During Martin Van Buren’s administration, the United States was in continual tension with Great Britain over disputes along the U.S.-Canadian border. Beginning in late 1837 and lasting over a year, the Canadian Rebellions, a series of internal disputes among Canadians in both Lower and Upper Canada, almost embroiled the Van Buren administration in a war with Britain. President Van Buren, however, was steadfast in his desire to avoid war with Britain.

In December 1837, British naval forces burned an America ship, the Caroline, and sent it over Niagara Falls because sympathetic Americans were using it to assist rebel forces. During the course of sinking the Caroline, the British killed an American crew member. In January 1838, Van Buren ordered General Winfield Scott to the border area to calm American anger and calls for war in retaliation for the Caroline affair. The president also reaffirmed U.S. neutrality with regard to Canadian independence, which Congress supported by passing a neutrality law in March 1838. Despite a retaliatory American burning of a Canadian ship, the Sir Robert Peel, in May 1838, the United States’ role in the crisis largely subsided.

This conflict was not the only one with Great Britain, however. In 1838, a crisis erupted along the Maine-Canadian border over control of the Aroostook River valley. New Brunswick lumberjacks began cutting timber in this territory, claimed by both nations but settled by Mainers. Maine governor John Fairfield responded by calling out his state’s militia in January 1839 and asking Van Buren to send in U.S. troops. Congress supported an aggressive response, authorizing the president to raise 50,000 volunteers and passing $10 million in appropriations to arm them.

President Van Buren preferred to find a peaceful solution to the so-called Aroostook War, so he once again called on Winfield Scott to bring calm to a tense situation, which the general did in the short term. A more permanent solution to these boundary disputes was needed, but it would not come until the year after Van Buren left office, when Daniel Webster and Alexander Baring, Lord Ashuburton, negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 that settled the boundary disputes of the Aroostook conflict and other long-standing issues along the U.S.-Canada border.

Like many Americans, Van Buren’s memories of the War of 1812 may have convinced him that another war with Great Britain was a fool’s errand. His experience as U.S. secretary of state and his familiarity with Britain from his brief time as U.S. minister in London also undoubtedly contributed to his willingness to find peaceful resolutions to the border conflicts of his presidency. It did not stop his opponents, however, from using the Canadian Rebellions and the Aroostook War to argue that Van Buren was an ineffectual president who led with weakness, not strength.