The Imperial Myth of Canada’s National Policy PART 3: The Alabama Claims Affair
By Matthew Ehret
By the end of the Civil War, Sumner and Seward led American patriots to go on the offensive against the true instigator of the war… not the southern confederacy, but the British Empire. The powerful flank which they chose to use as their weapon was the open fact that Confederate Warships used against Lincoln’s forces were built and supplied by the British under direct orders of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell. The most famous and destructive of the British-made war ships was the “C.S.S. Alabama”.
These American patriots began an international fight over Britain’s obligation to pay reparations for damages incurred during the war known as the “Alabama Claims”. Upon Seward’s purchase of Alaska, Senator Sumner began mobilizing for the demand of $2 billion from Britain or the annexation of its North American territories. Although Seward was highly favorable to the plan, British stalling tactics kept the Alabama Claims fight on hold for years. During these important years, America had lost much of its powerful bargaining chips and British control of its territories had advanced too far. By March of 1871, Grant’s appointed Secretary of State Hamilton Fish worked out an agreement with Britain on the Alabama Claims resulting in a mere $15.5 million dollars and an end to all similar disputes regarding Britain’s role in sponsoring the Southern Confederacy during the Civil War. This became known as “the Washington Treaty”. Much of the potential that was alive two years earlier had by then been sabotaged. It is of interest that one of the key arbitrators of the Alabama Claims was also Canada’s very active Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald.
The Elimination of Governor Seymour
During the months preceding the 2nd B.C. Annexation petition, a major tragedy befell the republican cause with the untimely death of Governor Frederick Seymour, who had been a long-time enemy of Confederation. In the short months before Seymour’s death on June 10, 1869, he had enraged the highest echelons of the Empire’s civil servants such as Sir Frederick Rogers, Undersecretary of State for the Colonies who, upon discovering that Seymour had suppressed information for months from the Colonial Office that a vote in favour of Confederation had occurred in the B.C. Legislature wrote “it appears that on March 28 last, the Council passed a Resolution in favour of admission which however Governor Seymour only now [November 4] sends through in his March telegram he said he would write.” [20]
What Sir Rogers is also revealing is that the British had two confederacy plans for the Continent of North America: one in the South of the United States and one in the North of the United States.
When the next opportunity to vote on Confederation occurred in February 17, 1869, Governor Seymour again sabotaged the pro-confederacy supporters and the British Crown, as he now convinced the legislature to postpone as no details were worked out on the settling of the Hudson’s Bay Company land purchase.
John A. Macdonald wrote in anger on May 15 to the Governor General of Canada saying “the first thing to be done will be to recall Governor Seymour if his time is not run out” [21], and on the same day he wrote to the pro-confederation Premier of New Brunswick, Sir Anthony Musgrave informing him that Seymour would be recalled: “as being perfectly unfit for his present position, under present circumstances. From all I hear, he was never fit for it” [22].
Within two weeks of Macdonald’s writing these two telegrams, Governor Seymour was dead. The official story holds that Seymour was sent to the harsh northern tip of B.C. to mediate a conflict between two warring native tribes. Upon his success, Seymour was struck with dysentery and died within days. Seymour was immediately replaced with Macdonald’s ally, Sir Anthony Musgrave, and the annexation movement lost its secret defender. Musgrave immediately set to work preparing for B.C.’s entry into Confederation with the March 1870 “Great Confederation Debates” begun in the legislature and culminated on April 6 with 16 clauses and Resolutions voted upon. Delegates were sent to Ottawa to negotiate these Resolutions while the republican movement in B.C. could only watch helplessly. Final appeals were made during this dark hour by leading citizens to the American Government, evidenced by the following letter of August 17, 1870 written by H.F. Heisterman [23] a leading merchant of the annexation movement:
“Understanding that you are likely to have his Excellency President Grant among you some time this month and that you will likely have an opportunity, I herewith hand you a further list of names to the memorial presented in December 1869 by Vincent Collyer. It would have been sent then, but owing to the hostility shown to it by the Canadian newspaper here it was not sent. I therefore transmit it to you, to make whatever use of it you see fit in the premises. It is exasperating to me and my fellow citizens, to see a country aggregating 405 000 square miles, of which 11 000 square miles comes upon Vancouver Island and 6000 upon Queen Charlotte Island and the balance 388 000 sq. miles upon the mainland of British Columbia, shut out as it were from the prosperity around it. The people of the colony are too few to make an armed resistance to confederation which seems on all accounts intended to be forced on us unless some countenance were given to parties who desire annexation to the United States by the government of President Grant, in a proposal to settle the Alabama Claim by the transfer of this colony, I don’t see how we can move in the matter.” [24]
The B.C. Bribe is Finalized
Musgrave’s agents advanced negotiations at breakneck speed. Ottawa negotiations began on June 7, 1870 and within weeks nearly all resolutions and clauses were agreed upon. The two biggest impediments to B.C.’s entry into the Confederacy were dealt with by the payment of all of the colony’s debts by Ottawa and the promise made by Macdonald to construct a rail line linking the new province with Montreal and Quebec “within ten years”. This promised rail line was necessary in order to sabotage the intention of the American Manifest Destiny policy.
