A Memoir on the North-Eastern Boundary in Connexion with Mr. Jay’s Map

Revisiting the question of the U.S. boundary with Canada about a year after it was finalized.

“The map used by Mr. Jay, during the negotiations of 1782, was one of Mitchell…It differs in no respect from Mitchell’s original map, but in its being colored, and having besides a redi line proved to have been traced on it by Mr. Jay, designated in his hand-writing as Mr. Oswald’s line.” – pg 73.

This uncommon volume was issued by the New York Historical Society in 1843. Its contents replicate the speeches offered by Albert Gallatin and Daniel Webster at a meeting on April 15th. The topic was the contested border between Upper Canada and Maine – a dispute which had been finally laid to rest by the signing of the Webster-Ashburton treaty less than a year prior.

The honorable Messrs. Gallatin and Webster attempt to validate the compromise by providing a complete historiography of the boundary line, including extensive excerpts from the Treaty of Paris (1783). Evidence supporting the American position is heavily emphasized, most notably with a cartographic ‘smoking gun’ found in the papers of John Jay. A specially designed fold-out titled “Mr. Jay’s Map – Extract from a Map of the British & French Dominions in North America by John Mitchell” explicitly recreates the map in question, including the bright red line that allegedly defined America’s rightful claims to British territory in Upper Canada and Nova Scotia.