198 
Indiana University 
When Derby wrote Seward, a petition had just been received 
from Victoria, Vancouver Island, requesting the annexation 
of British Columbia, whose slow growth was noticeable in 
painful contrast to the rapid progress of California and 
Oregon. Submitting a plan for the annexation of the Cana- 
dian provinces to the United States, and indicating the eco- 
nomic, political, and international advantages of annexation, 
he said: 
Is not America designed for the Americans? Annexation would 
dispense with custom houses and fortresses on a long frontier, give 
proper control of our telegraph lines to Asia and Europe, and ensure 
future pacific relations with Great Britain. The most effective mode to 
remove all difficulties would be the union of all parts of our continent 
in one harmonious whole. But this requires the sanction of England. 
Learning from the past and with a wise forecast of the future, should 
she not wisely take the initiative and seek to obliterate memories of three 
wars and to win the love and gratitude of a continent by an act of 
magnanimity? While she consolidates provinces and fortifies Halifax 
and Victoria, or at Esquimalt harbor, can she wonder that the United 
States seeks alliance with Bussia?^* 
The intimation that consolidation of the eastern provinces 
of British America would cause the United States to seek 
closer cooperation with Russia was significant. In Congress 
there was much opposition to the evident purpose of the Cana- 
dian movement. On March 27, 1867, the House, without op- 
position, passed a resolution from the committee on foreign 
affairs expressing the solicitude of the United States con- 
cerning the proposed confederation which was to be formed 
without the consent of the people of the provinces to be con- 
federated, and stating that such a measure would probably 
increase the embarrassment already existing between the 
United States and Great Britain.^^ Three days later a 
counter-movement against the future extension of the con- 
federation westward from the lakes to the Pacific was inaugu- 
rated by the treaty for the transfer of Alaska to the United 
States. Russia, so recently defeated in Crimea, and still hunt- 
ing territory that would give her an outlet to the sea on 
Asiatic coast south of Siberia, decided to retire from America, 
expecting England to retire also. She doubtless had other 
motives than the mere desire to be friendly with the great 
reunited American republic. Possibly, as Sumner intimated. 
Derby’s Report to Seward, January, 1867. 
American Annual Cyclopedia, 1867, 275. 
