USA > Vermont > Vermont in quandary, 1763-1825 > Part 26
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72. Crockett, Walter HI., Vermont: the Green Mountain State (New York 1921-1923), 5 vols., III, 124.
73. Burt, The United States, Great Britain and British North America, 482-496.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Withdrawal from the St. Lawrence
In 1814 the British writer of A Compressed View of the Points to be Discussed in Treating with the United States, argued from geography for a fundamental and far-reaching revision of the Canadian-American boundary.1 Since the Revolution, Canadian merchants had been advocating just such a change. Now in the year of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, this pamphlet argued in favor of a revision of the boundary in such fashion as to re- store to the political dominion of the Canadas those portions of its commercial dominion which had been ceded to the United States in 1783. Economic geography, so thought Canadian merchants, was the only legitimate basis for drawing the boundaries of poli- tical geography. The writer of the pamphlet proposed that the boundary between Lower Canada and Vermont be so changed. as to include the Champlain Valley in the British possessions in North America.
This was not a new or startling proposal. During the Revolu- tion, Vermonters had made a similar one, and others after the Revolution. They had been struggling to reconcile the pull of geography and trade in the direction of the St. Lawrence with their potential Americanism. Vermonters, chiefly of the Cham- plain Valley, lived and died within the Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence. From it they achieved a reasonable degree of prosperity. In times of peace they were fairly good neighbors of the people of Lower Canada and at the same time indifferent but unprotesting citizens of the United States.
Within seven years after the close of the War of 1812, however, the opening of the Champlain Canal enabled Vermonters in the Champlain Valley to withdraw from the St. Lawrence and connect themselves with the expanding economy of New York and with its busy and prosperous port at the mouth of the Hudson. From now on, a fundamental change took place in the commercial ties
1. Quebec Gazette, Oct. 6, 1814.
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of Vermonters with the outside world. Henceforth all of Vermont looked south instead of north.
The events of the immediate post-war years gave Vermonters no hint of these impending changes. The many ties of pre-war years with Lower Canada were quickly reforged. On May 29, 1815, St. Johns was declared a port of entry of the Province of Lower Canada. Timber, farm articles, etc., were once more placed on the Canadian free list.2 In August, William Lindsay, the Cana- dian Collector, wrote that the duties collected at St. Johns had averaged 7,000 & for the years, 1809-1812, and he estimated that the receipts would total 10,000 & for the year, August 1, 1815, to August 1, 1816.3 So optimistic was Lindsay for the future of this trade that he drew the plans for a splendid Customs House at St. Johns, one befitting the size and significance of the trade.
As before the war, people and goods moved freely back and forth across the border. "Every day," declared the Quebec Gazette, "brings in large sleighs heavily laden with provisions from the Eastern Townships and our friends the Vermonters."4 Again smug- gling became the bane of the Canadian Customs' officials as East India goods, American tobacco, American and British manufac- tures were brought illegally into the province. Once again com- plaints were made of the laxness of these officials who were, how- ever, it was claimed, very "punctual in calling for their Salery."3 Once more, professional men and artisans from the states entered the province. Even friendships of former times were resumed. John Strachan of York, Upper Canada, agreed with a Vermont friend not to discuss the war. "It should never have been," he wrote, "and I hope it will never be renewed." He said later that he hoped "our respective Governments have learned enough to be moderate in the future."6
This friendly spirit was reflected in the writing of the Rush- · Bagot Agreement of 1817 which limited armaments on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. Yet this agreement was effected
2. Q, CXXXII, 154-173.
3. S, CX, 115.
4. Jan. 31, 1820.
5. S, CVI, 81.
6. N.Y.S.L., Whceler Papers, 1813-1818, Strachan to Francis Childs, April 26, 1815. July 23, 1815.
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largely because the Canadians did not have the financial resources to outbuild the Americans in a naval race and because British naval power in the Atlantic was more than a match for American.7 That the peace treaty did not end American distrust of Great Britain was demonstrated when the United States built a formid- able fort at Rouse's Point. Much to the embarrassment of the American government, it was soon discovered that the fort had been built on Canadian soil.
