by socrates1fan » Tue 08 Jul 2008, 21:37:33
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nickel', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hironegro', 'I') have always wondered why america never anexed canada.
Well, it's like everyone said. Previously, throughout most of the 19th century, the US really didn't have the military wherewithal. Once it did, there was something a little humiliating about the idea of forcing someone in the nation. Pride made folks in the States want other people to WANT to join the US. Canadians, by and large, didn't, so that was that.
Canada, for the most part, was made up of two groups -- descendants of the French settlers, who had little love for Anglos of either sort but at least knew their rights were secured in British North America -- and the English Canadians who were largely descended from Loyalists who left the US. The fact that most of the "Loyalists" were "late Loyalists" who left for the free land grants was forgotten over time. Most of the people living in English Canada at the outset of the War of 1812 didn't care who ran the place; London or Washington. But when Hull invaded and circulated an edict that more or less denied the Canadians the right to defend their homes (as doing so made them allies with the "savages", and promised any such person the same treatment), he effectively killed off any hope the US had of simply showing up and becoming the new government. It turned English Canadians against the US, and the sentiment stuck, even if today no one really remembers why.
These days, there are big differences across the border on a number of social issues; abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage, soft drugs, capital punishment, socialized medicine, foreign policy, military aggressiveness... I honestly can't remember a time in my life when we felt more at odds with the US on a day-to-day basis. I think we've never been more relieved that the border exists. Frankly, far from us joining the US, I honestly believe there are several states in the north that would do well to leave the US and join Canada... it would suit their temperament better than the existing union with the attitudes of the US south.
I'm cool with the Canadians taking the great lake region.
We were part of Quebec at one point! Vincennes still has a lot of French flavor and it was one of the few French towns in the midwest that wasn't abandoned because of the English.
If it means I have a national border between me and the south I'm all for it. Ha-ha