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The Fenian raids were a series of incursions carried out by the Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish republican organization based in the United States, on military fortifications, customs posts and other targets in Canada (then part of British North America) in 1866, and again from 1870 to 1871.
During the 1866 Fenian raid of the Province of Canada, the Battle of Fort Erie was a surrounding and forcing of the Fenian armies surrender following a skirmish near Fort Erie and the farther-away Battle of Ridgeway on June 2.
The Battle of Ridgeway (sometimes the Battle of Lime Ridge or Limestone Ridge [nb 1]) was fought in the vicinity of the town of Fort Erie across the Niagara River from Buffalo, New York, near the village of Ridgeway, Canada West, currently Ontario, Canada, on June 2, 1866, between Canadian troops and an irregular army of Irish-American invaders, the Fenians.
O'Neill, ranked as colonel, travelled to the Canada–US border with a group from Nashville to participate in the Fenian raids. The assigned commander of the expedition did not appear, so O'Neill took command. On 1 June 1866, he led a group of six hundred men across the Niagara River and occupied Fort Erie.
The Fenian Chief: a Biography of James Stephens. Coral Gables, 1969. Senior, Hereward (1991). The Last Invasion of Canada: The Fenian Raids, 1866–1870. Dundurn. ISBN 978-1-77070-064-2. Steward, Patrick, and Bryan P. McGovern. The Fenians: Irish Rebellion in the North Atlantic World, 1858-1876. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013.
The volunteer companies were called out on active service during the Fenian Raids in 1866, serving along the St. Lawrence River frontier at Fort Wellington in Prescott. The battalion was commanded by Col. Hamilton Jessup , who also commanded Fort Wellington in 1866.
In 1866, he commanded the ill-fated Fenian invasion of Canada, after which he was arrested for breaking neutrality laws between the United States and Britain, but was soon released. He was reinstated with his former rank of major later that year, and retired from the regular army in May 1870 as a brigadier general.
To protect Nova Scotia from a possible Fenian Raid, the Battalion was put on high alert from 27 March 1866 until 14 April 1866. [14] They were called out for duty and drilled on Grand Parade. All ball practice was prohibited and no member of the battalion was allowed beyond the city limits without special leave.