USA > Michigan > Wayne County > Detroit > The city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Vol. I > Part 14
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"Already, in the winter of 1781-82; English emissaries had appeared at Paris and at The Hague, seeking the conditions upon which the war in America might be ended. No more than this could be done then because the ministers could not advise the king to acknowledge the independence of the United States until an enabling act for that purpose had been passed by Parliament. A bill giving this authorization was introduced into the House of Commons, but politics and not patriotism being uppermost, its passage took time. Franklin at Paris and Adams at The Hague had little faith in Lord North's professions of peace; but the former thought it worth while to write a friendly letter to Shelburne (princi- pal secretary of state) with whom he had been intimate before the war."
Franklin's letter to Shelburne was dated March 22, 1782. On March 27, 1782, Shelburne sent an agent to Paris to sound Franklin. This agent was Richard Oswald, a Scotch merchant of London, whom Shelburne described as "a pacifical man and conversant in those negotiations which are most interesting to mankind." Franklin received him kindly, took him to see Count de Vergennes (the French secretary of state for foreign affairs), and suggested that the United States, France and other belligerents could better negotiate separately with Great Britain. When everything was arranged, he added, there would only
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remain "to consolidate those several settlements into one general and conclusive Treaty of Pacification."
John Adams, John Jay and Henry Laurens were named by the Continental Congress to assist Franklin in the negotiations of the treaty. On April 15, 1782, Adams and Laurens had an interview at Haerlem. Laurens was then a British prisoner on parole. The day following this interview Adams wrote to Franklin and in his letter gave an account of his meeting with Laurens. "If you agree to it," he said, "I will never see another person who is not a plenipo- tentiary," and advised Franklin to do the same.
On the 20th of the same month Franklin wrote to Adams: "I like your idea of seeing no more messengers that are not plenipotentiaries; but I eannot refuse to see Mr. Oswald, as the minister here considered the letter to me from Lord Shelburne as a kind of authentication given that messenger, and expects his return with some explicit propositions. I shall keep yon advised of whatever passes.'
On May 8, 1782, Franklin again wrote to Adams regarding the negotiations, and a little later he received a letter from Laurens, dated at Ostend, May 17. 1782. declining to accept the appointment as commissioner. Jay arrived in Paris on June 23, 1782 and immediately called upon Franklin at Passy, a little village now within the eity limits of Paris. Two days later Franklin wrote to Robert R. Livingston : "I hoped for the assistance of Mr. Adams and Mr. Laurens. The first is too much engaged in Holland; and the other declines serving."
To quote from Channing: "On Roekingham's death in July, his followers retired from the government and Shelburne became prime minister. Toward the end of that month, the passage of the enabling act authorized him to issue a commission to Oswald and to give him definite instructions as to the negotiation with the Americans. Unfortunately, the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney- General and other officials had betaken themselves to the country the moment Parliament was prorogued. The commission, therefore, that Oswald exhibited to the Americans was not under the great seal, and, indeed, was only a copy or exemplifieation of the original."
Mrs. Merey Warren, in her "History of the Revolution, " says: "When Mr. Oswald, who had been appointed to act as commissioner of peace in behalf of Great Britain, and to arrange the provisional articles for that purpose, arrived in Paris, in the autumn of 1782, it appeared that his instructions were not suf- ficiently explicit. They did not satisfy the American agents deputed by Con- gress to negociate the terms of reconciliation among the contending powers. These were Doetor Franklin, John Jay and John Adams, esquires. Mr. Adams was still at The Hague; but he had been directed by Congress to repair to Franee to assist his eolleagues in the negociations for peace.
"The ambiguity of Mr. Oswald's commission occasioned much altereation between the Count de Vergennes and Mr. Jay on the subject of the provisional articles. Their disputes were easily adjusted; and the Spanish minister, the Count de Aranda, rather inclined to be acquieseent in the proposals of the British commissioner. Mr. Jay, however, resisted with firmness; and was supported in his opinions by Mr. Adams, who soon arrived in Paris."
