Jay's Treaty: The Transformation of Lake Champlain Commerce

Vermont History Vol. 80, No. 1 (Winter/Spring 2012): 33–56.

Jay’s Treaty: The Transformation

of Lake Champlain Commerce

The Jay Treaty, ratified by the U.S.

Senate in 1795, took real effect in 1796,

drastically altering the rules governing

Canadian-American inland and lake-

borne trade. The pattern of commerce

suddenly and dramatically changed.

By H. N

ICHOLAS MULLER III

hen its terms became public in 1795, most Americans, in-

cluding Vermonters, viewed the Jay Treaty through a polit-

ical prism. They saw its efforts to resolve maritime con icts

with Great Britain, the British occupation of a string of outposts in

United States territory, and the agreement to  rm up the Canadian-

American boundary in terms of domestic politics. They correctly

thought that it represented the Washington administration’s attempt,

led by Alexander Hamilton, to stabilize relations with Great Britain

and to maintain the tariff revenue that supported the young republic.

The Republican opposition led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madi-

son opposed these policies, which they saw as favoring Great Britain.

They preferred friendly relations with revolutionary France, which they

viewed as a continuation of the French-American alliance formed in the

late 1770s during the American Revolution. The French declaration of

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

H. NICHOLAS MULLER III, currently treasurer of the Vermont Historical Society, is

a frequent contributor to Vermont History, which he once edited, about the his-

tory of Lake Champlain and the Champlain Valley. A former professor and dean

at the University of Vermont, president of Colby-Sawyer College, director of the

Wisconsin Historical Society, and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation,

he has retired and lives next to the lake in Essex, New York.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

war against the British in 1793 exacerbated the political tensions in the

United States between these factions. These political opponents argued

their differences through the acrimonious debate over the Jay Treaty.

In this highly charged, volatile political atmosphere, few bothered to

examine the importance of the commercial aspects of the treaty.

In the seventeenth century and the  rst half of the eighteenth cen-

tury, commercial activity between the St. Lawrence and Hudson Riv-

ers over Lake Champlain de ed both British and French imperial pol-

icy. Fur gathered at Montreal went south while generally superior and

less expensive British trade goods of rum, iron implements, and strouds

(a coarse woolen cloth) went north in exchange. In the 1760s, with both

ends of this corridor under British authority after their victory in the

French and Indian War, settlement began to take hold in the Cham-

plain Valley, and trade followed settlement. Timber and pot and pearl

ash, by-products of clearing land, and some agricultural produce be-

gan to move north to Canada. The American Revolution once again

placed a political boundary, through British mercantile laws, across the

north end of Lake Champlain and disrupted the new trade. The Jay

Treaty abruptly changed the post-revolutionary geopolitical situation.

Canadian merchants, especially in Montreal, the developing commer-

cial entrepôt on the St. Lawrence River, and their counterparts from

New York City, Albany, and growing Champlain Valley towns astride

the Hudson River–Lake Champlain corridor quickly discovered the

new regulations. They rapidly took advantage of the treaty’s terms. The

rearrangement of the trade regulations between the United States and

Canada through the Champlain Valley induced a new commercial

stream between New York and Montreal. It also accelerated the pace

of development in northwestern Vermont and on both sides of the lake.

The impact of the Jay Treaty would dominate this commerce for at

least two decades until the War of 1812 and its aftermath would spark a

new set of trade regulations.

REACTIONS TO THE JAY TREATY IN VERMONT

News of the proposed treaty with Great Britain burst on Vermont in

the spring of 1795 to widespread explosions of public outrage includ-

ing, according to one report, hanging its author, John Jay, in ef gy in

Rutland. Jay signed the treaty in November 1794, but the Washington

administration, understanding its politically volatile nature, withheld the

draft from the Senate until March 1795. After a long and heated debate,

the Senate rati ed the treaty in June 1795, with Vermont votes split.

Senator Moses Robinson voted against it while Stephen R. Bradley

supported it. The perception of a “stealth” process around rati cation,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

because the administration, citing executive privilege for the  rst time,

withheld the documentation relating to the treaty, intensi ed public

objection. In Vermont the clamor became particularly shrill on the west

side of the Green Mountains from Bennington County northward, in-

cluding the entire Champlain Valley. Jay’s Treaty exposed deepening

fault lines cleaving Vermont politics that separated adherents of Presi-

dent Washington and Alexander Hamilton largely residing on the east

side of the Green Mountains from the fervent adherents of Jefferson

and Madison on the west side.

Jay’s Treaty satis ed some Vermont interests by agreeing to settle

the Canadian–Vermont boundary, thus removing an irritant to land

claims. It also achieved the abandonment of the British posts on Amer-

ican territory along Lake Champlain at Dutchman’s (or Blockhouse)

Point on the west shore of North Hero and at Point au Fer in New

York. The treaty explicitly opened trade with Canada on the lake and

overland. The British had previously stepped outside of their mercan-

tile policy and had tolerated the trade from Vermont of a limited list of

commodities sanctioned by orders of the governor of Canada. This

move recognized the pressing British need for timber and masts, pres-

sure from Vermont, as Canada provided the only outlet for its produce,

and the desire of Québec merchants to harvest the proceeds as middle-

men in the timber and pot and pearl ash trade and the sale of British

products in the United States. The treaty carefully hedged the conces-

sion of allowing lake and inland trade on a most favored nation basis by

speci cally prohibiting American ships from carrying cargoes on the St.

Lawrence River.

But the din created by the treaty in Vermont overrode public atten-

tion to the favorable commercial terms. Publicly, no one seemed to rec-

ognize the dramatic impact the Jay Treaty would have on the Cham-

plain Valley. The outcry asserted that the United States had servilely

buckled to the British at the expense of both American and French in-

terests. The noisy uproar did not consider the obscure Article XIII; it

went unnoticed. This provision “legalized American trade with the Brit-

ish East Indies . . . incidental to the American China trade.” It proved

“of much more advantage to the United States than doubtless either

party realized at the time of making the treaty.”

American merchants

and their counterparts in Vermont along the Champlain–Richelieu

route quickly seized the opportunity.

While the Jay Treaty secured the

northern market for the vast majority of Vermont produce from the west

side of the Green Mountains and across Lake Champlain in the form-

ing settlements in New York, it also greatly accelerated and in important

ways shaped the commercial infrastructure of the Champlain Valley.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

After becoming the fourteenth state in 1791, political life in Vermont

gradually aligned with the developing national Federalist and Republi-

can parties. Nathaniel Chipman, Isaac Tichenor, and some others who

had worked with Alexander Hamilton to achieve Vermont statehood

in 1791 led the Vermont Federalists. They supported a strong national

government, friendly relations with Great Britain, sound  scal policy,

and mercantile, commercial, and shipping interests. They found their

greatest support in the towns on the east side of the Green Mountains,

which generally approved of the Jay Treaty. The opposition, styling

themselves as Democratic–Republicans or simply Republicans, tended

to dominate political life on the west side of the mountains. With a more

rural, agrarian and egalitarian bent, they loathed Britain and enthusias-

tically supported the French Revolution, which they regarded as a  at-

tering re ection of the American struggle for independence and their

own against New York. The “old corps”

of what remained of the Allen–

Chittenden faction who had led the Vermont independence movement

generally supported rising Republican leaders like Israel Smith, Gideon

Olin, Stephen R. Bradley, and Jonas Galusha. They regarded Thomas

Jefferson as their national leader.

Jefferson and Madison, along with a third unidenti ed companion

from Virginia, visited Vermont early in June 1791. The trip hardened

their west side support. The Virginians proceeded north from Lake

George to the ruins at Fort Ticonderoga and another twenty- ve miles

further north down Lake Champlain until head winds forced them to

stop.

