The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged Martin

dozen fatalities. The prisoners were taken to Kingston, where one local resident was appalled to discover that his own brother-in-law was among those captured. After two senior lawyers refused to help, he implored John A. Macdonald to provide a defence. There was little the young lawyer could do: the invaders were tried by court martial, and the resentful military refused to recognize the upstart lawyer who had humiliated their commanding officer. A grisly batch of hangings ensued, and Macdonald was called to death row, to draw up the bandit leader’s will as he awaited the gallows.

      “Macdonald’s popularity was terribly strained by his defence of these men.” But John A. Macdonald was playing for higher stakes than popularity. He was putting down a marker: the elite must accept him, and on his own terms. For their part, the city’s power brokers decided to recruit him. Increasingly challenged by Toronto, Kingston needed to maximize its local talent. In June 1839, John A. Macdonald became a director of the Commercial Bank — the institution where his father worked as a clerk.

      That autumn, the death of Kingston’s mayor, Henry Cassady, provided further opportunities. Cassady’s legal apprentice,

       seventeen-year-old Alexander Campbell — like Oliver Mowat, offspring of the local elite — transferred to Macdonald’s tutelage in October 1839. At intervals through the next fifty years, Campbell would act as Macdonald’s business partner, campaign manager, and political lieutenant, usually dazzled but occasionally horrified by the activities of his magnetic mentor. Mowat soon moved to Toronto, but Campbell remained the workhorse who could handle groups who sometimes distrusted John A. — from genteel Tories to intolerant Orangemen. Macdonald also succeeded Cassady as the Commercial Bank’s official legal adviser, a position previously held by George Mackenzie. At the age of twenty-four, John A. Macdonald could now shift his focus away from fee-grubbing courtroom work towards the attractive world of business and corporate law. He was no longer “poor and friendless.” Hothouse schooling, grinding apprenticeship, plus ability, determination, and charm had won him a seat at Kingston’s top table. He was almost one third of his journey through life. Now he could map out how he planned to live the rest.

      2

      1839–1854

      Idleness Is No Pleasure

      John A. Macdonald was seriously ill for a time in 1840, and his health continued to cause concern during the next two years. His father’s death, in 1841, added to his family responsibilities, and he was probably working too hard. However, as he remarked during his first overseas holiday, “idleness is no pleasure,” and he planned to return to his career “with greater zest and zeal than ever.” In his mid-twenties, various options loomed: marriage, expansion of his law firm, and maybe a launch into politics, to advance Kingston’s business interests — and his own.

      Canada was entering a new political chapter. The British government had decided to unite Upper and Lower Canada into a single province, confident that the predominantly loyal Upper Canadians would control the habitants, who had posed the major challenge to the Empire in 1837–38. Both sections of the new province would have forty-two seats in the joint Assembly, thus overcoming the inconvenient problem that Upper Canada’s 450,000 population — half that of modern Nova Scotia — was 200,000 fewer than that of Lower Canada. However, Montreal, Canada’s largest city at the time, was largely English-speaking, and Anglophones would control about a dozen Lower Canada ridings, ensuring a 5–3 majority of English over French in the united legislature. Responsible government — a Canadian ministry answerable to the local legislature — was ruled out. Rather, the British governor-general would work with the Assembly just as the president of the United States dealt with Congress, persuading it to vote the taxes needed to pay for government and choosing his own Cabinet, irrespective of party. This imperial thinking was deeply flawed. Proclaiming that the Union was intended to subjugate French Canadians (even their language was barred in the legislature) guaranteed that they voted defensively as a national block. Since the rival English-speaking factions continued to squabble, the thirty French votes virtually controlled the Assembly. The French-Canadian leader, Louis LaFontaine, formed an alliance with the Upper Canada Reformers and, within eighteen months, he forced his way into office.

      At the first elections in 1841, Macdonald was campaign manager for Kingston’s Conservative candidate, John Forsyth. Since the right to vote depended upon owning property, his legal knowledge was important, and he discharged his task “ably and zealously.” Unfortunately, Forsyth narrowly lost to local businessman, Anthony Manahan. Normally, as an Irish Catholic, Manahan would have been a no-hoper but, in this unusual election, he was seen as the candidate of the governor-general, Lord Sydenham, who had just selected Kingston as capital of the united province. Indeed, when Manahan took a government job soon after, the city dutifully elected Sydenham’s right-hand man, S.B. Harrison.

      Early in 1842, John A. Macdonald sailed to England for an energetic convalescence. In London, he attended parliamentary debates, whetting his political appetite by watching the great statesmen of the Empire. A new invention, railways, made travel easy. He visited Queen Victoria’s private apartments at Windsor Castle, toured the Lake District, and looked up relatives in Scotland. He bought law books in London, a ceremonial kilt in Edinburgh, and state-of-the-art kitchen equipment in Manchester. Macdonald had cash to spend partly because of huge winnings in a card game before he left Kingston — an episode that perhaps triggered a row with his mother, because he never gambled again.

      There was probably a bigger item on his want list than kitchen equipment: prosperous and twenty-seven, he needed a wife. For a young professional man, finding the right partner was not just a personal choice. Marriages might not be made in heaven, but the couple usually belonged to the same religious denomination. In Kingston, now a town of six thousand people of all ages and many faiths, the range of potential brides was limited. A lawyer’s wife should be a sophisticated lady, but Canada seemed overrun, as Oliver Mowat complained, with “unthinking, unintelligent young women.” Respectable families often imported brides: Macdonald was twice married, but neither partner grew up in Canada.

      Although Helen Macdonald was a possessive mother, she could hardly have programmed her adult son to marry his cousin Isabella. But she probably sowed the seed by praising the female Clarks. The capable Maria, who had accompanied the family to Canada, had married a Macpherson and settled locally. Margaret was now a widow in her forties, but two younger sisters still lived with her. Jane had health problems; Isabella was six years John A.’s senior. Helen, who had married a younger man herself, probably brushed that aside. The Clark sisters had left Georgia and, in 1842, were living on the Isle of Man, a Crown dependency in the Irish Sea, where low taxes created a refuge for hard-up gentility. Sending their “warmest love,” they persuaded Macdonald to visit their backwater. There he proposed to Isabella and was accepted. The bride arrived in Kingston the next year, and the couple were married on September 1, 1843: in Scots tradition, the Presbyterian ceremony was held in Maria Macpherson’s drawing room.

      Within two years, Isabella’s health and her husband’s career combined to create a serious problem in the marriage, although their mutual affection was obvious. Thanks to their transatlantic courtship, the couple may not have known one another well when they agreed to share their destinies. When they married, Macdonald was twenty-eight, and Isabella thirty-four — an unusual age combination, but not an insuperable barrier in adult years. Perhaps the Clark sisters had visited Maria from Georgia — but when? Ten years previously, Isabella would have been a mature young woman, John a gawky teenage law clerk. Their romantic reunion on the Isle of Man was perhaps their first encounter on equal terms. During their short courtship, Macdonald probably told his fiancée that he hoped to enter the legislature, which then met in Kingston — a few blocks from home. Unfortunately, by the time she arrived, Canada’s capital had been transferred to Montreal: Macdonald’s election in 1844 meant long periods of absence. Isabella was no trophy wife, but she perhaps felt herself a captive daughter-in-law, with her ambitious Aunt Helen as her husband’s mother. She recalled her days in Georgia and yearned for space in her part-time marriage.

      Soon after Macdonald’s return from Britain, the provincial Parliament met for its second