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1854–1864

The Dreary Waste of Colonial Politics

In September 1854, John A. Macdonald became attorney-general West (Upper Canada justice minister) in a coalition Cabinet of Conservatives, Hincksites, and Bleus, under the premiership of Sir Allan MacNab. Over the next decade, he rose through Canada’s factional coalitions, then slipped backwards until he faced marginalization in what, in 1864, he called “the dreary waste of Colonial politics.”

Reformers agreed to serve under MacNab, the archetypal fossil Tory, and MacNab himself was prepared to join with French Canadians, whom he had denounced as rebels, because a sudden revolution had plunged Canada into the age of steam. MacNab himself had redefined his politics as “railways.” In 1850, there had been a few kilometres of track near Montreal. By 1856, railways snaked across the entire province. The centrepiece was the 500-kilometre Grand Trunk, planned to link Toronto and Montreal. Political pressure forced the Grand Trunk to extend eastward to Lévis, opposite Quebec City, and also west to Sarnia, in wasteful competition with the Great Western, connecting Hamilton and Windsor. Two north-south lines were also important. A spur from Brockville encouraged backwoods Bytown to adopt a grander name. Rejecting the satirical alternative of “Byzantium,” Bytown became “Ottawa” in 1855. Toronto’s Northern Railway to Georgian Bay inspired the Globe with visions of a western empire to the Rocky Mountains. The new railway age required broader political alliances, thus prompting unlikely coalitions.

There were casualties in Canada’s sudden steam revolution. Officially the Grand Trunk was a private company, but rapid construction wrecked its finances and effectively it was funded by Canadian taxpayers. Communities suffered if the railway bypassed them. With no interest in feeding lake traffic, the Grand Trunk ran its line around the back of Kingston: its refusal to build a station on the waterfront created problems for the city’s MP. Montreal had an ocean outlet through a line to Portland in Maine, but many Canadians feared this dependence upon the United States and argued for an alternative line to Halifax. Unfortunately, the Maritime provinces were too poor to build major railways.

John A. Macdonald’s finances were not much affected by the railway boom. He was associated with a scheme called the “Great Southern,” which was never built. He bought land at Sarnia for a railway station, a controversial speculation which allegedly involved misuse of political influence. Instead, in 1856, he invested in a steamship, which promptly sank. Another aspect of Canada’s steam revolution also impact negatively upon Macdonald. Steam-powered printing presses made possible Canada’s first daily newspapers, and the Globe exploited Toronto’s position as a rail hub to become Upper Canada’s dominant journalistic force. For the rest of his career, Macdonald faced a venomous opponent on his own patch.

Canada was also experiencing an administrative revolution, with bureaucratic reforms setting the foundations for today’s federal civil service. In 1855, Macdonald appointed Canada’s first auditor general, to impose discipline on government spending, while deputy ministers and entry tests were introduced in 1857. However, even routine matters still crossed ministerial desks, and all business was transacted longhand. Macdonald often complained he was “overwhelmed with work,” “working like a beaver.” When Parliament was sitting, his presence was required in the House at all hours. Campbell imagined his former partner keeping supporters in line with combinations of champagne and jokes “of doubtful moral tendency.” Macdonald was the only minister to serve throughout the eight years the coalition lasted, and the workload took an enormous toll.

Macdonald quickly carried legislation abolishing the clergy reserves, declaring it was “a great mistake in politics ... to resist when resistance is hopeless.” However, he turned the tables on the Grits by granting the churches a favourable good deal. Britain insisted on safeguarding those clergy already receiving incomes from the reserves. Macdonald proposed to commute these payments, offering sixteen years’ payment as a lump sum. However, he refused to buy out individual clerics, dealing instead with the churches that employed them. Far from depriving the Anglicans of State support, as Grits demanded, Macdonald handed them almost one million dollars, while the Presbyterians netted over $400,000 — permanent cash endowments replacing an unpopular land fund. He had captured the opposition’s policy, and turned it inside out. If anything, the dodge was too clever. When Macdonald backed Confederation a decade later, many suspected his sincerity.

In May 1855, late in the parliamentary session, Macdonald pulled another trick. A bill passed through Parliament extending the privileges of Catholic schools in Upper Canada. Many politicians from the upper province had already gone home, and the measure was passed by French Canadian votes against Protestant objections. Resenting Lower Canadian interference in their local affairs, the Grits stepped up their demands for rep. by pop., a campaign that placed the two sections on a potential collision course.

