Revival

• Author: Craig Forcese
• Pages: 81-89

81

Chapter 11

Revival

One thing is very certain, if McLeod is executed there will be

immediate war! Of this you may re assured.

— aMBassador stevenson to President van Buren (9 feBruary 1841)1

D   years of Palmerston’s silence, diplo-

matic discussions on other matters — such as the persis-

tent unrest along the frontier and US ef‌forts to suppress

raids by the Patriots — continued.2 And on the frontier citizens held

annual “anniversary meetings” to “commemorate and act upon

the means of redress for the outrage” of the Caroline’s destruction

and to complain about the British failure to respond to Stevenson’s

1838 letter, among other things.3 In Washington, meanwhile, John

Forsyth and Henry Stephen Fox did confer on the Caroline issue

informally,4 but the governments made no earnest ef‌fort to resolve

the dispute.

Then, on 12 November 1840, Alexander McLeod was arrested,

imprisoned, and ultimately tried in New York. The Scottish-born vet-

eran of the British military had participated — reportedly with con-

siderable bravery — in Allan Napier MacNab’s 1837 engagement with

William Lyon Mackenzie at Montgomery’s Tavern. He then claimed to

have entered the United States and espied (and reported to the British)

Mackenzie’s activities in Buf‌falo and the ultimate cutting-out of the

Caroline from the ice at Buf‌falo.5 Indeed, he claimed to have protested