Proposals of the As it was impossible to determine with absolute certainty what river was intended in the treaty under the name of the St. Croix, Congress, on the recommendation of Mr. Jay, who was then Secretary of Foreign Affairs, resolved that the minister of the United States at London should be instructed to bring the question to the attention of the British Government, and, if an adjustment by negotiation could not be effected, to propose a settlement by commissioners. Instructions were accordingly sent, but nothing could at the time be accomplished; and on the 9th of February 1790, during the second session of the first Congress under the Constitution, Washington submitted the matter to the consideration of the Senate with an expression of his opinion that all questions between the United States and other nations should be speedily and amicably settled. On the 12th of March the Senate advised that effectual measures should be taken to settle all disputes in regard to the line, and that "it would be proper to cause a representation of the case to be made to the court of Great Britain, and if said disputes can not be otherwise amicably adjusted, to propose that commissioners be appointed to hear and finally decide those disputes, in the manner pointed out in the report of the late Secretary of the United States for the Department of Foreign Affairs of the 21st of April, 1785.”2 The question, however, still remained unsettled when, in 1794, Mr. Jay went to England to negotiate for the general adjustment of differences. On the 19th of November 1794 he concluded a treaty, the fifth article of which reads as follows: "Whereas doubts have arisen what river Provisions of the was truly intended under the name of the Jay Treaty. River St. Croix, mentioned in the said treaty of peace, and forming a part of the boundary therein described; that question shall be referred to the final decision of commissioners to be appointed in the following manner, viz: "One commissioner shall be named by His Majesty, and one by the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate thereof, and the said two commis sioners shall agree on the choice of a third; or, if they can not so agree, they shall each propose one person, and of the two names so proposed one shall be drawn by lot in the presence of the two original commissioners. And the three commissioners so appointed shall be sworn, impartially to examine and decide the said question, according to such evidence as 1 Am. State Papers, For. Rel. I. 90-99. 2 MSS. Dept. of State. shall respectively be laid before them on the part of the British Government and of the United States. The said commissioners shall meet at Halifax, and shall have power to adjourn to such other place or places as they shall think fit. They shall have power to appoint a secretary, and to employ such surveyors or other persons as they shall judge necessary. The said commissioners shall, by a declaration, under their hands and seals, decide what river is the River St. Croix, intended by the treaty. The said declaration shall contain a description of the said river, and shall particularize the latitude and longitude of its mouth and of its source. Duplicates of this declaration and of the statements of their accounts, and of the journal of their proceedings, shall be delivered by them to the agent of His Majesty and to the agent of the United States, who may be respectively appointed and authorized to manage the business on behalf of the respective Governments. And both parties agree to consider such decision as final and conclusive, so as that the same shall never hereafter be called into question, or made the subject of dispute or difference between them." 1 Appointment of Commissioner by the United States. Under this article the President of the United States on the 1st of April, 1796, named as commissioner General Knox, but he declined to serve on the ground, among others, that he had a personal interest in the result of the controversy. The President then, on the 21st of May, appointed David Howell, a citizen of Rhode Island, who had been attorneygeneral of the State and a member of its supreme court. Mr. Howell was a graduate of Princeton College, and held for a number of years the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy, and also that of law, in Brown University at Providence. He was at one time a member of the Continental Congress. He had a reputation for talents and learning, and was celebrated for wit and anecdote. missioner by Great Britain. On the part of Great Britain the commisAppointment of Com- sioner appointed by the King was Thomas Barclay, of Annapolis, Nova Scotia, who had won the rank of colonel as a volunteer in the British forces during the American Revolution. At the outbreak of the war he was living in Ulster County, New York, of which State he was a native, when he was driven from his 'In a letter to Edmund Randolph, Secretary of State, on the day of the signature of the treaty, Mr. Jay, referring to the fifth article, observed that in the discussions before the commissioners the old French claims might be revived, and that the United States must adhere to Mitchell's map. The Vice-President, he said, perfectly understood the business. (Am. State Papers, For. Rel. I. 503.) home on account of his royalist sympathies. At the close of the war be, with many other proscribed loyalists, sought a home in Nova Scotia, where he practiced his profession of the law (which he had studied under John Jay) and where he became a member and afterward speaker of the provincial assembly. His appointment as commissioner to settle the dispute as to the St. Croix River was the beginning of a long career as the representative of his government in various capacities in the United States or in relation to American affairs.1 of Commissioners. In May 1796, Mr. Barclay being in New Preliminary Meeting York on private business, Mr. Pickering, who was then Secretary of State, suggested that it would be well for him to meet Mr. Howell, the American commissioner, with a view to choose a third commissioner and a secretary, as well as a man of science to ascertain with precision the latitudes and longitudes of the mouth and source of the St. Croix. Though the treaty indicated that the first meeting of the commissioners in the execution of their official functions should be at Halifax, Mr. Pickering did not consider this indispensable. Mr. Barclay, while withholding his own opinion on the question, found himself precluded by his instructions from acting officially until he had met the American commissioner at Halifax, but he consented to hold with Mr. Howell a private interview, in which they might freely though informally discuss their future proceedings and come to some determination respecting the persons mentioned by Mr. Pickering.3 This conference took place at Boston on the 27th of June, 1796. Several persons were named for third commissioner, and among those suggested by Mr. Howell was Egbert Benson, of New York, who was Mr. Barclay's cousin of the half blood, his father having been a half-brother of Barclay's mother. No choice, however, was made, and, in the expectation that it would be necessary to resort to lot, it was agreed that each side should name "three able and respectable characters," from the list of whom the opposite party should strike the names of two, and that the two remaining names should be put into a box and one drawn out for the third commissioner.