1 of Canada with the
rwise, who took part
It Booker, the Fenians were awakening. During the afternoon Gen
eral O’Neill had considerably enlarged his understanding of the
world l>eyond Mr. Newbigging’s farm. His scouts, having sur
vived the Civil War with a compulsion to thenceforth evaluate all
, landscape in terms of military advantage, had composed a map
sufficiently rich in crucial detail to enable O'Neill to move his men
, with great certainty during the next thirty hours. And they had, in
, addition, come to know the exact location of the split Canadian
j forces and their approximate strength.
During the evening O’Neill moved his men a couple of miles
northwest toward Chippewa to an area of heavy brush, protected on
one side by a creek and on another by the Niagara River. Here
the Fenians were not only safe for the night, but were also ideally
located to ambush Peacock’s force should it move southward
before dawn along the Eric and Ontario Railroad.
About midnight Captain Akers reached Colonel Booker at Port
h Colbome. As he was imparting Peacock’s orders, a Canadian cus
J toms official rode into camp with information about the Fenians’
e location. The customs man recommended that Booker entrain his
11 men and move swiftly along the Grand Trunk to Fort Erie and
from there by the Erie and Ontario to the Fenian encampment. The
11 suggestion was tempting, and Akers defending it. Booker con
sented, pending Peacock’s approval. Meahwhile, a Canadian tow
^ boat, the Robb, had reached Port Colbome bearing an abbreviated
|y company of the Dunnville Naval Brigade. Akers and Lieutenant
Colonel J. Stoughton Dennis, an ebullient volunteer officer, were
overjoyed. There could lx? a navy. They strengthened the force
T on the tug with the Welland Canal Field Battery, which carried
11 Fnfields and no artillery, and set off for the Niagara River, assum
(* ing that Bwker’s men would subvert Peacock’s orders and join
them in harassing the Fenians.
r
Booker did indeed entrain his men for the chase, but before
\ ’ lie could move. Peacock ordered him by telegraph to follow the
original plan. The plan, of course, was still largely in Akers’ head,
IS and he was off on Ihe tug. All Booker knew was that he and Pea
»
; cock wore to meet at Stevensville, which was somewhere north of
v the midpoint lietween Port Colbome and Fort Erie. He left his
troops on the train, and this was an error, for a train fully loaded
is a pressure for movement. Accordingly, Booker’s force left Port
Colbome many hours too early and detrained at Ridgeway, which
'. Booker estimated was directly south of Stevensville. But Ridgeway
.n was exactly the wrong place to detrain. During the night O’Neill
n had been told of undue activity at Port Colbome, had become un
d easy, and had roused his Fenians from the bushes to march on
*t Ridgeway,
d
T Unaware that the Fenians were approaching, Booker formed
[Q his men at Ridgeway and begin to march north toward his ren
dezvous at Stevensville. He had no vehicles in which to carry
stores, so he sent his reserve ammunition back to Port Colbome by
the train which had brought him. This was an error. In fact, the
•s misguided Booker, commanding his first brigade, made only two
il- intelligent moves that morning. He left his troops’ greatcoats on
n, the station platform at Ridgeway, for June 2 was a hot day, and he
>n put No. 5 company of the Queen's Own at the head of his column,
el for they carried Spencer repeating rifles. The rest of his men
■’s carried Enfields.
is
•0 O’Neill’s force was about two miles from Ridgeway when his
mounted seouts heard a locomotive whistle and, investigating,
observed the detraining of the Canadians. O’Neill had approach
:'d ed Ridgeway in such a manner that he was never on disad
-V vantageous terrain. Now knowing Booker’s column was march
c' ing toward him along the road from Ridgeway, he prepared for
Ve battle. He put his main body, his reserves, behind a heavily
es overgrown rail fence about a quarter mile north of a road cross
ed ing the road Booker was following. His first line was posted along
itn the south side of the crossroad, behind a hastily built barricade
of fence rails. Then he posted his advanced skirmishers along
*■ some rail fences still farther south and distributed a few files on
a wooded ridge nearby.
id
i,. Booker's advance party sighted the Fenians in time for the
sr Canadians to form a line. Three companies engaged the Fenians'
d advanced skirmishers and drove them back to their first line,
jii Among these Canadian companies was No. 5 of the Queen's Own.
