North America must either belong to the Americans or British system of government. It will be a century before we are strong enough to walk alone.” The prime minister was humble enough to admit that Canada was not yet of age.
Early in 1870, the English and French-speaking parishes of the Red River settlements drew up a list of rights with a view to negotiating with the Canadian government. Negotiating political settlements was Macdonald’s forte. But a party of Canadian forces preempted discussions and attacked Riel’s army. Once again, Riel was victorious. Macdonald was furious, not so much at Riel, as with the Canadian military. “The foolish and criminal attempt of Schultz and Captain Boulton to renew the fight had added greatly to Riel’s strength.” In the aftermath, the Métis took Thomas Scott, an Orangeman, prisoner. Scott’s agitation in confinement was extreme and he repeatedly offended the sensibilities of his captors. For his role in attacking the provisional government, and other unspecified offences, Scott was tried on March 2 before a Métis military tribunal and was then executed, all within 24 hours. This profoundly changed the political dynamic for Macdonald. Back East, the Cabinet, and the country, split on linguistic lines: English-speaking citizens demanded military action; the French supported negotiation.
A Fenian raid into Canadian territory was expected a little more than a month after Scott’s execution. Canada sought British military support, but it was slow in coming. Macdonald complained to his friend Lord Carnarvon about the lack of British support and American intervention: “At this moment we are in daily expectation of a formidable Fenian invasion, unrepressed by the United States government ...And we are the same time called upon to send a military force to restore order in Rupert’s Land. Her Majesty’s Government have been kept fully informed of the constant threats from the Fenian body for the last five years, and they have been specially forewarned of the preparations for the present expected attack. And yet this is the time they choose to withdraw every soldier from us, and we’re left to be the unaided victims of Irish discontent and American hostility. . . .”
On April 11, 1870, with Riel’s blessing, representatives from the West (named Assiniboia) arrived in Ottawa to negotiate terms for entry into Canada. Father Noel-Joseph Ritchot and Alfred H. Scott were immediately arrested for aiding and abetting the murder of Thomas Scott the previous month. Both claimed “diplomatic immunity.” A third western representative, Judge Black, arrived in Ottawa a few days later. Macdonald met him unofficially to discuss the list of rights and other terms for political compromise. Macdonald had been reluctant to attend such a meeting for a number of reasons: first, it might provide legitimacy to Riel and his provisional government; second, because of the negative political fallout in English speaking Canada surrounding the trial and execution of Thomas Scott; and third, the possibility that Riel was acting in bad faith and had no intention of negotiating for a political settlement. In fact, Macdonald suspected an American conspiracy: “The unpleasant suspicion remains that he is only wasting time by sending this delegation, until the approach of the summer enable him to get material support from the United States.”
Father Ritchot and Alfred Scott were released from jail, and the three western delegates met with Macdonald and Cartier. Assiniboia, later known as Manitoba, wanted to join Confederation, but under its own terms. The Métis feared the arrival of scores of English-speaking immigrants, mostly Protestant, and wanted assurances they would be able to sustain their language and culture. They also wanted provincial status, including guarantees for language and religion similar to those that existed in the Province of Québec. The Métis also sought land grants in settlement of their ancestral claims. Macdonald readily agreed to these terms, but refused one final request: amnesty in all matters arising out of the military conflict. Without the Scott execution, such a request might have been possible. Macdonald was personally inclined towards amnesty, but dared not risk the wrath of Ontario voters.
The negotiation concluded with Manitoba joining Confederation. Riel fled to America. While in exile he was elected on three occasions, twice by acclamation, to the House of Commons to represent the Manitoba riding of Provencher. The fugitive never took his seat.
Meanwhile, the strain of office and ongoing struggles in his family life contributed to Macdonald slipping into states of extreme intoxication. Sir Stafford Northcote, governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, reported to British Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli that Macdonald had fallen into temporary drunkenness: “His habit is to retire to bed, to exclude everybody, and to drink bottle after bottle of port. All the papers are sent to him, and he reads them, but he is conscious of his inability to do any important business and he does not.”
In the meantime, while progress was being made in the West, relations south of the border were deteriorating, with the issues of trade and fishing rights the most frequent irritants. International relations were not then a colonial purview, and Macdonald was frustrated that Canada was not properly represented in the British-led negotiations with the Americans. On the lack of representation for a dispute over the three-mile limit for the fishery, Macdonald remarked: “We must consider that if Canada allowed the matter to go by default, and left its interest to be adjudicated upon and settled by a commission composed exclusively of Americans having an adverse interest, and Englishman having little or no interest in Canada, the government here would be very much censured if the result were a sacrifice of the rights of the Dominion.”
The Macdonald government was heavily criticized over the treaty that was eventually signed with the United States over the fishery. Great Britain had struggles of its own with the United States and was not about to consume political capital over what it considered a minor trade issue in one of its colonies. Macdonald understood—and reluctantly accepted—Canada’s “inadequacies” when it came to self-representation. But he made certain his British masters understood the galling discomfort and humiliation Canadians felt at not having sovereignty over relations with their neighbours to the south. As he signed the treaty negotiated by England in 1871, Macdonald teased aloud so his British masters could hear, “Well, here go the fisheries ...we give them away ...here goes the signature ...they are gone.”
With Newfoundland and PEI showing little interest in a confederated Canada, Macdonald’s attention again turned westward, this time to British Columbia, whose entry into Canada depended on commencing the construction of a railway across the continent within two years and finishing it within ten. The railway was to be built by the private sector, and paid for with subsidies from the government plus considerable grants of land. A condition imposed by Macdonald on the Pacific Railway was that, “Canadian interests are to be fully protected . . . no American ring will be allowed to get control over it.” As Macdonald well knew, however, the operation could not be entirely Canadian: it required the financial support of loans and guarantees from England. And here Macdonald leveraged to his advantage the concessions England had made to the United States. He demanded compensation from the United States—through England—for the money Canada had spent to suppress the Fenian raids. But what he really wanted was financing for a transcontinental railroad.
Macdonald’s uneasiness about the Americans was both sincere and strategic. He was eager to run for reelection on a theme of Canadian independence from America, to the point that he considered shedding the Conservative label. Writing to T.C. Patteson, editor of the Mail, Macdonald explored a new name for his party: “I think (the term Conservative) should be kept in the background as much as possible, and that our party should be called the ‘Union party,’ going in for union with England against all annexationist and independents and for the union of all the provinces of British North America ...what think you of such a name as ‘the Constitutional Union Party?’”
He then told Patteson his major policy plank: “The paper must go in for a National Policy in tariff matters, and while avoiding the word ‘protection’ must dedicate a readjustment of the tariff in such a manner as incidentally to aid our manufacturing and industrial interests.”
The need for a National Policy fit well with Macdonald’s view of the conspiracies that existed south of the border to undermine Canada. Asserting Canadian interests through trade