Soon afterwards, the alternation of the capital back to Toronto enabled Macdonald to reunite his family, moving his wife and son from Kingston. The upheaval was too much for Isabella. In January 1856 she was so desperately ill that her new Toronto doctor warned she might die. Tory John Hillyard Cameron was Macdonald’s party rival, but his wife stepped in to become Hugh John’s child-minder. Coupled with his workload and money problems, Macdonald found his family crisis too much to bear. He had always been fond of a drink, but now he developed a full-scale alcohol problem. Early in 1856, his secretary twice noted that Macdonald was on a “spree,” binge drinking to escape his worries. Soon, his weakness became a political embarrassment.

Late on February 26, John A. Macdonald, obviously drunk, berated George Brown in the Assembly. Even hardened politicians were shocked by his virulent language as he branded Brown “a convicted liar” who had “falsified evidence” to the Penitentiary Commission. Pale with fury, Brown demanded an investigation to clear his name. The next day, Macdonald tried to explain away comments made “in the heat of the debate” although, lawyer-like, he would neither “admit nor deny” whatever he was alleged to have said. “I am carrying on a war against that scoundrel George Brown,” he told Helen, but only his mother could believe he was winning. Macdonald escaped formal censure since the committee of enquiry was stacked in his favour, but he failed to prove his most serious charges. Brown’s enmity was now implacable.

Fortunately, Macdonald won the regard of his new Hincksite allies. Indeed, they wanted him to replace Sir Allan MacNab. Although only fifty-eight, MacNab was immobilized by gout and seemed a relic of bygone days. In May 1856, the Hincksite ministers walked out of Cabinet. Macdonald was desperately torn: MacNab was his leader, but he needed those ex-Reformers to stop the Tories from recapturing the party. Reluctantly, he also resigned, forcing MacNab into retirement. The fallen premier ridiculed “progressive conservatives or liberal progressives or what they call it.” Macdonald defended himself, pointing out that MacNab had largely discarded “the conservative element” in forming his coalition government. But Macdonald made no reply when an opposition member sarcastically asked “whether, in future, he will call himself a Conservative or a Reformer?” John A. Macdonald emerged as Upper Canada leader in the reconstructed Cabinet, but at the cost of seeming devious and disloyal.

The alternating capital system, moving the administrative machine every four years, made no sense. Unfortunately, the Assembly could not agree on a permanent seat of government. Party discipline vanished, members voted for their local city and then combined to block more distant alternatives. In March 1857, the government decided to dodge the issue by referring the issue to Queen Victoria. The governor general, Sir Edmund Head, sent three-point secret advice to London: accept the request; delay the reply until after the next election; choose Ottawa. It proved a time bomb for Macdonald.

In July 1857, Macdonald made his third visit to Britain, his first as part of a government delegation. Isabella was “tolerably well” after her health crisis of the previous year: his secretary found her “very talkative.” Indeed, in March 1857, she seemed in “very unusual health and strength.” John A. Macdonald would not have crossed the ocean had there been a serious risk that he might return to find his wife dead and buried. Indeed, Isabella was well enough for her husband to plan on taking her on a New England vacation before escorting her to Kingston. There she would stay during the forthcoming elections, returning to Toronto when the new Assembly met.

The delegation to London failed to interest the British government in a railway linking Quebec with Halifax, but the visit to London gave Macdonald a valuable opportunity to think about British North America in a broader perspective. There were confidential discussions about the Hudson's Bay Company. Its trading monopoly west of the lakes would lapse in 1859, and the tacit assumption was that Canada would eventually inherit the prairies. A Nova Scotian delegation was also pressing for the Halifax-Quebec railway, and its leader, Premier James W. Johnston, favoured British North American union. Johnston probably persuaded Macdonald that Confederation would provide the framework to resolve Canada’s internal divisions and support westward expansion — and that Nova Scotia would willingly join. But it was still an idea to be handled cautiously in Canada. The Globe exploded when it discovered from a Nova Scotian report that the delegates to Britain had discussed “a Union of the British North American Provinces! Who authorized Mr. Macdonald, in the name of ... the people of Canada, to proceed on such an embassy?”

