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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.
A company of the Welland Field Battery landed without difficulty, capturing around 59 of the Fenian soldiers. But when John O'Neill returned with most of his large army from the nearby Battle of Ridgeway, the small number of Canadian volunteers that were sent to capture a small numbers of Fenian soldiers were not prepared. A firefight followed ...
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 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.
While the motion to create a Supreme Council succeeded, Roberts was not named the new leader. Incensed, Roberts resigned as leader of the Senate faction on 31 December 1867 and began to withdraw from revolutionary Fenianism. In 1870 he opposed more raids into Canada.
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 first serious raid came in June 1866 with 850 Fenians attacking at Ridgeway in the Niagara region, then withdrawing quickly back across the border. This was the largest and best-organized raid, and militia units, again primarily the Queen's Own Rifles and Hamilton's 13th Battalion, were called out.
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.