Commercial fishing was even connected to the peace process that ended the Revolutionary War. American leaders formally opened negotiations for peace with Great Britain in 1779. According to Edmund Cody Burnett, the foremost authority on the Continental Congress, these leaders resolved to demand six stipulations for peace over and above “absolute and unlimited … liberty, sovereignty, and independence.” “The most hotly contested parliamentary battle ever waged in Congress,” Burnett writes, involved the stipulation regarding “fishing rights on the banks and coasts of Newfoundland.” The Grand Bank, which was the richest source of cod in the Atlantic Ocean, was one of the spoils of the war.

New England delegates stubbornly insisted that Americans wage war until access to these fishing waters was guaranteed. These rights were, after all, one of the foremost causes of the imperial conflict in the first place. The issue split Congress into two geographical factions: a Southern faction that supported peace without fishing rights, and a Northern faction, which New Englanders championed, that would not accept a treaty giving up “the common right of fishing.” Congress remained deadlocked, and the peace process utterly broke down until middle ground was reached on this important issue.

In the compromise, Northern delegates agreed not to make fishing rights an absolute ultimatum for peace, and the Southern members of Congress agreed to allow a New England delegate to help negotiate peace terms with Great Britain.