Studies in American History 
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a long memorial to Congress setting forth the commercial and 
political advantages to be derived from the Americanization 
of the country. During the same year David Anderson, then 
Lord Bishop of Rupert’s Land, presented an address, on be- 
half of the people of the country, to Governor Seward when 
the latter visited St. Paul in September, 1860. In his speech 
at St. Paul, Seward suggested that Canadians were building 
states that would later join the American union. 
By the middle of 1861 the Canadian provincial legislature 
at Ottawa was slowly awakening to the future importance 
of the Red River and Saskatchewan districts, and the com- 
merce westward to Vancouver (the “Cuba of the North 
Pacific”), but did nothing. James W. Taylor wrote from St. 
Paul: “Unless England responds to the manifest destiny of 
central British Am.erica the speedy Americanization . . . 
is inevitable.” In October, 1861, the new settlements of Assini- 
boia were complaining of the need of organization as a new 
colony with a better system of government. The Nor-Wester 
said if Britain waited, the people might vote annexation to 
Minnesota and Dakota, or proclaim independence. Taylor said 
in case a struggle for natural existence should lead to a war 
with Great Britain, no British territory on the American con- 
tinent would prove so assailable with certainty of occupation 
by American troops. While the British authorities remained 
indifferent to their cries, and while some of the people of the 
eastern provinces preferred to contemplate the possibility of 
a plan for expansion into Maine, which stood like an entering 
wedge between Ganada and New Brunswick, American in- 
fluence from Minnesota continued to operate across the 
boundary into British territory.^® By the middle of 1862 
so anxious to be connected with Britain when such connection is nominal and fruitless ? 
Let us rather seek to form part and parcel of the great counti-y from which we are 
receiving- and will ever receive such practical benefits.” 
The Netv York Herald about the same time, 1860, said: 
‘ The eastern public may expect a considerable irhpulse next year in the direction 
of the fertile basin of Lake Winnipeg. A weekly mail through Minnesota to the in- 
teresting community at Selkirk is anticipated with confidence, and will doubtless enlist 
the cooperation of parties on both sides of the intei-naticnal boundary. The relation 
of the northwestern states to the valleys of the Red River and the Saskatchewan are 
already recognized as cf commanding importance, affecting intimately the mail and 
revenue service of the United States, and destined, with the extension of steam naviga- 
tion over immense areas, to work good commercial results.” 
House Executive Documents, No. 146, 37-2, Vol. X, 1862 (Taylor Report). 
E. H. Derby, Relations of the United States 'itnth the British Provinces, January, 
1867. (Quotes from the Halifax Morning Journal.) 
