Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 final casualty figures for the Fenian Raids into Canada 1866, when including deaths from disease while on service in both Canada West (Ontario) and Canada East (Quebec), were calculated by the Militia Department in 1868 as 32 dead and 103 wounded or felled by disease (including a female civilian accidentally shot by the militia). [18]
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.
Reports of the Annexation Bill of 1866 — a bill that, contrary to myth, never came to a vote — might have been one of the many factors behind Canadian Confederation in 1867. Much more serious were the Fenian raids made by Irish Americans across the border in 1866, which spurred a wave of patriotic feeling that helped the cause of ...
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.
While the U.S. authorities arrested the men and confiscated their arms afterwards, there is speculation that many in the US government had turned a blind eye to the preparations for the invasion, angered at actions that could be construed as British assistance to the Confederacy during the American Civil War. There were five Fenian raids of note.