What agreement did britain and the united states make in the treaty of 1818?

Far to the north and west of Texas, the United States and several other nations vied for the Oregon Country: the land north of California and west of the Rocky Mountains. The territory was variously claimed from the sixteenth century by Spain, Russia, Britain, and the United States. However, by the mid-1820s, only the American and British claims endured. The two nations agreed in 1818 to a "joint occupation" of Oregon in which citizens of both countries could settle; this arrangement lasted until 1846.

Map showing region claimed by both the United States and Britain until 1846, including Vancouver Island to the north.

The Oregon settlers from the United States and Britain were very different groups. The British were chiefly fur traders associated with the Hudson's Bay Company, while the Americans were a more eclectic lot. American settlement began in the 1830s when Protestant missionaries moved into the Wilamette Valley. Their accounts of the fertile soil of the region spread rapidly to the East and spurred a massive migration of thousands of American families westward along the Oregon Trail. The resulting population disparity along with an overall decline in the fur trade, convinced the British government to work for a negotiated settlement to the Oregon issue.

As with Texas, popular opinion over the Oregon Country was divided. Whereas Texas territory would have added proslavery representation in Congress, any potential states formed from the Oregon Country would be free states. Accordingly, Northerners were the chief advocates of acquiring as much Oregon Country as possible.

James K. Polk and the Policy of Expansion

In the presidential election of 1844, Democrat James K. Polk rode to victory over his Whig opponent Henry Clay on an aggressively expansionist platform that welded together the Texas and Oregon issues. Democrats appealed to the expansionist sentiments of both Northern and Southern voters and their shared desire to safeguard the sectional balance in Congress. After winning the election, Polk articulated his foreign policy goals: settlement of the Oregon dispute with Britain, annexation of Texas, and the acquisition of California from Mexico. The acquisition of California represented a significant expansion of American interest in Mexican territory and promised to complicate an already tense Mexican-American relationship over Texas.

James Knox Polk

Negotiated Settlement in Oregon

Negotiations between the United States and Britain over the Oregon Country began in the summer of 1845. The initial American proposal called for the boundary to be drawn at the 49th parallel, bisecting Vancouver Island. When British negotiators rejected this proposal, President Polk took a bolder position by reasserting his campaign promise to support the 54° 40' line and announcing the American intent to terminate the joint occupancy agreement within a year. While expansionist Northerners cheered these provocative actions with shouts of "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!," Southerners in Congress made it clear that they would not risk war with Britain over Oregon.

British leaders were similarly adverse to conflict and did not want to jeopardize their important economic relationship with the United States. In June 1846, the Senate, preoccupied with war against Mexico, quickly approved the Oregon Treaty with Britain, setting the boundary at the 49th parallel.

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Relations between the United States and Mexico soured in December 1845, when Congress voted to admit Texas as the twenty-eighth state. A negotiated settlement to the Texas boundary question (now a disputed international boundary between the United States and Mexico) was complicated by frequent changes in Mexican leadership during 1845-46. After the Mexican government refused to meet with an American representative sent to negotiate the purchase of Mexican lands stretching northward from Texas to the Oregon Country in January 1846, Polk ordered U.S. troops into disputed territory on the north bank of the Río Grande. The inevitable conflict occurred on April 25, 1846, when a contingent of Mexican cavalry crossed the Río Grande and skirmished with the American forces.

Map showing region claimed by both the United States and Mexico until 1846.

During the nearly two years of war, American troops took possession of Mexican territory in what is now California, New Mexico, northern Mexico, and ultimately the capital, Mexico City. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war in February 1848, established dramatically altered boundaries for the United States and Mexico. Under the terms of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded to the United States an immense territory of nearly one million square miles, including land in what is now California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The United States, in turn, agreed to pay Mexico $15 million and assume $3.25 million in debt claims against Mexico. The treaty also provided that Mexican people who remained on their lands would be granted American citizenship and allowed to retain their property.

The Legacy of Expansion

By 1848, the Manifest Destiny championed by many Americans had been realized. The territory of the United States stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coasts and from the 49th parallel to the Río Grande. Although they had been granted citizenship rights, many Mexican people who remained on their lands found the new American property laws complicated and confusing. Some unscrupulous American settlers used their greater familiarity with the law to acquire huge tracts of land owned by Mexicans.

