The New Student's Reference Work/Aroostook War

Aroostook (ă-rōōs' tŏŏk) War, a somewhat jocular name given the boundary dispute arising between the province of New Brunswick, Canada, and the state of Maine, reaching its crisis in 1839 and settled amicably in 1842. By the treaty acknowledging American independence in 1783, the boundary between the two countries was loosely defined to be the St. Croix River, eked out by a line from its source to the watershed between the streams flowing to the St. Lawrence and those to the Atlantic Ocean. The United States set up for boundary a stream far to the east of the river, only to have their contention disproved by the discovery of Champlain's little colony on the island at the true river's mouth. A branch to the east was then seized upon, but commissioners agreed upon the most westerly branch and there, in 1798, set a stone monument. The watershed then fell into dispute; the United States asserted that it skirted the St. Lawrence valley, a hundred miles north. The district became known as the disputed territory. In 1829 the king of the Netherlands, to whom the dispute was referred for arbitrament, refused a decision. Ten years later, lumber-thieves began cutting timber there in defiance of all law. The Maine authorities arrested them, and were in turn arrested by New Brunswick lumbermen. Maine sent 1800 militia to the Aroostook River, and a call was issued for 10,000 more to take possession. Sir John Harvey, governor of New Brunswick, occupied .the ground with two regiments of regulars, artillery and several bands of volunteers. Nova Scotia voted all her militia and £100,000 in aid. At this crisis Gen. Winfield Scott was sent on by President Van Buren. Harvey had fought against him at Lundy's Lane and Stony Creek, and their respect was mutual. The war-fever abated, and the question was referred to a commission. In 1842 Alexander Baring, for Great Britain, and Daniel Webster, for the United States, met and framed the treaty known as the Ashburton, from the barony soon to be conferred upon Mr. Baring. Under it a line was continued due north from the monument of 1798 until it met the St. John River somewhat beyond the mouth of the Aroostook, giving New Brunswick only 5,000 and Maine 7,000 square miles of the land in dispute. When the treaty came up for confirmation in the United States senate, ratification was at first refused, the United States wanting all the territory. But when Webster produced a map which had been in his possession all the time, showing that Franklin himself in 1783 had agreed precisely upon the boundaries set up by New Brunswick, the treaty was confirmed. The survey in pursuance of the Ashburton treaty is not yet complete, but several supposedly American towns have been compelled to transfer their allegiance to New Brunswick as it has proceeded.