“I am ... in good health and spirits & enjoying myself amazingly,” Macdonald reported from England. He visited relatives, attended the opera, and when he became “tired of London,” dashed over to Paris. Early in September, he returned to Canada, bearing luxury gifts for Isabella and a child’s kilt to remind Hugh John of his Scottish heritage — and prepared to fight his fifth general election. Although ministries in the province of Canada were named after both sectional leaders, one co-premier was always the senior figure: Macdonald was the junior partner in the Taché-Macdonald Cabinet. With elections approaching, the respected Étienne Taché decided to bow out. He remained in the upper house, but George-Étienne Cartier, a combative Montrealer, succeeded him as Lower Canada leader. John A. Macdonald led the new Macdonald-Cartier Cabinet. On November 26, 1857, he became — in the grandiloquent terminology of a Kingston newspaper — “Prime Minister of Canada.” At forty-two, Macdonald had achieved the highest office in his adopted country. It was the start of a nine-month nightmare that almost torpedoed his political career.

The new premier took over a tired ministry that had run out of ideas. He called an immediate election and, lacking eye-catching new policies, decided to campaign on the government’s record. By contrast, Reformers energetically denounced Catholic schools and demanded representation by population. Many Conservatives felt pressured to agree that Upper Canada should have a larger say in running the province. Macdonald cynically advised one supporter to couple the issue with “extent of territory,” to give country districts a counterweight against Toronto and Montreal. Farmers should be warned that urban politicians would tax them for big city projects. “These are good bunkum arguments.” He also claimed that George Brown could never deliver representation by population, since he could only form a ministry if he found Lower Canadian allies, who would veto his plans. But Macdonald’s specious arguments could not resist what he called the “fanatical” Protestant campaign.

Until 1874, general elections were spread over several weeks. As premier, Macdonald chose the order in which ridings polled, and he planned to raise his supporters’ morale by beginning with his own return by acclamation at Kingston. He was “much disgusted” when a rival candidate spoiled his walkover. Although dismissed by Macdonald as a “fool,” John Shaw was a local businessman and prominent member of the Orange Order. Shaw condemned Macdonald for failing to force the Grand Trunk to bring its line to Kingston’s waterfront “before granting the aid they supplicated for.” Of course, Macdonald could not hold a major provincial project to ransom for the benefit of his own riding, but Shaw’s criticism illustrated the problems of combining advocacy of Kingston’s interests with his responsibilities as provincial leader. Macdonald had in fact gifted the city three imposing public buildings, pushing them forward in 1855 “as in this uncertain world, no one can say, how long we are to last.” His supporters failed to realize that heading a coalition of hungry supporters probably reduced his scope to direct resources to Kingston: one local newspaper wrote that as “Prime Minister,” Macdonald’s “power to do the city further good is almost illimitable.” On December 17, 1857, he was re-elected by a massive 1,189 votes to nine, but his triumph was a high tide, not a benchmark, and disillusionment soon followed.

The Kingston victory was also an exception. Across Upper Canada, especially west of Toronto, government candidates were swept away by Grit demands for rep. by pop. and denunciations of Catholic schools. Bizarrely, two of Macdonald’s colleagues, both prominent Orangemen, were defeated after being denounced as tools of the Pope. Nor did he lead a united team. “We are losing every where from our friends splitting the party,” he complained. But there was no “party.” His ministry was a coalition, formed after the previous elections. In Cabinet, Macdonald worked well with Reformers, but they had not created an integrated grassroots organization and so, in the localities, rival candidates came forward. Every split “discourages our friends and strengthens our foes.” Macdonald issued appeals for unity, hinting at future rewards for those who withdrew. He tried to coordinate the campaign from Toronto. “I cannot leave the helm here for a moment,” he wrote, “or everything will go to the devil.” Shaw’s intervention forced him to spend a few days canvassing in Kingston, but he quickly returned to his headquarters. But on December 23, bad news made him hurry home again.

His mother had suffered a series of strokes in recent years, but this time Helen was likely felled by a virus, perhaps midwinter influenza: young Hugh John was also “seriously ill.” Both recovered but, on December 28, Macdonald’s wife Isabella died. She was forty-eight, and they had been married for fourteen years. Her life had often seemed precarious but her death was still unexpected. For a politician leading an election campaign, the bereavement was devastating. Political controversy was forgotten, wrote a Kingston journalist as he pictured Macdonald “sorrowing at his desolate fireside.” (In fact, he was at his mother’s house. His Brock Street residence had burned in 1856, and he never owned a Kingston home again.) A three-kilometre procession followed Isabella’s coffin on December 30, the largest funeral in the city’s history. But politics could not be forgotten, nor was sympathy universal. The Globe did not report Macdonald’s bereavement, even unleashing a virulent attack on him on the morning of Isabella’s burial. By January 3, 1858, Macdonald was back in Toronto, and his secretary thought him “pretty well under the circumstances.” He had a government to run, and elections still to fight.

