by John Boyko
The quick arrests, trial, executions and incarcerations could have allowed President Johnson to move the United States a step away from the horrors and costs of war and assassination. Rather than healing Southern, British and Canadian wounds, however, the controversial process and wild accusations poured salt onto them. Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis and Clement Clay waited in Fort Monroe, and Johnson faced the problem Lincoln had wanted to avoid—what to do with them. At the same time, a great number of Confederate officers were fleeing north to Canada, becoming Attorney General Macdonald’s problem. But diplomacy would soon be the least of his worries: thousands of Civil War veterans were preparing to right an injustice and promote a cause by using their newly acquired military skills to attack Canada.
NEW THREATS OF INVASION AND ANNEXATION
On the day that the Lincoln conspirators fell to their deaths, Macdonald arrived home from London. He was welcomed by darkening economic, political and military storms. Confederation was key to responding to all three and yet, despite the gathering consensus that change was essential, the project enjoyed no momentum. Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island had gone cold on the idea and Nova Scotia was rife with anti-Confederation talk led by the revitalized Joseph Howe. An anti-Confederation government held power in New Brunswick.
Then Sir Étienne-Paschal Taché died. With the death of Canada’s premier and titular leader in July 1865, Monck called on Cartier, Brown and Macdonald in turn and all three considered the top job. All had done it before and all wanted it again, but they knew if one of them became the premier, then the great coalition would be shattered. With their consent, Sir Narcisse Belleau, a non-entity from the Legislative Council, was appointed. The coalition was saved and Macdonald continued as Canada West’s attorney general, returning to his portfolio as minister of the militia while acting, and still openly recognized, as the government’s real leader.
Macdonald had controlled his drinking while in London, but upon his return home he fell off the wagon. Parliament resumed, but Macdonald was seldom in attendance. Despite reports of his being ill, Macdonald’s peers and the public knew what was meant when it was whispered that John A. was “off again.” But this time he was not off for long. Threats from America soon had him back on his feet and at his post. The new threats were galvanized by a group of angry Irish-Americans called the Fenians.
The origins of the Fenian movement date back to 1541, when Henry VIII went to Dublin to declare himself “King of Ireland, Annexed and Under the Realm of England.” Generations that followed saw England’s attempts to render Henry’s proclamation a fact matched by the struggles of Irish nationalists to make it history. By the 1840s, Ireland was a land of tears. A blight destroyed potato crops, visiting famine on an already impoverished people. Political anger and economic desperation were wed in the Young Ireland Movement, leading to the 1848 Rebellion. It was ruthlessly crushed by British soldiers and an even harsher British rule. Hungry for freedom or simply hungry, over a million people fled the troubled isle, most for the United States and Canada.
By the outset of the Civil War, close to 1.6 million Irish had moved to the United States. About a million had come to Canada and the Maritimes, many to Halifax, but most to Toronto, Montreal and the eastern townships south of the city. Their sheer numbers were the source of significant economic and political power, and their contributions to the building of both societies was inestimable. As many Canadian and American Irish climbed ladders of success and influence, however, negative ethnic and religious stereotypes were reflected in nativist distrust and blatant discrimination. Irish newspapers, clubs and organizations teemed with resentment and a romantic yearning for a home that many had never even seen. One of those organizations was the Fenian Brotherhood.
The Fenians’ goal was simple—the end of British rule in Ireland. It was formed as a wing of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood in 1858 by Irish-American New Yorker and veteran of the ’48 Rebellion John O’Mahoney. He had adopted the name from an ancient and brave Irish militia—the Fenia. He sought to raise awareness, money and armed men.
Three years later, thousands of Irish-Americans and -Canadians enlisted in the Union army and fought bravely in the Civil War, many in specifically Irish units. In November 1863, Irish soldiers were given leave to attend a national Fenian Convention in Chicago.34 They held a second convention in Cincinnati in January 1864. Governance, fundraising and recruitment were formalized, and local groups called “circles” sprang up in every city and town with a significant Irish population.
The Canadian branch of the Fenians, called the Hibernians, was established in Montreal by Michael Murphy and W.B. Linehan. Membership in Canadian circles grew with every anti-Irish taunt and bout of violence that accompanied annual St. Patrick’s Day parades. Hibernians were motivated by the growing power of their American compatriots. Their publication, the Irish Canadian, echoed many of the American groups’ goals. Young men were encouraged to take up arms to defend themselves against Irish-Catholic–hating Orangemen and to prepare for the ultimate struggle to liberate Ireland.
Hibernian leaders saw the movement toward Confederation as dangerous, for it would weld forever what they considered the undesirable link between Canada and Britain. They spoke against it and encouraged Irish throughout Canada and the Maritimes to vote for candidates pledged to oppose it.35 In November 1864, it became Hibernian policy and the editorial stance of the Irish Canadian, that Canada should be annexed to the United States.36 The growing militancy alarmed a number of Canadians. The Globe noted, “It is certain we have in our midst an armed secret organization … there can be no moral doubt these Hibernians identify with the Fenians in the neighbouring United States.”37 Many Hibernians, in fact, began referring to themselves as Fenians.
