On June 1, 1866, over 1,000 Irish-Americans, known as the Fenians, invaded Canada from Buffalo, New York. It was part of an audacious scheme to seize Canada and use it as a bargaining chip for Irish independence. The Fenians failed to free Ireland from British rule, but they ultimately played an unwitting role in forging the path to Canadian nationhood. Keep reading to learn more about the strange and bloody saga of the Fenian raids on Canada.

The Fenian Brotherhood

The Fenian Brotherhood was the North American counterpart to the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an armed underground organization dedicated to ending British rule in the entirety of Ireland. The two organizations were born in the aftermath of a failed rebellion in Ireland in 1848, one of many revolutions that swept the continent of Europe in that year. The Irish rebels, still weakened from the effects of the ongoing Great Famine, were swiftly defeated by imperial police. Dissidents and militants were forced underground into hiding, or into exile; many immigrated to North America, settling primarily in the United States, where they established chapters of the Fenian Brotherhood in the cities of the Northeast and northern border regions.

In the United States, exiled militants remained dedicated to the cause of an independent Irish Republic, even as their new home found itself in the midst of its own bloody civil war between 1861 and 1865. Many Fenians fought in the American Civil War, on the Union and Confederate side alike, gaining valuable experience in combat. In the aftermath of the Union’s victory, battle-hardened Fenians in towns along the northern border began concocting a bold and unusual plan for achieving Irish independence: invade and seize Canada, and use it to bargain with the United Kingdom in exchange for Irish independence.

Tensions over Trade

Canada, in 1866, was not yet a country. British North America, as it was known at the time, was rather a set of individual colonies of the United Kingdom, all in the midst of a period of great transition, as the colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada (encompassing modern-day Ontario and Quebec) began to move toward greater political unity, in large part out of fears of increasing American belligerence south of the border.

In 1866, the United States alarmed the ruling class of British North America by abruptly cancelling the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, which had established free trade agreements between the United States and the colonies to the north. The treaty, which had long been opposed by American trade protectionists, drew increasing ire across the political spectrum over the United Kingdom’s unofficial support for the Confederacy during the Civil War, which included the shipment of supplies (arms) to the Confederate States and the tacit permission of Confederate operatives to reside in Canada, even to the point of conducting cross-border raids into the United States.

Fifty years after the United States’ last failed attempt to seize Canada by force in the War of 1812, calls for the annexation of British North America remained commonplace among certain segments of the American press and political establishment. This made the gathering of arms by the Fenians, who openly plotted their invasion south of the border, even more alarming for the Canadians. For the Americans, the Fenians served as a useful proxy force, providing them with leverage in their trade war with Canada. They were allowed to stockpile arms, and amass, organize and train bodies of troops unimpeded by the American authorities.

The Fenian Raid from Buffalo

On June 1, 1866, more than 1,000 armed Fenians, many of them veterans of the American Civil War, crossed the Niagara River from Buffalo and landed in Canada. Their plan of attack was confused and confusing, and its success hinged on the “oppressed” people of Canada joining their cause. The Fenians encountered no armed resistance in their initial crossing, and quickly captured the town of Fort Erie, directly across the river from Buffalo. However, the people of Canada declined to join the Fenian cause, and the invaders were met with indifference or quiet hostility.

Accounts from contemporaneous Canadian historians contain a great deal of somewhat snide anti-Irish chauvinism, with numerous references to the laziness of the Fenian troops, and their proclivity for drinking whiskey. What is undeniable is that the Fenian invasion was disorganized and somewhat bizarre, with many of the troops apparently more interested in looting and making merry than the supposed liberation of Canada (to say nothing of Ireland).

Despite the tragicomic dimension of it all, the invasion was not a bloodless one. On June 2, a column of Fenians marched west from Fort Erie, with a detachment remaining behind to occupy the town and guard the rear. As was the case throughout the invasion, their objective was unclear, although some sources indicate their aim was to seize the strategic Welland Canal that connected shipping lanes in Lake Erie with Lake Ontario. Meanwhile, a column of Canadian militia marched east to meet the Fenians. The two forces more or less stumbled upon each other near the village of Ridgeway on June 2. The Canadians fought bravely against the Fenians, and initially appeared to be gaining the upper hand, driving the Fenians back toward the river.

However, a series of confused orders from the inexperienced Canadian commander turned the tide. The Canadians were ordered to change formation to defend against a cavalry charge, despite the Fenians having no cavalry on the field. The order was withdrawn and another was issued for the Canadians to retreat, despite them having the upper hand in the battle up to that point. The Fenian commander saw an opportunity to exploit the chaos, and ordered a bayonet charge. The militia, who had never seen battle before, panicked and fled in a rout, leaving behind nine dead men on the field. Twenty-two further would die from their wounds in subsequent days.

