on in 1840 exceptionally critical. Great Britain was angered at
the failure of the United States to grant her the right to police the
seas for the suppression of the slave trade, while the United States,
with memories of the vicious English practice of impressment before the
War of 1812, distrusted the motives of Great Britain in asking for this
right. Nearly every mile of the joint boundary in North America was in
dispute, owing to the vagueness of treaty descriptions or to the errors
of surveyors. Twelve thousand square miles and a costly American fort
were involved; arbitration had failed; rival camps of lumberjacks
daily imperiled peace; and both the Maine Legislature and the National
Congress had voted money for defense. In a New York jail Alexander
McLeod was awaiting trial in a state court for the murder of an American
on the steamer Caroline, which a party of Canadian militia had cut out
from the American shore near Buffalo and had sent to destruction over
Niagara Falls. The British Government, holding that the Caroline was at
the time illegally employed to assist Canadian insurgents, and that
the Canadian militia were under government orders justifiable by
international law, assumed the responsibility for McLeod's act and his
safety. Ten thousand Americans along the border, members of "Hunters'
Lodges," were anxious for a war which would unleash them for the
conquest of Canada. Delay was causing all these disputes to fester, and
the public mind of the two countries was infected with hostility.

Fortunately in 1841 new administrations came into power in both England
and the United States. Neither the English Tories nor the American Whigs
felt bound to maintain all the contentions of their predecessors, and
both desired to come to an agreement. The responsibility on the American
side fell upon Daniel Webster, the new Secretary of State. With less
foreign experience than John Quincy Adams, he was more a man of the
world and a man among men. His conversation was decidedly less ponderous
than his oratory, and there was no more desirable dinner guest in
America. Even in Webster's lightest moments, his majestic head gave the
impression of colossal mentality, and his eyes, when he was in earnest,
almost hypnotized those upon whom he bent his gaze. A leading figure
in public life for twenty-five years, he now attained administrative
position for the first time, and his constant practice at the bar had
given something of