State of the Union History: 1838 Martin Van Buren

As an American citizen, we rest assured that our Department of State is committed to ensuring our fair and humane treatment overseas. We have seen the State Department go above and beyond to assist imprisoned citizens in countries around the world. Just don't take part in an insurrection, especially against a world power we are at peace with. In 1838 when thousands of American citizens invaded Upper Canada to liberate Canadians from what they considered to be British tyranny, President Martin Van Buren signed a proclamation warning these Americans that the US Government would not come to their rescue. Just months later, Great Britain executed 11 men who took part in the insurrection and exiled another 60 to a prison in present day Tasmania. Many or most were American citizens.

Battle of the Windmill

In the 1830s, Americans sympathetic to the cause for liberty in Canada took part in several incursions across the Canadian border along the St. Clair River border near Windsor Canada. British authorities put down these attempted rebellions, but sympathetic support grew. By 1838, Americans along the border began to organize under the name of “Patriot Hunters” and formed “Hunter’s Lodges” recruiting around 40,000 members and raising money to purchase weapons. America had a policy of Neutrality regarding Canadian affairs, so all of this was down in secrecy. The Hunter’s Lodge recruited a Finish, Nils Gustaf von Schoultz to lead them to overthrow the oppression of Canada by Great Britain.

Throughout the summer and fall of 1838, Gustaf and the Patriot Hungers planned an attack focused on the stone windmill just downstream from the town of Prescott, Ontario. Their elaborate planning was all done in secrecy, but the British had spies who reported back locations and times of their battle plans. The British government rebuilt and fortified Fort Wellington and established militia units in communities along the American border. When it finally came time to launch the attack, the Patriot ragtag army was no match for the British regulars and Canadian loyalists who were defending their own homes.

Of the 250 men under Gustaf who first arrived at Windmill point on November 12, only about half made it back home. Fifty men were killed in battle, and another seventy plus were arrested. Ater spending one night in prison at Fort Wellington, they were transferred to Fort Henry. Eleven men including Nils Gustaf von Schoultz were executed at Fort Henry while the rest were sent into exile to the penal colony of Van Dieman’s land in present-day Tasmania. In respect of Schoultz’s military background he was hanged and buried at Fort Henry.

On the eve of his execution, von Schoultz wrote a final letter to a friend that he now realized that Canadians were very different than their American neighbors. In his letter he wrote:

“Let no further blood be shed; and believe me, from what I have seen, that all the stories that were told about the sufferings of the Canadian people were untrue.”

President Martin Van Buren’s Reaction

Nils von Schoultz was hanged on December 8th, just 5 days after President Van Buren delivered his State of the Union Address to Congress. In his address, the President lamented that the loss of many Americans who made “hostile incursions from our territory into Canada and to aid and abet insurrection there, in violation of the obligations and laws of the United States and in open disregard of their own duties as citizens”

Van Buren described the event as “a hostile invasion actually made by citizens of the United States, in conjunction with Canadians and others, and accompanied by a forcible seizure of the property of our citizens and an application thereof to the prosecution of military operations against the authorities and people of Canada.” Van Buren acknowledged that British spies had been embedded into the American communities and with advanced notice were able to “repel the invasion”.

Since it was the policy of the United States towards Great Britain to maintain a strict neutrality in the event of an insurrection in Canada, the American citizens were violating U.S. law. Van Buren reminded Congress that since our founding, America has always cherished and respected the principles of international law, and that was not going to change under his watch. Van Buren considered it a “duty inseparably associated with the maintenance of our national honor.”

The notion that these Americans were fighting to spread liberty, and democracy was not lost on the president, but he reminded Congress that the decision to take military action, especially those that inevitably lead to war “is a question which by our Constitution is wisely left to Congress alone to decide.” For individual citizens to take unauthorized military action against another sovereign nation is not only a criminal violation “of the laws of our country”, but also a threat to “good faith and honor of the country”. Van Buren explained that he had to take quick and decisive action by issuing a proclamation and take a very harsh stance against those who participated in the insurrection.

Van Buren closed out this section of the address by expressing his hope that “the good sense and patriotism, the regard for the honor and reputation of their country and the respect for the laws” would be enough to prevent anything like this from happening again. In the meantime, he was turning the issue over to Congress to decide if any more action was needed.

Here is the full except on the subject from the 1838 State of the Union Address.

