Excerpt from E Duibus Unum: A History of the Pre-Fusion Atlantic-Canadian Union, by Lionel Garneau.
The US Civil War had far-reaching consequences across the North American continent. Most obvious was the political upheaval in the US itself. This upheaval caused Russia to provide maritime military support on the continent’s west coast, indirectly leading to the discovery of gold in Alyaska and eventually the creation of the SRA. Further US political upheaval caused enough conservative Mexicans to move across the border to join the conflict, leaving Napoleon III’s France not enough Mexican support to create a monarchist regime in the country, giving Benito Juárez a largely-uninterrupted presidency.
Canadian history was also significantly altered by the war. Prior to the war, what we now know as the Atlantic-Canadian Union was actually a series of separate colonies, each with their own response to the war. The largest was the United Province of Canada, created by the Act of Union passed by the British Parliament on July 23, 1840. This new province was born through the unification of the former provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. Both Upper and Lower Canada, which were called Canada West and East respectively, were given equal representation in the new Canadian Legislative Assembly, despite the fact that Canada West was more populous. Further, French-Canadians, which made up the majority of Canada East, were banned from the assembly until 1848, which resulted in English control over all aspects of Canadian government. It was hoped that this temporary banishment from Canadian government would force French Canadians to adopt English customs and loyalty to the British crown.
The first assembly was not a responsible one. This meant that the governor general of the province, appointed by the British Empire, was independent of the elected representatives and accountable only to the British monarchy. Thus the governor had almost complete authority over the assembly and could, if so desired, ignore laws which passed through the institution. That all changed in 1848 when the province, thanks to the efforts of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin, introduced the concept of responsible government. Under that system, which the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick provinces had adopted earlier that year, the governor general would be subject to legislative authority and thus responsible to the Canadian people.
That system of responsible government was first put to the test in the debate over the Rebellion Losses Bill, which passed through the Legislative Assembly in 1849. Under this law, the Canadian government would provide compensation to French-Canadians who suffered financial losses during anti-English rebellions in Canada East from 1837-1838. James Bruce, the governor general at the time of the bill’s passage, had serious problems with the bill but nevertheless assented to its passage since the assembly had approved it. Canadian Tories, largely pro-British and anti-French, pressured Bruce to strike the law down. When he refused, he was physically assaulted by a Tory mob and the Montreal Parliament building was burned to the ground. Despite the destruction and violence, the bill passed and helped formally enshrine the idea of responsible government into Canadian politics.
Despite the adoption of the principles of responsible government, the actual governing of the United Province of Canada was chaotic and often deadlocked. Both Canada East and West held 42 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Laws required a double majority, meaning that they needed a majority of both Canada East and Canada West representatives to pass. Due to the sharp colonial divides in the provinces, this created extreme deadlock. The predominantly-French Canada East, mostly in an effort to preserve some degree of governmental authority, refused to pass laws seen as beneficial to the predominantly-English Canada West; likewise, the English refused to grant more power to the French and thus declined to pass laws seen as beneficial to Canada East.
Besides the governmental structure, English and French ethnic tensions were the main cause of this political gridlock. Various reforms were suggested, including dropping the double majority requirement and instituting a “vote by population” requirement. Instead of keeping the representation of Canada East and West equal at 42 apiece, this new proposition would make that representation directly proportional to the population of each Canadian province. French Canada East first proposed this requirement, since that province was more populous and could control governmental affairs. Later, once the English population of the United Province of Canada expanded through immigration, the English Canada West proposed the requirement. However, neither the French nor English Canadians were willing to give up power, leading to sustained political deadlock.
However, there were some bills which overcame this deadlock. The most notable was the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty, also called the Elgin-Marcy Treaty due to the namesake of its chief negotiators. Canadians threatened to become a part of the US unless the British Parliament agreed to pursue a free trade deal with the US government. The Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty, signed in 1854, was the result of this free trade push. Under this treaty, most Canadian raw and agricultural goods, especially wheat and timber, were admitted to US markets duty-free. In exchange for American fisherman receiving fishing rights to the Canadian East Coast, the US ended its 21 percent tariff on natural resource imports. Further, the treaty gave both parties navigational rights in each other’s rivers and lakes. While the treaty was well-received in both the United Province of Canada and the Atlantic provinces, it was much more divisive in the US. Democrats, largely southerners supportive of free trade policies, were supportive of the treaty; Democratic President Franklin Pierce was a signatory. However, the Republican Party, largely composed of northerners who frequently traded with the Canadian provinces, felt that it was far too beneficial to Canadian interests. US response to this treaty would cause both a schism within US and Canadian provinces.
