The friction aroused by repeated boundary disputes prevented
friendly relations between Canada and the United States. With
unconscious irony the framers of the Peace of 1783 had prefaced
their long outline of the boundaries of the United States by
expressing their intention "that all disputes which might arise
in future on the subject of the boundaries of the said United
States may be prevented." So vague, however, were the terms of
the treaty and so untrustworthy were the maps of the day that
ultimately almost every clause in the boundary section gave rise
to dispute.
As settlement rolled westward one section of the boundary after
another came in question. Beginning in the east, the line between
New Brunswick and New England was to be formed by the St. Croix
River. There had been a St. Croix in Champlain's time and a St.
Croix was depicted on the maps, but no river known by that name
existed in 1783. The British identified it with the Schoodic, the
Americans with the Magaguadavic. Arbitration in 1798 upheld the
British in the contention that the Schoodic was the St. Croix but
agreed with the Americans in the secondary question as to which
of the two branches of the Schoodic should be followed. A similar
commission in 1817 settled the dispute as to the islands in
Passamaquoddy Bay.
More difficult, because at once more ambiguous in terms and more
vitally important, was the determination of the boundary in the
next stage westward from the St.
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