The Union's main focus in foreign affairs was just the opposite: to prevent any British recognition of the Confederacy. The issues of the Oregon boundary dispute, British involvement in Texas, and the Canada–US border dispute had all been resolved in the 1840s, and despite the Pig War of 1859, a relatively minor border incident in the Pacific Northwest, Anglo-American relations had steadily improved throughout the 1850s. Secretary of State William H. Seward, the primary architect of American foreign policy during the war, intended to maintain the policy principles that had served the country well since the American Revolution: non-intervention by the United States in the affairs of other countries and resistance to foreign intervention in the affairs of the United States and other countries in the Western Hemisphere.