They stayed overnight at the inn at Chimney Point and then headed

south to Bennington, where they arrived on Saturday, June 4; toured

the Bennington battle eld; attended church services on Sunday; and

left the next day for the Connecticut River and south to Hartford, Con-

necticut. Jefferson referred to the tour as a “holiday trip” for scienti c

observations, and Madison ostensibly joined him for health, recreation,

and to satisfy his natural curiosity. Jefferson’s botanical curiosity included

the sugar maple, and he arranged to have sixty seedlings sent to Poplar

Forest, his summer residence about ninety miles from Monticello.

The tour observed Vermont politics as well as its  ora. Their Virgin-

ian traveling companion decried with “some uneasiness” electioneering

in Vermont. With a slightly veiled reference to Matthew Lyon, he noted

derisively that a Republican and a declared candidate for Congress

would run against the incumbent Israel Smith, who enjoyed “Republi-

can interest,” the support of the regular Jeffersonians. The traveler

blamed the situation on the existence of “bribery and corruption” and

“low intriguing arts.” That same year the Vermont Gazette charged

Lyon, Governor Chittenden’s son-in-law who operated a foundry in

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Fairhaven, with practicing two arts: “making politics malleable, and the

other the art of selling civil of ces for proxies.”

While sending Ver-

mont  ora south during the holiday excursion and botanical tour, the

Virginians scattered some political seeds in the Green Mountain state.

Not long after Jefferson’s tour, Democratic (or Democratic–

R epublican) Societies began to sprout in the fertile political soil of Ver-

mont’s western counties of Bennington, Rutland, Addison, and Chitten-

den, which then included the territory that would later become Franklin

and Grand Isle counties. Rabidly Anglophobic, the societies trumpeted

their contempt and “enmity” for Britain. The  rst resolution adopted

by “The Associated DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY, in the County of

Chittenden” enumerated the grievances that had brought the United

States to the brink of open hostilities with the British and caused Presi-

dent Washington to dispatch John Jay to negotiate with them. These is-

sues included the maintenance of military posts on the U.S. soil, en-

couraging Indians “to scalp, torture, and murder” frontier settlers, and

a list of maritime problems that included shutting off West Indian trade,

capturing American merchant vessels, and impressing seamen.

The ex-

coriation of Jay and the treaty never mentioned the removal of the

cramping limitations on moving Vermont produce to market in Canada.

While the Jay Treaty made changes along the length of the Canadian–

American boundary, its provisions had the most immediate impact on

Vermont. Article III permitted subjects of either country “to freely

pass and repass by Land and Inland Navigation, into the respective

Territories and Countries of the two Parties on the Continent of Amer-

ica,” except within the “limits” of the Hudson Bay Company, “and to

freely carry on trade and commerce with each other.” They could trade

in “all Goods and Merchandise whose Importation shall not be entirely

prohibited,” a provision that eliminated very few products. The treaty

declared that imported goods “shall be subject to no higher or other

Duties than would be payable” on goods imported by Americans into

the U.S. or by the British into British North America. The treaty did

maintain British mercantile policy at sea by prohibiting American ves-

sels from navigating on the St. Lawrence River.

In Article XIII of the Jay Treaty, presumably unrelated to Canadian–

American commerce, the British agreed to allow American vessels to

“freely carry on a Trade” with the British East Indies provided “that the

Vessels of the United States shall not carry any of the articles exported

. . . to any port or Place, except . . . in America, where they shall be un-

laden.” Article III speci cally permitted passage over the Canadian–

American border of any goods not expressly prohibited from coming

into Canada from Britain. It also settled the matter of allowing the

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

r e-export of Vermont produce to Britain, a practice that violated mer-

cantile law. The re-export trade continued nonetheless through for-

bearance and winking at the regulations, especially because of the Brit-

ish demand for forest products. A close reading of Article XIII, which

allowed American merchants to import goods directly from the British

East Indies to New York, when put together with Article III, allowed

the merchants to re-export these goods to Canada over the Champlain–

Richelieu route.

The popular dislike of the Jay Treaty boomed like a thunderstorm

over much of Vermont, where an observer thought it had “made the

author as famous in London, as Benedict Arnold is infamous in New

London.” Arnold and Jay, he wrote, “had the same object in view, the

sale of their country.” Jay, he concluded, “proved successful in his per-

 dy.”

But he and the public had missed the con uence of Articles III

and XIII. The view of the treaty would soon change, and the outburst

subsided. In a short time the clamor in Vermont about the treaty died

out and the Democratic Societies in Vermont faded away. As Philip S.

Foner notes, “when the [Democratic] Societies lost their campaign

against Jay’s Treaty, they also lost some of their in uence” and as the

apparatus of the Jeffersonian party developed, the Democratic Soci-

eties in Vermont gradually withered.

The British and Canadian merchants initially did not understand the

threat posed by the treaty. Instead, they greeted it with enthusiasm. In

Article III, the British recognized the community of economic interest

with Vermont. They wanted the steady  ow of squared timber, masts

and spars for the navy and maritime interests, and pearl and pot ash for

burgeoning English industries. They also wanted shingles, barrel staves

and heads, pig iron, wheat, salt pork and beef, and other Champlain

Valley agricultural products for the Canadian market. In return they

expected to sell British manufactures, salt, textiles, spirits, and other

products to Vermont that had advantageous costs. The British intended

Article III “to render in great Degree the local advantages of each

Party common to both and thereby promote a disposition favourable to

Friendship and good Neighbourhood.”

The Canadian merchants thought that they owned the “local advan-

tages,” and they urged their government to waste no time in putting the

treaty into effect. In Québec, Lord Dorchester, governor of Canada—

who as General Guy Carleton had led the British incursion in 1776 that

ended shortly after the  ght with Benedict Arnold’s  eet at the Battle

of Valcour Island—concurred. He remarked with some irony that the

treaty would promote the peace and understanding “which now happily

subsist between the two countries.”

South of the border, merchants

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ignored the partisan political din and prepared to take advantage of the

unexpected opportunity created by Jay’s diplomacy.

Jay’s Treaty would become binding on July 1, 1796. Article III, con-

sistent with American trade regulations already in place, required no ac-

tion by the United States. The Canadians who had legal restraints against

goods entering from the United States, unless excepted by Dorchester’s

proclamation allowing the importation of speci c commodities, would

need to act to implement the treaty. In anticipation of the provisions of

the Jay Treaty becoming effective, Dorchester in April 1796 directed

the customs of cer at St. John on the Richelieu River not to seize goods

that the treaty would soon make legal. St. John, at the south end of the

Chambly Rapids, which interrupted navigation on the Richelieu River

between Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River, had become the

natural site to regulate commerce.

Early in May the Legislative As-

sembly of Lower Canada passed “an Act for making temporary provi-

sion for the Regulation of Trade between this Province and the United

States.” The act gave the governor full powers to regulate trade until

January 1, 1797, and from then until its next sitting. As the Legislative

Assembly annually extended this act, the governor with his Legislative

Council exercised full authority over trade from Vermont.

Governor Dorchester turned to his attorney general, Jonathan Sewell,

who in lawyerly fashion, and perhaps with foresight, drafted a complex

order that included a series of new and differential duties on the trade

across the American border. The council strongly objected to any du-

ties on goods entering Canada for transshipment to Britain, a funda-

mental prop of the Canadian merchants. It also concluded that differ-

ential duties might not  t “within the construction of the treaty,” and

asked Sewell to revise the draft.

Dorchester issued Sewell’s revised

draft in an order on July 7, 1796, suspending all previous regulations

and declaring Lower Canada open to American commerce by land and

inland navigation. His order allowed the free export of all goods from

Canada, and the only duties levied on American imports would match

those paid by British subjects on imports through the port of Québec.

His order also required channeling all American imports, whether duti-

able or not, through the lone inland customs house at St. John.

The politically motivated resistance to the treaty quickly quieted

as the residents of the Champlain Valley realized the truth that the

merchants of Montreal and Québec had too slowly begun to fear and

Jonathan Sewell attempted to forestall. When they awakened to the sit-

uation, the attitude of the Canadian merchants abruptly changed, al-

though their complaints never approached the level of protest the

treaty had stirred up in western Vermont. “The British government,”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

they concluded, “has been in many respects actually legislating for the

advantage of America.” They grumbled that “the treaty of 1794 has been

very injurious, and annually becomes more so.” This “disgraceful com-

mercial treaty” ushered in a new era of trade over the Champlain–

Richelieu route and the developing economy of the Champlain Valley.