Thomas D’Arcy McGee was a pugnacious man who, at the beginning of the Civil War, was a member of the legislature for one of Montreal’s predominantly Irish ridings and a cabinet minister. While serving as a legislator, he also found time to lecture across British North America, publish poetry, write a book detailing the history of Ireland and earn a law degree. He had been part of the 1848 Rebellion, but while working at newspapers in New York and Boston he had rejected the ideas of his youth. McGee’s active and influential life, and his impassioned political stance, resulted in his becoming loved by many Irish-Canadians, who were proud of one of their own doing so well. He was also hated by many others, and certainly by the Hibernians, who saw him as a traitor to their cause. McGee faced many threats to his life and he seldom spoke in public without worrying that each appearance might be his last.38
McGee and Macdonald were good friends who saw eye to eye on Irish nationalism and the danger posed by Fenians in the United States and Hibernians in Canada. In the fall of 1864, McGee warned of increased Fenian activities on both sides of the border, and cabinet approved the hiring of more spies to infiltrate Canadian and American circles.39 The new spies reported to Gilbert McMicken, head of the Western Frontier Constabulary Force. While Canadian spies were already tied into Hibernian networks, the new spies were soon in attendance at American Fenian meetings and informal gatherings.
The career of Henri Le Caron demonstrated the degree to which Canadian spies had successfully infiltrated Fenian ranks in America. Born Thomas Beach in England, he became so enthralled by the romanticism of the Civil War that at the age of nineteen he changed his name and sailed to New York, where he enlisted in the 8th Pennsylvania Reserves. He fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chickamauga. He ended the war as a first lieutenant and settled in Nashville. He had fought in units with a number of young Irish men and knew of the Fenians and their goals. He was shocked when, after the war, he was told by a friend he had met in the service, the prominent Fenian leader John O’Neill, of plans to attack Canada.40 Le Caron’s English patriotism stirred and he wrote to his father, who wrote to Lord Cardwell—and he soon became one of Macdonald’s spies.
Le Caron attended Fenian meetings and infiltrated the organi
zation to the point that he became one of its chief spokespersons and organizers. Meanwhile, he was writing to McMicken and eventually reporting personally to Macdonald and, under three aliases, to the British home office. The effectiveness of the Canadian infiltration of the American Fenians resulted in Macdonald’s being well informed and justifiably nervous. In December 1864, he learned of armed Hibernians openly drilling in a number of Canadian communities, with the expressed purpose of helping their American comrades to overthrow him and his government.41
Monck was hearing similar warnings from London. The growth in wealth and numbers of the radical Irish nationalists in the United States, Canada and Britain, along with their increasing militarization and reports of their intention to attack British ships in American harbours, led the British ministry in Washington to take them seriously.42 In December 1864, Foreign Secretary Russell ordered Monck and British consuls in the United States to heighten their diligence and report any word of Fenian activity immediately and directly to him.43
William Seward had meanwhile quickly recovered from the wounds suffered in the carriage accident and assassination attempt, but he was never the same. Old friends and colleagues were shocked upon seeing him, as he was as changed in physical appearance as he was in the uncharacteristic sense of calm surrounding him. His two sons had recuperated slowly from the tragic night, but his wife, who had for some time suffered poor health, never did. She had died in June. Despite his pain and heartbreak, Seward was back at his desk, dealing with a new president he supported but with whom he often disagreed, and with a host of new problems involving Britain and Canada.
Russell wrote to Seward complaining that the Johnson administration had been allowing the Fenian Brotherhood to actively and openly plot against Canada. Seward responded with a reminder that the group had done nothing illegal. In America, he sneered, the Constitution protected free speech and assembly.44 Johnson spoke privately with British minister Frederick Bruce and assured him that his government was doing all it could to discourage the Fenians, but Macdonald’s spies in America were reporting that Johnson and Seward had met with the Fenian Brotherhood’s treasurer, Bernard Killian, at the White House. The president had given Killian his assurance that if Canada was invaded and its government overthrown, the United States would acknowledge the legitimacy of a transitional Fenian government.45
As the Fenian movement grew in the United States, O’Mahoney, its founder, was criticized for his lavish spending and for his contention that the movement should focus only on the ultimate goal of fighting for Irish independence in Ireland. At an August 1865 Fenian convention in Philadelphia, one-armed retired brigadier general Thomas Sweeny became the brotherhood’s secretary of war. William Roberts was elected president. In their opposition to O’Mahoney’s tactics and strategy, a Fenian schism was revealed. Sweeny and Roberts proposed an exploitation of the opportunity presented by the numbers of unemployed, experienced and trained Irish-American soldiers in their ranks, to restructure and formalize the movement’s military wing, recruiting even more veterans and purchasing more weapons. Sweeny and Roberts openly advocated using the powerful force they could create to attack Canada, establish a provisional government and then trade Canada for Ireland’s freedom. 46
This was not the first time Irish-Americans had threatened Canada. In 1848, the colony had been struggling through a decade of violent unrest and rebellion, during which the Parliament Buildings had been burned in a riot started largely by conservative businessmen, and powerful political and economic leaders had actively sought annexation. Governor General Lord Elgin had been in the midst of it all and in April had written to London of another threat: “A secret combination of Irish in Montreal is found and bound together by oaths, having designs imical to the Government; that the number enrolled is at least 17,000 and that they look to the acquisition of arms and powder stored on St. Helen’s Island.”47 The significant difference between 1848 and the post–Civil War situation was not just that the war had ramped up anti-Canadianism and that there were thousands of battle-ready soldiers available, but that talk of Confederation now gave Irish-Canadian nationalists greater reason to attack Canada sooner rather than later, because a confederated Canada would be stronger and more difficult to conquer. And there was more.