While this controversy was going on, Count de Reyneval went to London to lay the matter before Lord Shelburne. The result of his visit was that Mr. Oswald received a new commission and definite instructions. All was now smooth sailing and the commissioners began their deliberations in earnest.
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CLOTHIERS
LOTHING
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HOLESALE.
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OLD CAMPAU HOUSE, SOUTH SIDE OF JEFFERSON AVENUE, MIDWAY BETWEEN GRISWOLD AND SHELBY Erected in 1813, torn down in March, 1880
OLD HAMTRAMCK HOUSE 1N 1891
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The first result of their labors, which was made public on October 8, 1782, fixed the northern boundary of the United States as the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude from the Atlantic coast to the St. Lawrence River; thence to the southern end of the Lake Nipissing, and by a straight line from that point to the source of the Mississippi. The uncertainty as to the exact location of the head of the Mississippi was the cause of some delay in the conclusion of the treaty, but on November 30, 1782, preliminary articles of peace were signed by the commissioners. The preliminary treaty was confirmed by the definitive treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783.
Regarding the boundary lines of the United States under this treaty, Mr. C. M. Burton in an address before the Society of Colonial Wars, in 1907, said as follows :
"I think it is not necessary to tell you that the foundation for the history of the Northwest Territory lies largely in the unpublished documents in the British Museum and the Public Record office in London. The American papers on the subject of the Treaty of 1782 at the close of the Revolutionary war, have been collected and printed by Mr. Sparks in twelve volumes of the diplo- matic correspondence of the Revolution. They have recently, within the last few years, been reprinted and added to, in the Wharton collection. But the papers on the British side, with few exceptions, are still unpublished and it is among those papers that I spent a good portion of my vacation while in the City of London. A few of them are in the British Museum, but nearly all are in the Public Record office. I had some trouble in getting in there, but suc- ceeded through the kindness of Mr. Carter, who represents our government in London, and made as many extraets as I could pertaining exclusively to De- troit and the Northwest. While the collection there extends to every part of the United States, I was particularly interested in our own state, in our own part of the country. I refer to a few of these papers for the purpose of show- ing how it came about that Michigan became a part of the United States. That at first sight might seem very simple to be determined, and yet I find it very difficult to answer, and I do not know now that I have found much that would lead to a complete determination of the reason for this form of our Treaty.
"The first papers that attracted my attention I found in the British Museum. They consisted of some correspondence in French between the British government and the French government relating to the troubles that had arisen along the Ohio River, and in that matter Detroit took a very active in- terest about the year 1754. These papers finally ended in a proposition on the part of Great Britain to accept as the north boundary line the river that we call the Maumee, on which Toledo is situated. The country immediately south of this was to be neutral ground. This was in 1754. If that boundary line had been established; if that agreement had been accepted by the two coun- tries, Michigan would have remained French territory, and perhaps the war which immediately succeeded would not have taken place, and in all proba- bility Canada would still have been a French possession. In the midst of these negotiations, they were terminated. I did not know at the time why, but I found in my searches a little book which I now have, evidently written by some member of the Privy Council, telling the reasons for breaking off the negotiations, and for cansing the war which terminated in 1763. This book is
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entitled .The Conduet of the Ministry Impartially Examined,' and was pub- lished in London in 1756.