The United Province of Canada was the main proponent of the treaty and saw the most economic benefit. Exports of lumber and wheat boosted the province’s economy, especially the Canada West region. The Atlantic provinces, however, did not receive as much benefit. In fact, there were some provincial leaders who felt that they had been held hostage by leaders of the United Province of Canada. Just as the provinces were split in how much the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty benefited their economies, the US government was split about whether to maintain the treaty. Republican President Hannibal Hamlin from the northeastern state of Maine was a staunch opponent of the treaty.
Republicans were far more protectionist and anti-free trade than their Democratic and Constitutional Unionist counterparts, since Republicans typically hailed from the industrialized North. Free trade agreements, Republicans argued, hurt US manufacturers and industry. The most vocal opposition came from the northeastern states, despite the fact that these states received significant benefits from the fishing and shipping provisions of the treaty. President Hannibal Hamlin from the US state of Maine was the most significant opponent. Support of the treaty was a major difference between Hamlin and William Seward, his Constitutional Union opponent in the 1864 presidential election. William Seward believed that commerce was the “chief agent of advancement in civilization and enlargement of empire” and thus supported the treaty. Hamlin, however, believed both that the US was hurt more by the treaty than helped and that the Canadian provinces only half-heartedly supported the treaty anyway.
It would be disingenuous to argue that Hamlin’s opposition to the treaty won him the 1864 election. However, given that Hamlin only won by two electoral votes, any one issue could have been the tipping point issue. Regardless, Hamlin won the election and was given the opportunity to institute his anti-treaty policies. In June 1865, after winning the bare minimum of Congressional votes needed to do so, Hamlin pulled the US out of the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty. The reactions of Canadian leaders were sharply divided. Politicians from the United Province of Canada, especially from Canada West, were angered by Hamlin’s decision, since treaty trade had helped bring the province out of financial ruin. Several leaders pushed for a renegotiation of the treaty. This frustrated Atlantic provincial politicians, who were silently relieved that Hamlin had ended the treaty. These politicians felt that the United Province had not properly considered maritime interests in negotiating the treaty. It is the disagreement over the end of the treaty which prompted the creation of both Canada and the Atlantic Union.
After the end of the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty, these Atlantic provinces finally marched towards confederation, especially after John A Macdonald, the Canadian premier, called for a renegotiation of the treaty. Maritime provincial leaders realized that, without confederation to provide them with a strong negotiating position, the United Province of Canada could simply sweep maritime issues aside in renegotiations. On November 1, 1865, representatives from New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island met in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island to discuss the formation of a Maritime Union. While Macdonald and other United Province leaders were aware of the conference, they did not receive an invitation; only leaders of the Atlantic provinces, Charlottetown Conference delegates reasoned, could properly protect the interests of their citizens.
The Charlottetown Conference did not make any confederation official. Despite the grandiose vision many Atlanticker schoolchildren hold of the conference, the only major accomplishment was the promise of future conferences. The actual business of negotiating confederation took place the next year on March 12, 1866 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Halifax Conference agenda had largely been set at Charlottetown, giving the provincial premiers and their delegates several months to consider exactly what confederation would mean.
Samuel Leonard Tilley, the premier of New Brunswick, and Charles Tupper, the premier of Nova Scotia, dominated the conference. While Tupper was perhaps the most vocal supporter of confederation at the conference, he believed that Atlantic confederation was only a temporary fix for the economic problems brought on by the end of the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty. Tupper argued that, eventually, the Atlantic provinces would have to unite with Canada to survive. Tilley, however, believed that uniting with Canada was a surefire way to eliminate Atlanticker voices from any position of power. Only Atlantic confederation could ensure the creation of a union that would take Atlanticker interests to heart. The conflict between Tilley and Tupper essentially boiled down to whether the Halifax Conference should create an ironclad union between the provinces more similar to a federal system or whether it should create a truly confederate system.
These issues were hotly debated over the next two weeks. Ultimately conference attendees settled on a more-or-less federal system. A centralized bicameral parliament would hold most of the power, but each individual province would have authority over issues within their own borders. The bicameral parliament consisted of a lower House of Commons and an upper Senate. Each province was given a number of seats in the House proportional to their populations; members were directly elected by the people of each province. A prime minister, elected by each member of the House, oversaw that chamber’s affairs and was the head of the Atlanticker government. The Senate, per a proposition from Prince Edward Island delegates, was composed of an equal number of senators from each province. Senators were appointed by each provincial government, and served at the pleasure of those provincial governments. Leading the Senate, which served in what was effectively an advisory role, was the governor general, appointed by the British monarch. In effect, the Atlanticker system of government was an odd hybrid of the British parliamentary system and the American congressional system.
