by John Boyko
A by-election scheduled for November 6 in New Brunswick’s York riding was seen as a test of Confederation’s popularity. Former premier and determined Confederation advocate Leonard Tilley wrote to Macdonald arguing that his man Charles Fisher could win if eight to ten thousand dollars was poured into the campaign.58 Macdonald made arrangements with many of his political allies as well as Grand Trunk Railway executive Charles Brydges, and Fisher soon received all the money he needed. Even George Brown, who had resigned from cabinet over a patronage spat and was now focusing on his businesses and newspaper, contributed $500.
With the money to buy drinks, favours and votes, Fisher crisscrossed the riding, reminding everyone of his attendance at the Quebec conference and of the political, economic and military value of Confederation. He painted his opponent as pro-American, anti-British and a tool of the Fenians.59 To parry this thrust, anti-Confederation speakers were shipped in from Fredericton and Halifax, to warn of the untrustworthy and distant Canadians and tout the advantages of stronger ties to the nearby Americans. Many unscrupulous folks refused to stay bought and bargained for the price of their votes.60 In the end, Fisher won decisively and the Smith-Wilmot government and the anti-Confederation movement faltered.
While the York by-election offered a victory to celebrate, new Fenian activity needed to be addressed. In the week after the York contest, fore-warnings of an impending attack surfaced in Canada West. Macdonald called for militia units to be mustered in the southwestern portion of the province, and banks in the small town of London took the precaution of removing money from their vaults and hiding it.61 Macdonald notified Grand Trunk’s president that he had approved plans to slow the Fenian advance by tearing up rail lines.62 The rumours proved unfounded, however, and the militiamen went home.
In February 1866, the Fenian’s Sweeny-Roberts faction met in Pittsburgh and outlined not just an intention but a plan for the invasion of Canada. It would involve a number of simultaneous cross-border attacks led by regiments of Civil War veterans. Specific Canadian fortifications, canals and railway centres were targeted. Fifteen hundred dollars was approved to establish a secret service corps in Canada that would organize Hibernians to cut telegraph wires and burn bridges to frustrate Canadian militia and British regulars attempting to meet the advancing Fenians.63 Brigadier General Sweeny boasted that by May, all of Canada and the Maritimes would be under the Irish flag and their authority would be recognized by President Johnson.64 American and Canadian reporters had been invited to the conference, so Sweeny’s plans and promises became quickly and widely known.65
The growing public awareness of Fenian invasion plans brought the question of the American government’s stance on those plans, and the Fenian Brotherhood in general, to President Johnson’s February 9 cabinet meeting. After the president was told of the military preparations on the Canadian border, a long debate ensued on the advisability of denouncing the Fenian talk of invasion. It was finally decided to remain publicly quiet but to send word to local law enforcement officials to be extra vigilant.
Asking police to do their jobs was the very least the president could do, but at that moment it was about the most he could muster. Johnson was in the middle of a titanic struggle with Congress about reconstruction policies that would see him veto, among other things, the First, Second and Third Military Reconstruction Acts, the Freedman’s Bureau Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Tenure of Office Act, which gave Congress control over whom he could fire from his cabinet.* Johnson would veto twenty-nine bills, doubling the previous record held by Andrew Jackson. Congress overrode fifteen of those vetoes. Political gridlock ground the gears of progress, and the broken country suffered as the branches of government fought a lot and fixed little.