Although the British government eventually ceded the land upon which the fort stood to the United States, it was determined that Lower Canada would never again be in danger of inundation by American settlers. Lord Bathurst, the Colonial Secretary, wrote Governor Prevost on January 10, 1815, that he forbade him to grant lands to American settlers and that he was to exercise the greatest care that they did not settle in the province until he should be instructed otherwise.8 Governor Prevost himself objected to American settlers. He advised that the frontier east of Lake Champlain be left unsettled because he thought the war had demonstrated that an unsettled country provided a better defense than a settled one. Prevost declared that settlers on the frontiers would inevitably trade with Americans which would tend to preju- dice them in favor of American ideas and institutions. To prevent this, he suggested that Canadian settlers and British immigrants be settled upon the lands lying between the St. Lawrence, the Richelieu and the border.º Prevost's advice was finally accepted in modified form. The British government decided to create a barrier between the two peoples by preventing settlement of lands near the border and by outnumbering Americans already in the province with British immigrants.10
Canadians welcomed this belated effort to throw back the tide of American settlers which had risen to dangerous levels before the war. They had narrowly averted being swamped by the Ameri- cans and, furthermore, they had been inundated by a flood of raw materials from the States. After the war, Canadians sought
7. Burt, The United States, Great Britain and British North America, 395.
8. P.A.C., Conada Public, E, 367-368.
9. P.A.C., Land Sundries, 1812-1816, March, 18, 1815.
10. Ibid., 370-373.
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protection against a renewal of American competition in their markets. Inhabitants of the Eastern Townships petitioned the Lower Canada Assembly to build better roads to connect the townships with Canadian commercial centers and to lessen the "discouragement to the Agriculture and Commerce of the Prov- ince, arising from the unrestricted introduction of Cattle and Manufactures into the Townships from the United States."11 So strong became the agrarian protest against imports from the States that in 1817 the Canadian governor disallowed a bill extending the free list to flour, meal, flaxseed, cheese, pork and beef, and undressed hides and skins.12
Three years later so strong an opposition developed in Great Britain to the continued importation of American lumber via Lower Canada that a Parliamentary Committee was appointed to review the subject of Canadian commerce and its regulation. This committee laboriously and conscientiously unearthed a mine of information which must have startled many members of Parlia- ment. Charges were made that Champlain Valley timber was sub- ject to dry rot, that it was generally of inferior quality, that the timber exports from Lower Canada came from south of the border and that the differential duties in favor of the Canadas were un- economically fostering imports from the Canadas instead of from the source of timber supply nearer at hand in the Baltic region. The charge of dry rot was not wholly substantiated; but the other charges were proven. The committee heard testimony that be- tween one-third and one-half of the timber exported from the St. Lawrence had been cut in the United States. A leading timber merchant, Henry Usburne, was asked if the differential duties did not favor imports from the United States more than imports from the Baltic states and if they did not operate as a bounty to American citizens as much so as they did in favor of British colonials. He was forced to reply, "Yes, to a certain extent." 13
The evidence uncarthed by the Committee prompted the Cana-
11. Doughty, A. G., Story, N., Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1819-1828 ( Ottawa, 1935), 92-93.
12. Millman, T. R., The Legal Regulation of Trade Between Canada and the United States ( unpublished Master's Thesis, University of Toronto, 1933), 844.
13. Great Britain, Sessional Paper 186, VI. 1821; Sessional Paper 269, III, 1820, 43; Hansard Debates, n.s., I, col. 800, June 2, 1820; Albion, Forests and Sea Power, 401-403.
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dian and British governments to place restrictions on timber im- ports from the United States which threatened for a time to dis- rupt the historic trade between Vermont and Lower Canada. Be- tween 1819 and 1822, regulations were issued requiring certificates of Canadian origin for timber shipped from Lower Canada to Bri- tain. The British Parliament reduced the duty on Baltic timber and passed the Canada Trade Act of 1822 which placed duties upon imports of raw materials from the United States. This act, declared the New York Commercial Advertizer, was "likely to destroy the lumber trade hitherto carried on from Vermont to Canada." 14
In the same year in which the Canada Trade Act was passed, the Champlain Canal was sufficiently completed to provide a southern outlet for Champlain Valley timber. The construction of the canal had been abandoned in the nineties by Philip Schuyler. Since that time the financial resources which New York could tap to revive this project had increased enormously. Years before the opening of the Champlain Canal a Canadian, who saw clearly the significance of New York's superior financial resources, had thoughtfully declared that Americans "possess the funds; Cana- dians the volume of water."15 The man who marshalled these funds was De Witt Clinton. In 1817 he embarked upon the build- ing of two great canals. The more important one was to connect the Hudson with Lake Erie rather than Lake Ontario because goods once on Lake Ontario were said to be landed usually upon the wharves of Montreal. The less important canal was to connect the Hudson and Lake Champlain.
