The Aroostook War was an undeclared 1838-39 conflict between Maine and New Brunswick over contested territory in the Aroostook Valley (now Maine). It was resolved peacefully, with no violence or bloodshed.
The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution and established the United States as an independent nation, was vague on a number of boundary questions. One of these disputed regions was the Aroostook area north of the St. Croix River, a 12,000-square-mile piece of sparsely settled but timber-rich land, larger than the entire state of Massachusetts. The region was claimed by both the U. S. state of Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Neither of the central governments of Britain or the United States was much concerned about the inexactitude of the area’s official borderline—after all, it took more than half a century for the matter to come to any sort of a head. But to local residents, especially after Maine achieved statehood in 1820, the boundary question was one of national importance and a matter of state honor. In an era when states’ rights had come to the fore, this question demanded important consideration. In fact, it was Mainers’ indignation over the national government’s failure to resolve the Aroostook dispute that very nearly drove them to violence.
The new state of Maine had begun to grant parcels to settlers in the Aroostook Valley after 1820, despite New Brunswick’s claim to the land. When Canadian lumberjacks began logging the area in the winter of 1838-39, the dispute finally boiled over. A Maine land agent, Rufus Mclntire, attempted to send the Canadians home, and the loggers seized him in February 1839. That was enough for Maine to raise a 10,000-man militia and send it marching north. New Brunswick called up its own militia. The U. S. Congress authorized $10 million in spending for a 50,000-man contingent, and dispatched General WiNFlELD ScOTT to Maine.
Scott quickly managed to negotiate a truce, and by March 1839—before any U. S. troops had had a chance to arrive, much less engage in battle—the “Bloodless Aroostook War” was over. But it was not until the WEBSTER-AsHBURTON Treaty (1842) that the border question was settled. In the end, more than half of the disputed territory was awarded to Maine, and both the United States and New Brunswick were given navigation rights on the St. John River. New Brunswick retained the northern part of the territory, thus preserving communication routes among the eastern Canadian provinces. Britain agreed to pay $150,000 to Maine and to Massachusetts for their lost land, and the U. S. federal government was to reimburse those states for the funds they had spent on the region’s defense.
Further reading: Clarence A. Day, Aroostook: The First Sixty Years (Caribou: Northern Maine Regional Planning Commission, 1989).
—Mary Kay Linge
World History
