15,697
edits
Changes
→Agressive Expansion of United States territory by Secretary of States - William Seward
<dh-ad/>
====Agressive Expansion of United States territory by Secretary of States - William Seward====
[[File: William_H._Seward_portrait_-_restoration.jpg|left|250px|thumbnail|Secretary of State
In the north, fears of a resurgent United States and calls by some U.S. politicians for the annexation of British North American territory allowed Canadian politicians to overcome their own sectional differences, while also spurring British parliamentary leaders to urge a stronger central government in British North America, especially after Irish-born civil war veterans launched several unsuccessful raids into Canada. This resulted in the British North America Act of 1867, which united Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Subsequently, in 1870, Canadian Prime Minister John MacDonald successfully convinced the British Government to cede the lands of the Hudson’s Bay Company to Canada, crushing the hopes of U.S. expansionists who hoped to acquire those lands for the United States.
The renewed international image of the United States also helped Secretary of State William Seward in his attempts to acquire additional territory in the postwar period. In 1867, Seward succeeded in purchasing Alaska from the Russian Government. Seward also sought to acquire territories in the Caribbean, and to negotiate permission to build the Panama Canal. The postwar period also saw attempts by U.S. political leaders, including Seward, to resettle freed slaves abroad in either Mexico or Brazil, but the governments of those countries dissuaded Seward from these efforts. However, Brazil, where slavery remained legal until 1888, did become a magnet for disaffected Confederates angered by the end of slavery in the United States.
Between 3,000 and 20,000 former Confederates resettled in Brazil, although a considerable number returned to the United States. However, William Lidgerwood, the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires in Brazil, recommended that passports be denied for those who had renounced U.S. citizenship. By doing so, Lidgerwood created a class of stateless people, because some former Confederates had renounced their Brazilian citizenship in order to return to the United States. Although many former Confederates were eventually able to return, some remained in Brazil and continued to advocate the proslavery cause.