In this unprecedented political turmoil, Johnson needed to hold on to the friends he had and make no new enemies. The power of the politically active Irish communities in so many northern cities had therefore to be considered when determining his response to Fenian threats on Canada. Johnson was honest in making this point with a London Times reporter: “The Government, surrounded by difficulties in its internal policy, and anxious to obtain support from any quarter against the violent party in the North were desirous of avoiding, if possible, any collision with the popular sentiments of the Irish masses.”66
The British government inadvertently made things worse by sending soldiers to Dublin to raid a number of houses suspected of harbouring Irish nationalists. Two hundred Fenians were arrested, many of whom were naturalized American citizens. Parliament then suspended the right of habeas corpus. Reaction to these moves was explosive, and the Fenian Brotherhood organized a mass rally in New York to protest. On March 4, an even larger rally was held, at which one hundred thousand people gathered to hear speeches denouncing Britain and all things British. Sweeny was among the speakers and at one point he shouted, “There are enough Irishmen in the City of New York to drive the British rule off the continent of America. Every redcoat sent out [to Canada] makes the power of England in Ireland become less. We want her to send all her soldiers to Canada. Let them come. We will be able to kill them all.”67
American minister to Britain, Charles Adams, was in regular contact with Seward throughout the spring on the topic of the growing Fenian troubles and the administration’s silence.68 Adams was also working to secure the release of the American Fenians in British prisons. Meanwhile, Seward had several discussions with British minister to Washington Bruce about the jailed Americans and the blatant threats the Fenians were making toward Canada. Seward agreed to offer no direct support to Sweeny or his men because, from his point of view, he told Bruce, the worst thing that could happen at that point would be for Fenians to launch an attack on Canada with the new threats of a British-American war that would follow. 69 Someone was lying.
Meanwhile, McMicken’s spies told of the ongoing military preparations on the border.70 They believed that nearly five thousand Fenians were amassing at a number of locations and that the coordination with Hibernians was continuing apace for an invasion that would come on March 17—St. Patrick’s Day.71 On March 7, days after the huge New York rallies, and with McMicken’s reports on his desk, Macdonald mobilized ten thousand volunteer militiamen. Monck ordered two regiments of British regulars, who were about to leave Halifax, to stay in the city and on duty. Major rail stations were ordered to remain open and engineers told to keep their engines warm. Crews were to sleep on the trains to enable them to move troops and equipment at a moment’s notice.72 Macdonald received more reports from his spies saying that plans existed to capture all members of cabinet and that McGee would be specifically targeted for assassination.73
St. Patrick’s Day came and went without an invasion. But Canadian and American border towns had been shaken. Many frightened Canadians had suffered a sleepless night, with candles burning and weapons loaded. The Fenians had not come, but the fears stirred and preparations instigated were nonetheless significant. George Brown interpreted the situation to Canada’s advantage in the pages of the Globe:
The Fenians have.… given our Republican neighbours an opportunity of seeing how earnest and unanimous is the love of the people of British North America for British alliance, and how utterly groundless has been the impression so diligently propagated, that the desire for annexation to the United States was general in Canada.74
Just as Canadian militia men were returning to their families, Fenians threatened New Brunswick. In an attempt to regain influence, John O’Mahoney had organized a gathering of about five hundred Fenians in Eastport and Calais, Maine.75 The plan was to take New Brunswick’s Campobello Island and use it as a base from which they could harass British ships and, with any luck, provoke a British-American war. O’Mahoney was convinced that Seward knew of the plan and was sympathetic to it.76
From Eastport, Maine, came a Fenian proclamation to the people of New Brunswick stating, in part, “Republican institutions have become a necessity to the peace and prosperity of your
Province. English policy, represented by the obnoxious project of Confederation, is making its last efforts to bind you in effete forms of Monarchism. Annexation to the United States is not necessarily the only means of escape. Independence for the present is the best one.”77 The bold and provocative proclamation appeared in public places in several New Brunswick towns and found its way to American, Maritime and Canadian newspapers.
New Brunswick militia were mobilized and two British regiments moved in from Halifax. British ships of war Pylades and Rosario began cruising the American shoreline and more ships set out from Halifax to boost their presence. British major-general Hastings Doyle took command. Defensive positions were thrown up at likely invasion spots, the largest at St. Andrews.
With tension mounting, a group of Fenians, emboldened by nationalist fervour and ale, took boats to New Brunswick’s tiny Indian Island. They burned down a Customs House and stole a flag before rowing quickly back over the border. The escapade was more of a prank than an attack, but it raised the temperature and many New Brunswickers began evacuating their families from vulnerable border towns such as St. Stephen.