MOVING GOODS ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN

The Jay Treaty came into effect in the middle of a decade in which

Vermont experienced extraordinary growth. Between the censuses of

1791 and 1800, the state’s population expanded from 80,539 to 154,465,

a growth rate of 91.8 percent. In the Champlain Valley counties of Ad-

dison, Chittenden, and Franklin, population exploded from 13,034 to

32,000, increasing 145.5 percent. The towns in New York on the west

side of Lake Champlain, though lagging Vermont, had also begun a pe-

riod of rapid growth. During the decade from 1801 to 1810, Vermont’s

Champlain Valley population continued to swell, with three counties

along the lake shore, Addison, Chittenden, and Franklin climbing at a

combined rate of 56.2 percent.

With less than one-fourth of the popu-

lation of their Vermont counterparts, the three New York counties along

the lake continued to develop. The burgeoning population and manu-

facturing and agricultural output built local markets and stimulated the

development of transportation and related infrastructure, which in turn

facilitated the pace of settlement and more production.

Before the Jay Treaty, Vermonters had little alternative to Québec

to market the by-product of clearing land and the increasing agricul-

tural surplus. To transport the products to market, they assembled huge

rafts constructed of sawn timber on the river  ats exposed by the low

water levels in the fall. In the winter they constructed rafts on the  ats

and on the ice. In the spring melt the rising water would  oat the rafts

and propel them with the swift current into Lake Champlain, where

they would then begin the slow and dif cult voyage to Québec. They

 oated north with the current, sometimes aided by makeshift sails, to-

ward the Richelieu and St. Lawrence Rivers. This vital trade carried by

rafts came with serious navigation hazards, including the rapids on the

Richelieu River between St. John and Chambly. It also encountered

very dif cult market conditions.

Levi Allen wrote to his brother Ira of the “misfortunes met with on

the rapids” and other “risques.”

Another Vermonter reported his

“boards was all got down [to Québec] but 4 cribs got stuck by a bad

Pilot [and] Some Part was obliged to be unloaded by which means some

of the boards have been lost.”

Guy Catlin, a Burlington merchant,

kept a journal of his experience on a raft  oated out of the Lamoille

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

River in late April 1805. With the aid of a pilot, he managed to negoti-

ate “the rapids at St Johns,” before his real dif culties commenced.

“The wind blowing fresh from the west,” he wrote, the raft “was blown

on the Island an[d] stove [in] one crib of Oak timber. . . . [We] found

our Raft Drifting Down River with only seven hand[s] on board.” His

raft then “ran a foul of Mr. Waterman[’s] raft lying on the west side of

the river and an other on the East which Made a Bridge across” the

Richelieu. To compound Catlin’s woes, a pious of cial boarded the raft

and “forbid doing anything more” to free themselves because of “a

Complaint for breaking the Sabath.” This “occasioned a Dispute” which

ended with “one of the hand[s] giving him a severe glazing.” When Cat-

lin’s raft  nally got to the St. Lawrence River, wind and current drove it

past Québec and onto the Ile D’Orleans, about three miles downstream

from the prime marketplace.

The problems did not disappear when the rafts  nally negotiated the

voyage to Québec. The need for spring  oods to  oat the rafts and carry

“Timber Raft on Lake Champlain,” hand-colored engraving, dated 1831,

by Fenner Sears & Co. (engraver not identified) for publication in John

Howard Hinton’s The History and Topography of the United States of

North America (1831). The image is based on a painting by Thomas

Cole after a sketch he made in 1827. Courtesy of Special Collections,

Bailey/Howe Library, University of Vermont.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

them over the rapids on the Richelieu River landed all of the Vermont

produce at the market at the same time, saturating the market and de-

pressing prices. Traders had to contend with the monopsony of many

sellers chasing a very small number of buyers, referred to by Ira Allen

as “the sharpers at Q __” and “d—d scotch rascals.”

The Canadian

merchants who acted as middlemen for British buyers would often ar-

bitrarily downgrade the quality of the timber, and when it arrived in

Britain, merchants subjected it to further grading and condemnation.

They also charged the Vermonters in ated prices for the goods they

took home in exchange. Catlin punctuated his Journal with a weary and

repetitious recital: “Thursday continued with the Raft. No person as

yet appears to purchase.” The next week he recorded, “Tuesday and

Wednesday attended as usual to the Raft with out  nding anyone to

ask the price of timber.” He continued “from Day to Day without

 nding anyone to purchase it.”

“Without punctuality,” beating most

of the rafts to Québec, the lumber trade was “not worth a continental

dam[n].”

Vermonters would sell at depressed prices, because unsold

timber and boards caused “a great loss” as they “lay in the river over

the winter” deteriorating because “of the frost splitting them.”

Some-

times dry weather added to the dif culties. Levi Allen wrote to Ira, “It

appears obvious very little if any lumber will git to Quebec this season,

Except heavy rains set in soon.”

In 1789 the Reverend Nathan Per-

kins, touring Vermont, concluded that “the rafting business is unpro t-

able for the State and for individuals that undertake it.”

But the pro-

ducers from the Champlain Valley had little choice.

Despite the dif culties, the rafting trade in squared oak and pine tim-

ber, shingles, staves, masts, and spars, and oak, pine, birch, and cherry

boards and planks that had begun haltingly in the late 1760s greatly in-

creased in volume in the 1780s and 1790s. Until the mid-1790s, when

the Jay Treaty took effect, most of the pearl and pot ash produced in

the Champlain Valley also went to market by the barrel on the timber

rafts for re-export to Britain. Pot ash served as a key ingredient in glass,

lye, and soap making, and fertilizer. Bakers used the more re ned and

valuable pearl ash as a leavening agent. Both found an eager market.

The rafts also carried the increasing agricultural surplus to market for

Canadian consumption.

Champlain Valley farmers and merchants sent produce to markets as

far away as Troy and Albany, Portland, Boston, Hartford, New Haven,

and New York. But the majority of their surplus production of wheat,

oats, hops, corn, rye, pease, varieties of seeds, cheese, butter, honey, cat-

tle, oxen, horse, salt beef, and salt pork went to Canada, much of it piled

on rafts. The customs house at St. John entered twenty-two different

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

agricultural products that “found a ready and pro table market” in

Canada. A “great portion” of the agricultural produce “could not be

carried to any other place of sale.”

Canadian merchants re-exported

only pork and wheat in any quantity; they sold the rest in Canada. The

Montreal Gazette regularly carried advertisements for cheese, honey,

beeswax, sole leather, and corn from the Champlain basin. D. A. Grout

proudly announced that he used “Lake Champlain  our” in his Québec

bakehouse.

After the Jay Treaty the patterns of commerce changed dramatically.

Timber continued to travel to Québec on rafts, but a variety of other

products and much of the valuable ash trade went to Montreal, which

quickly eclipsed Québec as the commercial center for the American

trade. While timber rafts continued to carry Champlain Valley produce

into Canada well into the War of 1812 and perhaps a few years after

that, the pressure to carry other goods to the Montreal market spawned

a  eet of lake vessels.

The beginning of the era of commercial shipping on Lake Champlain

coincided almost exactly with Jay’s Treaty. Before rati cation of the

treaty in 1795, only four commercial vessels sailed on the lake. Benja-

min Boardman of Burlington owned a 30-ton sloop (name unknown)

built in 1791. Gideon King of Burlington, who would become known as

the “Admiral of Lake Champlain” because of his extensive shipping in-

terests, owned the 30-ton sloops Dolphin (1793) and Lady Washington

(1795), and Jed Boynton owned the 30-ton sloop Burlington Packet

(1793). By 1800 the  eet had grown by eleven more. When the War of

1812 broke out, builders had launched an additional thirty-one com-

mercial vessels in Lake Champlain, including the second steamboat in

the United States, the 120-foot Vermont, built in Burlington, that went

into service in 1809. Shipwrights in Burlington and Essex, New York

built almost all of the vessels, each sending about half of the lake’s  eet

down the ways.