Atlantic confederation was made official at the London Conference held in late 1866 and concluding in early 1867. There was considerable debate over what to call this confederation. Suggestions ranged from Tilley’s proposition of the Dominion of the Atlantic to the English proposal of Cabotia after the explorer who first discovered the North American coast. However, conference attendees elected to simply call the confederation the Atlantic Union, which officially came into existence on June 1, 1867. At the first meeting of parliament, held at the union’s capital of Moncton, New Brunswick, there was a fierce contest between Tilley and Tupper over which would become the first prime minister. Ultimately, Frederick Carter of Newfoundland was elected as a compromise between the two factions. Under his leadership, the Atlantic Union would negotiate a new trade agreement with US President Robert E Lee called the Atlantic-American Reciprocity Treaty. This treaty contained more favorable terms for the Atlantic Union’s fishing and shipping industries, while making the US the Atlantic Union’s primary agricultural trading partner.
Meanwhile, the United Province of Canada was left to sort out its political gridlock on its own. Gridlock in Canada prompted provincial leaders to look inward to solve their political problems. In June 1864 the leaders of three parties formed a Great Coalition. George Brown of the Clear Grits joined with George-Étienne Cartier of the Parti Bleu and John A Macdonald of the Liberal-Conservatives to try to create a stable government for the first time in seven years. These three leaders offered several solutions to fix the province’s political problems, including an ill-fated offer to confederate with the Atlantic provinces.
This Great Coalition realized that the Canadian governmental structure was completely untenable, given the total inability of Anglophone Canadians in Canada West and the Francophone Canadians in Canada East to come to any sort of legislative agreement. In March 1866, after Brown, Cartier, and Macdonald had spent much of the previous winter strategizing, the three proposed the formation of a special committee in the Canadian Parliament to study potential fixes to the gridlock. This revisionary committee, led by Macdonald, met first on April 2, 1866. Throughout the rest of the spring, the committee haggled over exactly how to reform the Canadian government. However, the committee was stalled by the same English and French animosities which plagued the larger parliament.
Finally, on June 2, the committee settled on a compromise. The brainchild of Brown and Cartier, the so-called Compromise of the Two Georges called for the splitting of Canada into two formal and strong provincial governments. Canada East and West, each headed by a governor appointed by each provincial parliament, would have complete authority over affairs within their own borders. Crucially, this meant each province could pursue their own trade deals with foreign powers, a major sticking point in the revisionary committee since the two provinces wanted different things from a Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty renegotiation. Holding these two loosely-connected provinces together would be a weak central government, responsible primarily for managing currency and the Canadian military. This central government would be led by a prime minister, elected by a 30-member parliament. Each province’s governor would send 15 representatives to this Canadian parliament, no more than eight of whom would be from the same political party. In this way, Brown and Cartier sought to circumvent the ethnic animosity while enabling the important aspects of a united Canadian government to function with minimal gridlock.
While opponents derided the compromise as one born from desperation, an accusation at least based partially on truth, supporters viewed it as a viable solution to solve Canada’s woes. Parliament passed it, with Premier Macdonald’s signature, on August 20, 1866; Queen Victoria and the English parliament approved the decision a little more than a month later. Canada East and West were renamed Quebec and Ontario respectively. The three members of the Great Coalition went on to powerful positions within the new Canadian government. Cartier was elected governor of Quebec, Brown governor of Ontario, and Macdonald as first prime minister of Canada.
The new Canadian government faced its first crisis in 1868 when representatives from British Columbia’s Confederation league petitioned for entry into the nascent Canadian Federation. The request from a predominantly Anglophone colony sparked considerable outrage from the Quebecois representatives in the Canadian parliament, who feared that British Columbia’s admittance would cause considerable imbalance within that political body. Some radical Quebecois proposed that British Columbia and Ontario split their parliamentary delegation, thus ensuring a roughly even spread of Anglophone and Francophone representatives. British Columbia’s fate hung in limbo for the rest of 1868 and into 1869, when that crisis was interrupted by the Red River Rebellion, which threatened to cause more damage to the power of the new Canadian government than the British Columbia question ever could.