The Americans finally reacted. Seward sent marshals, and Navy Secretary Gideon Wells approved the taking of the Fenian ship Ocean Spray, which had arrived at Eastport loaded with 129 cases of rifles, ammunition and other supplies. The next day, April 18, the hero of Gettysburg, General George Meade, arrived at Eastport with an artillery unit and took control of the situation. Meade crossed the border, visited St. Andrews and then met with Major-General Doyle. Meade let it be known that he would arrest any Americans attempting to cross the border with the intent of breaking neutrality laws.
Like the St. Patrick’s Day invasion that never came, the comic fiasco of the aborted attack on Campobello Island proved an important point. British regulars and local militia would and could quickly and effectively mount a credible defence. They also demonstrated that, despite its public silence and perceived support of Fenian designs on Canada and the Maritimes, the Johnson administration would enforce neutrality laws and stop Fenian incursions over the border. The long and legitimate menace of invasion also significantly helped New Brunswick’s pro-Confederation advocates, as fear altered perceptions and opinions.
New Brunswick’s York by-election the previous November had been followed by the slow crumbling of the anti-Confederation administration when Robert Wilmot resigned from the coalition and began speaking in favour of joining Canada. Further, after years of insubordinate intransigence, Lieutenant-Governor Arthur Gordon finally did what Cardwell and Monck had asked, and put pressure on New Brunswick’s political leaders to support the future offered by the Quebec resolutions. Premier Smith still opposed Confederation but offered no alternative.
As New Brunswick’s spring parliamentary session dragged on, dealing with minor matters but not the major issue facing it, more pressure arrived from Nova Scotia. While the irascible red-headed firebrand Joseph Howe continued to lead a strong anti-Confederation crusade in the province, he was winning rhetorical battles but losing the war. Gordon was told—and he told the premier—that Nova Scotia’s Parliament was about to bring Confederation to a vote and that everyone predicted a win.78
It was the first week of April 1866, nearly two years after Macdonald and the Canadians had steamed into Charlottetown offering their Maritime cousins a broader, safer, British, un-American union. News of the Fenians gathering in Eastport had broken, the militia had been called out and families were making plans to escape the murderous American rampage. Political and civil society leaders who had been arguing against the need for Confederation suddenly found their tongues stilled or audiences gone. Nova Scotia’s Catholic Church leaders, for instance, had opposed Confederation, but in the heat of Fenian fears a pastoral letter was read in pulpits and printed in newspapers across the province. It stated, in part, “Current events and all reliable sources of information within our reach point to one conclusion, that, namely, British aid and protection in the hour of danger and emergency can be secured on one condition only—and that condition is the UNION OF AMERICAN BRITISH PROVINCES.”79 While there were some, most notably Howe, who would carry on, the Fenian threat and the scrambled military response all but washed away resistance to Confederation like a Fundy tide.
On the day that troops were assembling on the Halifax pier to move to quell the Fenian invasion, the Nova Scotia legislature heard passionate speeches proclaiming the absolute and immediate necessity of Confederation. The point made over and over was distilled by one member: “The whole police [policy] of the United States has been acquisition of territory. Their ambition is insatiable.… If we remain disunited … the time may come when we shall have the British flag lowered beneath the stars and stripes, and the last gun fired from the Citadel as a British fort.”80 On April 18, the day General Meade arrived in Maine, the Nova Scotia legislature voted 31 to 19 for Confederation.
With the Fenians gone, but with reignited fear of America still in the air, New Brunswick’s government fell into a mess of shameful partisan manoeuvring that ended with its resignation. Leonard Tilley returned to the premier’s chair and called an election. One of his first campaign moves was to contact Macdonald and ask for money. He estimated a need for $40,000 to $50,000 to carry the campaign.81 Macdonald raised it from party stalwarts and he again wrote to Grand Trunk’s president Charles Brydges, who came through as he had in the York by-election. Galt personally delivered envelopes of cash.
