James Monroe's 1817 SOTU: Mentioning the Islands in Passamaquoddy Bay

In his State of the Union address on December 12, 1817, President James Monroe mentioned the Treaty of Ghent and the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay.

Excerpt from his address: 

The Commissioners under the fourth article of the treaty of Ghent, to whom it was referred to decide to which party the several islands in the bay of Passamaquoddy belonged under the treaty of 1783, have agreed in a report, by which all the islands in the possession of each party before the late war have been decreed to it.  

The Treaty of Ghent ended the hostilities of the War of 1812 in 1815, but a few thorny issues remained for further negotiation, including the issue of the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay.    

In July of 1814 the British had captured Fort Sullivan on Moose Island and renamed it Fort Sherbrooke, in honor of the Governor General of British North America, Sir John Coape Sherbrooke.  Unlike as in the case of Castine, Maine, however, the British did not leave Moose Island at the war's end, feeling that it had rightfully been part of British North America all along, since the American Revolution.

In the end, however, the negotiators agreed that the islands would be governed as they were before the War of 1812, and, thus, Moose Island and its fort would return to the United States, whereupon the fort resumed its name of Fort Sullivan. 

Although this decision was reached in late 1817, the British did not leave until June 30, 1818, because of slow communications, the enormity of the task and because the British were having a hard time finding transport for the large force.

A different outcome from those negotiations, not difficult to imagine, would have placed Moose Island in British North America, and thus a part of modern day Canada, or would have placed what are now the West Isles of New Brunswick in the United States.

Read Monroe's State of the Union address of December 12, 1817 in its entirety here.