* 1 Rives's Correspondence of Thomas Barclay. 2 Id. 48, 49. 3 Id. 49, 50. 4 Id. 51. Appointment of Meanwhile each government had appointed an agent to represent it before the commisAmerican Agent. sioners. On the part of the United States the agent chosen was James Sullivan, a citizen of Massachusetts, and a native of the District of Maine, of which he was the historian. His commission bears date May 21, 1796. A lawyer by profession, Mr. Sullivan held numerous posts in the public service, being at divers times a member of the general court of Massachusetts, a member of the committee of public safety, a judge of the supreme judicial court, a member of Congress, and governor of his native commonwealth. He was also president of the Historical Society of Massachusetts. At the time of his appointment as agent of the United States before the St. Croix Commission he was attorney-general of Massachusetts. He applied himself to his new duties with great diligence. History of the District of Maine, by James Sullivan, Boston, 1795. 2 Mr. Pickering, Secretary of State, in his instructions to Mr. Sullivan, said: "Your researches as the historian of the District of Maine, your reputation as a lawyer, and your official employment as the attorney-general of Massachusetts, the State directly and most materially interested in the event, have designated you as the agent of the United States to manage their claim of boundary where their territory joins that of His Britannic Majesty, in his province of New Brunswick, formerly a part of his province of Nova Scotia. You are apprised that the question to be examined and decided is stated in the fifth article of the treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation between the United States and His Britannic Majesty. The quantity of land the title of which depends on this decision is an object so interesting as to demand an accurate and thorough investigation of the claims of the two nations. It is supposed that you are already possessed of important documents concerning them; but it is desirable that you should diligently inquire and search for any others which public records or other repositories, public or private, may have preserved. The pending decision is to be final. Great industry, therefore, will be necessary to collect, and much diligence and ability required to arrange and enforce, the evidence in support of the claim of the United States. Besides written documents, it is possible that living witnesses, if carefully sought for, may yet be found whose testimony may throw much light on, if not positively establish, our claim. To obtain these, if they exist, as well as all written documents, the President relies on your diligent research and inquiry; and in the application of them to support the interests of the United States he assures himself of the utmost exertion of your ability." (Amory's Life of James Sullivan, I. 307, 308.) "Two of the council, two of the senate, and one of the most eminent of the law counsel in the State of Massachusetts," says Mr. Barclay, "were assigned to assist Mr. Sullivan in collecting documents and evidence, and in preparing the case The agent of Great Britain was Ward ChipAppointment of man, who also was a native of Massachusetts. British agent. Like Mr. Barclay, he had espoused the royalist cause in the Revolution, had served in the British army, and at the close of the war had sought refuge in Nova Scotia, taking up his residence in St. John, then in Nova Scotia, but which was later to be included in New Brunswick. At the time of his appointment as British agent before the St. Croix Commission he was solicitor-general of New Brunswick, of which province he was afterwards chief justice and president.' American Commissigner Proceeds to Halifax. On the 12th of August 1796 Mr. Howell, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Webber, professor of astronomy at Harvard College, and other members of the American party sailed from Boston for Halifax in an American sloop called the Portland Packet. As no commercial intercourse was at the time allowed between # and arguments on this important question." (Rives's Correspondence of Thomas Barclay, 67.) Amory, in his Life of Sullivan, I. 322, says that "Colonel Pickering procured for Sullivan many valuable books, and among others, after sending for them without success to Europe, borrowed from the library of Jefferson copies of Champlain and L'Escarbot.” 1 Burrage's "St. Croix Commission," read before the Maine Historical Society February 6, 1895. Mr. Barclay, in a letter to Lord Grenville, of August 30, 1796, says: "I have industriously exerted myself since I had the honor of receiving his Majesty's Commission in procuring for the Consideration of Mr. Chipman His Majesty's Agent such papers proofs and documents as could throw light upon the subject in controversy, but I find his zeal and industry in the fulfillment of the duties of his appointment, and his thorough knowledge of the subject will relieve me from every apprehension that anything will be omitted in procuring or arranging the evidence in support of the Claims of the British Government which can in any degree tend to elucidate their justness or force." (Rives's Correspondence of Thomas Barclay, 58.) Burrage, in his "St. Croix Commission," page 5, says that Mr. Chipman, in the collection of evidence, had "the assistance of Phineas Bond, the British Consul at Philadelphia; Robert Pagan, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas (of New Brunswick), and others." Among the "and others" there seems to have been a person who was able to supply the British minister and British consul at Philadelphia, in the early stages of the business, with copies of papers on which the United States relied, and probably with a copy of its claim. This person and the papers furnished by him are referred to in several letters of Mr. Bond, the British consul, to Mr. Barclay. The latter, however, cautioned Bond against him, saying that he was "a man of duplicity and not to be trusted." Bond feebly excused him, saying that the "person" referred to did not, in the present instance, conceive that he betrayed any confidence, but, on the contrary, "professed that Truth alone was the |