“Admiral” King, who owned about 40 percent of the

 eet before 1800, not only “controlled and furnished the business for

nearly all the vessels,” but also advanced much of the money to build

them.

The  eet carried products, some passengers, and news north

from a transshipment point at Whitehall at the head of the lake to lake

ports and St. John on the Richelieu River. The goods then moved over-

land from St. John about eighteen miles to Montreal. The vessels re-

turned south over the same route carrying British and some Canadian

goods and fur.

Other forms of transportation augmented the  eet, seasonally lim-

ited by the winter freeze-up. Many of these developments immediately

followed the implementation of the Jay Treaty. By 1797, a regular

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

weekly postal service had begun to operate between Burlington and

Montreal, connecting with service south from Burlington to Albany

and New York and beyond.

The same year the Montreal Gazette an-

nounced a subscription to construct “a Public road proposed to be laid

out from the Province line at Missiskouie Bay to St. Johns” to link with

the road from the south “where a line of stages are established.”

1797, Vermont adopted an act “to Lay out & Survey a Postroad from

Onion [Winooski] River to the Province Line” to improve the old

road.

These roads would tie into a growing network of roads and turn-

pikes linking Burlington and Middlebury with the Connecticut River

Valley and Boston to the southeast and Troy, Albany, and New York

to the south. Both routes had regular stage service by 1807.

Also in 1797, Abija Cheeseman opened an inn (“house of entertain-

ment”) at St. John, from which he rented “Horses and Calashes” and

operated “two good stages which run everyday from St Johns to Laprai-

rie” across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal.

A year later Fran-

cis Duclos inaugurated a ferry service “from St. John’s to Vermont.”

He “opened a House of Entertainment furnished with the best Li-

quors and Provisions at South River ferry Missiskoui Bay,” probably

in Alburgh.

In 1806, two Vermonters “adjacent to the landing at

LAPRAIRIE . . . opened a HOUSE OF ENTERTAINMENT” to

serve “Gentlemen Merchants and others, having property to transport

across the River to Montreal, or to St. John’s.” They supplemented the

usual “custom” of the inn with a daily round-trip stage between St. John

and Montreal and cartage for “POTASH and any other property.”

With the Jay Treaty opening the Canadian market, American mer-

chants needed to conduct business in Montreal. In January 1798, the

Montreal Gazette advertised that “persons wanting to go the United

States, will  nd good opportunity, by applying to Mr. Seth Brown at

Mr. Clarke’s near the Recollet Gate, who has a good covered Sleigh and

a baggage one, with able horses.”

Hugh Gray, an English visitor, ob-

served that “travel from Canada to the United States . . . is not without

its dangers, particularly in the winter; yet with all the inconveniences

attending it, the journey is performed very frequently.” The “Ameri-

cans,” he reported, “are constantly coming to Canada, particularly to

Montreal.”

The introduction of packets on Lake Champlain regular-

ized and improved travel conditions. By 1807, passengers “from Bur-

lington to St. Johns” could expect “a safe trip and pleasant passage in

Packets, 75 M[iles in] from 10 to 24 H[ours]. From St Johns to Lapraire

a stage runs daily, 18 Miles, 3 Hours. From Laprarie to Montreal, a

ferry, 9 Miles, 2 1/2 Hours.”

In 1809, the Vermont ushered in the age

of steam, removed the vagaries of wind, and lopped hours off of travel

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

time over the lake. It could make the lake passage from Whitehall to St.

John in twenty-four hours. Each week the Vermont met “the Southern

stage at Whitehall, and complete[d] the line at St. John’s L.C.” It then

returned to Whitehall with a call at Burlington both coming and going.

STIMULATING ECONOMIC ACTIVITY

Economic activity grew on each side of the lake, spurred by advanc-

ing settlement and augmented by the opportunity presented by the Jay

Treaty. As with the population, the New York side lagged behind Ver-

mont. In 1809, Peter Sailly, collector of customs of the Champlain Dis-

trict, informed the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, that

“there are  ve works on the New York side of the lake where iron is

manufactured.” “There is,” he continued, “an anchor shop of pretty

large scale.” But “we have none but household manufactures of cloth.

There is a number of cording mills, and nail cutting by water machinery

is done to a considerable extent.” He concluded that, except for iron,

“manufacturing here are of little importance.”

A report written the same year on manufacturing in Vermont by a

committee of the General Assembly found very different conditions.

The committee did not even bother to consider forest products and re-

lated by-products or other “branches of mechanical business.” It re-

ported that the Champlain Valley had  fty-nine “clothiers works” and

 fty-two cording machines, which annually produced 487,000 yards of

cotton and linen cloth and 428,000 yards of woolen cloth. The region

also made “hosiery and almost every article usually made from wool,

cotton, or  ax.” While much of this output provided “for the common

use of families” locally, it also provided enough for export. The Cham-

plain Valley produced an exportable surplus of iron in eight blast fur-

naces and twenty-three forges, with the furnace and forge at Vergennes

alone yielding “from 60 to 70 cwt. of pig iron and ware each 24 hours.”

The valley’s  ve paper mills annually produced a surplus for “exporta-

tion.”

These industries often found their export market in Canada un-

der the terms of the Jay Treaty.

While the Canadian merchants hoped the Jay Treaty would increase

their re-export of British goods to the United States, in practice it worked

the other way, allowing American merchants to compete with the Brit-

ish on the Canadian market, and, in some cases, capture it. Slowly after

July 1, 1796, when the terms of the Jay Treaty went into effect, an in-

creasing number and volume of American manufactured goods poured

into Canada. Products previously prohibited from entering Canada

traveled there over the Champlain-Richelieu route. From the found-

ries at Whitehall came saw and grist mill irons; from New York came

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Gowland’s Lotion for eruptions in the face and the Essence of Mus-

tard a speci c for Rheumatism, as well as tobacco, ribbons, leather

goods, candles, and assorted dry goods”; from Boston came shawls,

“silk and velvet ladies ware,” leather, plumes, combs, ribbons, umbrellas,

and shoes; and from Philadelphia came clothes, jewelry, furniture, and

“handicrafts of the Pennsylvania Germans.” Before 1797, very few ad-

vertisements for American goods “lately received” appeared in the

Montreal Gazette. After that they appeared in all seasons.

In the

winter, when the ice closed water-borne shipping, sleighs laden with

American manufactured goods came to Montreal from as far away as

Boston.

In 1799, the commercial syndicate of Caldwell, Van Ingen, & Caldwell

in Albany and Caldwell & Fraser in Montreal established a “Manufac-

tory” in Albany. The enterprise produced or processed “Tobacco of all

kinds, Snuff, Chocolate, Mustard, Starch, Hair Powder, Hull’d Barley,

and Split peas.”

The Montreal branch of the  rm carried on an espe-

cially large business in tobacco. The “Manufactory” in Albany sent quan-

tities of carrot tobacco in three sizes, pigtail tobacco, chewing twist,

Scotch snuff,  ne-cut smoking tobacco in three different sizes, and

common-cut smoking tobacco in two sizes.

Before 1796, British ships

carried all of the manufactured tobacco brought into Canada at Qué-

bec, except any smuggled from the United States. The Jay Treaty dra-

matically changed this. Soon after 1796, the customs house at St. John

entered increasing quantities of manufactured tobacco, and within a

decade almost 100 percent of the importation of the product entered

Canada over the Champlain–Richelieu route, demonstrated by the total

absence of tobacco products entered at Québec soon after 1796.

Even with timber, pearl and pot ash, and agricultural commodities

continuing to  oat on rafts into Canada in large amounts, the trade in

American manufactures, non-existent before 1796, constituted nearly

one half (44 percent) of the trade with Canada in 1807.

