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Between 1864 and 1873 the British colonies on the northen half of the North American continent were united into a new and larger colony that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. One factor that led to the Confederation of the British North American colonies and the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867 was clearly the northern victory in the American Civil War, which permanently changed the balance of power on the North American continent. Canadian historians have been divided over precisely how important the American Civil War was among the other factors which led to the Confederation of Canada. This paper examines this historiographical debate and the recent research into the impact of the American Civil War in order to assess who has the better case.
keywords: Canada; American Civil War; Confederation; Canadian historiography; American-Canadian relations
No Canadian historian would deny that the American Civil War had an impact on the 1867 decision of the British North American colonies to form a federal union. But how important the Civil War was among the other economic and political factors that led to Confederation has long been a subject of controversy, in large part reflecting how Canadian historians have viewed the nature of the American-Canadian relationship. The first serious scholarly studies of that relationship were written between 1936 and 1945, as part of a twenty-five-volume series sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on the relations of Canada and the United States. Not surprisingly, since the emphasis of the series was on the importance of American-Canadian friendship and the emergence of an undefended border, the significance of the American Civil War as a disruptive element in the evolution of peace along the American-Canadian border was downplayed.
Not all Canadian historians were satisfied with the somewhat benign interpretation of American-Canadian relations embodied in the Carnegie series, and in the 1950s and 1960s a number of more nationalistic Canadian historians began to paint a very different picture of the nature of that relationship. They argued that there was nothing inevitable about the evolution of American-Canadian friendship and stressed that the fear of American aggression was one of the most important factors-indeed, perhaps the most important factor-that led to Confederation in 1867. This interpretation...