Internal Forces That Led To Confederation Essay

“Canada is the linchpin of the english speaking world.” - Sir Winston Churchill. Basically this means Canada holds the English world together. He talks about the greatness of the fully developed country of Canada. Several steps were taken to get to this point. The first few were a series of external and internal forces which led to confederation.

Several internal forces pushed the creation of Canada, for example; the deadlocked government, The Railway and The great coalition. After the union of Canada East and Canada West the government had something called double majority. This meant both sides of the government needed a majority for a bill to pass instead of just a simple majority. This left the government often in a stalemate which did

One of the biggest factors of Confederation was The Railway. A railway was needed for several reasons. With poor infrastructure aside from rivers which froze over in the winter the merchants needed a way to transfer their products. Canada was in a depression because of their loss of trade with other countries. The railway would solve the problem of transporting goods and help transport troops for the military. The railway pushed Confederation because it would bring all the BNA colonies together with a railway connecting them. The Railway also pushed confederation because of its need of money during building because it often ran out halting the project. The final internal force was the great coalition. They were 3 men, John A. Macdonald, George Cartier and George Brown. They were the men that pushed confederation. Macdonald pushed confederation mainly because of his fear of The United States and Brown only supported it after Macdonald and

The Corn Laws were a law Britain had with their Colonies. It meant all of the British manufactures had to buy their raw material from Canada or face heavy taxes. Britain got rid of these laws creating Canada to loose most of their trade with Britain. This led to a depression in Canada. This pushed confederation because with confederation all the BNA colonies could trade without taxes. The Reciprocity treaty was a deal Canada had with the United States where they could trade with each other without facing taxes. The United States got rid of this deal which worsened Canada's depression and increasing the need to find someone to trade with. Again pushing confederation so they could trade with other BNA colonies without taxes. One of the largest forces pushing confederation were the Americans. America was having a Civil war and British Arms dealers decided to supply the south. The northern states found out about this and wanted to attack the closest british colony which at that time was Canada. To fix this Macdonald wanted to unite the BNA colonies which would create one big military. Another thing with the Americans was Manifest Destiny. That was The United States belief that they were destined to rule all of North America. They had more soldiers than Canada had people so that was a serious threat. This