Aroostook War - Settlement

Settlement

Daniel Webster and Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburton, reached a compromise the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of Washington in 1842, which settled the Maine-Canada boundary and the boundary between Canada and New Hampshire, Michigan and Minnesota. This treaty awarded 7,015 square miles (18,170 km2) to the United States and 5,012 square miles (12,980 km2) to British control. The British retained the northern area of the disputed territory, including the Halifax Road with its year-round overland military communications between Quebec and Nova Scotia. The U.S. federal government agreed to pay the states of Maine and Massachusetts $150,000 each for the loss of the lands of their states while the United States reimbursed them for newly acquired territory in the Northwest Territories and for expenses incurred during the time Maine's armed civil posse administered the truce period.

Webster used a map that Jared Sparks, an American citizen, found in the Paris Archives (and which Benjamin Franklin supposedly marked with a red line in Paris in 1782) to persuade Maine and Massachusetts to accept the agreement. The map showed that the disputed region belonged to the British and so helped convince the representatives of those states to accept the compromise, lest the truth reach British ears and convince the British to refuse. Later historians discovered that the Americans hid their knowledge of the Franklin map. Britain apparently used a map favorable to the United States claims but never revealed this map. Some claim that British officials created the Franklin map as a fake to pressure the American negotiators. The evidence is that the British map placed the entire disputed area on the American side of the border.

The Aroostook War, though devoid of actual military combat, did see militiamen die of accident or disease, such as Private Hiram T. Smith.