The Retreat from Ridgeway

The Fenian victory was short lived. To continue their campaign, they required supplies and reinforcements. Since the people of Canada showed no interest in joining them in rebellion, this necessitated reinforcement from the other side of the river. The Fenian column retreated back to Fort Erie to await reinforcements from the American side. Thousands of Fenians and their sympathizers (and a fair number of mercenaries and opportunistic adventure seekers) had gathered in Buffalo on the other side of the river. However, as the Canadian historian W.G. Hardy wrote (perhaps a little unfairly): “Most of the ten thousand Fenians gathered at Buffalo had stomachs for only oratory and whisky.”

Perhaps more importantly, as in previous cross-border crises, the American federal government decided that deescalation was preferable to increased conflict with the United Kingdom. A warship, the Michigan, was dispatched to the Niagara River to prevent further crossings; federal troops were dispatched to Buffalo, where they began seizing arms. The Fenians were trapped in Fort Erie, cut off from resupply and reinforcements. With the Canadian militia mustered in full force, and British regulars arriving from the garrison in Toronto, those who could not escape across the river were forced to surrender on June 3.

The Fenian Trials

Although the majority of Fenians managed to slip across the river back into the United States, dozens were taken prisoner by the Canadian authorities, and charged with a variety of offenses against the Crown. The trials of the Fenian prisoners, the majority of whom were American citizens, commenced in Toronto in the autumn of 1866.

The proceedings were followed with great interest on both sides of the border, particularly in the largest Canadian cities, Toronto and Montreal. The most sensational trials were those of three Americans said to be commanders of the Fenian forces: Robert Lynch, John McMahon, and John Warren. President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward (an expansionist diplomat who would famously spearhead the American acquisition of Alaska in the following year) issued public letters calling for the release of American citizens held in Canada.

The letters were met with outrage in Canada, where anti-American sentiment was already high in the midst of Fenian raids that continued through 1871 (although none were ever as significant or as bloody as that from Buffalo in 1866). Lynch, McMahon, and Warren were all sentenced to death by hanging, with other Fenians sentenced to various lengths of confinement and hard labor. Seeking to avoid further international incident, British authorities in London intervened to commute the death sentences to 20 years of imprisonment and hard labor. These sentences were steadily reduced to the point where, within six years of the invasion, all Fenian prisoners in Canada had been released.

Canadian Confederation

The Fenian invasions of Canada failed to achieve the goal of an independent and united Ireland. In the years following the raids, the Fenian Brotherhood and other Irish nationalist organizations in North America disintegrated in a series of rifts and bloody purges. The legacy of the Fenians is contested even today. Depending on what source one consults, they are either courageous patriots or opportunistic scoundrels. This is not an uncommon situation in the study of history.

The Fenians were unable to free Ireland, but the raids did have a lasting impact on Canadian nationhood. In the aftermath of the raids, anti-American sentiment in Canada was rivaled only by the public’s widespread frustration and disgust with their own government. American and British spy services had infiltrated the Fenian movement quite extensively, and the authorities in the Province of Canada had been forewarned of a coming attack. Despite this forewarning, and in spite of the activation of the colony’s militia, Canadian leadership appeared unprepared for the invasion. As W.G. Hardy writes, somewhat colorfully, in From Sea to Sea, his history of Canada at the dawn of the Confederation era: “On the Canadian side, there were charges and recriminations and a hot flash of shame that for two days a Fenian force wandered at will through part of the Niagara Peninsula, stealing chickens and frightening farm wives, while the blundering Canadian command had let them escape, practically scot free.”

Calls for stronger national leadership, more prepared to resist future American incursions, grew in the colonies of British North America. Confederation, in which the separate colonies united into a single nation in the Commonwealth, had been debated for years in the provinces of British North America. But doing so would require the agreement of the individual provinces in addition to the consent of imperial authorities in London. The Fenian debacle did a great deal to strengthen the hand of the pro-Confederation side. Within days of the Fenian landing at Fort Erie, provincial authorities in the new capital of Ottawa adopted the final resolutions of Confederation.

In 1867, the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the British North America Act (now known as the Constitution Act), which joined together the colonies of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia in a single nation, the Dominion of Canada. The passage of the Act, which established the Constitution of Canada, is celebrated each year on July 1, as Canada Day.

Further Canadiana in HeinOnline

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