,n Their Spencer repeating rifles so multiplied the Canadian firepow
er that the Fenian first line was dislodged from its strong
position behind the rail barricade and was forced back upon the
Ist Fenian main body. Meanwhile two Canadian companies on the ex
'd treme right and left were clearing the woods of O’Neill’s hidden
*> skirmishers.
>y
'x- Several of Booker's companies ran short of ammunition and
[it- were relieved by companies in reserve. Had the battle lasted five
i- or ten minutes longer, the Fenians would have retreated, for they
I >n were outnumbered and astonished both by the Spencer rifles and
by the sustained courage of the raw Canadian volunteers. The Irish
were convinced they were fighting hardened British regulars.
[*1
ut But they weren't, and events of the next few minutes made it
evident. The Fenians prepared to charge as a last effort to turn the
course of what appeared to be a lost battle. A handful of O’Neill’s
officers emerged from the Fenian line, cat horses to lead the
charge, and were mistaken by the Canadians for cavalry'. "Prepare
-s for cavalry'!” shouted a Canadian skirmisher. Booker's battalions,
® some under their officers’ orders and some in automatic response
® to their volunteer drilling, abandoned their line and formed squares,
a~ the traditional (although invariably ineffective) defense against
cavalrv.
ut,
te The Fenian charge easily broke up the squares of volunteer
•s, infantry and sent them back in confusion on their reserves. The Can
adians then were reminded of a problem that British-trained soldiers
had had in the American Revolution and had apparently put out
of their minds since. Close-order precision formation of foot sol
diers just doesn't seem to be appropriate to North America s
rd wooded land. And the rail fences compounded the problem. The
Phone 576
Reprinted from THE AMERICAN GUN,
Summer 1961 issue, by permission of
the editor, well-known author, hunter,
columnist and gun expert Larry Koller,
who lives at Seven Springs Road, Mon
roe, New York.
Canadians, crowded together in dismay and panic, could not ma
neuver to reform a line. In addition, the volunteers began to wish
fervently for the ammunition that Booker had sent back to Port
Colbome. They retreated.
The Fenians followed them as far as Ridgeway and then turn
ed toward Fort Erie. Casualties in the battle had been compara
tively light: about eight Fenians were dead and more than twenty
were wounded. About a dozen Canadians had been killed and about
two dozen were wounded.
That afternoon the happy Fenians poured down a slope to
ward Fort Erie. Near the village’s ferry dock they saw half a
hundred Canadian soldiers. The truant Dennis and Akers, having
steamed up and down the Niagara picking up forty or fifty Fenian
stragglers, had disembarked their troops at Fort Erie for incom
prehensible reasons and were promptly driven to cover by the
joyous Irishmen. A short fight occured in which both sides lost a
couple of men. The Canadians surrendered, but the Fenians were
unable to prevent the tug Robb from steaming away with its load
of prisoners.
Colonel Peacock meanwhile had been toiling southward in the
hot sun from Chippewa. He had heard of Booker’s embarrassment
and had decided to march toward Fort Erie to drive the Fenians
away. But his men had not left their greatcoats behind. In fact,
the uniform-of-the-day tradition being a cortical tattoo in a well
oriented army, most of the men were wearing their coats instead of
carrying them. In midaftemoon Peacock, observing that his men
could no longer move, called a halt and made camp for the night.
During this night General O'Neill came to understand that
600 men unreinforced, could not occupy Canada. And so in the
morning, when Peacock resumed his march, he found Fort Erie
emptied of Fenians; O’Neill had signaled across the Niagara and
had taken his men back to the United States. Revenue cutters
were waiting for him, and the heroic little invasion force was
arrested. All were eventually released and sent back to their
homes at government expense.
