doubt is at an end.” Britain in a judiciously worded note had asked for the release of Mason and Slidell. The American government, no less judiciously, had accepted that necessity. Canada was jubilant – but much, much more relieved. And so, of course, were Brown and the Globe, who now found salutary lessons in the vanishing crisis. Canadians, they said with satisfaction, could see in Britain’s swift dispatch of troops a sure and ample pledge of aid, if war should ever threaten them again. Americans would understand that Canada stood solidly with Britain, and Britain with her – that talk of annexation, willing or otherwise, was futile. And the British equally should recognize that Canada, which would bear the brunt of conflict and destruction if the Empire ever warred with the United States, stood staunchly ready to accept her role.99 This last, indeed, was almost the prime consideration, as Brown and the paper reflected on the defence question, which the Trent affair had thrust into the foreground and which seemed likely to remain there, as long as the Civil War and its accompanying stress should last.
5
There was a major public meeting in Toronto on December 31, to discuss the problem of colonial defence; but Brown did not attend. He was ill again, confined to his room for nearly two weeks more.100 Conceivably, the strain of the crisis and perhaps the row with Sheppard had proved too much for his health. Yet there were some consolations. Early in January of 1862, the Leader announced that Mr. Sheppard had left its employ and ran an article disclaiming any governmental responsibility for its own late incendiary career.101 It was apparent that Sheppard’s course as editor had not been much appreciated either by proprietor James Beaty, who faced a suit for libel, or by a weak coalition ministry that had sufficient troubles without being stamped as far more warlike than the imperial government itself. The ill-fated Sheppard moved on again, this time to try his luck in Lower Canada at Quebec. But soon there would be one more shift, to the New York Times, where at last he would find an enduring haven for his undoubted journalistic talents.102
The libel action came up in February, when Adam Wilson and Skeffington Connor argued the plaintiff’s case before the justices.103 Beaty, through his lawyer, M. C. Cameron, retracted most of the charges that had been made; namely, that Brown had skipped from Edinburgh with the money of widows and orphans, that he had intrigued with a foreign (presumably the American) government, that he had exploited friends to raise money for himself and now was hopelessly in debt. “Defrauding” American creditors was reduced to leaving New York without paying all his debts. On this and a charge of “swindling” in four minor business transactions they stood ready to justify a case. The justices rejected the first plea a few weeks later, and the second was set aside by mutual agreement.104 Thus the grand press libel suit evaporated, like so many others of the day. But Brown had forced his attackers to give most of their ground, and once more exhibited his own swift readiness to fight for his personal reputation.
Of much more public interest through the troubled winter of 1862 was the question of colonial defence. As a postscript, or perhaps an anticlimax, to the Trent affair, the troops sent from Britain to reinforce the small imperial garrison of regulars continued to arrive throughout January and February. The bulk of them had been compelled to land in Maritime ports because of the St. Lawrence ice barrier, and to proceed to Canada in long sleigh convoys through the empty, snowy wilderness of upland New Brunswick. The lack of effective year-round communications between Canada and Britain’s Atlantic provinces was thus graphically displayed.
The long-debated project for an Intercolonial Railway to join Halifax with Quebec received new impetus from this practical indication of its need. The scheme had never completely lapsed, ever since the breakdown of negotiations between the British American provinces and the imperial government in 1851 had led instead to the building of Canada’s own Grand Trunk. There had been further Intercolonial missions to the Mother Country in the decade thereafter, largely pressed by Maritime enthusiasts – and explained by the Toronto Globe as chiefly useful for “the possible presentation at court of Mrs. Bluenose and the Misses Bluenose”.105 But now it seemed that both the colonies and Britain might be readier to shoulder the heavy financial outlay for such a line, because of its political and military value. Actually, there was an Intercolonial mission waiting on the Colonial Office when the Trent affair occurred, and the delegates had not been slow to point out the necessity of the railway for successful British North American defence.106
If Brown had not necessarily opposed the Intercolonial in itself, he had given it a very low priority. Now in February of 1862, as the ministerial press was exclaiming over the project, he used the Globe to criticize its “fictitious importance”.107 It would no doubt serve to tighten “the friendly bonds which already unite us to our kindly fellow countrymen”, and could be a boon to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.108 Yet the line would never be a great highway to the sea: the St. Lawrence furnished that. And, while it would have some military merit, the Americans still might cut it at the narrow neck of land where Quebec met New Brunswick. Above all, the huge costs to Canada of building such a line would be a poor exchange for her development towards the North West: “The Red River route has a ten times better claim than the country through which the Intercolonial Railroad passes,” declared the Globe emphatically.109
That was the crux of it. George Brown would not have eastern extension at the cost of westward expansion. His faith in the North West and Canada’s future there was quite as strong as ever. The Globe had never ceased to run articles on the value of the North West beyond the Lakes, and now on the mounting dangers of American penetration into that region. Moreover, there was cause indeed to think that the Intercolonial scheme would either replace or still further postpone Canada’s acquisition of the Hudson’s Bay territories. The governing Coalition had shown little real concern – and, in French Canada, actual distaste – for North West expansion. Yet the Montreal business power associated with the government might contemplate the extension of its empire into the nearby Maritimes. More specifically, the huge bankrupt Grand Trunk enterprise was hopefully viewing the Intercolonial as a means of redeeming itself – at further substantial cost to the taxpayer.110
The new president of Grand Trunk, Edward Watkin, a clever, confident Englishman most appreciative of his own abilities, had recently come out to view the “organized mess” of the railway (his own term), and concluded that its one salvation lay in dazzling extensions to east and west, until it became the first transcontinental line linking Europe and the Orient across America.111 But the opening step would be eastward extension, through having the Intercolonial built jointly by the provinces with imperial support. Consequently, Brown still further refused to sanction the Intercolonial as essential to colonial development or defence. He cherished too many suspicions of costly Grand Trunk projects, and of the patriotic and plausible Mr. Watkin, who, as the Globe averred, “fanned the flame which is always kept burning on the railway altars in Halifax and Saint John [until] the conflagration has spread through three provinces”.112
Brown’s own concern for defence lay with measures more immediately needed to protect the long inland flank of Canada, that is, with the provision of an effective militia force to supplement the British regulars in the country.113 At present the colonial force existed largely on paper, the “sedentary militia” in which all able-bodied male inhabitants were enrolled, and which had met and drilled – more or less – once a year on the annual muster day. There was, besides, a small body of active militia with a little more claim to training, exemplified in the local volunteer companies that had been hurriedly embodied during the Trent crisis. But clearly the entire militia system needed overhauling, to provide for an efficient active force on a provincewide foundation. To that end, a militia commission had been named in January of 1862 by the new Governor-General, Lord Monck, who had replaced Sir Edmund Head shortly before the Trent affair. While it studied the problem in order to prepare for new militia legislation, the Canadian press and public concerned themselves with the drilling of the volunteer companies, and the proper principles of military organization.114
Brown