The perfect storm had also been abetted by American consul general to British North America John Potter, a diligent but arrogant former Wisconsin congressmen who had arrived in Montreal in July 1864. After speaking with just a few Montreal businessmen, Potter reported to Seward early the following year that Canadians yearned to be annexed to the United States and that the desire to become American was growing stronger every day.48 He ignored all evidence to the contrary, including the opinions of the popular press, the building of fortifications, the training of militia and the Confederation initiatives.
Potter’s views dominated a convention hosted by the Detroit Board of Trade on July 12–14, 1865. The convention’s purpose was to discuss the future of the Reciprocity Treaty and so delegates from American and Canadian Boards of Trade were invited. Potter wrote to Seward proposing that he and others use the convention to promote the end of the treaty as a way to damage the Canadian economy, thereby advancing the day when Canadians would beg to become Americans. Seward, who had long advocated—and still fervently believed—that Canada should become part of the Union and improve the American economy through the expansion of territory and influence, supported Potter’s stand.49
Potter arranged for others to carry his message to the convention floor, but he spoke at a large meeting hosted by the New York delegation. Potter’s remarks were interrupted by a group of Canadian hecklers in the audience, but he was undeterred. A Globe article reported on his speech, noting that American talk of making economic policy decisions, such as the killing of the Reciprocity Treaty, to promote annexation had become the convention’s dominant theme.50 Other newspapers, including the Montreal Gazette and the Halifax Morning Chronicle, picked up the story, with similar attacks on Potter and his ideas.51 A group of Montreal merchants collected signatures demanding Potter’s recall and sent it to Macdonald and Monck.52
While Potter and the convention made headlines, his ideas were not particularly new. In 1863, the same argument had been made by America’s consul to British North America Joshua Giddings. He had flooded Seward with reports urging that the treaty be immediately scrapped, with the intention of causing such economic pain in the British colonies that they would beg to be subsumed by America.53 At the 1864 National Union Party convention in Baltimore where Lincoln was nominated as presidential candidate, New York founder and Times editor Henry Raymond had earned great cheers from the floor when he argued that at the war’s conclusion Canada should be attacked and made American, and that getting rid of the Reciprocity Treaty should be the first step.54
The Civil War’s conclusion, which freed thousands of armed veterans to march on Canada, made these old ideas more viable and so, to Canadians, more alarming than ever. Seward did nothing to calm growing Canadian fears and left Potter at his post. Civil War hero and soon-to-be Johnson administration cabinet secretary, Ulysses S. Grant, visited Montreal the next month and was asked about the American desire to swallow Canada. He diplomatically ducked the question of annexation and invasion, but left the door open by telling reporters that the United States would consider invading Canada if Britain supported France in Mexico.55
McMicken had Canadian spies in Philadelphia and Detroit, so Macdonald received first hand reports of both meetings. Canadian spies had also infiltrated a number of major American Fenian circles and were attending their meetings in New York, Cincinnati and Chicago. They were paid $1.50 per diem with a bonus for the submission of useful information. McMicken told Macdonald that the plans to invade Canada were real and that preparations were underway. 56
After the Philadelphia meetings, the Fenian leadership kept Seward’s support a secret, but no longer concealed their designs on Canada. They needed the publicit
y for their recruitment and fundraising efforts. Fenian goals and plans filled American newspapers. The New York Herald’s front page of October 24, for instance, reported on the growing power of Sweeny and Roberts, and noted that the Fenian Brotherhood boasted over half a million members, with representation in every Northern state and many Southern ones. As before and during the war, the paper seemed to relish anti-Canadian, anti-British rhetoric: “Their first step will be to seize Canada with an army of one hundred thousand fighting men.… The Fenians will establish a provisional government, and operate for the deliverance of Ireland. The United States will play the neutral game, precisely like Great Britain in our contest with the rebels.… England will find before many years, that the neutrality game is one that two nations can play at.”57
CAMPOBELLO ISLAND
While Fenians prepared, New Brunswick pondered. Pressure, politics, fear and hope had been slowly changing minds about joining Canada. Despite having been formed by the slimmest of margins, New Brunswick’s Smith-Wilmot government had assumed its mandate to be the death of Confederation, but when it sent delegates to London to argue against all that Macdonald was proposing, Cardwell had informed them that the British government fully supported the adoption of the Quebec resolutions. They were offered neither lavish dinners nor an audience with the Queen.
