John Macdonald

This article deals with the politician. For other people, see John MacDonald .

John Macdonald (1868)

Sir John Alexander Macdonald , GCB , KCMG , QC (born January 10, 1815 in Glasgow , Scotland , † June 6, 1891 in Ottawa ) was the first Prime Minister of Canada . He was in office twice, first from July 1, 1867 to December 5, 1873 and then from October 17, 1878 until his death. With a total term of over 19 years, he is the country's second longest ruling prime minister. As one of the fathers of the Confederation , Macdonald is one of the pioneers of the Canadian state founded in 1867, and he was also a driving force behind the transcontinental railroad that was completed in 1885 . He had also previously served as Prime Minister of the Province of Canada .

Childhood and youth

Macdonald's exact date of birth is controversial: Official sources give January 10th, while Macdonald himself celebrated his birthday on January 11th. His father, Hugh Macdonald, was an unsuccessful businessman. He married Helen Shaw on October 21, 1811. They had five children together; John was the third. When the father's various businesses went bankrupt, the family emigrated to Kingston , Upper Canada, in 1820 .

The bad luck followed the family to their new home. When he was seven years old, John Macdonald saw his younger brother James being slain by a drunken servant (a court ruled the death an accident). The father was not much more successful in his business than in Scotland. Still, he could afford to send his son to Midland Grammar School, where he took subjects like Latin, French, and math. John Macdonald finished school at the age of 15, and there was no money to study literature at a university.

Career as a lawyer

Macdonald's parents decided that their son should become a lawyer when he finished school . He traveled by steamboat to York (present-day Toronto ) and passed the entrance examination of the Law Society of Upper Canada (Law Society of Upper Canada ). Around 1830 there were still no law faculties, so that future lawyers could acquire their knowledge as employees of an established lawyer after passing the entrance exam. In Macdonald's case, it was George Mackenzie, a prominent member of the Scottish community in Kingston who practiced business law.

When he was 17 years old, Macdonald was entrusted with running the branch in Napanee . In 1833 he was allowed to leave the company to head the office of his ailing cousin Lowther Pennington Macpherson in Picton . However, in the summer of 1835, he decided to return to Kingston and open his own law firm after George Mackenzie died during a cholera epidemic. Macdonald was determined to follow in Mackenzie's footsteps as the leading attorney for the Scottish Presbyterian community that was rapidly gaining influence in Kingston.

On February 6, 1836 he was first admitted to a court hearing. Soon after opening his office, he took on two students who would later also become very prominent: Oliver Mowat , who later became Prime Minister of Ontario , and Alexander Campbell , who later became Minister of the Interior and Defense, and Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. After he had dealt with the lucrative but from his point of view boring commercial law, he practiced criminal law for two years from 1837 , because he hoped that it would attract more public attention. Macdonald unsuccessfully defended a man accused of raping an eight-year-old girl, but a local paper extolled his defensive strategy. He then obtained the acquittal of a man who had allegedly killed a friend in an argument. Alexander Campbell later wrote that Macdonald had won over the jury with humor and anecdotes rather than legal prowess.

1837 rebellions

The 1837 rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada proved to be a turning point in Macdonald's legal career. Macdonald earned the reputation of a conservative who was not afraid to fight for liberal principles. He defended eight political prisoners from neighboring districts who were accused of participating in rioting against the colonial authorities and charged with treason . Macdonald obtained an acquittal in all cases. A Kingston newspaper praised "his genius and skill" and prophesied that he would have "a rapid rise in his profession" ahead of him.

Macdonald then served as an advisor to John Ashley, who was in charge of running the local military prison and had himself been briefly imprisoned for allegedly helping 15 political prisoners to escape. Ashley charged military commander Colonel Dundas with illegal arrests. Dundas was very popular, but Macdonald convinced the jury to generously compensate Ashley.

After all, Macdonald took a great risk when he agreed to defend American irregulars. They tried to invade Canada in order to free the country from the yoke of colonial oppression by the British in their eyes. The irregulars were captured in November 1838 after the Battle of the Windmill . At least two other lawyers had declined to take on the case. Macdonald hesitated at first, but then agreed after the angry brother-in-law of one of the accused stormed into his house and rudely woke him up.

Macdonald could do little for the Americans. In a military tribunal , a civil defense lawyer was not allowed to question the witnesses or speak to the judge. Macdonald could only offer private advice, which allowed the brother-in-law to ask the right questions during the trial. However, this did not save the defendants from the gallows . Macdonald also advised Nils von Schoultz , the leader of the irregulars , originally from Finland . Von Schoultz insisted on pleading guilty and leaving Macdonald $ 100 in his will. Macdonald had to refuse this request.

Political rise

John Macdonald (1843)

Macdonald's political career began in 1843 when he was elected to Kingston City Council. In 1844 he accepted the Conservative Party's nomination and ran for the legislature of the Province of Canada . Macdonald won significantly in Kingston constituency, earned the respect of his fellow parliamentary groups, and was appointed treasurer to the government of William Henry Draper in 1847. When the Conservatives lost the election in 1848, he resigned from the party. In 1854 he was involved in the founding of the far more moderate liberal-conservative party led by Allan MacNab .

