Though often overshadowed by the acquisitions from Louisiana, Mexico, Spain, Russian Alaska, or overseas, Canada is just as crucial to the national picture for its failures as those territories are for their successes. Too often the history of the United States reads backwards, focused only on the successful or recent. A study regarding American expansion into Canada counters many nationalist, exceptionalist, and defensive imperialist narratives permeating American expansionism.

This paper also combines sources from American newspapers, letters, official documents, and congressional meetings with their British and Canadian counterparts to expand upon the strictly national interpretations of Canadian-American relations to delve into British North American reactions to their place bordering the growing United States. Much like the West, gradual American expansion through population growth had Americans assured of an eventual, even peaceful, merging with Canada. Ultimately, the only real difference between the efforts to add Canada and the remainder of early American expansionism is how this northern thrust remained unfinished.

The American desire to permanently occupy and control Canada, expressed frequently and diversely through the period from 1774-1815, contains all the necessary scholarship regarding American empire, despite its unique role as the 'failed' or forgotten imperialism. The reasons Canada fits, and more importantly doesn't fit, into the national narratives are essential to any understanding of the history of the early republic, of imperialism, expansionism, and the formation of the American empire.