The main reason for building these canals was to divert the trade of the basin of the Great Lakes and the Champlain Valley from the St. Lawrence to the Hudson. New York had already, by its superior commercial resources and shipping facilities, among many factors, won a sizeable proportion of the trade in Ameri- can and foreign manufactures moving from the seaboard into the interior regions on both sides of the border. The Erie and Cham- plain canals were designed to increase the size of New York's
14. Quoted in the Vermont Republican and American Yeoman, Aug. 13, 1824. 15. Q, LVII, pt. 2, 375-381.
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share of this trade and to add to it a large proportion of the out- bound trade in raw materials. That such was New York's strategy was demonstrated by the Canal Commissioners' Report for 1817. They declared that the Champlain Canal would raise land values, transport timber, iron ore, food and other farm commodities to New York markets as well as open a wider market for manu- factured goods, domestic and imported, in the Great Lakes region and the Champlain Valley.16
Although the promoters of New York's canal system desired above all to increase the volume of the commerce of their state, they sought also to tie together the American sections with the thread of commerce. The continued existence of the United States, they said, depended to a large degree upon the "strength of our common interests."17 They hoped that the canals would help to prevent a recurrence of the disaffection which had been so evident among Americans living in the Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence during the Embargo and the War of 1812. They wrote privately that unless the Erie Canal were built, Americans "on fertile farms in convenient Situations, may continue to toil for British Merchants; and accommodating, by Degrees, their Senti- ments to their Connections, feel at last, with Sorrow and Surprize, that british Hearts beat in their American Bosoms."18
With the decisive aid of British capital, the Champlain and Erie canals were swiftly completed. By modern standards the Champlain canal was puny, merely a ditch capable of floating shallow-draft canal boats. Yet it achieved its purpose. Although lumber passed through it in 1822, not until October 8, 1823, was the canal officially opened when the Gleaner was welcomed with appropriate ceremonies in the city of New York. The much more spectacular ceremonies celebrating the opening of the Erie in 1825 have tended to lessen recognition of the effect of the Champlain Canal upon the commerce of Vermont, Lower Canada and New York. "A new era has indeed burst upon us," said Governor C. P. Van Ness of Vermont after the Gleaner docked in New York,
16. New York (State), Report of the Canal Commissioners for 1817 (Albany, 181S), 91-92. 17. Ibid., 101.
18. Columbia University, De Witt Clinton Papers, XXIV, 91 (n.d.).
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'when we can hear of the arrival of vessels at the city of New York from the northern extremity of Vermont. The immense value of such a communication to this state will soon be extensively seen and felt in the different branches of business carried on with- in."19
The first effect of the opening of the canal was the sudden and dramatic ending of the lumber trade hitherto carried on between Vermont and Lower Canada. In 1821, 758,500 cubic feet of pine timber came down the Richelieu, one year later, only 22,000.20 Saw mills were now moved from the Hudson to the Champlain Valley to cut the remaining timber, and the lumber was sent by the canal to the Hudson where it would be lashed aboard Hudson River sloops for transportation to New York.