Although the Upper Canada results were bad, Macdonald’s Lower Canada allies, the Bleus, swept to victory: the ministry would have a massive thirty-six seat overall majority in the Assembly. The shattered premier talked of resigning, but Sir Edmund Head persuaded him to continue. With three of his Cabinet colleagues defeated, his first task was to rebuild the Upper Canada section of the ministry, but how? “What to do I do not know,” he wrote despairingly on January 16.

One possible avenue was to seek an alliance with George Brown’s rival for the leadership of the Upper Canada Reformers, his near namesake, John Sandfield Macdonald. An attractive if sometimes abrasive character, “Sandfield” was bilingual, and a Catholic, although not especially devout (he once sued a priest for defamation after being likened to a mushroom on a dunghill). He opposed rep. by pop., which would weaken his political base in eastern Upper Canada by shifting power to the burgeoning districts further west. From Toronto, George Brown could defy the French, but Glengarry County and the tiny river port of Cornwall preferred a united Canada. “From Montreal we obtain our money,” Sandfield explained. His fantasy solution to sectional confrontation was the “double majority”: ministries must have strong support in both halves of the province. At intervals over the next decade, Macdonald would try to exploit the John A.–Sandfield–Brown triangle, seeking to use first one Reform leader and then the other, to checkmate his rival. But his first attempt failed. On January 26, Macdonald offered Sandfield two Cabinet seats, urging him to choose “a Reformer supporting the Government, and not a Grit.” A coded telegram, “All right,” would signify agreement, but the reply was “No go.” John A. Macdonald filled the vacant Cabinet posts from his own depleted ranks.

The 1858 parliamentary session was one of the longest and nastiest in Canadian history. Although the government’s program contained little of importance, the Grits fought every inch of the way. By mid-March, John A. Macdonald was “hardly able to crawl” and privately he talked of finding a pretext to resign. “I find the work & annoyance too much for me.” He needed space to grieve for Isabella, and perhaps he blamed himself for having left her in Kingston. He was drinking more than his exhausted system could handle. One evening in May, he delivered an alarmingly incoherent speech in Assembly. Soon after, it was announced that he had joined a temperance group, Macdonald himself admitting that “he had not been altogether free from blame in the course he pursued.” The Globe called it “the funniest thing that has occurred for a long time.” Canada’s premier was becoming a figure of mockery.

One high-risk manoeuvre offered John A. Macdonald the chance to confound his tormenters. If his government could find an excuse to offer its resignation, his quarrelsome critics might find it difficult to unite, and impossible to secure an Assembly majority. Never having officially quit, Macdonald’s colleagues could then bounce back stronger than before. It was an attractive tactic, for nobody believed that George Brown would find Lower Canada allies willing to make him premier: even Brown called himself a “government impossibility.” Unfortunately for this dodge, Macdonald’s solid French Canadian support gave him a bombproof majority. Only if he were defeated could there be a pretext to lure George Brown into the trap.

However, one issue threatened disunity among Macdonald’s supporters. In January 1858, news arrived that Queen Victoria had chosen Ottawa as Canada’s permanent capital. There was widespread protest against the selection of this primitive backwoods town: the Globe predicted that any public buildings erected in Ottawa would soon “be abandoned to the moles and the bats.” Indeed, Premier Macdonald was in no hurry to start construction. “Do not say anything about any action of the Government on the matter,” he warned the editor to whom he leaked the scoop. His Lower Canada supporters especially disliked the Queen’s choice and, on July 28, a Bleu revolt carried a motion denouncing Ottawa by sixty-four votes to fifty. It was a parliamentary hiccup, but the next day, Macdonald tendered his Cabinet’s resignation, in protest against the Assembly’s “uncourteous insult” to the Queen. Since ministers had not snubbed their monarch, they had no reason to resign. Indeed, they had comfortably defeated a formal censure motion and so had no right to quit. The ensuing week of farcical intrigue damaged the reputation of public life, and branded John A. Macdonald as an inept trickster.

