If you’ve ever hiked Isle Royale and thought, “This feels like Canada,” you’re not wrong — the island sits just 15 miles from the Canadian shore and over 50 miles from Michigan. Yet it’s part of the United States thanks to a series of 19th-century boundary negotiations set in motion by President Martin Van Buren. In his 1839 State of the Union Address, Van Buren pushed to resolve an obscure but crucial border line “from the entrance of Lake Superior to the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods.” That push ultimately ensured that Isle Royale became American, not Canadian. When President Martin Van Buren delivered his 1839 State of the Union Address, he revisited a boundary few Americans thought about but which would prove pivotal to the shape of the upper Midwest including a stretch of land “from the entrance of Lake Superior to the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods.” That line, first drawn in the Treaty of Paris in1783, was based on faulty maps and vague language that left Britain and the United States uncertain who owned several islands in Lake Superior, including Isle Royale.
Van Buren explained that “the commissioners appointed under that article by the two Governments having differed in their opinions, made separate reports … upon the points of disagreement, and these differences are now to be submitted to the arbitration of some friendly sovereign or state.” He cautioned that “the disputed points should be settled and the line designated before the Territorial government of which it is one of the boundaries takes its place in the Union as a State,” insisting that all border ambiguities be resolved before new states were admitted to the Union.
This renewed diplomatic pressure mattered. the British and American commissioners disagreed over how to interpret the 1783 treaty’s reference to the “Isles Royale and Phelipeaux” as explained by Lake Superior Magazine, “The American commissioner argued that the Paris Treaty specified the boundary was to extend north of Isle Royale, so the obvious intention was for the border to run directly into the Pigeon River.” American negotiators understood that the treaty’s language — northward of the Isles Royale and Phelipeaux — placed the island firmly within U.S. territory. Britain, however, read the same line as justification for drawing the border south of the island. By insisting in 1839 that this segment of the boundary be settled “before the Territorial government … takes its place in the Union,” Van Buren kept the U.S. claim alive, making sure that it became part of the larger diplomatic agenda.
The president's persistence paid off. The Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842 ultimately confirmed that the international boundary ran north of Isle Royale, confirming that it would be American soil. Without this push by Van Buren to reopen and finalize the Lake Superior–Lake of the Woods negotiations, the British interpretation might easily have prevailed. Isle Royale, today part of Michigan, could well have become Canadian territory instead.
Here is the full excerpt from President Martin Van Buren's 1839 Annual Address:
"For the settlement of our northeastern boundary the proposition promised by Great Britain for a commission of exploration and survey has been received, and a counter project, including also a provision for the certain and final adjustment of the limits in dispute, is now before the British Government for its consideration. A just regard to the delicate state of this question and a proper respect for the natural impatience of the State of Maine, not less than a conviction that the negotiation has been already protracted longer than is prudent on the part of either Government, have led me to believe that the present favorable moment should on no account be suffered to pass without putting the question forever at rest. I feel confident that the Government of Her Britannic Majesty will take the same view of this subject, as I am persuaded it is governed by desires equally strong and sincere for the amicable termination of the controversy.
To the intrinsic difficulties of questions of boundary lines, especially those described in regions unoccupied and but partially known, is to be added in our country the embarrassment necessarily arising out of our Constitution by which the General Government is made the organ of negotiating and deciding upon the particular interests of the States on whose frontiers these lines are to be traced. To avoid another controversy in which a State government might rightfully claim to have her wishes consulted previously to the conclusion of conventional arrangements concerning her rights of jurisdiction or territory, I have thought it necessary to call the attention of the Government of Great Britain to another portion of our conterminous dominion of which the division still remains to be adjusted I refer to the line from the entrance of Lake Superior to the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods, stipulations for the settlement of which are to be found in the seventh article of the treaty of Ghent. The commissioners appointed under that article by the two Governments having differed in their opinions, made separate reports, according to its stipulations, upon the points of disagreement, and these differences are now to be submitted to the arbitration of some friendly sovereign or state. The disputed points should be settled and the line designated before the Territorial government of which it is one of the boundaries takes its place in the Union as a State, and I rely upon the cordial cooperation of the British Government to effect that object."
References
Van Buren, Martin. State of the Union Address, December 3, 1839. The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/third-annual-message-4
Treaty of Paris. Definitive Treaty of Peace Between the United States of America and His Britannic Majesty, 3 Sept. 1783. National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-paris
Webster–Ashburton Treaty. Treaty Between the United States and Great Britain, 9 Aug. 1842. Avalon Project, Yale Law School. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/br-1842.asp
No comments:
Post a Comment