In 1869 the British monarchy gained control of Rupert’s Land, a large expanse of territory to the west of Canada stretching north to the Arctic Circle. After this acquisition and the subsequent transfer of the land to the Canadian government, Prime Minister Macdonald worked, with the consent of Governors Brown and Cartier, to survey Rupert’s Land in the interest of formalizing the acquisition. While Canada itself was largely approving of this territorial expansion, Métis residents of Rupert’s Land were anxious. The Métis did not have an official title to the land which they had worked for more than a century, instead possessing only a tenuous right of occupancy. To the Métis, the survey portended greater Canadian migration into the territory, which threatened their farms and culture.
Macdonald initially wanted William McDougall to be the first governor of the Rupert’s Land territory, mostly as a reward for his role in securing the acquisition of the territory. However, Cartier and Quebecois representatives in parliament strongly objected to this proposed appointment, given McDougall’s vehemently anti-French ideology. Instead, Macdonald appointed Francis Godschall Johnson. A conservative like Macdonald, Johnson was a former administrator for the Hudson’s Bay Company which had previously controlled Rupert’s Land and was thus deemed to have the necessary experience to ensure a smooth survey and acquisition.
Johnson’s survey was anything but smooth. In July 1869, Johnson ordered the survey of the territory to commence, which only served to increase Métis anger. One particular Métis man named Louis Riel quickly emerged as a leader in this vocal opposition. He denounced the survey on the steps of a cathedral in late August, rallying many other Métis and Métis-sympathizers to his side. In early October, the group disrupted Johnson’s survey and, soon after, formed the Métis National Committee to represent Métis interests in any hypothetical negotiations with Canada.
Despite the acquisition of Rupert’s Land by Canada, the territory was technically still under the authority of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In mid-October 1869, the company summoned Riel to explain his actions. Riel simply declared that he and the Métis National Committee would oppose any Canadian attempt to survey the territory until the Canadian government had first negotiated with the Métis. Johnson, as a former company administrator who had previously dealt with Métis issues within the territory, persuaded Macdonald to negotiate with the Métis. Meanwhile, Riel worked to bring Anglophones in the territory into his camp, mostly to bring his movement a sense of legitimacy. This union eventually formed a provisional government, the Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia of which Riel was president, to further legitimize Riel’s cause. Emissaries of both the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Canadian government met with this provisional government to discuss possible solutions. The Canadian representatives, in late January 1870, agreed to allow Riel to send representatives to Ottawa, the capital of the Canadian Federation, to directly negotiate with government officials.
Before these negotiations could commence, however, a contingent of anti-Métis Canadians plotted an attack on Riel’s provisional government. Fortunately for the Métis, that attack was prevented when, on February 17, 1870, 48 of the would-be attackers were arrested. Though all members of the attacking party were found guilty of crimes against the provisional government, Riel pardoned them as a show of good will towards the Canadian government. He felt that any sort of aggression on the part of the Métis would only serve to derail the negotiations, which would prove disastrous to his people.
On March 4, Riel and his delegates departed for Ottawa, where they entered into direct negotiations with Macdonald, Cartier, and Brown. The Anglophone representatives Riel brought with him served to reassure Macdonald that the rebellion was not just a Francophone plot. By March 12, the two parties came to an agreement. However, when Quebecois representatives in parliament moved to admit the territory which Riel’s provisional government occupied into the Canadian Federation, Ontarian representatives scoffed at the hypocrisy. Just two years earlier, Quebecois representatives refused to admit British Columbia on account of its British-majority population; now those same representatives had the audacity to try to admit a territory with a French-majority population. Despite these cries of hypocrisy, the two sides entered negotiations over both the British Columbia and Rupert’s Land questions.
By July 11, 1870, the two sides had reached a simple compromise. Both British Columbia and Riel’s territory would be admitted into the Canadian Federation as full provinces, though they would only receive 11 parliamentary representatives each instead of the 15 which Ontario and Quebec possessed. This Provincial Act, made official on August 1, set the tone and terms for all future provincial acquisitions throughout the existence of the Canadian Federation. The first governor of British Columbia, renamed Victoria in honor of the British monarch, was Amor de Cosmos, a Mormon immigrant from the United States who had his name legally changed to a loose translation of the phrase “lover of the universe.” As for Riel, he, as widely expected, was elected governor of the province of Assiniboia, carved out of the southern Ontario-bordering portion of the vast Rupert’s Land territory. With the gridlock fixed and Canadian territory expanded, the Canadian Federation was just as ready to tackle the nineteenth century as its eastern Atlantic counterpart.