338 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
The Settlement of the North-West Angle Controversy by Negotiation, 
1851-1842. 
The rejection by the United States Senate of the award of the King 
of the Netherlands closed the attempt to settle this controversy by arbi- 
tration. The same resolve, however, which recorded the decision of the 
Senate opened the new, and as it happily proved, the final, stage in 
the controversy, for it advised the President 
to open a new negotiation with His Britanic Majesty’s Government, for the 
ascertainment of the boundary between the possessions of the United States 
and those of Great Britain, on the northeastern frontier of the United States, 
according to the Treaty of Peace of 1783. (Blue-book, 1838, 13). 
The President accordingly made overtures to Great Britain, which 
were received in a very friendly spirit, and the negotiations, which 
lasted for nearly ten years, began. The correspondence for this entire 
period, together with many correlated documents of very great interest 
and importance are printed in the British blue books of 1838, 1840, and 
1843, which are therefore invaluable sources for this period and this 
phase of our local history. 
From the very start these negotiations were greatly hampered upon 
the part of the United States by the necessity of consulting the State of 
Maine. That state continued to show the same spirit as during the pre- 
ceding decade, a spirit altogether admirable from the extreme partizan 
standpoint, but one characterized by unreasoning, almost violent, and 
sometimes well nigh hysterical insistence upon her own claims, any sug- 
gestion of a possible different view of which she refused to entertain. 
As will be apparent to the readers of the earlier pages of this work, and 
as will appear more fully later, the present writer is of opinion that 
Maine was technically and legally right in her claim, but legal rights are 
not the only ones it is the duty of men and of states to stand by in their 
dealings with one another, and it is the total refusal of Maine to enter- 
tain the suggestion of any other kinds of rights in this controversy which, 
at this distance, makes her appear to great disadvantage in the official 
documents of the time. This, however, is characteristic of the earlier 
and middle part of the controversy; later, as we shall see, her spirit 
became more liberal. The Secretary of State in renewing negotiations 
in 1832, attempted to obtain a right from Maine to manage the affair 
without interference from that State, and as Moore points out (page 
138) in 1832 an agreement to that effect was entered into with repre- 
sentatives of Maine, but was not ratified. During the following ten 
years Maine was most impatient of the slowness of the negotiations, 
but it was the necessity of consulting her, and her uncompromising atti- 
