The Rush-Bagot Pact was an agreement between the United States and Great Britain to eliminate their fleets from the Great Lakes, excepting small patrol vessels. The Convention of 1818 set the boundary between the Missouri Territory in the United States and British North America (later Canada) at the forty-ninth parallel. Both agreements reflected the easing of diplomatic tensions that had led to the War of 1812 and marked the beginning of Anglo-American cooperation.
 U.S. political leaders had long expressed interest in disarming the Great Lakes and had proposed such a measure during negotiations that led to the 1794 Jay Treaty, but British officials had rejected this proposal. During the War of 1812, both Great Britain and the United States had built fleets of ships on lakes Erie and Ontario, and fought many battles in the region. Near the end of the war, U.S. forces had achieved dominance over the Lakes. After the war, both powers were wary of one another’s military strength and a postwar shipbuilding race ensued. However, both countries also wished to reduce their military expenditures. Unfortunately, the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, contained no disarmament provisions. However, it did establish commissions to resolve contested areas along the border (as determined by the 1783 Treaty of Paris) between the United States and British North America. Although tensions between Great Britain and the United States remained high along the Great Lakes, overall relations improved. Postwar trade rebounded, and British political leaders increasingly viewed the United States as a valuable trading partner, while also realizing that British North America would be expensive and difficult to defend should another war break out. When U.S. Minister to Great Britain, John Quincy Adams, proposed disarmament on January 25, 1816, British Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh responded favorably. The British Government had already dispatched Charles Bagot as Minister to the United States with the intention of improving relations between the two countries. Bagot met with Secretary of State James Monroe informally, and finally reached an agreement with his successor, Acting Secretary Richard Rush. The agreement limited military navigation on the Great Lakes to one to two vessels per country on each lake. The U.S. Senate ratified the agreement on April 28, 1818. The British Government considered a diplomatic exchange of letters between Rush and Bagot sufficient to make the agreement effective.
In addition to the issue of military navigation of the Great Lakes, the British Government was also open to negotiations regarding a number of other points of contention that had not been resolved by the Treaty of Ghent. Several commissions met to settle border disputes along the U.S. border with British North America. One of these commissions awarded several islands off the coasts of Maine to New Brunswick. However, negotiators deadlocked over other parts of the northern borders of Maine and New Hampshire. That issue would not be resolved until the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which also resolved the border between Canada and northeastern Minnesota. Several other separate committees determined other stretches of border that negotiators at the 1783 Treaty of Paris had drawn with faulty maps. The commissions divided the St. Lawrence and other rivers connecting the Great Lakes to allow both countries navigable channels, and handed Wolfe Island near Kingston, Ontario to the British and Grosse Île near Detroit to the United States. British and U.S. negotiators also agreed to make present-day Angle Inlet, Minnesota the end point of the 1783 border and to allow the Convention of 1818, concluded by Rush and Albert Gallatin, to determine the border to the west of that point. While these commissions debated border issues, Rush and Gallatin concluded the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 that, among other things, confirmed permanent U.S. rights to fish off Newfoundland and Labrador. The Convention also made provisions for Russian mediation over the issue of escaped slaves in British hands (U.S. slaveowners were eventually provided monetary compensation) and also determined that the border from Angle Inlet would run south to the forty-ninth parallel, and then due west to the Rocky Mountains. The Oregon Country would remain open to both countries for ten years. Although the agreements did not completely settle border disputes and trade arrangements, the Rush-Bagot agreement and the Convention of 1818 marked an important turning point in Anglo-American and American-Canadian relations.
NOTE TO READERS
Along with territorial disputes with Spain and Mexico over the Southwest, the fate of the Oregon Territory was one of the major diplomatic issues of the first half of the 19th century.
The territory became a focus of those who believed that it was the United States’ obligation and right to extend its rule and liberties across the North American continent. The Oregon Territory stretched from the Pacific coast to the Rocky Mountains, encompassing the area including present-day Oregon, Washington, and most of British Columbia. Originally Spain, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States claimed the territory. In 1819, under terms of the Transcontinental Treaty, Spain ceded its claims to the territory to the United States. Shortly thereafter the United States contested a unilateral Russian move to grant its citizens a fishing, whaling, and commercial monopoly from the Bering Straits to the 51st parallel. In 1823 President Monroe promulgated his doctrine, which put Russia on notice that the United States did not accept Russian attempts at monopoly. The U.S. claim was based on the explorations of Lewis and Clark and on the establishment of trading posts set up by John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company, such as Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River. Great Britain based its claim, in part, on James Cook’s exploration of the Columbia River.
As early as 1818 British and American Commissioners had fixed the border between the United States and Canada at the 49th parallel from the Lake of the Woods (Minnesota Territory) west to the Rocky Mountains. The United States had proposed to extend the border along the same parallel to the Pacific Ocean, but Great Britain insisted that the northern border be drawn west to the Columbia River and then follow that river to the ocean. Neither side then budged, but they did agree to postpone the decision for 10 years. In 1827 Washington and London agreed to postpone the issue indefinitely subject to one year’s notice by either party. There the matter remained until the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 partially delineated the northeastern U.S.-Canada border, but left the border of the Oregon Territory unsettled. By 1843, increased American immigration on the Oregon Trail to the Territory made the border issue a burning one in Congress, where jingoists raised the slogan of “54 degrees 40 minutes or fight.” President James Polk, a supporter of Manifest Destiny with an eye also on the Mexican Southwest and California, was eager to settle the boundary of the Oregon Territory and proposed a settlement on the 49 degree line to Great Britain. British Minister to Washington, Richard Pakenham, and Secretary of State James Buchanan, supported and encouraged by British Foreign Secretary Lord Aberdeen and Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, worked out a compromise. With some minor modifications, which reserved the whole of Vancouver Island to Canada, Great Britain agreed to Polk’s suggestion. The Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of 41-14 on June 18, 1846. A later controversy over the precise boundaries in the Juan de Fuca Strait was resolved by international arbitration in favor of the United States. This article needs additional citations for verification. (June 2020) The Oregon Treaty[1] is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States that was signed on June 15, 1846, in Washington, D.C. The treaty brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to the Oregon Country; the area had been jointly occupied by both Britain and the U.S. since the Treaty of 1818.[2] Map of the lands in dispute
The Treaty of 1818 set the boundary between the United States and British North America along the 49th parallel of north latitude from Minnesota to the "Stony Mountains"[3] (now known as the Rocky Mountains). The region west of those mountains was known to the Americans as the Oregon Country and to the British as the Columbia Department or Columbia District of the Hudson's Bay Company. (Also included in the region was the southern portion of another fur district, New Caledonia.) The treaty provided for joint control of that land for ten years. Both countries could claim land and both were guaranteed free navigation throughout. Original manuscript of the treaty (transcription), as kept by the U.S. National Archives. Joint control steadily grew less tolerable for both sides. After a British minister rejected the offer of U.S. Presidents James K. Polk and John Tyler to settle the boundary at the 49th parallel north, American expansionists called for the annexation of the entire region up to Parallel 54°40′ north, the southern limit of Russian America as established by parallel treaties between the Russian Empire and the United States (1824) and Britain (1825). However, after the outbreak of the Mexican–American War in April 1846 diverted U.S. attention and military resources, a compromise was reached in the ongoing negotiations in Washington, D.C., and the matter was then settled by the Polk administration (to the surprise of its own party's hardliners) to avoid a two-war situation, and another war with the formidable military strength of Great Britain.[4] In early June 1846 the British offered to negotiate the boundaries between the United States and British North America in the region west of the Rockies. Some US senators such as Charles Gordon Atherton and Benning Wentworth Jenness were combative and were in favor of rejecting British proposals to negotiate. However others, such as both Alabama senators (Arthur P. Bagby and Dixon Hall Lewis) as well as both Massachusetts senators (Daniel Webster and John Davis) were in favor of accepting British proposals. The Senate agreed that they would vote on whether or not to recommend President Polk accept British offers to negotiate. Watching closely, the British hoped this vote would pass the Senate. On June 12 the Senate voted 38–12 recommending that President Polk accept British proposals to negotiate this boundary. 18 Democrats and 20 Whigs voted in favor, whereas 11 Democrats and one Whig voted against. 3 Democrats and 3 Whigs abstained.[5] The treaty was negotiated by US Secretary of State James Buchanan and Richard Pakenham, British envoy to the United States. Foreign Secretary Earl of Aberdeen was responsible for it in Parliament.[6] The treaty was signed on June 15, 1846, ending the joint occupation and making Oregonians south of the 49th parallel American citizens, with those north of it becoming British.[7] The Oregon Treaty set the border between the U.S. and British North America at the 49th parallel with the exception of Vancouver Island, which was retained in its entirety by the British. Vancouver Island, with all coastal islands, was constituted as the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849. The U.S. portion of the region was organized as Oregon Territory on August 15, 1848, with Washington Territory being formed from it in 1853. The British portion remained unorganized until 1858, when the Colony of British Columbia was set up as a result of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush and fears of the re-asserted American expansionist intentions. The two British colonies were amalgamated in 1866 as the United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. When the Colony of British Columbia joined Canada in 1871, the 49th parallel and marine boundaries established by the Oregon Treaty became the Canada–US border. In order to ensure that Britain retained all of Vancouver Island and the southern Gulf Islands, it was agreed that the border would swing south around that area. Ownership of several channel islands, including the San Juan Islands remained in dispute. The San Juan Islands Pig War (1859) resulted; it lasted until 1872. At that time, arbitration began, with German Emperor Wilhelm I as head of a three-man arbitration commission.[8] On October 21, 1872, the commission decided in favor of the United States, awarding the San Juan Islands to the U.S.[9] The treaty states that the border in the Strait of Juan de Fuca would follow “the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island.” It did not, however, specify which of several possible channels was intended, giving rise to ownership disputes over the San Juan Islands beginning in 1859. Other provisions included:
Ambiguities in the wording of the Oregon Treaty regarding the route of the boundary, which was to follow "the deepest channel" out to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and beyond to the open ocean, resulted in the Pig War, another boundary dispute in 1859 over the San Juan Islands. The dispute was peacefully resolved after a decade of confrontation and military bluster during which the local British authorities consistently lobbied London to seize back the Puget Sound region entirely, as the Americans were busy elsewhere with the Civil War.[11] The San Juans dispute was not resolved until 1872 when, pursuant to the 1871 Treaty of Washington, an arbitrator (William I, German Emperor) chose the American-preferred marine boundary via Haro Strait, to the west of the islands, over the British preference for Rosario Strait which lay to their east. The treaty also had the unintended consequence of putting what became Point Roberts, Washington on the "wrong" side of the border. A peninsula, jutting south from Canada into Boundary Bay, was made by the agreement, as land south of the 49th parallel, a separate fragment of the United States. According to American historian Thomas C. McClintock, the British public welcomed the treaty:
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What agreement did Britain and the United States make in the treaty of 1818 joint control of the Oregon country for ten years?
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