Still caretaker premier, Macdonald sat back to enjoy watching George Brown self-destruct in an impossible pursuit of power — in Macdonald’s contemptuous image, like a greedy fish gobbling at the angler’s bait. Unfortunately, Brown grabbed the bait and eluded the hook. Since Cabinets were small, there were only six Lower Canadian posts to fill, and the task proved unexpectedly easy. Antoine-Aimé Dorion was keen to show that his Rouges could tame the Toronto Protestant ogre, while Montreal’s business community wanted its voice heard too. The Brown-Dorion ministry was sworn into office on August 2, and John A. Macdonald automatically became Canada’s ex-premier. Worse still, the incoming team even offered some plausible policies. Disagreements over Catholic schools were mysteriously sidelined, but there was an important breakthrough on representation by population. Montreal Reformer Luther H. Holton encouraged Brown to consider restructuring the province as a two-headed (Ontario-Quebec) federation. Each section would run its own affairs, with Upper Canada having its rep. by pop. majority in the joint legislature. It looked a cumbersome constitution for just two million people: intriguingly, Brown wondered whether a union of all the provinces would make more sense. But the idea offered Lower Canadian politicians a device to protect their local interests while giving ground to Upper Canada’s growing weight of numbers. The new ministry could also plead for time to work out the details. John A. Macdonald urgently needed to strangle the Brown-Dorion ministry in its cradle.

Macdonald was helped by the constitutional rule requiring ministerial by-elections. By accepting office, Brown’s Cabinet colleagues ceased to be members of the Assembly until their ridings had re-endorsed them, further weakening their parliamentary numbers when attacked by Macdonald and Cartier. Ambush turned into massacre, with a censure motion passing by seventy-one votes to thirty-one. On his second day in office, Premier Brown asked the governor general to call an election. In a rare invocation of the Crown’s prerogative, Sir Edmund Head refused. The governor general had already indicated that he might refuse to allow a fresh election but, as Head wrote privately, Brown believed “he could bully me into dissolving.” Franchise qualifications had been relaxed in recent years, but no provision had been made for reliable voters’ lists. During the recent elections, returning officers had been intimidated into accepting blatantly bogus claims: in Quebec City, thousands of dubious voters allegedly included British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston and French Emperor Napoleon III. Premier Macdonald had carried legislation to create voters’ rolls, but these were not yet ready, and other abuses remained. Head argued that “a new election, under precisely the same laws, held within six to eight months of the last” would be equally unsatisfactory. However, Head was known to like Macdonald, and critics suspected a secret alliance between them. John A. himself angrily branded the charge of collusion “false as hell” but, in England, a senior civil servant suspected that Head was “too much under the influence of Macdonald.” Frustrated and furious, Premier Brown resigned on August 4.

“Government no. 3 pretty much identical with no. 1,” was Head’s laconic summary of the outcome of a turbulent week. However, there was one notable change: the former ministers mostly returned, but Cartier was now premier. John A. Macdonald had been unlucky in his eight months at the provincial helm, politically in the lop-sided election result, personally through the hammer blow of Isabella’s death. But politics is an unforgiving trade and, for all his efficiency, charm, and political cunning, John A. Macdonald had proved a disappointment in Canada’s highest office. Worse still, he had formally admitted his alcohol problem. His resignation on a trumped-up pretext had proved a ludicrous miscalculation, although it would become a slow-burn grievance in Kingston that his premiership had made the rival city of Ottawa Canada’s capital. Macdonald and Cartier remained allies but, down to 1867, the Montrealer was the senior partner. He was not pleased when Macdonald supplanted him as first prime minister of the Dominion.

The week of petty politicking played out in a bizarre finale. Somebody recalled that the law had been changed in 1857 to exempt ministers from fighting by-elections if they moved between portfolios within thirty days — a device to permit leisurely Cabinet reshuffles. Since Brown’s “Short Administration” had survived only forty-eight hours, the returning ministers were well within the timeframe, so long as they accepted fresh portfolios. On August 6, John A. Macdonald was sworn in to Cartier’s Cabinet as postmaster general. The next day, he resumed his old office as attorney general West. This was politics as a card game, and the episode was nicknamed the “double shuffle.” Some said the ministers had accepted their joke jobs just before midnight, waited till the clock struck and then picked up their Bibles to swear themselves into their previous portfolios. Victorians were shocked at the sacrilege. Macdonald later implied that the dodge was not his idea but, for the remainder of his career, enemies remembered the squalid pantomime of the double shuffle.

Building Parliament in Canada’s compromise capital Ottawa. His Kingston voters blamed Macdonald for backing the rival city.

