A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 3, part 2: Martin Van Buren
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 3, part 2: Martin Van Buren
Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government; Van Buren, Martin, 1782-1862
In July the result of the action of the Senate in relation to the award
was communicated to Mr. Bankhead, the British charge d'affaires, and he
was informed that the resolution had been adopted in the conviction that
the sovereign arbiter, instead of deciding the questions submitted to
him, had recommended a specified compromise of them. The Secretary of
State at the same time expressed the desire of the President to enter
into further negotiation in pursuance of the resolution of the Senate,
and proposed that the discussion should be carried on at Washington. He
also said that if the plenipotentiaries of the two parties should fail
in this new attempt to agree upon the line intended by the treaty of
1783 there would probably be less difficulty than before in fixing a
convenient boundary, as measures were in progress to obtain from the
State of Maine more extensive powers than were before possessed, with
a view of overcoming the constitutional obstacles which had opposed
themselves to such an arrangement; and he further intimated that the
new negotiation would naturally embrace the important question of the
navigation of the river St. John.
In April, 1833, Sir Charles R. Vaughan, the British minister,
addressed a note to the Department of State, in which, hopeless of
finding out by a new negotiation an assumed line of boundary which
so many attempts had been fruitlessly made to discover, he wished to
ascertain, first, the principle of the plan of boundary which the
American Government appeared to contemplate as likely to be more
convenient to both parties than those hitherto discussed, and, secondly,
whether any, and what, arrangement for avoiding the constitutional
difficulty alluded to had yet been concluded with the State of Maine.
Satisfactory answers on these points, he said, would enable the British
Government to decide whether it would entertain the proposition, but His
Majesty's Government could not consent to embarrass the negotiation
respecting the boundary by mixing up with it a discussion regarding the
navigation of the St. John as an integral part of the same question or
as necessarily connected with it.
In reply to this note, Mr. Livingston, under date of the 30th of April,
stated that the arrangement spoken of in his previous communication, by
which the Government of the United States expected to be enabled to
treat for a more convenient boundary, had not been effected, and that
as the suggestion in regard to the navigation of the St. John was
introduced merely to form a part of the system of compensations in
negotiating for such a boundary if that of the treaty should be
abandoned, it would not be insisted on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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