burg on the course they should pursue. He instructed them 

 to see that a definite boundary was established between the 

 two powers from the St. Lawrence to the northwest corner of 

 Lake of the Woods, there being many valuable islands and 

 lakes claimed by both sides. Nothing was said, however, by 

 Monroe of the boundary west of Lake of the Woods. The 

 embassies of the two nations met at Ghent in Flanders in 

 August, 1814. J. Q. Adams, Henry Clay, Jonathan Russell and 

 Albert Gallatin were the American representatives. 



The British commissioners were most anxious concerning 

 the boundary west of Lake of the Woods and in a few days 

 proposed the boundary should be westward, not from Lake of 

 the Woods, but from Lake Superior; thus throwing all of the 

 country north of an imaginary line drawn from what is now 

 Duluth, Minnesota, westward, into English territory. American 

 commissioners would not agree to this, as it meant a large 

 cession of territory to Great Britain, but after a month and a 

 half of litigation the American commissioners wrote the Brit- 

 ish that they could not agree to fix a boundary of the United 

 States in the northwest corner unless that of the territory of 

 the Louisiana was provided for in the agreement. The latter 

 returned the articles unchanged, the eighth one being the 

 same as the unfinished one of 1803. 



The convention was adjourned without any definite state- 

 ment as to the boundary with the exception, however, that 

 the northwest angle of the Lake of the Woods should be defi- 

 nitely determined. 



The subject was not dropped here but was handed back 

 and forth between the ministers and ambassadors of the two 

 countries until another meeting was called in London. Messrs. 

 Richard Rush and Gallatin represented the United States and 

 stated in their second articles: "It is agreed that a line 

 drawn from the most northwestern point of Lake of the Woods 

 along the forty-ninth parallel, or, if the said point shall not 

 be in the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, that a line be 

 drawn due north or south as the case may be until the line 

 shall intersect the said parallel of north latitude and from a 

 point of such intersection, due west along and with the said 

 parallel, shall be the line of demarcation between the ter- 



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