Paradoxically, this shabby episode spawned an inspirational policy. Almost casually, the new ministry announced that it would ask the Maritime provinces to discuss how Confederation might “perhaps hereafter be practicable.” The initiative was both tentative and tactical. It was the price paid for recruiting Alexander Galt, a reputed financial genius (although he had problems with the concept of a balanced budget) and an early enthusiast for British North American union. Cartier also needed a big idea to trump Grit talk of a two-headed Canadian federation, and Macdonald likely recalled Nova Scotian enthusiasm for the wider union in London the previous year. Above all, raising the Confederation issue might permit delay over Ottawa. Quebec City’s campaign to become the permanent seat of government had argued that its central position between Canada and the Maritimes would make it the obvious capital of a united British North America. Discussing Confederation tacitly signalled to the Bleus that Ottawa might yet be dumped. However, the ploy was checkmated by the governor general’s threat to resign unless Cartier backed the Queen’s selection.

For Cartier’s new ministry, the union of the provinces was more an aspiration, perhaps even just a slogan, than a practical policy. There was potential for disagreement over the design of any such union: would it imitate the American federation, in which Washington shared its authority with state legislatures, or copy Britain, where a single Parliament at Westminster ruled the entire United Kingdom? Cartier wanted French Canadians to control their own autonomous unit, but Macdonald admired the British constitution, a preference confirmed by the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. In 1858, this difference was papered over with the phrase “a bond of a federal character” — “bond” meant strong, “federal” meant weak. The initiative petered out in a round of dispatches and delegations, but the Confederation genie was out of the bottle, and the issue returned to the political agenda in 1864.

Macdonald’s disappointing premiership left his career curiously becalmed at the very top of politics. He claimed he was “unwilling” to return to office in August 1858, “but Cartier would not do anything without me.” His health was poor and, by November, it was “no secret” that he was planning to quit politics altogether. “Having been First Minister, he has no higher point to reach,” wrote a friendly journalist. The Grits launched a private prosecution to challenge the legality of the double shuffle. Macdonald faced massive fines if he lost the case. In fact he won, but the action was launched in the name of a man who was bankrupt, so he could not recover his costs. The Globe alleged that the thought of losing Macdonald created panic among “the hungry, unprincipled crew who call him leader.” But was he really indispensable? In July 1859, Macdonald discovered that Galt and Cartier had authorized a major bank guarantee without telling him. Angry that he had “not been consulted,” he drafted a resignation letter. Maybe he never sent it: the risk of acceptance was too great. In fact, Macdonald was probably not consulted because he had been adrift on a steamboat in Georgian Bay. He had joined an inspection tour — a political junket — sailing to Sault Ste. Marie, but the ship’s engines had failed and the helpless vessel drifted dangerously close to the rocky Bruce Peninsula. Even George Brown was shocked at how close Canada’s political elite had come to perishing. “Little as I owe them, I would not like them to go off in that way.” John A. Macdonald did not travel west again until 1886, when he rode the train to the Pacific.

Although there were further threats to quit in 1861 and 1862, Macdonald was remarkably tenacious in office. His “private affairs” were in such disarray that in November 1858, he appealed to an associate to be “a good fellow” and help him out of a “scrape” by hurrying a payment owed to him. John A. Macdonald picked his business associates badly. In August 1859, he arrived in Kingston to find his property seized for auction thanks to the default of a hard-up colleague whose finances he had recklessly underwritten. “I am quite unable to pay my own debts & meet this one of yours as well.” One observer wondered how “a man of so much intellect and versatility” could be “such a child” about money. A partner in a Kingston real estate development complained in 1861, “Macdonald has all but ruined me by his wretched carelessness.” Yet, despite his resolve in July 1862 to “set to work to make a little money,” Macdonald remained addicted to politics.

Isabella’s death had left him with sole responsibility for his son Hugh John. The Macdonald of the 1840s had delighted in playing with a young nephew, pretending to owe the little boy huge sums of money and emptying his pockets of coin to pay the imaginary debt. But the most popular politician in Canada now seemed too busy and remote to be a proper father to “Hughey.” Parenting responsibilities fell upon his sister Margaret, who had married a Queen’s academic, widower James Williamson. The childless Williamsons were “kind & judicious” in rearing the boy, and Macdonald’s letters sent praise and kisses, but somehow his staccato correspondence conveyed little affection for Hugh and not overmuch appreciation for the help of his in-laws. Hugh Macdonald became an insecure adult.