The fertile territory acquired during 1840s also contained the bitter seeds of discord. Many Northerners and Southerners disagreed sharply over the slavery status of the territories, and eventually this dispute flamed into the carnage that was the Civil War. Today, the legacy of nineteenth century U.S. expansion is evident in the dynamic cultural and political interchange between the United States and Mexico. The people of each nation influence each other's language, food, music, and traditions, while their leaders continue to work together to resolve a host of political and environmental questions, including complex immigration, water rights, and land use issues.

The Rush-Bagot Pact was an agreement between the United States and Great Britain to eliminate their fleets from the Great Lakes, excepting small patrol vessels. The Convention of 1818 set the boundary between the Missouri Territory in the United States and British North America (later Canada) at the forty-ninth parallel. Both agreements reflected the easing of diplomatic tensions that had led to the War of 1812 and marked the beginning of Anglo-American cooperation.

U.S. political leaders had long expressed interest in disarming the Great Lakes and had proposed such a measure during negotiations that led to the 1794 Jay Treaty, but British officials had rejected this proposal. During the War of 1812, both Great Britain and the United States had built fleets of ships on lakes Erie and Ontario, and fought many battles in the region. Near the end of the war, U.S. forces had achieved dominance over the Lakes. After the war, both powers were wary of one another’s military strength and a postwar shipbuilding race ensued. However, both countries also wished to reduce their military expenditures. Unfortunately, the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, contained no disarmament provisions. However, it did establish commissions to resolve contested areas along the border (as determined by the 1783 Treaty of Paris) between the United States and British North America.

Although tensions between Great Britain and the United States remained high along the Great Lakes, overall relations improved. Postwar trade rebounded, and British political leaders increasingly viewed the United States as a valuable trading partner, while also realizing that British North America would be expensive and difficult to defend should another war break out. When U.S. Minister to Great Britain, John Quincy Adams, proposed disarmament on January 25, 1816, British Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh responded favorably. The British Government had already dispatched Charles Bagot as Minister to the United States with the intention of improving relations between the two countries.

Bagot met with Secretary of State James Monroe informally, and finally reached an agreement with his successor, Acting Secretary Richard Rush. The agreement limited military navigation on the Great Lakes to one to two vessels per country on each lake. The U.S. Senate ratified the agreement on April 28, 1818. The British Government considered a diplomatic exchange of letters between Rush and Bagot sufficient to make the agreement effective.

In addition to the issue of military navigation of the Great Lakes, the British Government was also open to negotiations regarding a number of other points of contention that had not been resolved by the Treaty of Ghent. Several commissions met to settle border disputes along the U.S. border with British North America. One of these commissions awarded several islands off the coasts of Maine to New Brunswick. However, negotiators deadlocked over other parts of the northern borders of Maine and New Hampshire. That issue would not be resolved until the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which also resolved the border between Canada and northeastern Minnesota.

Several other separate committees determined other stretches of border that negotiators at the 1783 Treaty of Paris had drawn with faulty maps. The commissions divided the St. Lawrence and other rivers connecting the Great Lakes to allow both countries navigable channels, and handed Wolfe Island near Kingston, Ontario to the British and Grosse Île near Detroit to the United States. British and U.S. negotiators also agreed to make present-day Angle Inlet, Minnesota the end point of the 1783 border and to allow the Convention of 1818, concluded by Rush and Albert Gallatin, to determine the border to the west of that point.

While these commissions debated border issues, Rush and Gallatin concluded the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 that, among other things, confirmed permanent U.S. rights to fish off Newfoundland and Labrador. The Convention also made provisions for Russian mediation over the issue of escaped slaves in British hands (U.S. slaveowners were eventually provided monetary compensation) and also determined that the border from Angle Inlet would run south to the forty-ninth parallel, and then due west to the Rocky Mountains. The Oregon Country would remain open to both countries for ten years.

Although the agreements did not completely settle border disputes and trade arrangements, the Rush-Bagot agreement and the Convention of 1818 marked an important turning point in Anglo-American and American-Canadian relations.