When the

Americans, adding to the export of their own products, began to re-

e xport goods from British colonies over the Champlain–Richelieu

route, the Canadians observed with dismay that the competition from

the United States had increased “to a considerable Magnitude, and

sundry articles are daily brought in from thence, which are the Produce

& Manufacture of the East & West Indies.”

Canadian merchants com-

plained of the “Rivalship of trade” the Jay Treaty introduced in “Teas

and all kinds of East India Goods.” They correctly feared it would vir-

tually “exclude all importations of that kind of trade from the Mother

Country.” It especially vexed them that “by inland navigation, the

American[s] may bring Brandies and Wines into Canada, which British

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

subjects are prohibited to import from places of their growth,” as the

trade and navigation laws required that British merchants endure the

cost of  rst taking them to Britain before re-exporting them to Can-

ada.

American merchants could now legally circumvent the monopoly

that had protected high prices on goods imported by the British East

India Company. The Montreal merchants despaired at the situation,

and they bitterly complained that “the treaty has been very injurious,

and annually becomes more so . . . as it affords a monopoly to the States

in supplying the two Provinces [Upper and Lower Canada] with Teas,

Cotton, and other East Indian Commodities, as well as Articles of for-

eign European Production.”

The Jay Treaty, as the Canadians noted with resignation, also af-

fected goods imported from other parts of the world than the British

East Indies. On the popular commodity of rum, a staple in the taverns

and the fur trade, the British attached a 9d. per gallon tariff on rum that

shipped from the British West Indies. But they levied a duty of only 3d.

per gallon on rum shipped from England. Because of the trans-Atlantic

transportation costs, rum coming through Britain could not compete.

Rum coming from the West Indies or American distilleries directly into

Canada over the Champlain–Richelieu route and paying 3d. per gallon,

as speci ed by the “most favored nation” provision in the Jay Treaty,

captured the market.

American merchants did not ignore opportunities and made the most

of these new regulations. A wide variety of goods brought to American

ports from the far corners of the world made their way north over the

Champlain–Richelieu route and appeared in Canadian warehouses and

on the shelves of Canadian shopkeepers. In 1794–95, before the Jay

Treaty, the customs house at St. John listed only thirty-two items other

than wood products. By 1800 that number had climbed to seventy, and

in 1807 it exceeded 110.

Montreal merchants such as Joseph Provan,

James Caldwell, Horatio Gates, George Kittson, Thomas Schief ier, and

James Dunlop advertised a host of goods “lately received from New

York,” including capers, olives, almonds, raisins, lemons, limes, wines,

rum, cordials, Holland gin, anchovies, chocolate, “Spanish segars,” In-

dia cotton, Russian and Scotch sheeting, and Irish linens. The customs

house at St. John even recorded the passage of a lion from the United

States into Canada.

James Dunlop received “from Canton, via New

York Four Quarter Chests” of a variety of teas.

H. Caritat, a New York

bookseller, traveled to Montreal to sell his inventory of books from

France, and John Jacob Astor and his agents, who had operated in

Montreal since 1787, much of it illegally in smuggling fur, maintained a

warehouse in Montreal and traded in tea, probably imported from

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

China where he sold fur.

In many cases merchants in Burlington and

some other Champlain Valley towns assumed the position of middle-

men in this re-export trade.

While these goods poured into Canada over the Champlain–Richelieu

route, their importation at Québec came to a halt. The absence of com-

plete import records makes estimation of the competitive effect of the

Jay Treaty dif cult to measure. The full returns at Québec for 1805

show that no tea, chocolate, nankeens, nor spices entered through the

St. Lawrence. Instead, the customs house at St. John listed all of these

products with tea alone accounting for about 90 percent of their mone-

tary value.

The  ow of goods north, the growing commercial partnerships, and

the improved transportation provided stimulus for the reverse trade.

Before the Jay Treaty, settlers in the Champlain Valley obtained many

supplies from Canada, most of it re-exported from Britain. Salt, mill-

stones, iron stoves, and other hardware, all too inexpensive in relation

to their weight and bulk to be transported pro tably from the Hudson

or across the Green Mountains from Boston, constituted the most im-

portant part of the trade. But Canadian merchants also sold spirits,

dry goods, glass, paint, earthenware, wine, red lead, plaster of Paris,

gunpowder, feathers, horses, and  sh oil and  sh to Champlain Valley

settlers.

Salt, mostly from Liverpool, always a staple in the Champlain Val-

ley’s imports from Canada, remained the most important non-fur im-

port from Canada after the Jay Treaty. One British traveler noted that

“the Vermontese depend wholly on that country [Canada] for their

supply of salt.” The Vermont Centinal frequently carried notices by

Burlington merchants such as Newell & Russell, Jewett & Moore, and

Peaslee & Haswell for the “Best Liverpool Salt.” Of the  fty-three ves-

sels with cargoes from Lower Canada that docked in Burlington be-

tween June 1805 and November 1807, thirty carried salt.

The Canadi-

ans also sent quantities of  sh, which after 1796 lagged only the value of

salt in exports to Burlington. In the eighteen-month period after June

1805, one-third of the vessels arriving from St. John carried  sh, and

ads for “shad, just received from Canada” or “A Quantity of Excellent

LIVER OIL,” often appeared in the Vermont Centinal.

Many other

products joined the salt and  sh, in much less value. One sloop from

St. John entered the customs house at Champlain on the New York

side of the lake carrying the most weighty item of the trade, an elephant

valued at $100.

The development of transportation on Lake Champlain after 1795

that permitted the  ood of American products and other products

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

i mported though American Atlantic ports to reach Canada, also stimu-

lated northbound commerce. As Canadian merchants had feared, this

reversed the commerce that had previously gone from Québec to Ver-

mont paid for by the sale of products rafted to Canada. After the Jay

Treaty took effect, the customs house at St. John, with the exception of

the special case of fur, recorded very little increase in the value of ex-

ports to the United States. It reported £4,000 of non-fur exports in 1794,

two years before the Jay Treaty went into effect, and only £4,600 in

1800, four years after the treaty. Even with the robust economy of the

early 1800s, St. John listed the value of non-fur exports as only slightly

over £9,000 in 1807.

When the Jay Treaty began to operate it reversed the balance of

trade going through St. John. In 1795, Canada maintained a favorable

balance, but by 1797, the advantage in payments had turned com-

pletely around. The United States achieved a very favorable balance at

St. John that grew to £40,000 by 1800, when the value of commerce

moving north into Canada exceeded the southbound  ow by ten times.

The imbalance created dif culties for shippers to  nd cargoes heading

south from Canada.

The Americans carried much of their favorable

balance of trade “out of Canada in cash.” In Québec the merchants

complained of “a serious and growing evil to the province,” especially

because of “the gold and silver . . . carried out of the province, the

amount of which rises annually.” They laid the blame squarely on the

Jay Treaty, for the “regulations of commerce with the States; an evil

which calls for redress, as those regulations, without being for the gen-

eral interest of the empire, serve only to cramp commercial exertion of

his majesty’s subjects.”

Of the variety of coins in circulation in Can-

ada, the Americans preferred the Spanish dollar, which they used in the

China and British East Indies trade. Hugh Gray, a British traveler who

lived in Canada for several years in the  rst decade of the nineteenth

century, concluded that “there does not appear any way of preventing

this drain of circulating medium while the trade remains on its present

footing.”

The commercial regulations that put them at a disadvantage

with their American counterparts, who only a short time before they had

called rebels and had fought, made the price of loyalty appear very high.

Even the sudden emergence of fur exports going directly from Can-

ada to the United States did not redress the trade imbalance. After 1796,

when the imperial regulations requiring merchants to ship fur to Brit-

ain before re-exporting it to the United States were lifted, fur quickly

became a dominant part of the commerce moving south over the

Champlain–Richelieu route. In fact, it became the single most valuable

sector of the commerce moving in either direction. Since the seventeenth

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

century, French and Indians had smuggled fur south through this corri-

dor to the Dutch and later the English at Albany. The clandestine trade

set up to avoid the imperial monopoly centered in Paris thrived. Not

long after the Treaty of Paris formally ended the American Revolution

in 1783, John Jacob Astor sent a man to Montreal to purchase fur, even

though the British still prohibited its shipment to anywhere but Lon-

don.

