Done Deal

When the men who came to be known as the Fathers of Confederation met in Quebec City to try to hammer out an arrangement for the union of their respective colonies, it was not clear whether the tide was turning toward or away from large polities. In Europe, the progress of Italian and German unification seemed to bode well for larger units. But the Ottoman Empire was tottering and Russia’s weaknesses were starkly revealed in the Crimean War that had ended less than a decade earlier. In North America, large nations were definitely in trouble. Atlanta had just fallen to Union forces in September, but the United States Civil War would not end until the spring of 1865. (Indeed, a raid on St. Alban’s, Vermont, conducted by some Confederate trouble makers hiding out in the Eastern Townships, took place in the middle of the Quebec conference.) Mexico was also engaged in a civil war, this one between republicans and monarchists, triggered by an invasion of...