Maine in the Northeastern Boundary Controversy: States' Rights in Antebellum New England

Abstract

ALTHOUGH New England is often cited as the unwavering champion of American nationalism during the antebellum years, when a Yankee state's interests were especially threatened, states' rights arguments could be heard echoing across the nation. During the 1830s Maine was particularly agitated. The peace treaty Great Britain and the United States had signed in 1783 supposedly set the boundary of the new nation, but diplomats had based their definitions on inaccurate maps. The line said to run along [the] Highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean,' as well as the specific location of the highlands themselves, was disputed far into the nineteenth century. Maine, which feared it might lose in a settlement negotiated by the federal government, asserted its right to a role in what was at heart a foreign policy matter. The War of 1812 had intensified the dispute. The British conquest of eastern Maine left a bitter legacy of Anglophobia downeast. British strategists also came to recognize the need for a winter transportation route between Halifax and the St. Lawrence, and so they insisted that rivers (such as the St. John) that emptied into the Bay of Fundy did not flow into the Atlantic. Thus England placed the highlands in what is now central Maine. The Americans, of course,