The evidence suggests that Astor maintained this trade illicitly.

In the late 1780s he began trips to Montreal in the late summer and

early fall of every year to arrange to purchase and ship fur. At Platts-

burgh, Astor lodged with Peter Sailly, an early settler, prominent local

merchant, and later collector of customs for the Champlain District.

The lake sloop Lady Washington, owned by “Admiral” Gideon King of

Burlington, another of Astor’s agents, was launched in 1795, the year

before the Jay Treaty legalized the direct exportation of fur to the

United States. The sloop had a notorious false bulkhead and a record

of smuggling.

In late September 1788, Astor bought $2,000 worth of fur and “of -

cially” had them shipped to New York via London, in strict conformity

with trade law.

Less than a month later, well short of the time required

for two trans-Atlantic voyages, Astor advertised in New York that he

had “a quantity of Canada Furs, such as beaver, beaver coating, rac-

coon skins, raccoon blankets, and spring muskrat skins.”

The next

year Astor returned to Montreal and contracted for $15,000 worth of

muskrat skins.

Because the rampant practice of smuggling fur from Canada directly

to the U.S. had existed for well over a century, the Jay Treaty may not

have drastically changed the situation when the trade became legal.

The extent of the commerce may simply have become more visible. In

1798, almost £10,000 worth of fur went to the United States through

St. John, amounting to 70 percent of the value of the entire southbound

commerce. By 1800, the value of the fur exported from Canada directly

to the U.S. had jumped to over £22,300, which made up about 85 per-

cent of the value of the exports recorded at the St. John customs house.

In seven more years the value of the trade had more than tripled to

£75,000. The immediate success and rapid growth of the fur sector indi-

cated its highly pro table nature and suggested that it built on an illicit

trade developed well before the Jay Treaty.

The customs returns at St. John single out Astor, Gideon King, and

other Lake Champlain shippers who frequently carried cargoes that in-

cluded fur. Astor and others re-exported some of the fur from New

York “direct to China,” where, along with Spanish dollars, it consti-

tuted a staple in the growing American commerce with the Far East.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

These traders would return to the United States with British East In-

dian goods, some of which would eventually make their way through

the Champlain–Richelieu route to Canada.

A growing community of interest developed along the route as com-

mercial relations increased and the transportation improved. After 1796,

a number of American merchants migrated to Montreal, where they

engaged in the sale of British East Indies products, American manufac-

tures and new staples.

James Caldwell, part of a larger mercantile

concern, came from Albany.

Vermonter Horatio Gates became one

of the leading merchants in Montreal, a founder of the Bank of Mon-

treal and a member of the Legislative Council of Lower Canada.

Older,

well-established American  rms made alliances with other  rms and

opened new of ces. Caldwell was a partner in both an American and a

Canadian consortium.

Bellows & Gates of Montreal announced a

“connection with the Boston  rm of Bellows, Cardis and Jones.”

Mon-

treal merchants engaged in the trade over the Champlain–Richelieu route

included Joseph Provan, James Dunlop, Thomas Schief eu, George

Kittson, Henry Richard Symes, Jonathan Hazen, Lewis Lyman & Co.,

McLean & Buckley, Fraser and Sanford, James Laing & Co., and G.G.

Lester & Co. In Burlington alone, these merchants did business with

Gideon King, Moses and Guy Catlin, Samuel Fitch & Co., the  rm of

E.H. Deming, L. Tousey, G. Buel, and Horace Loomis, Peaslee & Has-

well, Jewett & Moore, and Newell & Russell.

Enterprising Americans operated inns and stage lines in Canada, and

in Québec a group of American boarding house managers made their

greatest pro ts in the spring when the timber rafts arrived.

Numerous

American tradesmen and artisans—tailors, saddlers, masons, and

lumbermen—found employment north of the border.

In Montreal,

Bellows & Gates sold tickets for the “Harvard College Lottery with the

possibility of winning $20,000 and a number of other capital prizes.”

James Caldwell proudly and publicly announced the marriage of his

daughter in both Montreal and Albany.

The community of interest

that developed around business relationships and extended into public

services and social matters would soon transcend trade regulations, in-

ternational tensions, and even war.

THE JAY TREATY AND THE AMERICAN ADVANTAGE

Prior to Jay’s Treaty, as settlement took hold in the Champlain Valley

and particularly in the Vermont counties in Lake Champlain’s water-

shed, residents marketed timber and forest products, and, gradually,

agricultural surplus on large rafts  oated down the lake and through the

Richelieu River to Québec. In return, the Americans used the proceeds

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

to purchase from Canadian merchants goods they took back to Ver-

mont. The Canadian merchants had the commercial whip hand, and

they enjoyed a favorable balance of trade. After the American Revolu-

tion, an international boundary placed British mercantile regulations

between the United States and Canada. With Canadian permission and

implicit British approval, Americans could market only forest products

and a small number of other goods enumerated in a proclamation is-

sued by the governor of Canada. The British mercantile regulations

placed no prohibitions on British goods the Canadian merchants could

export to the United States, however, and the Canadian trade advan-

tage grew. The Allens and others in the Champlain Valley with timber

and produce to market chafed under the regulations. This motivated

the Allens to initiate renewed negotiations with Canadian authorities

in the 1780s. At the same time, a signi cant illicit movement of fur from

Canada, primarily from Montreal,  owed to the United States,  outing

the British regulations that required that all fur go directly to the

mother country. In the 1790s, rapid population growth in the Cham-

plain Valley and expanding agricultural production and markets gener-

ated the demand for improved transportation and related infrastruc-

ture. These developments placed increasing pressure to overcome, or

illicitly by-pass, imperial restrictions on trade with Canada.

The Jay Treaty, rati ed by the U.S. Senate in 1795, took real effect in

1796, drastically altering the rules governing Canadian–American in-

land and lake-borne trade. The pattern of commerce suddenly and dra-

matically changed. Americans could legally export a full range of prod-

ucts and manufactured goods to Canada, paying no higher duties than

the British. They could also carry products from the British East In-

dies directly to New York and other American Atlantic ports, and

transport them over the Champlain–Richelieu route for sale in Canada.

The treaty permitted the legal import of fur directly from Canada to

the United States. Jay’s Treaty suddenly tore down the dam of British

mercantilism, and the commerce began to  ow north in a widening

stream. Beginning in 1796 and accelerating in the decade that fol-

lowed, the balance of trade with Canada reversed. East Indies goods

and products like rum and tobacco entered Canada through St. John

and no longer in British ships at Québec. John Jacob Astor and others

increased the imports of fur directly into the United States, merchants

formed international alliances, Montreal replaced Québec as the center

for trade with the United States (except for the rafted forest products),

and the ship-building industry on Lake Champlain began in earnest.

These changes all pivoted in 1796–97, an in ection point created by the

treaty.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The pattern introduced by the Jay Treaty would grow and strengthen.

When, in violation of the Jay Treaty (the sovereign law of the land, a

point that no one made), President Jefferson introduced the embargo

in late 1807 and extended it early the next year to the inland and

lake trade with Canada, the merchants and producers found ways to

evade the restrictions. Even the prosecution of the War of 1812 in the

Champlain Valley could not stem the trade with a declared enemy in

Canada.

The “disgraceful commercial treaty” signed by John Jay introduced

an era of prosperity into the commerce of the Champlain–Richelieu

route and systems of trade that would not dissolve until the depletion

of American forest products ended the rafting tradition, more restric-

tive post-War of 1812 Canadian regulations made the trade more dif -

cult and less pro table, and the opening of the Champlain Canal con-

necting the lake to the Hudson River in 1823 allowed the creation of

new markets. During the two decades with its provisions in full force,

the once-hated Jay Treaty recon gured and accelerated commercial

life in the Champlain Valley.