Meanwhile, Macdonald’s political career descended towards disaster. In 1860 Queen Victoria sent her son, the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII), on the first royal tour of Canada, under the guardianship of the Duke of Newcastle, the British Cabinet minister responsible for the colonies. Kingston was their first Upper Canadian port of call, and Macdonald planned a glittering ball at which his constituents could meet the prince. He was not alone in planning a welcome. Catholic priests had been prominent in civic ceremonies in French Canada, and Kingston’s Orangemen determined to parade in their regalia under triumphal arches to demonstrate that Canada was a Protestant country too. Unfortunately, the Orange Order was banned in Ireland and the duke refused to countenance its existence. When the royal steamboat arrived at Kingston, a furious row broke out, with Macdonald insisting that the Order was a legal body in Canada, Newcastle refusing to allow the prince to land, and the Orangemen standing their ground on the waterfront. The gala ball was a flop, despite Macdonald’s bogus claim that “His Royal Highness had expressed his sincere regret at the unfortunate misunderstanding.” After a twenty-four-hour standoff, the prince sailed away. Macdonald had furiously told the duke that “if they passed Kingston by, they should also pass him by.” For the next two weeks, the senior minister from Upper Canada boycotted the royal tour. The politician who had resigned because Parliament had insulted Queen Victoria over Ottawa had placed himself in the invidious position of snubbing her son and heir. Eventually, Macdonald swallowed his pride and rejoined the official party. Not surprisingly, there were suspicions he had been on drunken bender.

Macdonald’s political standing was so shaken that he embarked on a speaking tour of the province, to rebuild his grassroots support. “I never took to the stump before,” he commented, but he enjoyed the experience. Unfortunately, extremist Orangemen believed Macdonald had not done enough to defend them, and at the next elections, in the summer of 1861, his Protestant power base in Kingston was fractured. His one-time law pupil, Oliver Mowat, was imported from Toronto to run against him — it was no accident that Mowat was a prominent teetotaller. Kingston rejected the interloper by 785 votes to 484, a come-down from Macdonald’s eleven hundred vote triumph in 1857. He owed his victory to Catholic voters, many of whom backed him as the lesser of two evils. Macdonald’s majority was less secure than it appeared.

The Conservatives did well across Upper Canada but, paradoxically, success added to Macdonald’s problems. To his puzzlement, “the dry bones of Pre-Adamite Toryism” had stirred into new life. By abolishing the clergy reserves, he had done the extreme Tories the favour of freeing them from an unpopular cause. The 1861 elections were held soon after preliminary results from that year’s census showed that Upper Canada now had 1.4 million people, well ahead of Lower Canada’s 1.1 million. Tories increasingly vented their contempt for French Catholics under the fair-play guise of demanding representation by population. Macdonald condemned the “violent Tories” who stupidly believed “that a purely Conservative Government can be formed.” Any such attempt would merely reunite all brands of Reformers, who collectively had a built-in majority in go-ahead Upper Canada. “I am not such a fool as to destroy all that I have been doing for the last 7 years.” But when Cabinet changes were needed in March 1862, it was impossible to find any Conservative opposed to rep. by pop. Indeed, the Tories demanded that they should dominate the government. An emerging Lower Canadian centre group, the Mauves (a mixture of Rouge and Bleu) added to the instability.

The outbreak of the American Civil War created fresh challenges. In November 1861 a Northern warship seized two Southern envoys travelling to Europe on a British steamship. Britain angrily demanded an apology, and war was briefly threatened. The crisis destroyed any lingering belief that the Empire could protect Canada from invasion. British reinforcements were rushed across the Atlantic, although the lack of a railway from Halifax prevented most from reaching the interior of Canada. The imperial garrison was boosted to 14,000 troops. This would have deterred the 16,000-strong pre-1861 United States Army, but it was useless against the massive forces engaged in the Civil War: the North suffered 15,000 casualties in a single week of battles in June 1862 — and went on fighting.

Nominally, every adult male from sixteen to fifty served in Canada’s militia: that was why Macdonald had marched against Mackenzie’s rebels in 1837. Now, as the first-ever minister of militia, he introduced a sweeping reform measure, to create a part-time army, intensively (and expensively) trained. The details of his Militia Bill were both vague and alarming. Military experts spoke of training 100,000 men; Macdonald talked of 50,000, maybe costing a million dollars. Financially, this was a nightmare: Galt’s latest budget already planned to spend $12 million — but revenue would be only $7 million. If there were too few volunteers, conscription would make up the numbers, something especially unpopular in French Canada. Cartier seemed notably unenthusiastic about his own government’s proposal, and Macdonald’s handling of the measure was lacklustre. Worse still, some days the bill stalled because the minister did not appear in Parliament. Macdonald’s absences were caused “nominally by illness,” noted the new governor general, Lord Monck, “but really, as every one knows, by drunkenness.” On May 20, 1862, a Bleu revolt defeated the Militia Bill, and Cartier’s ministry resigned.