"At the end of the war, the treaty of Paris gave to Great Britain all of Canada, and Canada at that time was supposed to include all of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, all of the land north and west of the Ohio River. The same year that this treaty was entered into, Great Britain established the Province of Quebec. One of the peculiar matters connected with this establishment of the Province of Quebec I shall refer to hereafter. Quebec was established in 1763 and was nearly a triangle. The south boundary line of the province extended from Lake Nipissing to the St. Lawrence River near Lake St. Francis. Mich- igan and all of the lower part of Canada, and all of the Ohio district, were entirely omitted ; so that by the proclamation of 1763, no portion of that country was under any form of government whatever. This was likely to lead to trouble with Great Britain and with the people in Detroit, for Detroit was the most prominent and important place in the whole of that district. Within a few years after the establishment of the Province of Quebee, a man by the name of Isenhart was murdered in Detroit by Michael Due, a Frenchman. Due was arrested, testimony was taken here before Philip Dejean, our justice, and after his guilt was established, Due was sent to Quebce for trial and execution. After he was convicted they sent him baek to Montreal, so that he could be executed among his friends. The matter was brought before the Privy Couneil to determine under what law and by what right Due was tried at all. They executed the poor fellow, and then made the inquiry afterwards. It was finally decided that they could try him under a special provision in the Mutiny Act, but they had to acknowledge that at that time they absolutely had no control, by law, over our portion of the Northwest Territory, and that the land where we are was subject to the king exelusively, and was not under any mili- tary authority except as he directed it.
"In 1774 the Quebec Act was passed, and by that act the boundary lines of the Province of Quebec were so enlarged as to include all of the Ohio country and all the land north of the Ohio River: so that from 1774 until the close of the Revolutionary war, Canada and the Province of Quebec included all the land on which we are situated as well as the present Canada, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
"Now, when we come to the treaty of peace, or the preliminary treaty of peace in 1782, the first thing that I found of interest was the fact that Franklin, who was then in Paris, was quite anxious that some effort should be made to close up the war. There never had been a moment from the time the war first started that efforts were not being made along some line to bring it to a conelusion, but it was the efforts of Mr. Franklin in the spring of 1782 that finally brought the parties together. The man who acted at that time for the British government was Richard Oswald. He was sent from London to Paris to represent his government, and to see if something could not be done with Mr. Franklin to negotiate a treaty. Those of you who have been in Paris will reeolleet that the house in which Mr. Franklin lived while there was not then within the city limits. It was in Passy, a little village some three or four miles distant, but now within the city limits. The place is now marked by a tablet a little above the heads of the passersby, on Singer Street, indicating that Franklin lived there during the time of which I am speaking. 1782, and sometime later. He was sick. He was unable at various times to leave his
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apartments at all, and much of the negotiations took place in his private rooms on Singer Street in Passy.
"The proceedings on the part of the American commissioners have all been published, but Mr. Oswald kept minutes of his own, and these, with a few exceptions, have not been printed. These and the papers that are connected with them, I had the pleasure of examining and abstracting, if I may use that term, during the past winter. I find that on April 25, 1782, Mr. Richard Oswald returned to Paris, and that place was named as the city for settling up the affairs of the Revolutionary war, if it was possible, with Doctor Franklin. The principal point was the allowance of the independence of the United States, upon the restoration of Great Britain to the situation in which she was placed before the Treaty of 1763. The question that came before the commissioners at once was what constituted Canada or what constituted the Province of Quebec. I think that Great Britain made a blunder, and a serious blunder for herself, in establishing the Province of Quebec within the restricted lines of Lake Nipissing, and the reason of her making this line I believe was this. She had once before taken Canada from the French, and then restored it. She did not know but what she might again be called upon to restore Canada to France. But if she had to restore it, she proposed to restore only that portion of it that she considered to be Canada, that is the land lying north and east of the line from Lake Nipissing to the St. Lawrence River. She would maintain, if the time again came to surrender Canada to France, that all the land lying below that line was her own possession, and not a part of the land she had taken from France. Now she found that in order to be restored to the situation she oeeupied before 1763, she must abandon the land lying below that line, and thereafter it would become part of the United States. So that one of the principal features of this new treaty was to be the restoration of Great Britain to the situation that was occupied by her before the Treaty of 1763.
"The peculiar formation of the lines that marked the Province of Quebec in the proclamation of 1763 attracted my attention, and I undertook to study out the reason for so shaping the province, and some years ago wrote out the reason that I have outlined tonight. I did not know then that there were docu- ments in existence to prove the truth of my theory.