NOTES

Samuel Flagg Bemis, Jay’s Treaty: A Study in Commerce and Diplomacy (New Haven and Lon-

don: Yale University Press, rpt. of 1923 edition), 355. Bemis prints the text of the Jay Treaty in Ap-

pendix B.

The Hudson River, Lake Champlain, and the Richelieu River, with overland carries between

the Hudson River to Whitehall, New York, at the head of the lake and from St. John on the Riche-

lieu River to Laprairie on the St. Lawrence River opposite Montreal, formed the water route con-

necting New York and Montreal. This article uses the term “Champlain–Richelieu route” to refer

to the entire route.

Daniel Chipman, The Life of Hon. Nathaniel Chipman, LL.D. (Boston: Charles C. Little and

James Brown, 1846), 37.

Eliakim P. Walton, ed., Records of the Governor and Council of Vermont, 8 vols. (Montpelier:

J. & J. Poland, 1873–1880), 4: Appendix A, “Vermont in 1791, As Viewed By a Virginian,—No

Slavery,” 423–424. See also Vermont Historical Society, “Jefferson in Vermont,” In Context: Ver-

mont Historical Society News and Notes, 3, (Spring 1999): 2.

Kyle Scanlon, “The Dark Side of Maple Sugaring,” Livin’ The Vermont Way, 1 (March/April

2005): 11.

Governor and Council, 4: 423–424: and Aleine Austin, Matthew Lyon: “New Man” of the Dem-

ocratic Revolution, 1749–1822 (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University, 1981),

chapter 6.

Philip S. Foner, ed., The Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790–1800: A Documentary Source-

book of Constitutions, Addresses, Resolutions, and Toasts (Westport, Ct. and London: Greenwood

Press, 1967), 273, 279, 283.

Bemis, Jay’s Treaty, Appendix B.

Ibid., 355, and 469–471. Bemis mentions the importance of Article XIII, but he does not link it

to Article III. He wrote that Article XIII “proved to be of much more advantage to the United

States than doubtless either party recognized at the time of making the treaty.” This implicitly as-

serts that Jay, the son of a mercantile family, with vast legal experience, and a reputation for

shrewdness, did not recognize the loophole. Alexander DeConde, Entangling Alliance: Politics and

Diplomacy under George Washington (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1958); Joseph

Charles, The Origins of the American Party System (New York: Harper and Row, 1961); and other

treatments of the diplomacy and politics of the 1790s do not link Articles III and XIII. Walter

Stahr, John Jay (New York and London: Hambleton and London, 2005), who published the best

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

modern work on Jay, in a letter to the author of May 2, 2005, indicated he could “not think of any-

thing that proves Jay was well aware of the possibilities of trade across the St. Lawrence” generated

by Article XIII, though he thought it possible Jay “was friendly with one of those [merchants] . . .

involved at least the US-Canada trade.” The reasons why the British accepted Article XIII that

proved so prejudicial to Canadian and British merchants remain obscure. Gerald S. Graham, Sea

Power and British North America, 1783–1820 (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1941),

163, cites no evidence, but assumes it was a “technical oversight,” as “it was undoubtedly assumed

by the British government that there would be no re-export.” Holden Furber, “The Beginnings of

American Trade with India, 1784–1812,” New England Quarterly, 11 (June 1938): 245, remarks that

Article XIII re ected “the willingness of the British government to be accommodating about what

they considered a minor point in the negotiations.” This suggests a British ignorance of North

American geography. Their previous oversights accounted for several points that the Jay Treaty

recti ed. No doubt, more than a “technical oversight” accounts for the provisions that allowed

American merchants to access the Canadian market with products from the British East Indies.

Stephen Thorn to Robert Woodworth, 15 March 1797, quoted in James Benjamin Wilbur, Ira

Allen, Founder of Vermont, 1751–1814, 2 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mif in Company,

1928), 2: 116.

Foner, The Democratic-Republican Societies, 38.

Lord Portland, Secretary of State, to John Graves Simcoe, Lt. Governor of Upper Canada, in

E. A. Cruikshank, ed., The Correspondence of Lieut. Governor John Graves Simcoe, 5 vols. (To-

ronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1923–1931), 3: 185.

National Archives of Canada (hereafter NA), Q, LXXV, part 2, 271, Dorchester to Portland,

Quebec, 30 April 1796.

Ibid., R.G. 1, El, B, 282, Thos. Aston Cof n to Patrick Conroy, 25 April 1796. Contemporary

sources refer to “St. John’s,” “St. John,” and, occasionally “St. Jean” (the term now in use in fran-

cophone Québec.). Unless directly quoted otherwise, this article uses the term “St. John.”

Province of Lower Canada, The Provincial Statutes (Quebec, 1796), 1:214, 36

Geo. III cap.

VII, 7 May 1796; and ibid., 2: 2, 32–34, 50, 174; 3: 12, 88, 190–192, 248; 4: 16, 152–154, 388–390; and

5: 46–48, 140.

NA, R.G. 1, E1, B, 303–305.

NA, CO 42/12, 392 m (micro lm); Report of the Canadian Archives, 1921, Appendix B, 34–41;

and Province of Lower Canada, Order of the Governor and Council of 7th July 1796 (Quebec, 1796).

David Anderson, Canada: or, a View of the importance of the British American Colonies (Lon-

don: J.M. Richardson, 1814), 7.

For easy reference to the decennial population of Vermont by counties and the  ve largest

towns see Michael Sherman, Gene Sessions, and P. Jeffrey Potash, Freedom and Unity: A History of

Vermont (Barre, Vt.: Vermont Historical Society, 2004) Appendices A and B.

Levi Allen to Ira Allen, 16 June 1785, in Wilbur, Ira Allen, 1: 490; and Levi Allen to Ira Allen,

11 October 1788 in ibid., 1: 508–509.

John Stevens to Ira Allen, 15 June 1789, Allen MSS, Special Collections, Bailey-Howe Li-

brary, University of Vermont (hereafter UVM).

Guy Catlin, Journal for Lower Canada, 1805, Catlin MSS, UVM.

Constantine Alonzo (Levi Allen) to Ira Allen, 3 May 1789, Allen MSS, UVM; and Levi Allen

to Ira Allen, 11 October 1788, in Wilbur, Ira Allen, 1: 508–509.

Catlin, Journal, 180, Catlin MSS, UVM; H. Nicholas Muller III, “Floating a Lumber Raft to

Quebec City, 1805: The Journal of Guy Catlin of Burlington,” Vermont History, 39 (Spring 1971):

116–124; and David Kendall Martin, ed. (with transcription and annotation by Fuller Allen), The

Journal of William Gilliland (Plattsburgh, N.Y.: Clinton County Historical Association, 1997), 81.

Levi Allen to Fraser & Young, 4 May 1787, Allen MSS, UVM.

John Stevens to Ira Allen, 11 October 1789, Ibid.

Levi Allen to Ira Allen, 18 August, 1786, Ibid.

Nathan Perkins, A Narrative of a Tour Through The State of Vermont (Rutland: Charles Tuttle

Company, 1964), 33.

Vermont Centinel, 22 April 1808.

Montreal Gazette, 25 December 1797, 1 May 1801, 4 February 1807, and 13 April 1807.

Abby Maria Hemenway, ed., The Vermont Historical Gazetteer, 5 vols. (various places: 1862–

1882), 1: 670, prints a list compiled by Thomas H. Can eld, with the help of retired Lake Champlain

captains, “of vessels built on Lake Champlain from 1790 to the time of the last war, say 1815.”

Ralph Nading Hill, Two Centuries of Ferry Boating (Burlington: Lake Champlain Transportation

Co., 1972), 72,  lled in the Can eld list with steam powered vessels. George F. McNulty, a prodi-

gious researcher, who compiled the most complete list of vessels built and plying Lake Champlain

between 1791 and 1814, added a number to the Can eld enumeration. Letter of 8 September 2005

to the author.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hemenway, Vermont Historical Gazetteer, 1: 670n.

