In honor of the Fourth of July, we are continuing our look at a perennial thorn in the side of the Canadian-American relationship: the fisheries question. As we have seen, the awarding of a substantial award to Canada by a committee of arbitration led the United States Congress to abrogate the fisheries clauses of the 1871 Treaty of Washington. Both the Canadians and the Americans recognized that the abrogation was likely to spell trouble.
In his annual message to Congress on December 4, 1883, President Chester A. Arthur, recognizing the importance of British North American water to the American fisheries industry, suggested “that Congress create a commission to consider the general question of our rights in the fisheries and the means of opening to our citizens, under just and enduring conditions, the richly stocked fishing waters and sealing grounds of British North America.” The Canadian government responded to this proposal by sending Sir Charles Tupper as an envoy to Washington in April 1884, but he was rebuffed by the Arthur Administration in light of the impending presidential election.
The British government was the next to broach the subject of the impending lapse of the fishery clauses, reaching out to the Governor General of Canada, Lord Lansdowne, in early December 1884. Lansdowne conveyed the attitude of the Canadian government to the British Colonial Secretary: Canada had no desire to upend the calm that had characterized the fisheries issue for over a decade and would be open to the extending the fisheries clauses of the Treaty of Washington until January 1, 1886. The British Minister in Washington, Sir Lionel Sackville-West, took this proposal to the outgoing Arthur Administration and was turned down. On January 31, 1885, the United States government issued a proclamation warning fisherman of the impending end of the Treaty of Washington’s fisheries provisions.
After Grover Cleveland took office in March of 1885, Sackville-West approached the new Secretary of State, Thomas F. Bayard, and repeated the offer he had made to the Arthur Administration. He found the new administration favorably disposed but was informed that it lacked the power to extend the duty-free importation of Canadian fish and fish oil into the United States without the consent of Congress. Bayard offered instead to have the President recommend a commission to settle the fisheries issue to Congress. The Canadians grudgingly acquiesced to Bayard’s proposal in the interest of keeping the peace.
Grover Cleveland followed through on Bayard’s promise in his first annual message on December 8, 1885, less than a month before the expiration of the extension arranged by Bayard. “In the interest of good neighborhood and of the commercial intercourse of adjacent communities,” the President began, “the question of the North American fisheries is one of much importance.” He then recommended that “Congress provide for the appointment of a commission” that would be “charged with the consideration and settlement, upon a just, equitable, and honorable basis, of the entire question of the fishing rights of the two Governments and their respective citizens on the coasts of the United States and British North America.”
The Republican controlled Senate did not react favorably to Cleveland’s call for a joint commission to settle the fisheries question. At the time, New England was home to the American North Atlantic fishing industry and all twelve of its senators were Republicans. Senators George F. Edmunds of Vermont, William P. Frye of Maine, and George F. Hoar of Massachusetts took the lead in responding to the Democratic President’s request. On January 18, 1886 that response took the form of a resolution introduced by Senator Frye resolving that a commission to settle the fisheries dispute “ought not to be provided for by Congress.” In the debate that followed the introduction of the resolution the triumvirate of Edmunds, Frye and Hoar offered an array of arguments: Senator Edmund objected to the extension of the fisheries provisions of the Treaty of Washington, seeing it as an overreach of the president’s treaty making powers; Senator Frye intimated that the Cleveland Administration was kowtowing to the British and bemoaned the entry of duty-free entry of Canadian fish into the US market; and Senator Hoar argued that no fisherman to his knowledge had asked for the extension. Thus, at the very beginning, the main lines of attack the opposition to any attempt to solve the fisheries question would use were laid out: the constitutional role of the Senate in treaty making; the hostility of New England fishermen; Anti-British feeling; and protectionist sentiment.
On April 13, 1886, Senator Frye’s resolution passed the Senate with 35 in favor and 10 against. In the meantime, between the introduction of the resolution and its passage, Secretary of State Bayard had been consulting State Department officials and fisheries experts in an effort to acquire a fuller picture of the dispute. He received an opinion from the Solicitor General of the State Department, Francis Wharton, that under the Convention of 1818 American fishing vessels still had the right to enter Canadian waters in order to visit ports and purchase bait. In his opinion, the renunciation of the liberty to take fish in inshore waters was not a renunciation of the liberty to buy fish. Wharton’s opinion would guide Bayard’s view of the fisheries dispute and stand in stark opposition to the Canadian view of the matter.
While Bayard investigated the issues involved in the fisheries and before the Senate had voted on Frye’s resolution, on February 25, 1886, the Canadian Parliament began its new session with the traditional Throne Speech laying out the Government’s priorities for the coming session. The speech was direct in its reference to “The Fishery Question:” should the negotiations for a joint commission “fail to secure any satisfactory result, you will be asked to make provision for the protection of our Inshore Fisheries by the extension of our present system of Marine Police.”