Lumber, however, did not loom so large in the trade with New York as it had in the trade with Lower Canada. By 1820, or there- abouts, the better stands of timber had been cut and sent to Que- bec. What remained was fit largely for sawing or for ashes. The imminent exhaustion of the better stands indicated that the econ- omy of the forest frontier in Vermont was passing. Indeed, the - Vermont boom was almost over. That its end was approaching had been demonstrated by the migration of Vermonters to the Eastern Townships. After the War of 1812, they moved in ever- increasing numbers to the Genesee and the Western Reserve. By mid-century they were on the Pacific slope. Those who did not choose to migrate were forced to adjust themselves to the advance westward of the frontier of timber and of grain. This adjustment was at last made when Vermonters turned to the production of wool, to dairying, mining and small scale manufacturing. By pro- viding new markets for Vermonters, the Champlain Canal helped them to adjust themselves to the changing times.21
The lake port which benefitted most from the canal and these newer economic activities was Burlington. The Allens and Samuel Peters had thought that Burlington would prosper only if a Riche- lieu Canal were built; but it was the Champlain Canal which
19. Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont, VII, 443.
20. Lower, Lumbering in Eastern Canada. I, 317.
21. Stilwell, L.D., Migration from Vermont, 115-196.
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brought Burlington its real prosperity. Nevertheless, they would have enjoyed the Burlington boom. The port was soon connected by sloops, steamboats or by canal boats with St. Johns to the north, Troy, Albany and New York to the south, and even with Boston to the east and Cleveland to the west. By land it had turnpike connections with its own immediate hinterland, the Winooski River Valley, and from it to the Connecticut Valley.22 As Bur- lington forged ahead, so did its political pretensions. In 1823, a group of Burlington inhabitants presented a petition to the Ver- mont Assembly asking that the port be made the capital of the state because it is "situated on what is now and ever must be the greatest thoroughfare in this portion of North America." 23
The far-flung commercial activities of Burlington are admirably illustrated by the business carried on by the firm of Mayo & Fol- lett. After the opening of the canal, the firm discovered that Con- necticut Valley merchants were disposed to do more business with the Champlain Valley and New York than with eastern New Eng- land. On one occasion the firm introduced a Craftsbury merchant and his partner to the New York firm of Halstead & Harris with the explanation that "they had hitherto purchased their goods at Boston but from the facilities of communication afforded by the canal are disposed to make purchases at New York."24 The firm actually dispatched articles via the Champlain Canal and New York to Boston.
The depressing effect of this trade upon the business of the merchants of the Connecticut Valley did not pass unnoticed. The advantages which they had gained by the building, in the first quarter of the century, of six canals around obstructions to navi- gation of the Connecticut River were largely nullified by the Champlain Canal. In 1825 merchants of Bellows Falls, Brattle- borough, Montpelier and other towns held conventions at Windsor and Montpelier to discuss the practicability of regaining lost ground by building canals to connect the Champlain Valley with the Connecticut Valley and the latter with Boston and Ports- mouth. Unfortunately for them, the hilly character of western
22. See Mayo & Follett Papers in the New York State Library.
23. Ibid., n.d.
24. Ibid., Mayo & Follett to Halstead & Harris, May 1, 1824.
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New England made such a project impracticable. The Connec- ticut Valley, as well as New England as a whole, had to await the railroad era before it could tap the trade west of the barrier of the Berkshires and the Green Mountains.25
In addition to trading with the Connecticut Valley, Mayo & Follett carried on a lively trade within the Champlain Valley. The firm did a thriving business forwarding manufactures which had been purchased in New York, and collecting farm products from both sides of the lake for shipment to New York or, on occasion, to Lower Canada. It enjoyed the advantage of an alter- nate market and source of supply. It often sent pork, cheese and other products to Horatio Gates & Company in Montreal. Usually, the firm was wary of purchasing in the Canadian source of sup- ply. The American protective tariff of 1824 and the "facility of bringing merchandize from New York, by the Champlain Canal operated against it."26 The firm wrote Horatio Gates & Company that it was not purchasing salt in Montreal because the partners "don't know whether it may be more advantageously purchased at the North or the South." They carefully watched the prices current in New York and Lower Canada, dispatching their pro- duce accordingly. "We believe ashes will command a better Price in Canada the approaching season, than in any of the United States markets."27 Such, however, was the exception. Henceforth, the bulk of the trade was directed south rather than north. Canadian bills still circulated in Vermont, salt was still . imported, but the great days of the Canadian trade were gone forever.28
While the canal stimulated trade in farm products and ashes, it also helped to diversify the valley's economic activities by making possible the profitable exploitation of its sub-soil re- sources-notably marble and iron ore. In anticipation of the opening of the canal, two New York business men opened a marble mill at Swanton in 1820.29 This venture was not a suc- cess, but similar ones elsewhere were wholly successful. In the
