A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783-1842

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom and The History of Fort St. Joseph, and the co-author of
Invisible and Inaudible in Washington: American

This is probably the most significant book on the origins of the
Canada-U.S. boundary since A.L. Burt wrote his classic in 1940. Indeed,
Burt terminated his commentary at the end of the War of 1812, but
Carroll continues to the Webster- Ashburton Treaty of 1842. A sentence
on page 286 suggests that, by 1842, “the search for the boundary was
finally over.” That is wrong. Four years later the United States and
the United Kingdom faced the possibility of war over the location of the
boundary from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast. There were
further disputes culminating in 1871 over the ownership of the Gulf
Islands between the mainland and Vancouver Island and in 1903 over the
boundary between Canada and Alaska.

Carroll’s book contains 306 pages of small print, 102 pages of
endnotes, and 18 pages of bibliography. The research at archives in
Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Canada, and the United States was
extensive. Frederick Merk had already devoted his life to studies of the
1846 problems. Carroll is thorough in what he does and gives a better
account than any predecessor of the arbitration of the 1820s when
British and U.S. authorities decided who owned which islands in the
Great Lakes and connecting rivers. Maps clarify the choices that
negotiators faced and ultimately made.

Carroll, an American raised in Minnesota near the border, has taught
Canadian-American relations, and has had a life-long interest in and
admiration for Canada and Canadians; his judgments are fair. If there is
any criticism, it is that this book may be too profound for the novice.
Its target audience will be those who already know something about the
reasons for placing the boundary where it is. Richard Oswald, the chief
British negotiator in 1783 when both sides laid out the principles of
the border, is not mentioned until page 257—in the context of
1841—and is not identified until page 301.