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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.
1866–71 British North America. Dominion of Canada. Eastern Canada; Manitoba; Fenian Raids: Fenian Brotherhood: 1867 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, England, and Canada: Fenian Rising: Fenian Brotherhood 1881–85 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Fenian dynamite campaign: Fenian Brotherhood 1882–83
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 Fenian threat prompted calls for Canadian confederation. [citation needed] Confederation had been in the works for years but was only implemented in 1867, the year following the first raids. In 1868, a Fenian sympathiser assassinated Irish-Canadian politician Thomas D'Arcy McGee in Ottawa, allegedly in response to his condemnation of the raids.
Map of major events during the Fenian Rising in Ireland and the UK, and the Fenian Raids in North America. Click the map to view a larger size. (To contribute:
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.