In the same year the new party, which appealed to both the conservative electorate and the reform forces in the center, won the election. Macdonald was appointed Attorney General , serving as the government's chief legal advisor. After the election in 1856, he was together with Étienne-Paschal Taché co-prime minister of the province of Canada (the government of the province of Canada was led by a prime minister from Lower and Upper Canada). In 1857 Taché resigned and was replaced by George-Étienne Cartier .

In early August 1858, the Macdonald-Cartier government lost the confidence of its MPs. But just four days later, Cartier was asked by the governor-general to take over the post of prime minister again because the liberal George Brown could not form a government. Cartier accepted the request and reinstated Macdonald. This procedure was entirely legal at the time, because every member of the government could re-enter the government no later than one month after resigning. The Cartier-Macdonald government suffered another defeat in May 1862. Macdonald was the leader of the opposition until the election in May 1864 . Taché then ended his retirement and formed the government again with Macdonald. From July 1865, Narcisse-Fortunat Belleau Macdonalds was co-prime minister.

Canadian Confederation

Proclamation of the Canadian Confederation

Macdonald used his abundance of power to unite the various British colonies in the north of the American continent into a confederation. This should create a counterweight to the USA and enable expansion into the West. In order to avoid constant changes of government in the province of Canada, Macdonald formed a grand coalition in 1864 with the reformers around George Brown, the forerunners of the Liberal Party . By 1867 he devoted himself to creating the legal basis for the unification of the British colonies.

In September 1864 Macdonald led the delegation of the Province of Canada at the Charlottetown Conference in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island to present his ideas to the Atlantic colonies , which at the time were planning a merger themselves and were still skeptical of the union with the Province of Canada. In October 1864, the delegates of the individual colonies met in the city of Québec to negotiate the "Seventy-two Resolutions", the basis of the Confederation, at the Québec Conference . In 1866 the agreement on the formation of the confederation was signed in the British capital of London as part of the London Conference . In 1867 the bill came before the British Parliament , which then passed the British North America Act . The province of Canada was to be divided into the provinces of Québec and Ontario .

First term as Prime Minister

John Macdonald (1883)

Queen Victoria knighted John Macdonald for his contribution to the creation of the Confederation. On July 1, 1867, he was accepted into the Order of St. Michael and St. George , the same day the provinces of Québec, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia merged to form Dominion Canada. The Macdonald-led coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Conservatives won the first general election .

Macdonald's vision as Prime Minister was to expand and unite the new state. Canada bought the Hudson's Bay Company for £ 300,000 (around 8 million euros) from extensive areas in the west, which were combined to the Northwest Territories . In 1870, in response to the Red River Rebellion led by Louis Riel , Parliament passed the Manitoba Act , creating the new, equal province of Manitoba from a small portion of the Northwest Territories . In 1871, British Columbia joined the Confederation. Macdonald promised to build a transcontinental railway line to connect the remote area with the rest of the country. In 1873, Prince Edward Island joined the Confederation and Macdonald created the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (then called the North-West Mounted Police ) to take over the police duties in the Northwest Territories.

In the wake of the Pacific scandal of 1873, Macdonald and his cabinet were accused of accepting bribes to secure the contract for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway for industrialist Hugh Allan . The Macdonald government lost public favor and had to hand over to a transitional government under Alexander Mackenzie on November 5, 1873 . The subsequent election in January 1874 was won by the Liberals. Macdonald offered to resign as party chairman, but the delegates at the party congress refused.

Second term as Prime Minister

Election campaign poster from 1891

On October 17, 1878, Macdonald took over the office of Prime Minister for the second time. Before the general election of 1878, he had promised to strengthen Canada's economy and protect it from foreign competition. He also promised to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway by 1885 (construction progress had been very modest under the Mackenzie administration).

Also in 1885, at the request of many Métis , Louis Riel returned to Canada from his US exile and sought an independent province in what is now Saskatchewan with a Provisional Government . Macdonald decided to crack down on the military, which marked a harsh turnaround in the Canadian government's moderate policy towards the Métis, and the Northwest Rebellion ensued . The North-West Mounted Police , which normally maintained public order in the area that was then part of the Northwest Territories , was far too weak in numbers and Macdonald dispatched 3,000 men under General Frederick Middleton, who, thanks to the, was not quite The completed new railway was on site unusually quickly and with its superior strength ultimately defeated the Métis in the Battle of Batoche. The execution of Riel for treason led to a deep rift with the French Canadians who had always supported the half-French Métis.

Macdonald's Conservative Party won the election on June 20, 1882 and February 22, 1887 . In the election on March 5, 1891 , Macdonald was again confirmed as prime minister, although it was clear that the now 76-year-old suffered from overwork, stress and alcohol problems. On May 29th, he suffered a severe stroke that prevented his ability to speak and from which he did not recover. Macdonald died a week later on June 6, 1891. Thousands paid his last respects when he was laid out in the Ottawa Senate Chamber. His remains were transferred to Kingston in a special funeral train. There he is buried in the Cataraqui cemetery.

