"Aroostook war" ended. There was no more encroachment on the timber lands of Maine, and there was no further seizure of Maine land agents or imprisonment of Maine citizens. What was intended had been accomplished.

ary to May, 1839, was prepared in the office of the adjutant general of Maine and published by the state. The detail of the detachment made by order of Governor Fairfield, February 19, 1839, called for ten thousand, three hundred and forty-three men. The names of both officers and men actually called into service at Aroostook are given in this record.

CHAPTER XIV.

COMPLAINTS under the New AgreemeNT.

THE new agreement with reference to the exercise of juris

diction in the disputed territory was not followed by

those harmonious relations along the border which some

at least supposed, or hoped, had been secured. As has already appeared, it was not such an arrangement as the British minister and the secretary of state had proposed. The British minister had no specific authority for attaching his signature even to the rejected memorandum, while the lieutenant governor of New Brunswick, in declaring in the agreement that it was not his intention to seek to take military possession of the disputed territory, or to seek by military force to expel from that territory the armed civil posse of Maine, did so with the qualifying words, "without renewed instructions to that effect from his government." In fact, as early as November 6, 1839, Mr. Vail, the acting secretary of state at Washington, called the attention of Governor Fairfield to a communication1 he had received from Mr. Fox, the British minister, protesting in the name of the British government against certain alleged acts of encroachment on the part of the people of Maine, which from his point of view were regarded as at variance with the agreements of the preceding March. First, the armed posse, stationed in the disputed territory for the protection of public property, had extended its territorial occupation to the mouth of Fish River, and accordingly, it was claimed, into a portion of the Madawaska settlements. Second, the armed posse had assumed an aspect and character decidedly military, something more like a permanent national possession of the country, the land agent's station being fortified with can1Senate Document No. 107, 26th Congress, First Session, 57-59.

non and entrenchments. Third, the road under construction to Fish River was a road connecting Bangor with the disputed territory. Fourth, surveyors, acting under state authority, were locating lots and townships and making sales of land in that portion of the territory. Because of these complaints, the governor was reminded by the president of his anxious desire that nothing should be permitted to call in question the faithful observance of existing agreements, and he asked the governor for such information in relation to the acts above mentioned as were in the possession of the government of Maine.1

In his reply, November 21, 1839, Governor Fairfield informed the president that the first of these complaints had reference to the fact that the land agent of the state had sent a small force to Fish River to disperse a band of trespassers operating in that locality. Their camps were broken up, some of the trespassers were driven off, and a few, with their teams, were brought to the Aroostook settlement, though subsequently they were released. Later, another force was sent to the mouth of the Fish River to construct a boom at that point to prevent other depredations. This proceeding, said the governor, in no wise violated the arrangement made by General Scott. The agent had a right to go anywhere in the American portion of the disputed territory to protect timber recently cut and to prevent future encroachments. As to the military character of these proceedings, the members of the land agent's armed posse were neither militia nor United States soldiers, but hired laborers, protecting public property. "At all events," remarked the governor, "the complaint at the extent of this force was hardly to have been expected from the British government just at this moment, when a few days only have elapsed since some fifty of its own subjects, bearing the queen's arms, and otherwise suitably equipped, headed by a veteran militia captain, made an assault, in the dead of night, upon that very force

1Senate Document No. 107, 26th Congress, First Session, 49, 50. Also Manuscript Correspondence, etc., Northeastern Boundary, State Library, IV, 276-280.