"In July, 1763, Lord Egremont, Secretary of State, reported to the Lord of Trade that the King approved of the formation of the new government of Canada, but that the limits had not been defined. The King thought that great inconvenience might arise if a large tract of land was left without being subject to the jurisdiction of some Governor and that it would be difficult to bring criminals and fugitives, who might take refuge in this country, to justice. He therefore thought it best to include in the commission for the Governor of Canada, jurisdiction of all the great lakes, Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior, with all of the country as far north and west as the limits of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Mississippi, and all lands ceded by the late treaty, unless the Lords of Trade should suggest a better distribution.
"On the 5th of August the Lords of Trade submitted their plan for the Government of Quebec, a portion of which was as follows:
" 'We are apprehensive that, should this country be annexed to the Gov- ernment of Canada, a colour might be taken on some future occasion, for supposing that your Majesty's title to it had taken its rise singly from the cessions made by France in the late treaty, whereas your Majesty's titles to
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the lakes and circumjacent territory, as well as sovereignty over the Indian tribes, particularly of the Six Nations, rests on a more solid and even a more equitable foundation ; and perhaps nothing is more necessary than that just impressions of this subject should be carefully preserved in the minds of the savages, whose ideas might be blended and confounded if they should be brought to consider themselves under the government of Canada.'
"Conformable to the report of the Lords of Trade, the King on September 19th, said that he was pleased to lay aside the idea of including within the government of Canada, or any established colony, the lands that were reserved for the use of the Indians.
"He directed that the commission to be issued to James Murray comprehend that part of Canada lying on the north side of the St. Lawrence River which was included within the Province of Quebec.
"The commission to James Murray as Captain-General and Governor of the Province of Quebec, which was issued November 14, 1763, bounded the province on the south by a line drawn from the south end of Lake Nipissing to a point where the forty-fifth degree of north latitude crosses the St. Lawrence River-the westerly end of Lake St. Francis.
"In settling the line of the United States in 1782, it was very convenient for our commissioners to claim that the Lake Nipissing line was the northern boundary of the new government, for it gave to England all the lands she claimed to have won by the contest with France, and this line Great Britain could not well dispute.
"I found here a letter from Governor Haldimand, and it is interesting just at this point, because it gives an idea of the American army.
"'It is not the number of troops that Mr. Washington can spare from his army that is to be apprehended; it is their multitude of militia and men in arms ready to turn out at an hour's notice upon the show of a single regiment of Continental troops that will oppose the attempt, the facility of which has been fatally experienced.' So Haldimand was writing to the home office that . they must have peace because they could not contend against the militia of the United States.
"In the various interviews that Mr. Oswald reports, he says that Franklin and Laurens maintained that Canada, Nova Scotia, East Florida, Newfound- land and the West India Islands should still remain British colonies in the event of peace. Mr. Oswald reported that in all the conversations on this sub- ject, no inclination was ever shown by the Americans to dispute the right of Great Britain to these colonies, and he adds, 'Which, I own, I was very much surprised at, and had I been an American, acting in the same character as those commissioners, I should have held a different language to those of Great Britain, and would have plainly told them that for the sake of future peace of America, they must entirely quit possession of every part of that continent, so as the whole might be brought under the cover of one and the same political constitution, and so must include under the head of independence, to make it real and complete, all Nova Scotia, Canada, Newfoundland and East Florida. That this must have been granted if insisted upon, I think is past all doubt, considering the present unhappy sitnation of things.'
