Annexation Bill of 1866
Encyclopedia : A : AN : ANN : Annexation Bill of 1866
The Annexation Bill of 1866 was a bill introduced on July 2, 1866 but not passed in the United States House of Representatives. It called for the annexation of British North America and the admission of its provinces as states and territories in the Union. The bill never came to a vote in either House, [Warner p. 66] although hoaxes to the contrary have long circulated in Canada. It was referred to committee and died there.[link]
The bill authorized the President of the United States to, subject to the agreement of the governments of the British provinces, "publish by proclamation that, from the date thereof, the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East, and Canada West, and the Territories of Selkirk (present-day Manitoba), Saskatchewan, and Columbia, with limits and rights as by the act defined, are constituted and admitted as States and Territories of the United States of America." It provided for the admission of all the colonies and the purchase of the Hudson's Bay Company's lands for $10,000,000. The American government would assume public lands and state-owned bonds and the right to levy taxes and, in return, would take over provincial debts to the total of $85,700,000 and give an annual subsidy of $1,646,000 to the new states. In addition, the United States would connect Canada with the Maritimes by rail and spend $50,000,000 to complete and improve the colonial canal system.
The bill was introduced by Congressman Nathaniel Prentiss Banks, a representative from Massachusetts. It was intended to appeal to Irish Americans who supported the Fenian Movement and were aggressively hostile to Britain. Indeed American public opinion at the time was hostile because of Britain's support for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. There was no serious effort in Washington to annex Canada.
The bill was not passed in the United States Senate. Its introduction and similar interest in annexation by the United States and possibly provided a little incentive for the organisation of Canada as an entity distinct from Britain; indeed, the bill's passage preceded Canadian Confederation by less than a year. However the attempted Fenian invasion had much more influence.
References
- Fred H. Harrington. Fighting Politician: Major General N. P. Banks (Philadelphia, 1948), pp 178-79.
- Donald Frederic Warner; The Idea of Continental Union: Agitation for the Annexation of Canada to the United States, 1849-1893 University of Kentucky Press. 1960.
See also
- Annexationist movements of Canada
- Continentalism
- Expansionism
- Fenian Raids
- Hunter Patriots
- Manifest Destiny
- Oregon boundary dispute
External links
- [actual text from US Library of Congress]
- [Text of the bill], from Collections Canada
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.