Later that year, Nelson met many leaders of the Patriot movement in Swanton, Vermont, and began to plan border skirmishes to draw the United States into a conflict with the British Empire. However, the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty destroyed the last hopes of getting American assistance to liberate the French Canadians from British colonialism. Ruined, destitute, and his reputation broken, he refused to return to Lower Canada despite an amnesty and stayed in the United States, forsaking politics until his death in 1873 in Staten Island.