Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
To the intrinsic difficulties of questions of boundary lines, especially
those described in regions unoccupied and but partially known, is to be
added in our country the embarrassment necessarily arising out of our
Constitution by which the General Government is made the organ of
negotiating and deciding upon the particular interests of the States on
whose frontiers these lines are to be traced. To avoid another controversy
in which a State government might rightfully claim to have her wishes
consulted previously to the conclusion of conventional arrangements
concerning her rights of jurisdiction or territory, I have thought it
necessary to call the attention of the Government of Great Britain to
another portion of our conterminous dominion of which the division still
remains to be adjusted I refer to the line from the entrance of Lake
Superior to the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods,
stipulations for the settlement of which are to be found in the seventh
article of the treaty of Ghent. The commissioners appointed under that
article by the two Governments having differed in their opinions, made
separate reports, according to its stipulations, upon the points of
disagreement, and these differences are now to be submitted to the
arbitration of some friendly sovereign or state. The disputed points should
be settled and the line designated before the Territorial government of
which it is one of the boundaries takes its place in the Union as a State,
and I rely upon the cordial cooperation of the British Government to effect
that object.
There is every reason to believe that disturbances like those which lately
agitated the neighboring British Provinces will not again prove the sources
of border contentions or interpose obstacles to the continuance of that
good understanding which it is the mutual interest of Great Britain and the
United States to preserve and maintain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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