English Major Needed

I’ve finished James McCabe’s book about the solution of the U.S./U.K. water boundary problem in the Northwest back in the 19th Century. The Treaty of 1846 says you go west on the 49th parallel and then when you hit the ocean (which would be at Point Roberts, as it turns out), you go out to the middle of the channel and head south to the middle of Juan de Fuca. Unfortunately, the treaty text is no more specific than that, so the question of over 25 years of discussion between the U.S., the U.K., and eventually the Canadian Federation, was ‘what channel would that be?’

It’s extremely interesting to read at this century-and-a-half distance how this extended set of discussions went and what kinds of issues arose in the long process. I suppose it is always the case that historical issues are made much more lively when the reader has some actual connection to the places involved in the outcome. The Battle of Bull Run is vastly more real when you have stood on the actual battlefield, in my experience. This water boundary question, too, seems more vital as I look out each day to the waters that were involved in this argument.

In my view, the strangest (from a 21st Century perspective) of the issues that arose in the course of figuring out who owned the land and water that lay to the south and west of Point Roberts was, post Civil-War, when the Americans were worrying a great deal about how they were going to pay for the extraordinary costs that the war had brought to them. (That sounds familiar.) One of the outcomes of the Civil War was the destruction (by the Confederate Navy) of much of the U.S. maritime fleet (i.e., commercial ships), a destruction that the Americans strongly felt that the British were responsible for because the Confederate Navy ships were welcomed into British ports before they went out on their predatory runs. The U.S. thought that the British should (and could) be made to pay for this ship loss and thus help the U.S. to cover much of their war losses. This was all subsumed under something called the Alabama Claims.

Then comes Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts (he whom South Carolina Senator Preston Brooks beat into unconsciousness on the floor of the Senate just prior to the Civil War, using Brooks’ own gutta percha cane for the assault), who decided that an even better idea was to have the British give all of Canada to the U.S., thus paying for the Alabama claims with this generous gift, a gift which would additionally make the northwest water boundary issue moot. Well, that would have eliminated Point Roberts’ anomalous status. Unfortunately, though Sumner held to this belief for a number of years, it was not to happen. But it does suggest some current foreign policy approaches that we may have neglected. How about we propose to Iraq that, given the extensive costs to the U.S. of the recent war, they give us, say, Kirkuk and all its oil wells? Just a kindly gesture of international friendliness and cooperation, not to mention an October Surprise for the Kurds.

Well, it finally all ended in 1871 when the U.S. and U.K. agreed to a ‘grand bargain’ set of negotiations in which they took on all the current issues involving Canada: Alabama claims, fisheries disputes, Fenian raids into Canada (never mind, I’m not going into that!), and the water boundary question. Canada got sold out on the fisheries and both the Alabama claims and the water boundary question went into separate arbitrations (which the U.S. had previously opposed). The water boundary arbiter was the German Kaiser and his three experts found, 2-1, that the American claim as to the definition of ‘channel’ was more compelling, which resulted in all three of the major San Juan Islands going to the U.S. The arbiters seemed to have found that this result was what the original treaty negotiators had intended, but from reading this book, it seems that the original negotiators didn’t have a common meaning to ‘channel.’ Bottom line: Next time you’re writing a treaty, maybe best to hire an English Major to provide assistance.