This is the definitive history of the boundary dispute as experienced by the citizens and officials at the local, state, and provincial levels, both British and American. It is based on journals, documents, speeches, letter books, and collections of correspondence of participants on both sides of the controversy to chronicle the dispute from its origins to the establishment of an agreed-upon boundary with the Treaty of Washington in 1842. Appendices list settlers in the disputed territory and neighboring Aroostook County towns, Canadian timber harvesters, the land agent's civil posse, militia rolls, land claims from Aroostook, etc.

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Excerpt from Maine in the Northeastern Boundary: Controversy While these pages have been passing through the press, Mr. S. H. Brown, manager of the Marks Printing House in Portland, has assisted me in many ways. I am also indebted to Miss Flora M Mitchell, of the same establishment, for excellent work in overcoming the illegibilities in my manuscript and also in proof suggestions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Historians have paid surprisingly little attention to state-level political leaders and judges. Edward Kent (1802–77) was both. He served three terms as a state legislator, two as mayor of Bangor, two as governor, and two as a judge of the state supreme court. He represented Maine in the negotiations that resolved the long-running northeastern border dispute between the United States and Great Britain and served for four years as the American consul in Rio de Janeiro. The foremost Whig in Maine state politics and later a Republican judge, Kent articulated classic Whig political views and carried them forward into his Whig-Republican jurisprudence. In examining Kent's career as Maine's quintessential Whig, An Exemplary Whig reveals his characteristically conservative Whig outlook, including an aversion toward disorder and a deep respect for law, for existing institutions, and for the wisdom of experience. Kent brought his conservative disposition into the Republican Party. He had no use for radical abolitionism, preferring moderation and compromise to measures that endangered social order or the integrity of the Union. Kent saw the "slave power," not abolitionism, as the disrupter of the Union, and he urged the “fusion” of all antislavery elements into a new Republican party. In 1859, Maine's Republican governor appointed Kent to the state supreme court. During his fourteen-year tenure, Kent adopted a Whiggish jurisprudence, pragmatic and commonsensical, and displayed a reverence for the common law and a distrust of “theoretic speculation.” After his retirement, he chaired a constitutional revision commission, admonishing his fellow commissioners to bear in mind the “practical wisdom” that kept dangerous innovation in check. As a politician during the Jacksonian era, Kent exemplified Whig leadership at the local and state levels. In his jurisprudence, he carried the Whig persuasion into the Republican ascendancy and the beginnings of the Gilded Age.

The story of the attempts to settle the original boundary between British North America and the United States. Though established by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the boundary was plagued by ambiguities and errors in the document.