“I had hoped that the respect for the laws and regard for the peace and honor of their own country which have ever characterized the citizens of the United States would have prevented any portion of them from using any means to promote insurrection in the territory of a power with which we are at peace, and with which the United States are desirous of maintaining the most friendly relations. I regret deeply, however, to be obliged to inform you that this has not been the case. Information has been given to me, derived from official and other sources, that many citizens of the United States have associated together to make hostile incursions from our territory into Canada and to aid and abet insurrection there, in violation of the obligations and laws of the United States and in open disregard of their own duties as citizens. This information has been in part confirmed by a hostile invasion actually made by citizens of the United States, in conjunction with Canadians and others, and accompanied by a forcible seizure of the property of our citizens and an application thereof to the prosecution of military operations against the authorities and people of Canada.
The results of these criminal assaults upon the peace and order of a neighboring country have been, as was to be expected, fatally destructive to the misguided or deluded persons engaged in them and highly injurious to those in whose behalf they are professed to have been undertaken. The authorities in Canada, from intelligence received of such intended movements among our citizens, have felt themselves obliged to take precautionary measures against them; have actually embodied the militia and assumed an attitude to repel the invasion to which they believed the colonies were exposed from the United States. A state of feeling on both sides of the frontier has thus been produced which called for prompt and vigorous interference. If an insurrection existed in Canada, the amicable dispositions of the United States toward Great Britain, as well as their duty to themselves, would lead them to maintain a strict neutrality and to restrain their citizens from all violations of the laws which have been passed for its enforcement. But this Government recognizes a still higher obligation to repress all attempts on the part of its citizens to disturb the peace of a country where order prevails or has been reestablished. Depredations by our citizens upon nations at peace with the United States, or combinations for committing them, have at all times been regarded by the American Government and people with the greatest abhorrence. Military incursions by our citizens into countries so situated, and the commission of acts of violence on the members thereof, in order to effect a change in their government, or under any pretext whatever, have from the commencement of our Government been held equally criminal on the part of those engaged in them, and as much deserving of punishment as would be the disturbance of the public peace by the perpetration of similar acts within our own territory.
By no country or persons have these invaluable principles of international law--principles the strict observance of which is so indispensable to the preservation of social order in the world--been more earnestly cherished or sacredly respected than by those great and good men who first declared and finally established the independence of our own country. They promulgated and maintained them at an early and critical period in our history; they were subsequently embodied in legislative enactments of a highly penal character, the faithful enforcement of which has hitherto been, and will, I trust, always continue to be, regarded as a duty inseparably associated with the maintenance of our national honor. That the people of the United States should feel an interest in the spread of political institutions as free as they regard their own to be is natural, nor can a sincere solicitude for the success of all those who are at any time in good faith struggling for their acquisition be imputed to our citizens as a crime. With the entire freedom of opinion and an undisguised expression thereof on their part the Government has neither the right nor, I trust, the disposition to interfere. But whether the interest or the honor of the United States requires that they should be made a party to any such struggle, and by inevitable consequence to the war which is waged in its support, is a question which by our Constitution is wisely left to Congress alone to decide. It is by the laws already made criminal in our citizens to embarrass or anticipate that decision by unauthorized military operations on their part. Offenses of this character, in addition to their criminality as violations of the laws of our country, have a direct tendency to draw down upon our own citizens at large the multiplied evils of a foreign war and expose to injurious imputations the good faith and honor of the country. As such they deserve to be put down with promptitude and decision. I can not be mistaken, I am confident, in counting on the cordial and general concurrence of our fellow-citizens in this sentiment. A copy of the proclamation which I have felt it my duty to issue is herewith communicated. I can not but hope that the good sense and patriotism, the regard for the honor and reputation of their country, the respect for the laws which they have themselves enacted for their own government, and the love of order for which the mass of our people have been so long and so justly distinguished will deter the comparatively few who are engaged in them from a further prosecution of such desperate enterprises. In the meantime the existing laws have been and will continue to be faithfully executed, and every effort will be made to carry them out in their full extent. Whether they are sufficient or not to meet the actual state of things on the Canadian frontier it is for Congress to decide.”

The decisive action that Van Buren took, was a proclamation given on November 21, 1838 warning that the US government will not defend the actions of those who took part in the incursions and will not save them from any punishment deemed necessary by the British even if that meant death by hanging.

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Whereas there is too much reason to believe that citizens of the United States, in disregard to the solemn warning heretofore given to them by the proclamations issued by the Executive of the General Government and by some of the governors of the States, have combined to disturb the peace of the dominions of a neighboring and friendly nation; and
Whereas information has been given to me, derived from official and other sources, that many citizens in different parts of the United States are associated or associating for the same purpose; and
Whereas disturbances have actually broken out anew in different parts of the two Canadas; and
Whereas a hostile invasion has been made by citizens of the United States, in conjunction with Canadians and others, who, after forcibly seizing upon the property of their peaceful neighbor for the purpose of effecting their unlawful designs, are now in arms against the authorities of Canada, in perfect disregard of their obligations as American citizens and of the obligations of the Government of their country to foreign nations:
Now, therefore, I have thought it necessary and proper to issue this proclamation, calling upon every citizen of the United States neither to give countenance nor encouragement of any kind to those who have thus forfeited their claim to the protection of their country; upon those misguided or deluded persons who are engaged in them to abandon projects dangerous to their own country, fatal to those whom they profess a desire to relieve, impracticable of execution without foreign aid, which they can not rationally expect to obtain, and giving rise to imputations (however unfounded) upon the honor and good faith of their own Government; upon every officer, civil or military, and upon every citizen, by the veneration due by all freemen to the laws which they have assisted to enact for their own government, by his regard for the honor and reputation of his country, by his love of order and respect for the sacred code of laws by which national intercourse is regulated, to use every effort in his power to arrest for trial and punishment every offender against the laws providing for the performance of our obligations to the other powers of the world. And I hereby warn all those who have engaged in these criminal enterprises, if persisted in, that, whatever may be the condition to which they may be reduced, they must not expect the interference of this Government in any form on their behalf, but will be left, reproached by every virtuous fellow-citizen, to be dealt with according to the policy and justice of that Government whose dominions they have, in defiance of the known wishes of their own Government and without the shadow of justification or excuse, nefariously invaded.
Given under my hand, at the city of Washington, the 21st day of November, A. D. 1838, and the sixty-third of the Independence of the United States.