A New Borderland: Canada, the United States, and the Economic Middle Ground

The complex world constructed by the French, British, and Native American peoples had fallen apart, but the Niagara Frontier still remained a place of encounters and connections.  The Niagara River, the new border between the United States and Canada, lay at its heart.  And as European settlement continued to stretch westward, the Niagara Frontier became an important nodal point in the trade routes connecting the great resources of the Midwest with the great business centers of the east.  Over the next century and a half, the region would once again witness both successful efforts to create a peaceful and profitable middle ground, and troubled times when conflict and division temporarily derailed the cooperative spirit.

The most well-known episode on the negative side of the ledger was the War of 1812.  When US President James Madison declared war on Britain that year, his bravado masked a profound military weakness in the United States.  Utterly incapable of waging war directly against Britain, American nationals eyed a closer and ­ to their minds ­ easier target:  Canada.  Since America outstripped Canada in population (25 to 1), militia (9 to 1), and regular soldiers (7 to 5), and three out of every five settlers in Canada were Americans from New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, the conquest seemed to former US President Thomas Jefferson “a mere matter of marching.” But after a failed invasion launched from near Niagara Falls and a series of hard-fought but ultimately inconclusive battles, the war ended with no change of territory.  The devastation from the war, however, was far from “status quo ante bellum,” particularly in the Niagara region where the hopeful young cities of Niagara, Ontario and Buffalo, NY had been burned entirely to the ground in December 1813.

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This broad backdrop of division and antagonism should not, however, be over-emphasized.  Why did the American invasion north of Niagara Falls fail?  Many reasons, but for our purposes one in particular stands out:  the New York militiamen refused to join the US regular army in crossing the border.  Contending that they had volunteered only to protect their homes, not to undertake invasions, they simply watched as their nation’s army was pulverized on the other side of the river.

Ironically, this act of apparent respect for the international border in fact reflected a deeper, more pragmatic local understanding of interdependence across that very boundary.  Since the onrush of American settlers to the Niagara Frontier after 1783, the area had witnessed the efflorescence of a “borderland economy” characterized by strong ties between American and Canadian frontiersmen.  Far from the developed markets in the east, residents in this frontier land depended upon each other for markets, friendship, and family alliances.  Borrowing heavily from America’s Enlightenment-derived philosophy of “natural rights” and free trade, pioneers in the Niagara Frontier worked hard to keep the border free of harassing customs officers, restrictive trade regulations, and legal complications in the conveyance of their goods across the river.  These efforts were embodied early on in such documents as Jay’s Treaty of 1794, which called in principle for free trade between America and Canada.  And literally days after the cessation of hostilities in 1814, citizens of the two nations eagerly returned to the whirring mechanics of a regional economy, hiring each other, selling to each other, and following each other’s culture and fashions.  The very elements that, in some situations, were a recipe for war ­ different peoples encountering each other under conditions of hardship and necessity ­ had instead served as a catalyst for creativity and productive interconnections.  Ironically, the War of 1812, fought over free trade and shipping rights, was itself an unwanted impediment to free trade in a Niagara Frontier already committed to interdependence and cooperation.

This mostly informal regional solidarity almost plunged the United States and Canada into a second war nearly three decades later.  In 1837, Canadian Scotsman William Lyon Mackenzie led a failed revolution against the British government in York (Toronto).  After he and his followers were routed, Mackenzie fled to the Niagara River and was smuggled across to Buffalo.  There he gathered sympathetic Buffalonians and, under the benevolent blind eye of Buffalo officials, took his new 100-strong army and occupied Upper Canada’s Navy Island and proclaimed a provisional government.  Events took another lurch toward war when the British sank the American steamboat Caroline, which, in the tradition of “innocent” American ships, had been brazenly transporting American volunteers for Mackenzie’s Patriot Army to Navy Island all day.  The situation threatened to escalate to all-out war until President Martin Van Buren dispatched Major General Winfield Scott to Niagara to defuse the crisis.  Despite its quick settlement, the brief skirmish continued to echo through the region in the following years:  Mackenzie supporters formed secret societies called Hunter Lodges along the waterfront, and the US and Canada fortified the border against each other at Fort Niagara (US) and Fort Henry (Canada).  It was the same pattern again:  obvious divisions inseparably linked to informal but powerful bonds of solidarity.

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