Montreal Gazette, 16 January 1797.

Ibid., 6 November 1797.

Vermont, Governor and Council, 3: 135.

Vermont Centinel, 23 September 1807, 7 July 1807, and 18 August 1807; Walter Hill Crockett,

Vermont: The Green Mountain State, 5 vols. (New York: The Century History Company, 1921–

1923), 2: 521; and G. P. deT. Glazebrook, A History of Transportation in Canada, 2 vols. (Toronto

and Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1964), 1: 134.

Montreal Gazette, 7 August 1797; and Hemenway, Vermont Historical Gazetteer, 2: 496.

Montreal Gazette, 20 March 1798.

Vermont Centinel, 2 July 1806.

Montreal Gazette, 22 January 1798.

Hugh Gray, Letters from Canada, Written during a Residence There in the Years 1806, 1807,

and 1808 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809), 272–276.

Montreal Advertiser, no date, advertisement dated Windsor, Vt., June 1807.

David J. Blow, “VERMONT I, Lake Champlain’s First Steamboat,” Vermont History, 33

(Spring 1966): 115–122.

Sailly to Secretary of the Treasury, 7 September 1809, in Peter S. Palmer, History of Lake

Champlain, from Its First Exploration by the French in 1609 to the Close of the Year 1814 (Albany,

N.Y.: J. Munsell, 1866), 173n–174n.

Governor and Council, 5, Appendix 1, 500–501, “Domestic Manufactures in Vermont—1809.”

The report breaks out the data by counties. The term “Champlain Valley” includes the  ve counties

in the Lake Champlain watershed: Rutland, Addison, Chittenden, Franklin, and Grand Isle.

Marcus A. McCorison, “Vermont Papermaking, 1784–1820,” Vermont History, 31 (Fall 1963):

209–245.

Montreal Gazette, January 1798, 3 December 1798, 20 May 1799, 11 August 1799, 4 November

1799, 5 January 1807, 6 April 1807, and 30 November 1807.

George Heriot, Travels Through the Canadas (London: Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1807),

51.

Montreal Gazette, 18 November 1799.

Ibid., 4 November 1799, and 9 June 1800.

Lower Canada, Journals of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada (hereafter Journals) re-

corded the annual import of manufactured tobacco and snuff at the customs house at St. John. See

Lower Canada, Journals 1802, 166, Journals 1803, 68, Journals 1804, 130, Journals 1806, 184–186,

Journals 1807, 230–232, Journals 1808, 262–264, Journals 1809, Appendix A, and Journals 1811,

Appendices A6 and B6.

NA, S, XXVII, 7; LVIa, 5; ibid., LXIV, 114–116; LIX, 105; Gray, Letters, 180–181; and Jour-

nals 1808, 646–651.

Lt.-Governor Russell to Duke of Portland, 17 July 1798, in Harold A. Innis and A. R. M.

Lower, eds., Select Documents in Canadian Economic History, 1783–1885 (Toronto: University of

Toronto Press, 1933), 322.

NA. M.G. 23, A 2, IX, 149.

Ibid., Q-109, 236–248, “Memorial of the Montreal Merchants to Lord Castlereagh,” 29 May

1809.

Graham, Sea Power, 124.

NA, CO 47/80 (micro lm); S, LVIa, 5; S, XXVII, 7; and Journals 1807, 646–651.

Montreal Gazette, 3 December 1798, 4 November 1799, 20 May 1800, 8 August 1800, 27 Octo-

ber 1800, 3 November 1800, and 4 February 1804.

Ibid., 9 June 1800.

Kenneth Wiggins Porter, John Jacob Astor: Business Man, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard

University Press, 1931), 1: 65.

Burlington, Inspector of Customs, Records, 1805–1809, Haswell MSS, UVM.

NA, S, LXII, 104. See Gray, Letters, 189–190; and John Lambert, Travels through Canada and

the United States in the Years 1806, 1807, & 1808, 2 vols. (London, Edinburgh, and Dublin: Doig and

Sterling, 1814), 1: 101.

NA, CO, 47/80 (micro lm); S, LXVI, 114–116; S, LIX, 104; S, LVI-a, 5; S, II, 81; Burlington,

Inspector of Customs, Records, 1805–1809, Haswell MSS, UVM; Journals 1807, 546–551; Gray, Let-

ters, 182; and National Archives of the United States, R.G. 17, G.A.O., Revenue Letters Sent, 8:

331, “J.S. to David Russell, Tres. Dep’t, Comptroller’s Of ce, 17 November 1798.”

Lambert, Travels, 1: 103–104; Vermont Centinel, 20 August 1806, 27 August 1806, and 13 July

1807; Receipts, 27 August 1803, Catlin, MSS, UVM; and Burlington, Inspector of Customs, Re-

cords, 1805–1809, Haswell, MSS, UVM.

See 13 August 1806.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The manifest quoted in D. H. Hurd, History of Clinton and Franklin Counties, New York

(Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis, 1880), 47.

H. N. Muller III, “The Commercial History of the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River Route,

1760–1815” (Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1968), 197.

Inspector of Customs, Records, 1805–1809, Haswell MSS, UVM, Burlington.

A.T. to the editor of the Quebec Mercury, 1 December 1806; and ibid., 5 January 1807, quoted

in Innis and Lower, Select Documents, 371.

Gray, Letters, 183.

Porter, Astor, 1: 23–25.

Ibid., 1: 30: and George S. Bixby, Peter Sailly (1754–1826), A Pioneer of the Champlain Valley

with Extracts from His Diary and Letters (Albany: New York State Library History Bulletin #12,

1919). Plattsburgh did not round off its name with an “h” until the twentieth century.

Hemenway, Vermont Historical Gazetteer, 1: 669; and Walter Hill Crockett, A History of Lake

Champlain (Burlington: Hobart J. Shanley & Co., 1909), 291.

U.S. Congress, American State Papers, Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress

of the United States, 38 vols. (Washington: United States Congress, 1832–1834), 1: 269.

New York Packet, 29 October 1788.

Porter, Astor, 1: 360–3.

NA, CO 47/80 (micro lm); S, XXVII, 7; S, LVI –a, 5; and Journals 1808, 646–651.

NA, S, LVI-a, 5.

Donald Grant Creighton, The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, 1760–1850 (Toronto:

The Ryerson Press, 1937), 147.

Montreal Gazette, 4 November 1799, 9 June 1800, and 22 June 1801.

Burlington Free Press, 8 April 1834; and Adam Shortt, “Founders of Canadian Banking,”

Journal of the Canadian Banker’s Association, 30 (January 1923): 154–166.

Montreal Gazette, 18 November 1799.

Vermont Centinel, 29 June 1810.

Statement of G.G. Lester & Co., Catlin, MSS, UVM; and Montreal Gazette, 4 November 1799,

9 June 1800, 11 August 1800, 3 November 1800, 25 May 1801, 5 January 1807, 4 February 1807, 6

April 1807, and 13 April 1807.

Vermont Centinel, 2 July 1806; Chilton Williamson, Vermont in Quandary, 1763–1825 (Mont-

pelier: Vermont Historical Society, 1949), 251; Marcus Lee Hansen, completed and prepared for

publication by John Bartlett Brebner, The Mingling of the Canadian and American People (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 77; and Jeremy Cockloft, Cursory Observations Made in Que-

bec Province of Lower Canada in the Year 1811 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1960), 26.

NA, S, Declarations of Aliens, 1792–1811; and Williamson, Vermont in Quandary, 251–252.

Montreal Gazette, 6 April 1807. The sum of $20,000 seems so high as to suggest a misprint.

Ibid., 22 June 1801.

See H. N. Muller III, “Smuggling into Canada: How the Champlain Valley De ed Jefferson’s

Embargo,” Vermont History, 38 (Winter 1970): 5–21; and H. N Muller III, “ ‘A Traitorous and Dia-

bolical Traf c’: The Commerce of the Champlain-Richelieu Corridor during the War of 1812,” Ver-

mont History, 44 (Spring 1976): 78–96.