In May of 1886, after the United States Senate had passed its resolution against the appointment of a joint commission, the Canadian Parliament introduced Bill 136 which would amend the Fisheries Act of 1868 to provide teeth to Canada’s interpretation of the Convention of 1818. According to this interpretation, American fishermen were allowed access to inshore waters only for the “four purposes of shelter, repairs, obtaining wood, and obtaining water” and, to quote the Convention, “for no other purposes.” The amended act empowered the “Marine Police” to enforce violations of this strict interpretation, fixing the deficiency in the 1868 act, which neglected to enumerate penalties for non-fishing related violations of the Convention of 1818. As explained in the debates around the second reading of the bill in the House of Commons: “The penalty of forfeiture therefore will be provided in the case of United States fishing vessels which come into Canadian waters for any other purpose than for shelter, repairs, wood and water.” This Canadian interpretation clashed directly with the American interpretation, putting the two countries on a collision course.
Meanwhile, the 1886 fishing season had begun with the Canadians signaling their intention to strictly enforce their interpretation of the Convention of 1818. On May 7, 1886, the David J. Adams, was seized by the Canadians for purchasing supplies and bait in Canadian waters. Bayard unleashed a flurry of diplomatic protests calling on Great Britain to rein in its wayward colony. The British Government, anxious to avoid further escalating tensions ordered the Governor General of Canada to reserve Bill 136 into order to delay it from taking effect. Notwithstanding the delayed implementation of Bill 136, Canada continued seizing American fishing vessels found in violation of the Convention of 1818.
The furor in the United States caused by the Canadian seizure of American vessels was stoked by the Republicans in the Senate. In July, Senator Hoar of Massachusetts introduced a resolution that called upon the President to furnish all “facts in his possession” and all correspondence related to the seizure of American vessels in the waters of British North America. That same month, the Senate passed a resolution introduced by Senator Edmunds calling on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate “the rights of American fishing vessels and merchant vessels within the American possessions of the Queen of Great Britain, and whether any rights of such vessels have been violated.” Requests from Senators for additional information continued throughout the summer and the Cleveland Administration’s handling of the issue was a centerpiece of Republican elder statesman James G. Blaine’s attack on the government in late August.
By the time 1886 fishing season closed, 116 American fishing vessels were claiming rough treatment at Canadian hands and the Cleveland Administration understood that something had to be done to address Canadian actions. On December 8, President Cleveland sent a special message to Congress, placing before it Bayard’s correspondence regarding the fisheries dispute and suggesting that he might “make further recommendations during the present session for such remedial legislation as may become necessary for the protection of the rights of our citizens engaged in the open-sea fisheries in North Atlantic waters.” Cleveland’s call for potential “remedial legislation” was cast in a new light when word reached the United States on December 24, 1886 that the Queen had given royal assent to Bill 136. When the 1887 fishing season began, American fishermen would be facing even greater penalties for violating the strict Canadian interpretation of the Convention of 1818.
As 1887 dawned, the stage set for a further escalation of tensions. Those elements in the American, British, and Canadian governments that sought a peaceful resolution had their work cut out for them. Next time, we will explore the Cleveland Administration’s attempt to solve the fisheries question via diplomatic means.
Image: Canadian House of Commons, late nineteenth century. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Sources:
Miller Center, University of Virginia, “Presidential Speeches: Chester A. Arthur Presidency: December 4, 1883: Third Annual Message,” https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-4-1883-third-annual-message.
Charles C. Tansill, The Foreign Policy of Thomas F. Bayard, 1885-1897 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1940).
Donald Creighton, John A. Macdonald: The Old Chieftain (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada: 1955).
Miller Center, University of Virginia, “Presidential Speeches: Grover Cleveland Presidency: December 8, 1885: First Annual Message,” https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-8-1885-first-annual-message.
17 Cong. Rec. 702-703 (1886), https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-CRECB-1886-pt1-v17/context.
17 Cong. Rec. 3440 (1886), https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-CRECB-1886-pt4-v17/context.
Canada, Parliament, House of Commons, Debates, 5th Parl., 4th sess., 1, (1886): https://parl.canadiana.ca/ view/oop.debates_HOC0504_01.
Canada, Parliament, House of Commons, Debates, 5th Parl., 4th sess., 2, (1886): https://parl.canadiana.ca/ view/oop.debates_HOC0504_02.
Robert Craig Brown, Canada’s National Policy, 1883-1900: A Study in Canadian-American Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964).
Hugh L. Keenleyside and Gerald S. Brown, Canada and the United States: Some Aspects of Their Historical Relations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952).
17 Cong. Rec. 6722, 7350 (1886), https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-CRECB-1886-pt7-v17/context.
Charles S. Campbell, Jr., “American Tariff Interests and the Northeastern Fisheries, 1883-1888,” Canadian Historical Review 45, no. 3 (September 1964).
18 Cong. Rec. 39 (1887), https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-CRECB-1887-pt1-v18/context.
