The First Reconciliation

[otoshigo]

Haha, so I figure what with all the drawing I'm not supposed to be doing, I should at least draw comics relating to what I'm studying.  Luckily I happen to be studying US History, US Foreign Relations History and World History.  XDDD (well, along with economics and management, but you can't win them all)

Title; Reconciliation
Warnings: None
Summary:  John Jay is annoyed with mobs (AKA USxUK from the pov of a Founding Father)
A/N: ....I promise this actually is USxUK related.  While France was having it's revolutionary war, the US nearly went to war with Great Britain all over again because the Treaty of Paris pretty much left waaaay too many things unresolved and Britain was kind of afraid that America would fall into French orbit.  So John Jay went to Britain and pretty much fixed everything.... well except for maybe two things that kind of bit him in the ass later.  That said, I kind of <3 John Jay right now.  :D  I also have the strange notion that the Founding Fathers in general have a pretty special relationship (not THE one, but you know what I mean) with America.  Like uncles.  ....Holy cow, that's a whole lot of uncles~!  DX








Okay, so here's the deal with this comic. This is about the Jay Treaty AKA The Treaty of London of 1794. Essentially, there were many, many issues left unresolved after the America Revolution and the signing of the first peace treaty. Most notably were...

• Britain was still occupying a number of forts on U.S. territory in the Great Lakes region.
• American merchants wanted compensation for 250 ships confiscated during 1793-94.
• Southerners wanted compensation for the slaves the British had taken from them during the Revolution.
• Merchants wanted the British West Indies reopened to American trade.
• The boundary with Canada was too vague and needed delineation.
• The British were believed to be aggravating Native-American attacks on settlers in the West.
• The British kept impressing American sailors.  XD

US and Britain were still pretty much on the brink of war, being nasty to each other and whatnot.  During that time, the French Revolution was going on and a few notable Founding Fathers, like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wanted the United States to side with the French and help them out.  (They eventually became the Republican party.)  However, President George Washington, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alexander Hamilton and Joh Jay (the leaders of the Federalist party) were greatly opposed to the idea, because they saw that the United States was still incredibly weak and could not get entangled in a foreign war else it may just lose what little foundation it already had.

Interestingly, Great Britain was also VERY interested in the United States not being involved in the French Revolution, so it became particularly amenable to strengthening ties between them.  So Hamilton wrote up a number of terms and sent John Jay to London to negotiate with the heads of state there.  Jay was able to get pretty much everything that the US wanted except for two things, 1) he couldn't get the British to stop impressing American sailors (which later became an issue of great contention that helped lead to the War of 1812 - oh that England and his habit of kidnapping American sailorboys  XD  and 2) he didn't even bother getting compensation for the slaves Britain took because he was an abolitionist.  (I kind of find this the most hilarious thing of all.  Oh John Jay, why so awesome?)

Now here's the things they ended up agreeing to:

• The British agreed to vacate the six western forts by June 1796 (which was done), and to compensate American ship owners (the British paid $10,345,200 by 1802).
• The United States gave most favored nation trading status to Britain, and acquiesced in British anti-French maritime policies.
• The United States guaranteed the payment of private prewar debts owed by Americans to British merchants that could not be collected in U.S. courts (the U.S. paid £600,000 in 1802).
• Two joint boundary commissions were set up to establish correctly the boundary line in the northeast (it agreed on the Saint Croix River) and in the northwest (this one never met).

And I'm pretty sure that Britain kept its most favored nation status for... well, ever since then XD (except for that slight stint with Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1807 (oh Jefferson, why so dumb?) and the War of 1812).  I mean, after 1812, they kind of just went back to the original terms of the Jay Treaty.  ^^

I'm also kind of dumbfounded by how dumb France was in all this.  I mean, the French Monarchy was already outrageously in debt when it decided to help out America in the War of Independence.  But they pretty much got nothing for it in the Treaty of Paris.  Not only that they became so unpopular that they ended up getting beheaded.  To top it off, Britain was pretty much lording it over France because they had American business (after the Jay Treaty) and France didn't.  XD  And America didn't even bother to back up the uprising in the French Revolution.  Wow, stabbed in the back much?

So yeah, hope that explains it.  Sorry for not doing so before...

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