Year: 2016

Preliminary Proposal

The american civil war was mainly a fight between the northern free states and the southern slave states (a war over slavery) about who would unionized and thus freeing or not freeing the slaves.

The Trent affair was when a american ship stopped a British ship with two agent on board wanting to talk to the British to see if they would join in the confederate cause. The Americans held them as prisoners but they were eventually released as to not cause a war.

The st. Albanis raid was soldiers from the British colony/ies raiding a town called st.albanis and then running back across the american border to not be captured by the Americas. America took this raid as Britain provoking them.

Manifest destiny was this strong belief in america which personally i think is a american excuse to attack Canada, that america under the very rule of god that they should be the ones to govern the entirety of North America.

Fenian’s: Group of Irish men to force the freedom of Ireland from British control. There plan was to hold British colonies and ransom them in return for Ireland’s freedom.

In 1854 The reciprocity treaty was signed by both BNA and United states to allow free trade of goods. But then in 1866, twelve years later the Americans cancelled the treaty.  Because the British no longer had this sharing peace with the Americans they encouraged confederation and continued to try to unite the colonies.

Explain how the economic situation in the 1860s would encourage the BNA Colonies to unite…

According to the article about the Canadian railways there was a need for transport and trade to be able to survive as people needed food and supplies from other places and so the railways needed to be built. This connected many towns and specifically the BNA colonies because the train traveled from one place to another and hence there was bound to be interaction between the colonies. Also Britain had tariffs on Canadian grain (corn law) about taxing the grain import from Canada lower than america to be able to level out the price.  So the colonies united in an effort to lower/ completely take away the tax so that food wasn’t so expensive almost to the degree that people were going into starvation.  It did bring economic depression though.  The Reciprocity treaty was brought forth in an effort to bring Canada out of it economic strain and bringing america as a partner with it.  Eventually they did sign it because they needed to sell the products from the British colonies and that brought confederation.

According to Mr.Norton in his memoir of the rebellion against the British in 1837, him being on the rebel side, first states that they were not well versed in the way of how to handle guns.  They were first basically rounded up and given a staggered arrangement of weapons and told to put their toe on the line and fight. This s not the best way to approach a war obviously as it seems no one knew what the heck to do.

Mackenzie’s memoir states that when they approached a town they saw a group of the enemy.  first the rebels shot at them then the enemy shot back and ran away.  When the rebels shot again they did not step aside to make room for the bullets instead they dropped to the ground which is dangerous i supposed since u might get shot yourself. Also someone from the rebel side did get shot and killed and when Mackenzie took a look he noticed that by the way that the man was shot he was not shot by the enemy but by his own team.  Yet again an example of poor organization and skill.

Mr. Bellingham (British)  states that his leader and most of the men rode horses which is smart because then you somewhat above the rebels and can hurt them more easily.

In short the rebels lost due to lack of proper training, skills, efficient weapons, and size of army.