought the land contested had no value.

On the American side, Daniel Webster was a purported anglophile, a close friend of Lord

Ashburton, a legal advisor for the Baring firm for a decade and may have been in the pay of the

British. His critics termed him the “god-like Daniel” and “Black Dan”. [23] Webster had a very

imposing presence with his large head, chest and hands as well as thick eyebrows. One British

critic called him a living lie “because no man on earth could be as great as he looked.” [24]

Webster claimed to want to improve relations with Great Britain and furthered the cause by

bribing Maine newspapermen as well as a Maine senator to support the giving up of territory.

Charges were later brought against Webster for bribery but he was never convicted.

To prove his point, Webster embraced a dubious piece of evidence. It involved a man

named Jared Sparks who later became president of Harvard. In 1842 Sparks was doing scholarly

work in Paris and found a note from Benjamin Franklin written to the Count de Vergennes that

stated he was returning a map after having marked the limits of the U.S. with a strong red line.

Following up on this, Sparks searched among the 60,000 maps in the French Archives until he

found a 1782 map with a strong red line. As it turned out, the line matched exactly the boundary

claimed by the British even though it was 100 miles south of the boundary line that had been on

maps for 20 years and it would have been quite unlikely that Franklin would have given up that

much land.

Of course, there was no proof that this particular map was the one referred to in

Franklin’s letter. In fact, the map found was one by d’Anville and there is no evidence that the

negotiators in 1783 ever even looked at a d’Anville map, much less one so small that, according

to Disraeli, the red line obliterated much of the state of Maine.[25] Sparks may have not been

completely objective in this controversy since he was paid at least $250 by Webster out of what

was called the secret service fund. Sparks’ later academic career was checkered since he was

continually dogged by accusations of editing the letters of others for publication. Later, a map

first owned by Baron von Steuben and later John Jay had a red line matching that on the map

found by Sparks and thus also supported the British position. It is now thought that the Sparks

and Jay maps reflected French claims against Great Britain dating from before the French and

Indian War.

But Webster said that the finding of the red-line map proved that the treaty gave more to

the United States than it deserved and thus induced the Maine Commission to accept the treaty,

partly with the help of $15,000 in secret service funds designed to influence public opinion in

Maine. In 1839 another map with a strong red line from King George III’s library was found in

the British Museum but it was hidden for three years in the Foreign Office by the Foreign

Secretary, Lord Palmerston, a severe critic of any treaty that would favor the Americans. This

map had the notation: “Boundary as described by Mr. Oswald” who was one of the 1783

negotiators and the map had an endorsement apparently put there by King George III. Of course,

this later map supported the American rather than the British boundary claim.[26] This was

opposed by Sir Robert Peel in England who said that both a Mitchell map and a 1783 Faden

map agreed with the “Franklin” map and that the boundary was actually 100 miles to the south.

Peel’s findings may be taken with a grain of salt since the Mitchell map was notoriously

inaccurate and Faden was probably not very objective since he was King George’s geographer.

In addition, Peel had sent an associate to Paris who found three maps that supported the

American line but he ignored these new maps. But, Peel did hit the nail on the head when he

said that “nothing can be more fallacious than founding a claim upon contemporary maps”.[27]

A third Franklin map found in Madrid also supported the American position since their

archives also had a note from the Spanish minister to the 1783 Paris treaty which stated that it

was copied from Franklin’s map. Thus, the Americans had maps that supported the British

position while the British had maps supporting the American boundary line. All of this

confusion and semantics over these maps was echoed many years later by Winston Churchill

when he said that “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.”

Since Great Britain also wanted to improve relations, the treaty boundary was favorable

to the U.S. but it still got 900 square miles less in the northeast than set by the King of the

Netherlands in 1831 with Maine being the biggest loser. The U. S. also got the right to carry

timber down the St. John’s River and received Rouse’s Point on Lake Champlain where the U.S.

already had a fort nicknamed “Fort Blunder” since it had mistakenly been built on Canadian soil

during the War of 1812.[28] To the American negotiators, Rouse’s Point was worth more than all

the Maine land lost.[29] The Webster-Ashburton Treaty also settled the boundary in the Great

Lakes region where the land was considered much more valuable than that lost in Maine since

Webster said it had mineral resources. How Webster knew about these mineral resources is

uncertain since traces of iron ore were not discovered there until 1875. But the treaty did not

settle the Oregon dispute which involved forty times as much territory as in Maine since Lord

Ashburton thought that the presence of Indians would hinder any American settlers. The

Oregon settlement was finally made four years later.

