A British army, as it was,--is,--and ought to be : $b illustrated by examples during the Peninsular War; with observations upon India; the United States of America; Canada; the boundary line; the navy; steam warfare, &c.Campbell, James
History
A British army, as it was,--is,--and ought to be : $b illustrated by examples during the Peninsular War; with observations upon India; the United States of America; Canada; the boundary line; the navy; steam warfare, &c.
Campbell, James
Great Britain. Army
"Now, here you have, in the report of a campaign made by an American
general eight years before the peace, viz. in 1775, and printed in an
English _Annual Register_ five years before the peace, viz. 1799, as
direct a reference to the same marked distinction of rivers flowing
different ways, in consequence of the peculiar nature of the country,
as it is possible to desire; and you have an acknowledgment, _totidem
verbis_, that the then known designation of such tract was no other
than that used in the article of the subsequent treaty, as it had been
also used in the 14th of George III. by the British Legislature and in
the Royal proclamation of 1763, and upon examining any map, that of
the Useful Knowledge Society or any other, it will be seen that all
the rivers rising on the south side of the British boundary do fulfil
the terms of the above treaty, and that all on the other, or north
side, do, as the above account of Arnold's march expresses it, 'take
courses directly contrary.' The rivers on the south side flow towards
the Atlantic Ocean, not one on the other side does flow towards it--in
itself the most indisputable proof that the American claim cannot stand
with those words of the article which assign to them only that tract of
territory wherein the rivers flow towards and 'fall into the Atlantic
Ocean.'
"I may here remark, that as the proclamation of 1763 is the earliest
reference I know to these highlands so dividing the rivers, and as that
proclamation proceeds from west to east, and as General Arnold found
at the west end the peculiar marks required, the only really amicable,
and perhaps the only certain, mode of ascertaining the bound, would be
not to start on a loose cruise for highlands at the line of St. Croix,
which can itself only be determined by its abutment with the specified
highlands (in fact, I believe this loose and hand-over-head mode of
proceeding has produced all the difficulty), but to start the search
where General Arnold crossed, and run the line eastward according to
the direction of the rivers, giving all the territory wherein 'the
rivers fall into the Atlantic,' as by the treaty, to America, that
wherein 'the rivers flow the contrary way' to Britain; for with this
report of General Arnold's march seven years before under our view, it
is impossible to believe that General Washington would have sanctioned
a reference to so marked a distinction as these so-called 'highlands'
in one sense, while he meant, in future times, the reference to
be interpreted in another. Viewing the matter according to these
lights, which is the only just mode of viewing it, as a case between
Christians, Penobscot, the cession of which was reprobated in the
British Parliament at the time (and when many officers who had been
employed in Canada and in the States were present in both Houses), does
fulfil the terms required by the treaty--namely, it embraces all the
rivers which, rising on the south of Arnold's ridge, flow towards and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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