Calling defeat “a grateful tonic,” Macdonald put his usual favourable spin on events. “I chose a soft bed to fall upon ... I fell in a blaze of loyalty.” Perhaps a new phase was opening in his career. The death of Helen Macdonald in October 1862 freed him from acting out his mother’s ambitions. Soon afterwards, he made a private visit to England on Trust and Loan Company business: maybe, at last, he could concentrate on making some money. Although claiming to be “thoroughly sick of official life,” Macdonald still planned to exercise political influence, “to keep my place in parliament ... I can do more good there.” But while he remained in politics, sheer ability made him an inescapable choice as party leader. Even in the aftermath of the Militia Bill debacle, the “immeasurably inferior” John Hillyard Cameron failed to oust him as caucus leader. As the governor of New Brunswick wrote in 1865, “Macdonald (when not drunk) is a really powerful man.” Once again, John A. Macdonald dealt with the alcohol issue by announcing he would join the temperance movement.

The new premier, Sandfield Macdonald, skilfully kept his insecure ministry afloat for twenty-two months. Unfortunately, his big idea, the double majority, ensured that the divided province achieved little at a time when there were so many challenges to tackle. John A. Macdonald even put out feelers for a possible alliance with George Brown. Brown replied that he would “sustain” a Conservative ministry if it enacted representation by population. However, he rejected coalition as “demoralizing” and refused “friendly personal intercourse” with Macdonald until his 1856 allegations were “entirely withdrawn.”

John A. Macdonald promised to provide “gentlemanlike and patriotic opposition” in Parliament. Sandfield’s ministry was “in a great mess & cannot possibly go on, but I am doing what I can to keep them up,” he claimed in March 1863. “They will fall from their own weakness and not from the attacks of the opposition.” Six weeks later, as mighty American armies clashed at Chancellorsville, he carried a censure motion and forced Sandfield into a general election: continental crisis had not yet compelled Canada’s politicians to soar above faction fighting. Campaigning as “a simple citizen of Kingston,” Macdonald faced Reformer Overton S. Gildersleeve, a young, respected, and highly successful local businessman. Gildersleeve’s vote equalled Mowat’s 1861 tally, marking him as a long-term threat. The Conservatives did badly across Upper Canada but the overall political situation remained unstable. Sandfield clung to a wafer-thin majority but, on March 21, 1864, he staged a tactical resignation, boasting that his opponents could not replace him.

At first, John A. Macdonald refused to accept office: he had “strong private reasons urging him to look more closely to his own affairs.” Once again, the wild card of mortality had intervened. Although only forty-one, his partner, Archie John MacDonell, was fatally ill: his death, on March 27, automatically dissolved their law firm. Winding up their joint accounts would reveal that the practice was chronically insolvent. “It was utter ruin to me to return to the Government and I declined,” Macdonald later recalled. Taking office would also mean fighting a ministerial by-election, and Macdonald had probably concluded months earlier that the ambitious Gildersleeve would throw money into such a contest which the near-bankrupt John A. could not match. But death took a hand here too. On March 9, aged just thirty-nine, Gildersleeve died of a heart attack. Kingston’s Reformers had no obvious alternative candidate, and John A. Macdonald might survive a by-election after all.

Premier Sandfield Macdonald was indeed hard to replace. A Reformer, A.J. Fergusson-Blair, failed to form a ministry, Cartier ran into problems, and there was even talk of drafting Alexander Campbell, who had never held office. Étienne Taché was prepared to come out of retirement, but he demanded John A. Macdonald as his Upper Canada deputy. Macdonald was “wrapped in slumber” late one March evening when Cartier, Campbell, and Fergusson-Blair hammered at the front door of his lodgings and roused him from his midnight slumber. They delivered an ultimatum. If he would not forget his business worries and join them, they would abandon their attempts to form a Cabinet and allow Sandfield to bounce back in triumph. John A. Macdonald did not need long to consider. He returned to the dreary wasteland of colonial politics.