"Well, he did not understand Mr. Franklin, because Franklin was sitting there day after day, doing a great deal of thinking and letting Mr. Oswald do the talking, and when it came to the time for Mr. Franklin to give forth
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his own ideas, they were very different from what Mr. Oswald thought they were. Franklin told Oswald on July Sth that there could be no solid peace while Canada remained an English possession. That was the first statement that Franklin made regarding his ideas of where the boundary line ought to be. A few days after this, the first draft of the treaty was made, and it was sent to London on July 10, 1782. The third article requires that the boundaries of Canada be confined to the lines given in the Quebec Act of 1774, 'or even to a more contracted state.' An additional number of articles were to be con- sidered as advisable, the fourth one being the giving up by Great Britain of every part of Canada. Oswald had formerly suggested that the back lands of Canada-that is the Ohio lands-be set apart and sold for the benefit of the loyal sufferers; but now Franklin insisted that these back lands be ceded to the United States without any stipulation whatever as to their disposal. Many of the states had confiscated the lands and property of the loyalists, and there was an effort on the part of Oswald to get our new government to recognize these confiscations and repay them, or to sell the lands in the Ohio country and pay the loyalists from the sale. A set of instructions was made to Oswald on July 31st and sent over, but the article referring to this matter was afterwards stricken out, so that it does not appear in any of the printed proceedings. The portion that was stricken out reads as follows: 'You will endeavor to make use of our reserve title to those ungranted lands which lie to the westward of the boundaries of the provinces as defined in the proclamations before men- tioned in 1763, and to stipulate for the annexation of a portion of them in each province in lieu of what they shall restore to the refugees and loyalists, whose estates they have seized or confiscated.'
"But Franklin refused to acknowledge any of these debts. He said that if any loyalists had suffered, they had suffered because they had been the ones who had instigated the war, and they must not be repaid, and he would not permit them to be repaid out of any lands that belonged to the United States; that if Great Britain herself wanted to repay them, he had no objection. In a conversation Jolin Jay, who came from Spain and took part in these negotia- tions, told the British commissioner that England had taken great advantage of France in 1763 in taking Canada from her and he did not propose that England should serve the United States in the same manner, and he, Jay, was not as favorable to peace as was Franklin.
"On the 18th of August, a few days later, Oswald wrote: 'The Commis- sioners here insist on their independence, and consequently on a cession of the whole territory, and the misfortune is that their demand must be complied with in order to avoid the worst consequences, either respecting them in par- ticular, or the object of general pacification with the foreign states, as to which nothing can be done until the American independence is effected.' He recites the situation in America; the garrisons of British troops at the mercy of the Americans, the situation of the loyalists, and the evacuations then taking place. In all these negotiations, there was a constant determination taken by Franklin to hold the territory in the west and on the north.
"In the last of August, 1782, the commissioners set about determining thic boundary lines for the new government, which they fixed in the draft of the treaty so as to include in the United States that part of Canada which was added to it by act of parliament of 1774. 'If this is not granted there will be a good deal of difficulty in settling these boundaries between Canada and several
Vol. 1-10
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of the states, especially on the western frontier, as the addition sweeps around behind them, and I make no doubt that a refusal would occasion a particular grudge, as a deprivation of an extent of valuable territory the several prov- inces have always counted upon as their own, and only waiting to be settled and taken into their respective governments, according as their population in- creased and encouraged a further extension westward. I therefore suppose this demand will be granted, upon certain conditions.' It seems that in the preceding April, Franklin had proposed that the back lands of Canada should be entirely given up to the United States, and that Great Britain should grant a sum of money to repay the losses of the sufferers in the war. He had also proposed that certain unsold lands in America should be disposed of for the benefit of the sufferers on both sides. (These unsold lands were those claimed as Crown lands in New York and elsewhere, considered as the private property of the Crown.) Franklin had withdrawn this proposal and now refused to consent to it, although strongly urged by Oswald, who wrote, 'I am afraid it will not be possible to bring him back to the proposition made in April last, though I shall try.'
"The preliminary articles of peace were agreed upon by Oswald and Franklin and Jay, October 7, 1782, and the northern boundary line of the United States extended from the east, westerly on the 45th degree of north latitude until the St. Lawrence River was reached, then to the easterly end of Lake Nipissing, and then straight to the source of the Mississippi. If you will remember that Lake Nipissing is opposite the northern end of Georgian Bay, you will see that the line as laid down in this draft of the treaty would include within the United States all the territory that is aeross the river from Detroit, all of the southerly portion of what formerly constituted Upper Canada. Mr. Franklin at this time wrote: 'They want to bring their boundaries down to the Ohio, and to settle their loyalists in the Illinois country. We did not choose such neighbors.'
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