Sir Alexander Galt, a fellow father of Confederation and proponent of Canadian expansion, speaking to a crowd on May 22, 1867 in Lennoxville Quebec described his views on the need to extend confederation and rail to the Pacific:
“We cannot close our eyes to what is happening in the West… I for one look upon the acquisition of Russian America by the United States as their answer to the arrangements we have been making to unite among ourselves… If the United States desire to outflank us on the west, we must accept the situation and lay our hand on British Columbia and the Pacific Ocean. This country cannot be surrounded by the Unites States- We are gone if we allow it… “From the Atlantic to the Pacific” must be the cry in British America as much as it has ever been in the United States”
Another Father of Confederation George Brown, who ran the influential Toronto Globe and heavily promoted Canada’s trans-continental railway, wrote on July 10, 1867 that
“Seward’s attempt to coerce Canada by the purchase of Walrussia has brought down upon him the laughter of mankind and has not altered one white the determination of the people of British America from Prince Edward Island to Cancouver to stand by the old flag to the last man and the last cartridge”
Sir George Etienne Cartier stated in 1865 dreaded the immanent annexation of Canada by saying “We must either have a Confederation of British North America or else be absorbed by the American Confederation.”
With these arrangements agreed upon (paralleling similar arrangements in the former Red River Settlement), British Columbia was admitted into Confederation as the 6th Canadian Province [25]. Within the coming decades, as Canada was increasingly turned into a wedge blocking US-Russian collaboration and arctic development. Saskatchewan and Alberta were formed as provinces where there had formerly been Hudson’s Bay land.
After eight years, still no progress had been made on the construction of the promised rail linking the Dominion and again, British Columbia continued to feel the painful grip and despair of isolation and economic depression. This pain was made that much worse, as the republican neighbour to the south was witnessing unheard of prosperity under the effects of Lincoln’s Trans continental Railroad and vigorous pioneering of the west. The American System’s continuation of John Quincy Adams’ Manifest Destiny policy, led by Lincoln’s economic advisor Henry C. Carey had resulted in the greatest explosion of wealth in the United States, and become a model for the whole civilized world with the 1876 Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia.
The superiority of the American System to the failure of the wicked British System of Free Trade resulted in America becoming the world’s leading productive power.
Converts to the American System were made by all lovers of progress from around the world who came to the Convention. Germany under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck vigorously applied American System practices of high protective tariffs and vast internal improvements. Czar Alexander II and his close circle of Russian advisors applied the American model for the vast modernization of Russia vectored around the Trans-Siberian Rail with the great scientist Dimitri Mendeleev chairing the Committee on Protectionism [26]. Even Japan under the Meiji Restoration applied the American model to escape feudalism and enter the modern age.
In light of this dynamic, leading voices for progress in Canada again began to clamour for real independence from the trap of the British System that they had fallen into. Even some among the greatest enemies of the late Governor Seymour were gripped by this frustration of progress, exemplified by Amor De Cosmos, then a Liberal MP for Victory, who in May 1878 arose in parliament and warned that if rail development did not begin immediately, then British Columbia would annex into the United States!
A Clone is Born without a Soul
The threat of losing Canada to the United States having once again resurfaced, Sir John A. Macdonald was brought back into power after a five year role in opposition under a dysfunctional Liberal Government. The new platform which the Privy Council used to steamroll him back into office was called “The National Policy”. This program was based on a perverse copy of the American Policy of high tariffs, the speedy construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the creation of new agricultural zones, open immigration and other internal improvements, yet with one caveat… it’s governing intention was aimed not at building a sovereign nation of Canada, but rather the ultimate destruction of America and a reconstruction of global British imperial hegemony.
The National Policy featured a sweet deal with the Canadian Pacific Railway which was incorporated in 1881 and was granted a generous $25 million subsidy from Ottawa along with 10 million hectares of rich land. The CPR was also exempted from paying taxes for the next 20 years. Five years later, on June 28, 1886, the first CPR train left Montreal and, like a slap on the face to all republicans in Canada, and at the same time demonstrating its true anti-American intention, was timed to arrive on July 4, 1886 at Port Moody in British Columbia.
Due to the inability of American System patriots to continue the trajectory of progress unleashed by Lincoln’s victory, the unification of intention of Russia and America was never finalized, the material division which fed a spiritual disease later capitalized upon by the British Foreign Office architects of the wars of the 20th century (including the Cold War which was only unleashed over the dead body of FDR).