Another early boundary dispute lasted for 59 years and revolved around a section of New

Hampshire called the Indian Stream Territory, a remote area where the St. Francis Indians were

considered dangerous. This land was originally a grant from the Indian chief, King Philip, a

notorious raider before federal legislation in 1790 made it illegal to buy land from Indians. All

that King Philip got out of the grant were perpetual hunting and fishing rights as well as the right

to plant four bushels of corn and beans but no money.[30] The argument stemmed from the Treaty

of Paris defining this boundary in terms of the northwesternmost headwaters of the Connecticut

River. Unfortunately, the Mitchell map used by Benjamin Franklin for the treaty was inaccurate

and the Connecticut River actually has three headwaters, thus allowing both countries to claim

the area. In 1831 the King of the Netherlands awarded the Indian Stream Territory to Great

Britain but this decision was not accepted by the United States.[31]

This unresolved issue led both Vermont and New Hampshire to collect import taxes for

the produce sent over the border and to continue to serve warrants in the area. To compound the

problems faced by area inhabitants, Canada ordered 18 to 50-year old Indian Stream men to join

the militia. These acts vexed the 300 inhabitants and resulted in the creation of the Republic of

Indian Stream which lasted from mid-1832 to 1835. The republic was snuffed out when an

attempt to collect a cross-border hardware store debt almost led to war with two Canadians being

wounded in the actions. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty also later settled this border issue.

I should note that another Maine boundary dispute still exists, that covering Machias Seal

Island which both the U. S. and Canada claim based on the 1783 Treaty of Peace. Imprecise

wording in the treaty is again the problem here since it defines the province of Nova Scotia as

encompassing islands “near to” the coast. Hence both Nova Scotia and Maine could claim this

island as being “near to” their respective coasts; in fact it is slightly nearer Maine than Nova

Scotia. The consequence is that Machias Seal Island is in a gap between the nautical boundaries

of the two countries. The island itself is not much to talk about since it is only 20 acres of rocks

with the largest puffin and razorbill colonies south of Newfoundland. But, it is in the middle of a

spectacular lobster fishery which both countries exploit.

Machias Seal Island was never settled and, in fact, was completely overlooked by both

Great Britain and the colonies during the Revolutionary War. Canada’s argument here is that

they have had a presence here since 1832 which, under international law, can be used as

evidence of ownership. Their presence here consists of a lighthouse which, although automated,

is the only manned lighthouse left on Canada’s Atlantic coast and a wild bird sanctuary, created

in 1944.[32]

The United States also had a presence here during the Civil War when it was single-

handedly captured by one Barnaby “Tall Barney” Beal who is said to have left the island to his

heirs. “Tall Barney” has been described as being up to seven feet tall and so strong he could bear

a dory on his back while carrying 100-pound kegs under each arm. Supposedly, he once

punched a horse and killed it. Even now, there is a Tall Barney’s restaurant which is

appropriately noted for its “Liars’ Table”. The restaurant is located in Jonesport, Maine where

half the inhabitants are descended from Tall Barney’s twelve children.[33]

One part of the border which has escaped problems is Rock Island, Quebec where the

borderline divides several buildings, a factory, a library, an opera house and even splits

bedrooms in houses.[34]

Two morals of these border disputes between the U. S. and Canada is that one shouldn’t

trust the wording of treaties when their authors had no idea what they were talking about and that

the early maps were so inaccurate that they were poor guides for setting boundaries. As John

Francis Sprague said in a 1910 publication: “Two causes were among the earliest and most

predominating which led up to the general confusion: The first was the fact that the English

sovereigns were very ignorant of American geography and were perpetually making grants

irreconcilably and often grotesquely conflicting, and the second was the instinctive desire of the

Anglo Saxon to possess himself of all of the territory of this earth within their reach.” [35] Also, at

least in the first half of the nineteenth century, the best way for the U. S. to settle a border

dispute with Canada was to send in General Winfield Scott who typically spoke softly but

carried a big stick. The results of Scott’s efforts were, at least during this period, bloodless wars

which in two cases resulted in the only military casualty being a pig.