25. Records of the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont, VII, 480.
26. N.Y.S.L., Peter Sailly Memoir.
27. Mayo & Follett Papers ( badly humed ).
28. N.Y.S.L., Vermont Papers, XV, Letter of John Sprage (?). November 26, 1827.
29. Hemenway, The Vermont Historical Gazetteer, IV, 1025-1026.
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ensuing decades, many a Yorker would install in his parlor a mantle made of Vermont marble.
The bulk of the iron ore was mined on the west side of the lake. Mines were opened at Ausable Forks, Port Henry, Peru and Chateauguay. Nearby, nail factories, anchor forges, blast furnaces and cable manufactories were established. Much of the ore not used by these enterprises was shipped across the lake to Vermont towns, especially to Vergennes where John Dodd Ward eventually settled. He had assembled the first Canadian steamboat machinery at his Eagle Foundry in Montreal in 1817- 1819.30
Although Vermonters were seemingly indifferent to the end of the prosperous trade with Lower Canada, Canadians were not. As early as 1818, one year after the New York canals were chartered, the Assembly of Lower Canada retaliated in a half- hearted fashion by passing a bill appointing persons to make a survey for a canal around the ever-troublesome rapids of the Richelieu and appropriated the sum of 1550 £ for this purpose.31 The necessity for such a canal was described to the Assembly by the inhabitants of Dorchester, a small town near St. Johns.
... It is evident to every man of commercial knowledge that unless we are permitted and encouraged to improve the navigation of these Rapids without delay the reso- lutions of the Legislature of the State of New York passed last winter will operate seriously against the general interest of this Province hereafter and that on the contrary if we proceed immediately to make an easy, cheap and safe water communication for rafts and boats from Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence we may defy their utmost exertions as to any canal between the Hudson and Whitehall being able to detach the mercantile body situated in the vicinity of Lake Champlain from their usual connections with us and the Province in general; and that notwithstanding we live under different governments they and posterity will bless the hands who first undertook this grand object.32
30. Bixby, G. F., "The History of the Iron Ore Industry on Lake Champlain," Proceed- ings of the New York State Historical Association (X, 1911), 171-237; V.H.S., John Dod !! Ward Papers.
31. S. CXXXIII. 54.
32. S, CXXXI, 131, n.d.
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The Quebec Gazette claimed that the canal would advance the commercial prosperity of its city by drawing trade from Montreal and, by by-passing St. Johns, enable Americans to bring articles to the Quebec market, "direct without intervention of agents."33 The open avowal of Quebec's ambition to entice trade from St. Johns and Montreal to its own merchants demon- strated that the canal project had become involved in commer- cial rivalries within the province. These rivalries made it diffi- cult for Canadians to present a united front against the threat of New York's canals to Canadian commerce as a whole. Further- more, they were accompanied by the stiff opposition of the agra- rian French Canadians who wished provincial funds to be spent on roads rather than on canals, because canals threated to in- crease American competition with their farm produce and timber in the Canadian market. Why should they vote, French Canadi- ans argued, to appropriate money which would have the effect of increasing this competition? Agrarian opposition made it even more difficult for Canadian merchants to secure financial aid from their government for the purpose of building a canal system which would furnish the same advantages to the Canadas as the New York canals furnished to New York. On October 8, 1818, the Quebec Gazette, in referring to an American pamphlet which discussed Canadian plans to build a canal system, said that the pamphlet gives "us praise for exertions to counteract the effects of the American canals to which we are not entitled. Not a spade- ful of earth has as yet been taken out of the intended Lachine & Chambly [Richelieu] canals."
Not until the middle thirties did the Canadians attempt to compete with the United States by building the Chambly Canal around the Richelieu rapids, the Welland Canal to connect Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and by building canals around the St. Lawrence rapids.34 These canals, however, failed to attract as much trade as Canadians had anticipated. The Welland Canal was used by Americans to transport articles to New York through the feeder canal connecting Oswego with the Erie Canal. The
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