Similarly, Berlin to Baghdad rail developments as well as similar rail programs planned between Germany and France and both to Russia had resulted in a dynamic of division which the British capitalized upon to instigate the irrational meat grinders known as World Wars I and II. Due to similar frauds, the birth of a sovereign Canada was derailed, and a population, occupying one of the richest and largest territories in the world, was subject to a dynamic which has left it vastly underdeveloped, with the lowest population density in the world of 34 million for a land area of almost 10 million square kilometers. A single state of California alone sustains over 38 million inhabitants while most of that is desert!
The Conclusion of a Fallacy. Let the Truth Begin Again.
The paradox of “Canadian Nationalism” can only be efficiently addressed by first recognizing the power of progress as a universal phenomenon, expressed both in biological evolution of species, and human evolution of civilization which Lincoln’s advisor Henry Carey referred to as the “increasing powers of association of labor, producer, and consumer”. This power towards increasing self-conscious creative thought actively with an intention to perfect the universe, is so powerful that even those regressive policies expressed by the oligarchical principle must submit and adapt to it.
The power of this anti-entropic capacity of human creativity to leap outside of closed systems of material/intellectual limits in order to discover a higher organizing principle and willfully act in conformity with it, is expressed most clearly in recent history by the American Constitutional System and its affiliated view of man as a creature made in the image of its Creator.
The adoption of momentary progress in order to annihilate a greater good was considered a necessary evil on the part of the leading strategists of the British Empire’s Privy Council, then centered around Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston of the powerful British Foreign Office. The influential pro-American System faction of Canadian patriots operating under the leadership of Isaac Buchanan was removed from power with the full adoption of the “National Policy” which followed the British North America Act of 1867. These policies stymied the birth of a true sovereign nation.
To the horror of the British Empire in 1958, John Diefenbaker and his collaborators were inspired by the progress achieved during this period of rapid Canadian development, and attempted to reproduce this process once again except with an important ingredient lacking in Sir John A. Macdonald… a devout love of unbounded progress without ulterior motive for destroying America. This approach of an active “nationalism” whose aim was to effect an increase of national power, was about to clash directly with the passive “New Nationalism” then being artificially crafted by the nest of Rhodes scholars working for the British Foreign Office’s Canadian Institute of International Affairs (CIIA) under the likes of Vincent Massey, Georges Henri Levesque, and Walter Gordon.
This perverted “Nationalism” was merely a conduit selected to promote cultural irrationalism, and the acceptance of fascism masquerading as “zero-technological growth”, otherwise known as the “New Cult of Eugenics” or “environmentalism” aimed at destroying the whole continent of North America.
Notes
[20] Sir John A. Macdonald to Sir John Young, May 25, 1869, PAC., Macdonald Papers, Letterbrook 12 972, cited in Frederick Seymour: The Forgotten Governor, Margaret Ormsby, B.C. Studies no. 22, Summer 1974, p. 20
[21] Ibid p. 21
[22] Heistermann was also the Grand Secretary of the Provincial Grand Lodge of British Columbia
[23] F.H. Heisterman to W.H. Oliver, Aug. 17, 1870, cited in William Ireland, The Annexation Petition of 1869, p. 274
[24] The Red River Colony became the Province of Manitoba on May 12, 1870 with the Manitoba Act.
[25] Both Saskatchewan and Alberta joined confederation as provinces in 1905
[26] This is the same Mendeleev who had recently discovered the ordering principle, now called the “Periodic Table of Ele-ments”. While Chairing the Commission on Protectionism, Mendeleyev astutely annihilated the argument for free trade ending with the following remarks in an 1891 Tariff paper: “Belonging to the small circle of Russians who have given their entire lives to science, who own neither factories nor plants, and knowing that contemporary science has uncovered crude untruths and omissions in the “classical” and “orthodox” teachings of the free trade school, and, finally, seeing that the historical and experimental–that is the real–path of study of political economy leads to different conclusions than those of the free traders, which are taken on faith as “the last word in science”–I consider it my duty, partly in defense of truly con-temporary, progressing science, to say openly and loudly that I stand for rational protectionism. Free trad-ism as a doctrine is very shaky; the free trade form of activity suits only countries that have already consolidated their manufacturing industry; protectionism as an absolute doctrine is the same sort of non-sense as free trade absolutism; and the protectionist mode of activity is perfectly appropriate now for Russia, as it was for England in its time….” cited in Barbara Frazier, Scientist-Statesman Fought British Free Trade in Russia, Executive Intelligence Review, Jan. 1992 http://members.tripod.com/american_almanac/mendel1.htm
Matthew Ehret the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas trilogy. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation .