_Washington, May 11, 1829_.
Right Hon. CHARGES R. VAUGHAN, etc.:
The undersigned, Secretary of State of the United States, has the honor
to acknowledge the receipt of the note which Mr. Vaughan, His Britannic
Majesty's envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, addressed to
him on the 10th of April, stating upon the authority of a letter from
the governor of New Brunswick, whereof a copy came inclosed in Mr.
Vaughan's note, that it was apparently the intention of the Government
of the United States to carry the road now making through the State
of Maine to Mars Hill over that point, and to occupy Mars Hill as a
military station; and protesting against such occupation upon the ground
that the line drawn by the commissioners of boundary under the treaty of
Ghent due north from the monument which marks the source of the river
St. Croix was not considered by them as correctly laid down, and that it
yet remains to be determined whether Mars Hill is eastward or westward
of the true line.
The undersigned deems it unnecessary upon the present occasion to enter
into an elaborate discussion of the point stated by Sir Howard Douglas,
the lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, concerning the line referred
to by him, inasmuch as the relative position of Mars Hill to that line
is already designated upon map A, and the line itself mutually agreed
to and sufficiently understood for all present purposes, though not
definitively settled by the convention of Condon of the 29th September,
1827.
The undersigned will therefore merely state that he finds nothing
in the record of the proceedings of the commissioners under the fifth
article of the treaty of Ghent to warrant the doubt suggested by the
lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick whether Mars Hill lies to the
westward of the line to be drawn due north from the monument at the
source of the St. Croix to the highlands which divide the waters that
empty into the river St. Lawrence from those which empty into the
Atlantic Ocean; that the joint surveys and explorations made under that
commission place the hill about a mile due west of that line; and that
the agent of His Britannic Majesty before the commissioners, so far from
intimating any doubt on the point, made it one ground of argument that
the true line, when correctly laid down, would necessarily, on account
of the ascertained progressive westerly variation of the needle, fall
still farther westward.
The undersigned can not acquiesce in the supposition that, because the
agent of His Britannic Majesty thought proper in the proceedings before
the commissioners to lay claim to all that portion of the State of
Maine which lies north of a line running westerly from Mars Hill, and
designated as the limit or boundary of the British claim, thereby the
United States or the State of Maine ceased to have jurisdiction in the
territory thus claimed. In the view of this Government His Britannic
Majesty's agent might with equal justice have extended his claim to any
other undisputed part of the State as to claim the portion of it which
he has drawn in question, and in such case the lieutenant-governor of
New Brunswick could surely not have considered a continuance on the
part of the United States and of the State of Maine to exercise their
accustomed jurisdiction and authority to be an encroachment. If so,
in what light are we to regard the continued acts of jurisdiction now
exercised by him in the Madawaska settlement? More than twenty years ago
large tracts of land lying westward of Mars Hill, and northward on the
river Restook, were granted by the State of Massachusetts, which tracts
are held and possessed under those grants to this day, and the United
States and the States of Massachusetts and Maine, in succession, have
never ceased to exercise that jurisdiction which the unsettled condition
of the country in that region and other circumstances admitted and
required.
The undersigned, therefore, can not discover in the facts and
circumstances of the case any just principles upon which Sir Howard
Douglas could predicate his protest. He has, however, submitted the note
which he had the honor to receive from Mr. Vaughan to the President of
the United States, and is by him directed to say in reply that although
this Government could feel no difficulty in the exercise of what it
deems an unquestionable right, and could not allow itself to be
restrained by the protest of the lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick,
yet, as a further proof of the spirit of amity, forbearance, and
conciliation which the President is desirous of cultivating between the
two Governments, he has decided to postpone for the present the exercise
of the authority vested in him by the Congress of the United States to
cause to be surveyed and laid out a military road to be continued from
Mars Hill, or such other point on the military road laid out in the
State of Maine as he may think proper, to the mouth of the river
Madawaska, and to add that the lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick is
under a misapprehension as to the design of this Government to occupy
Mars Hill as a military station, no such intention being entertained by
the President, nor have any measures been taken by this Government with
an ulterior view to that object.
The undersigned indulges the hope that Mr. Vaughan will perceive in the
manner in which the President, discriminating between the rights of this
Government and their present exercise, has used the discretion conferred
upon him an additional evidence of the desire which he sincerely
entertains, and which he has heretofore caused to be communicated to
Mr. Vaughan, that both Governments should, as far as practicable,
abstain from all acts of authority over the territory in dispute which
are not of immediate and indispensable necessity, and which would serve
to create or increase excitement whilst the matter is in course of
arbitration; and he feels well persuaded that Mr. Vaughan will not fail
to inculcate the same spirit and to recommend in the strongest terms the
observance of the same course on the part of the provincial government
of New Brunswick.
The undersigned offers to Mr. Vaughan the renewed assurances of his high
consideration.