Private life

Isabella Clark Macdonald

After the sudden death of his father on September 29, 1841, Macdonald was solely responsible for the financial support of his mother and his two unmarried sisters. Although he was a full-time attorney, he received most of his income as the director of the prosperous Commercial Bank of the Midland District . He also dealt in real estate and was involved in a dozen Kingston companies.

During a trip to Great Britain in 1842, he met his cousin Isabella Clark, four years his senior. She moved to Kingston and the couple married on September 1, 1843. From 1845 onwards, Isabella began to suffer from trigeminal neuralgia and developed a dependence on opium , which she drank in liquid form to relieve pain. The marriage resulted in two sons. The first, John Alexander, died of sudden infant death in September 1848 . The second son, Hugh John Macdonald , was born on March 13, 1850. He later became Prime Minister of Manitoba.

Isabella died in 1857. Ten years after her death, Macdonald married for the second time. Her marriage to Susan Agnes Bernard (1836–1920) had a daughter, Margaret Mary Theodora, who suffered from hydrocephalus all her life . One of his great-nephews was the well-known actor Glenn Ford .

Macdonald founded the Masonic Lodge St. John's Lodge No. 5 . In 1868 he was elected by the United Grand Lodge of England as its deputy in the Grand Lodge of Canada.

legacy

Macdonald is best remembered as the man who managed to make a united nation out of widely spaced colonies with different cultural roots and political views.

He was known for both his wit and his sporadic alcoholism . Sometimes Macdonald was drunk during parliamentary sessions. During an election debate, he vomited on the speaker's platform as his opponent was speaking. Then Macdonald told the crowd, "Look how the ideas of my opponent disgust me" ( see how my opponent's ideas disgust me ). According to another version of the story, he is said to have said: "This shows that I prefer a drunk conservative to a sober liberal" ( It goes to see that I would rather have a drunk Conservative than a sober Liberal ).

Macdonald is depicted on the Canadian 10 dollar bill. Numerous bridges, airports and highways are named after him, including the Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport or the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway . A variety of schools across the country and Mount Macdonald in the Selkirk Mountains also bear his name. In 2004 he was named the eighth most important Canadian of all time on the television show The Greatest Canadian .

See also

• 1st Canadian Cabinet (1867–1873)
• 3. Canadian Cabinet (1878-1891)

literature

• Joseph Pope: The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion. Brook & Co., Toronto 1915.
• Donald Creighton: John A. Macdonald - The Young Politician vol 1: 1815-1867. The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, Toronto 1952.
• PB Waite: John A. Macdonald. Fitzhenry and Whiteside Limited, Don Mills 1976.
• Donald Swainson: Sir John A. Macdonald - The Man and the Politician. Quarry Press, Kingston 1989.
• Patricia Phenix: Private Demons, The Tragic Personal Life of John A. Macdonald. McClelland & Stewart. Toronto 2006, ISBN 0-7710-7044-6 .
• JK Johnson and PB Waite: Canada's Prime Ministers: MacDonald to Trudeau. University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2007, ISBN 0-8020-9174-1 .
• Richard Gwyn at Random House Canada:

1. The Man Who Made Us. The Life and Times of Sir John A. Macdonald 1815-1867. 2007, ISBN 0-679-31475-X .
2. Nation Maker Sir John A. Macdonald. His Life, Our Times. 1867-1891. 2011

Web links

Commons : John Macdonald  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• John Macdonald . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
• Sir John Alexander Macdonald ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
• John Macdonald at Library and Archives Canada
• John Macdonald - biographical information on the website of the Canadian Parliament (English)
• John Macdonald's Kingston - Kingston Historical Society

• John Macdonald in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Waite, p. 7.
2. ^ Phenix, p. 8.
3. ↑ Swainson, p. 17.
4. ^ Pope, p. 5.
5. ↑ Swainson, p. 19.
6. ^ Creighton, p. 34.
7. ↑ Swainson, pp. 21-23.
8. ^ Johnson, Waite, p. 1.
9. ↑ Pope, p. 8.
10. ↑ Gwyn, pp. 49-50.
11. ^ Creighton, p. 68.
12. ^ Creighton, p. 54.
13. ↑ Creighton, pp. 55-58.
14. ↑ Creighton, pp. 65-68.
15. ↑ See Bruce Hutchison : Mr. Prime Minister 1867–1964 . Longmans Canada, Toronto 1964.
16. ↑ Swainson, p. 39.
17. ↑ Gwyn, pp. 54-55.
18. ↑ Phenix, pp. 56-59.
19. ↑ Phenix p. 70.
20. ↑ Phenix, pp. 93-94.
21. ↑ JAM Freemason
22. ^ The Ten Greatest Canadians ( Memento from May 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
23. ↑ The magazine "Literary Review of Canada" rated this book in 2016 as one of the 25 books that have had the most influence on Canada in the last 25 years.