in September. President Monroe may not have been a brilliant statesman, but he was tactful and conciliatory, and knew how to make friends, a quality which some of his successors have lacked. The most active Federalist partisans were cordially greeted, their hospitality was accepted, and as a result there followed that "era of good feeling," appropriately named, which came as a welcome relief after a period of bitter partisan strife.

When the American and the British commissioners met at Ghent, in 1814, to conclude a treaty of peace, the latter proposed, at the first conference, that the boundary line between the United States and Canada should be revised. Accordingly there was embodied in the Treaty of Ghent a provision for ascertaining the international boundary line from the source of the St. Croix River to the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods. The British Government named Thomas Barclay as its representative, and President Madison appointed as commissioners Cornelius P. Van Ness, an eminent citizen of Vermont, and a resident of Burlington, and John Holmes of Massachusetts. The commission of Mr. Van Ness was dated April 3, 1816. The first meeting of what was known as the Northeastern Boundary Commission was held at Portland, Me., and on September 17, 1816, the members sailed for St. Andrews, N. B., where a meeting was held on September 23. After a two days' session, adjournment was taken, as the surveyors had not arrived, and it was too late in the season to begin the survey of the boundary line.

When the commissioners reassembled, William C. Bradley of Westminster, Vt., appeared as Agent on the

part of the United States, with a commission from President Madison, dated February 7, 1817. John Johnson of Burlington was appointed chief surveyor on the part of the United States. He was made Surveyor General of Vermont in 1812, being a surveyor of unusual skill and a man of excellent judgment. Beginning the work in 1817, with Colonel Bouchette, representing the British Government, the line due north from the head of the St. Croix River, in eastern Maine, was traced to the River St. John. In 1818 this work was continued, Colonel Odell representing the British commission. The line was surveyed as far as the highlands designated in the treaty and the country west of the line running due north was explored. The British commission objected to carrying beyond the River St. John the line running north, and the work was interrupted.

It had been planned to hold the first meeting of the Boundary Commission in 1818 in New York, but by agreement it was held at Burlington, Vt., on May 15 of that year. Other meetings were held at Montreal, St. Regis, Boston and New York. After considering the questions at issue from September 20 until October 4, the debates being characterized by no little acrimony, with no prospect of reaching an agreement, adjournment was taken until the following year, in order that each commission might prepare its report. In a statement prepared by Mr. Van Ness he said: "The obstacles to be encountered have been great and numerous. The whole extent of the country from the source of the River St. Croix north to the River St. Lawrence, and between that line and the head of the Connecticut River, is one

vast and entire wilderness, inhabited by no human being except a few savages, and, in one spot, a few Frenchmen." Near the headwaters of the Connecticut River there was a difference between the American and the British lines, Mr. Bradley, the American Agent, claiming the head of Hall's Stream as the proper line and the British Agent holding out for another stream. Mr. Van Ness was inclined to doubt the advisability of insisting upon Hall's Stream as the proper boundary. Some of the British authorities asserted that their first surveyor, Colonel Bouchette, had been "bullied" by Mr. Johnson, and Bouchette was discharged.

In the fall of 1818, Doctor Tiarks and Mr. Hassler, astronomers, respectively, for the British and American commissions, discovered to their surprise and consternation, that just east of Lake Champlain the forty-fifth parallel of latitude actually ran about three-fourths of a mile south of the accepted boundary line, surveyed in the preceding century. This meant that a fortification begun at Rouses Point by the United States Government was actually in British territory. In order to avoid a local uprising this discovery was not made public at the time. Mr. Bradley put forward the claim that the geocentric instead of the observed latitude should be taken, which would have placed the boundary line thirteen miles farther north. Mr. Van Ness, however, did not endorse this claim. Disagreeing reports were filed by the two commissioners and the surveyors were recalled. Other negotiations were carried on from time to time, without arriving at a settlement, until the negotiation of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842, which

ceded to the United States the land in the vicinity of Rouses Point, occupied by the unfinished fortification, called in derision, "Fort Blunder."

In a letter written to Henry Clay by Albert Gallatin, January 30, 1827, from London, where the author had been sent on a secret diplomatic mission, the boundary report of Mr. Van Ness was characterized as "conclusive and remarkably well drawn"; and in the same letter it was stated that "Mr. Bradley's arguments have also great merit, and embrace or allude to almost all that can be said."

In the published writings of Gallatin a letter to Mr. Van Ness is included, in which he said: "Whilst in London I took several opportunities in my correspondence with our Government to do that justice to which you were so fully entitled, not only for the soundness of your decision and of the arguments on which it was founded, but for the impartiality which you evinced throughout the whole of the proceedings under the commission. I think it highly honorable to the country that the commissioner appointed on the part of the United States should have sustained the character of a judge bound on his oath to decide as such, and according to evidence and the general principles of law, and should in no instance have permitted himself to act as a partisan. In a letter written on the same day to William C. Bradley, Mr. Gallatin said: "I embrace with pleasure the opportunity of acknowledging the great benefit I have derived from your able arguments, in which you maintained an evident and constant superiority over the British Agent."