The campaign was hard fought, with many of those opposing Confederation claiming that Macdonald had actually stage-managed the Fenian scare to manipulate public opinion.82 On June 21, 1866, the last of the votes were counted and Tilley and Confederation were found to have won the day. Three weeks later, with a 31 to 8 vote, the New Brunswick legislature passed a resolution supporting Confederation.
FENIANS ATTACK CANADA
The O’Mahoney faction of the American Fenians was devastated by the Campobello failure and in a May 5 editorial the New York Times announced the death of the entire movement. 83 At the Roberts-Sweeny headquarters on Broadway, however, the more militant and determined faction was stronger than ever. Plans to take Canada remained paramount. Fenians were soon on the move north from Cincinnati, Tennessee and even New Orleans. Retired Civil War officers were in charge: Brigadier-General C.C. Trevis would lead the attack from Chicago and Milwaukee; Brigadier-General W.F. Lynch would cross Lake Erie and the Niagara River from Cleveland and Buffalo; and Brigadier-General S.P. Spear would attack from New York and Vermont.84 Sweeny’s plan involved ten thousand armed invaders supported by artillery.
Macdonald had been reading reports of renewed Fenian activity, but with the false alarms of two months before and then the Campobello fiasco, he had dismissed them. By late May, however, the reports were becoming more frequent and convincing. The Fenians were coming. On the last day of May, he ordered fourteen thousand militiamen to predetermined border locations.
In cities, towns and villages, men left their families, farms and jobs to hoist a rifle and risk their lives. An audience enjoying an opera at the Toronto Music Hall gasped when a uniformed officer of the Queen’s Own Rifles interrupted the performance to announce from the stage that the United States was about to attack Canada and that all militia volunteers must assemble by six the next morning. After a loud cheer, the orchestra played “God Save the Queen.”
Many of those gathering their weapons to stand against Civil War veterans were veterans themselves. James Wesley Miller, for instance, had left his home in Peterborough, Canada West, in October 1861 to join the New York 6th Cavalry. He had seen action in a number of important battles, including Gettysburg. Miller was back home in Peterborough when he heard the call. He joined his militia unit and others from surrounding villages such as Lakefield and Ashburnham, on a train for Cobourg on Lake Ontario’s northeast shore.85 Another Civil War veteran who responded to the call was Newton Wolverton, the youngest of the four brothers from Wolverton, Canada West
, to join the war.* While Miller and Wolverton would see no action, like thousands of others they were prepared to do battle against their former brothers in arms.
On June 1, the invaders crossed the line. Beneath a cloudless, starry midnight sky, retired Union colonel John O’Neill gave the order. Leaving reinforcements behind, about fifteen hundred men, dressed mostly in old uniforms from Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, New York and Indiana regiments, slipped across the Niagara River in small boats. At 3:30 in the morning, they assembled at a wharf just outside Fort Erie.
With news of the landing, British lieutenant-colonel George Peacocke led three companies of infantry, an artillery battery and Canadian militia to the Niagara Peninsula. O’Neill divided his force of invaders, intending to forage for horses and food, and then have one unit move west toward Port Colborne and the Welland Canal, while the other advanced toward St. Catharines. At six o’clock in the morning on June 2, Peacocke’s Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Booker arrived at the village of Ridgeway with about nine hundred Canadians of the Queen’s Own militia unit, many of whom were students from Toronto’s Trinity College. The Fenians had taken the high ground and built earthworks. Both sides deployed skirmishers and then, with bayonets fixed, the opposing lines advanced.
Private A.G. Gilbert of Peterborough was on the ridge as a member of the Queen’s Own Company 7. He later wrote of the battle:
One look at one another, then a shot from No. 5, and soon a continuous roar of musketry greeted us, and bullets in showers whizzed past our ears. The battle was now opened in earnest, and nothing but the whistle of bullets and the roar of the rifles could be heard.… But we could not open fire yet; and there we stood, about the most exposed and dangerous position in the field, receiving the Fenian fire, but dare not return it. And it was at this time that we had the sensation fully and keenly experienced, of facing death in its most terrible form—in full health, young, active, very fond of life.86
