The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged Martin
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Alexander Campbell, who had never held office. Étienne Taché was prepared to come out of retirement, but he demanded John A. Macdonald as his Upper Canada deputy. Macdonald was “wrapped in slumber” late one March evening when Cartier, Campbell, and Fergusson-Blair hammered at the front door of his lodgings and roused him from his midnight slumber. They delivered an ultimatum. If he would not forget his business worries and join them, they would abandon their attempts to form a Cabinet and allow Sandfield to bounce back in triumph. John A. Macdonald did not need long to consider. He returned to the dreary wasteland of colonial politics.
4
1864–1867
Confederation, Under a Female Sovereign
The insecure government formed by Etienne Taché in March 1864 faced collapse within eleven weeks. Nonetheless, John A. Macdonald’s decision to take office under Taché proved a turning point in his career. In mid-June, the Cabinet was reconstructed to become the “Great Coalition” which launched Confederation. The revised ministry was essentially a deal between Cartier’s Bleus and George Brown’s Grits: if Macdonald had not already joined in March, there would have been no room to bring him aboard in June.
Aside from its collective desire to oust Sandfield Macdonald, the March 1864 minority government had no “big idea.” Sandfield had quarrelled with the Irish Catholics, so their representative, Reformer Michael Foley, was invited into the new Cabinet. When Foley cautiously enquired about the ministry’s guiding principles, John A. Macdonald jovially urged him to “join the Government and then help make the policy.” In Parliament, Macdonald implied that the new Cabinet endorsed the Confederation bid of 1858. “The Government had done all in its power to have this federation remedy adopted” — but, unfortunately, the Maritimers were not interested. As a policy statement, it was watertight. As a blueprint for action, it was unhelpful.
Taking an independent line in politics, Brown secured a parliamentary committee on constitutional change. His task force reported in June “in favour of changes in the direction of a federative system” — but whether for the province of Canada or the whole of British North America remained an open question. John A. Macdonald opposed the report: he favoured “a complete union,” but he knew compromise was required. His 1861 election manifesto had briefly talked of federation, but with “an efficient central government” — the British model adapted to learn from American failures. The mid-June ministerial crisis concluded with George Brown joining the Cabinet to resolve Canada’s sectional disagreements. Although it united to carry Confederation, the Great Coalition was also a continuation of factional fighting in a new guise: Brown and Macdonald grasped each other not by the hand but by the throat. In the tense negotiations of June 1864, Macdonald out-manoeuvred his enemy on four issues, but — on the most crucial — his victory contained a time bomb.
As in 1862, Brown initially promised independent support for constitutional reform, claiming it was “quite impossible” for him to sit in Cabinet alongside political enemies. It was easy to foresee that some issue would soon outrage Brown’s implacable conscience, and Macdonald was not alone in insisting that it was “essential” that he joined. Macdonald then faced down Brown’s reasonable demand that the Grits, dominant in Upper Canada, should have four of that section’s six Cabinet places: his rival conceded only three. Macdonald’s comment that “he had been for some time, anxious to retire from the Government, and would be quite ready to facilitate arrangements by doing so,” was a threatening reminder that he was indispensable. A third issue was Brown’s demand that Macdonald publicly retract the allegations he had made between 1849 and 1856 over the penitentiary enquiry. It seems that Macdonald soothingly sidestepped the commitment. Brown never received his “public reparation,” and his resentment festered at being cheated of revenge.
The fourth — and major — issue concerned the coalition’s policy. Brown wanted to reorganize the province of Canada as a local (Ontario-Quebec) federation, with provision for the Maritimes and the West to join later. Initially, of course, the central legislature would be dominated by Upper Canada’s population and hence run by Upper Canada’s Grits — a structure that might be unattractive to potential new members. Macdonald’s counter-proposal, “a Federal Union of all the British North American Provinces,” was dismissed by Brown as “uncertain and remote,” no solution to the “existing evils.” However, one development worked in favour of the wider scheme. The governments of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island were considering an Atlantic regional union. If the Canadians could secure an invitation to the planned Maritime Union conference in September, and if they could argue persuasively for Confederation, then the larger union might become a practical option. “If it had not been for this fortunate coincidence of events,” Macdonald said in 1865, “never, perhaps ... would we have been able to bring this scheme to a practical conclusion.” The Great Coalition struck a deal. Ministers would “address themselves, in the most earnest manner, to the negotiation for a confederation of all the British North American Provinces.” But, if the initiative failed, they would legislate “in the next session of Parliament” to create a local federation for Canada alone.
Given parliamentary timetables, Macdonald had gained maybe nine months to launch the dormant project of Confederation before conceding victory to Brown. His best hope was to play for time and extend the deadline. But everything depended upon winning over a group of small-pond Maritime politicians, most of them strangers to him. If they said “No” at Charlottetown, John A. Macdonald’s career would hit the buffers. Working hard to prepare an outline scheme, and with his business affairs in disarray, he was under great pressure that summer, even appearing at one Cabinet meeting aggressively drunk.
Fortunately, despite much champagne diplomacy, he remained sober and performed impressively at Charlottetown. Although the meetings were held in secret, we know that the Canadians — Brown, Galt, and Cartier included — swept their hosts into endorsing Confederation in principle. The delegates then sailed on to Halifax where, on September 12, John A. Macdonald delivered a heartfelt speech. He had spent “twenty long years” dragging himself through “the dreary waste” of provincial politics. “I thought there was no end, nothing worthy of ambition” but Confederation was “well worthy of all I have suffered in the cause of my little country.” He accepted that that “local difficulties may arise ... local jealousies may intervene” but asserted that the union of the provinces was “a fixed fact.” “Union must take place some time. I say now is the time.” On the return journey, the delegates visited New Brunswick to speak at Saint John. It was a worrying sign that Macdonald was too exhausted to leave the ship.
On October 10, 1864, provincial delegations began a three-week conference at Quebec to convert the outline agreement of Charlottetown into a constitutional blueprint. “Unless the details can be made satisfactory the whole thing must break down,” Macdonald warned. He called for “a powerful central government,” with the provinces assigned “only such powers as may be required for local purposes.” He reminded the Maritimers of the coalition’s timetable, warning that if Canada was compelled to tackle its own problems, “it will be too late for a general federation.” He also told them that the “Intercolonial” railway from Halifax to Quebec was conditional on Confederation, “a political consequence of a political union.”
D’Arcy McGee later claimed that John A. Macdonald crafted fifty of the seventy-two resolutions that comprised the Quebec scheme. “Not one man of the Conference (except Galt on finance) had the slightest idea of Constitution making,” Macdonald privately boasted. “Whatever is good or ill in the constitution is mine.” Would there have been a Confederation movement without John A. Macdonald? Probably. Would it have been led with the same skill and efficiency? Perhaps not.
Macdonald was open about his belief that “one government and one parliament ... would be the best, the cheapest, the most vigorous and the strongest system of government we could adopt.” Realistically, he also recognized that centralization was unacceptable to French Canadians, because they were “a minority, with a different language, nationality, and religion.” But a “smoking gun” in a letter to Tory politician, Matthew