Resolution

• Author: Craig Forcese
• Pages: 111-122

111

Chapter 14

Resolution

The President is content to receive these acknowledgments and assurances

in the conciliatory spirit which marks your Lordship’s letter, and will make

this subje, as a complaint of violation of territory, the topic of no further

discussion between the two governments.

—      6  18421

T   now f‌inally replaced Andrew Ste-

venson as ambassador. Edward Everett — described by his

alma mater Harvard as “brilliant and honored”2 — assumed

the post. A renowned orator, educator, and politician, Everett was well

received by the British. While the location of ongoing negotiations over

the irritants between the two states would soon shift to Washington,

Everett became an important conduit to the British foreign oce.3

The late 1841 changes at the top of the British foreign service

were even more dramatic. Viscount Palmerston now departed the

scene, as the government of Sir Robert Peel entered oce. The new

British foreign secretary, George Hamilton-Gordon, the Earl of Aber-

deen, dif‌fered from his more hawkish predecessor, believing (like

Daniel Webster) that bilateral irritants might be resolved by a more

accommodating approach. Lord Aberdeen also hoped to deter the

United States from alliance with Britain’s perennial rival, France.4

Still, while Aberdeen seemed better disposed to the Americans

than had Palmerston,5 he prepared for the worst. He renewed Henry

Stephen Fox’s orders to quit Washington should Alexander McLeod

be executed.6 And indeed, McLeod’s fate remained a subject of