The Fenians, during their two days in Canada, had followed
the spirit of their legend. Their courage and skill in battle were
superb. More, they did violence to no women, pillaged not, nor did
they fail to fight an outnumbering enemy. Of nearly 10,000 Fenian
troops who moved toward Canada in 1866 — and after all, these
were but a fraction of the rebellion-pledged Irishmen in the United
States at that time — only John O'Neill and 600 men had been
capable of serious, sustained action to fulfill the Fenian oath.
While O’Neill was fighting in Canada, several thousand other
Fenians were massing at Malone and St. Albans, farther east along
the border. At Malone nothing happened, and at St. Albans a
couple of thousand Republican troops, directed by the brother
hood’s top warrior, General Sweeny, strutted and drank and then
started across the border. At the first shots from waiting Can
adian Volunteers, the Irish fled back across the border and were
disarmed by U. S. troops.
The Fenian Brotherhood became officially irked at the United
States government, blaming federal intervention for the failure in
Canada. In response to Fenian political pressure, bills were in
troduced in Congress calling for repeal of America’s neutrality
arrangements with Canada. These were defeated.
The forty or fifty Fenians held on the tug Robb were impris
oned pending trial. But captured Fenians were as elusive as
Leprechauns: the enlisted men wore no uniforms, and by losing
their ammunition belts they became innocent civilians, challenging
the Canadian authorities to correctly identify them as war-makers.
Perhaps the Canadians are not a vengeful people either. All but
six Fenians were released, and the others were given compara
tively short prison terms.
In 1870, just about the time when American medical students
were removing from Canada for educational purposes the last
skeletons of the Fenians killed in the Battle of Ridgeway, John
O’Neill decided to invade Canada again. By then he was presi
dent of the Fenian Brotherhood, and although he had little reason
to believe that active support for an invasion would exceed that
given the 1866 effort, he could not deny Irishmen who urged,
"Lead us.”
This time he chose St. Albans, the scene of Sweeny’s Shame,
for the crossover. The brotherhood, stimulated by the Fenian sen
ate, again bought war bonds, redeemable six months after acknow
ledgment of the Irish Republic. Again rifles (breech-loading Spring
fields and Spencers of the latest pattern) for 20,000 troops were
acquired, as was a breech-loading rifled field piece, and again
recruits were drilled. In the summer the northward movement of
troops began, mostly fom New York and New England.
Canada mobilized and farmers in the area of St. Albans taught
their children to make the sign of the cross, that they might be
spared by the Fenian hordes.
But this time everything was different. Most Civil War veterans
no longer cared about war or even about the gestures of w'ar.
O’Neill’s troops were teen-agers from Boston and other New Eng
land cities, bolstered by a core of voting-age New Yorkers. Irish
farm families in Northern Vermont baked pies and bread for the
young deliverers.
The invasion was embarrassing: The Fenians crossed the bor
der against the entreaties of helpless U S- marshals and were
driven back without firing a single effective shot against the Can
adian volunteers. O’Neill was furious, and humiliated, for thou
sands of spectators were watching. He shouted at his retreating
troops: “Men of Ireland. I am ashamed of you! . . . Comrades, we
must not. we dare not go back with the stain of cowardice on us.
Comrades, I will lead you again, and if you follow me, I will go
with my officers and die in your front!”
O’Neill was ignored. He went back across the border to bring
some of his more dependable New Yorkers up in an effort to in
spire the fleeing youngsters. A U. S. marshal, assisted by a num
ber of armed citizens, arrested him.
In jail the general seethed in disillusioned anger. He wrote
a long, bitter tirade against the leaders of the Fenian Brother
hood, concluding with, "God help poor Ireland, if she has to remain
in bondage until freed by such men!” Finally John O’Neill was
beginning to preceive his world with some sort of reasonable per
spective.
From New York, William M. Tween sent money north for rail
road tickets to return the Fenians from his city. An election was
coming up. and the Boss wanted his boys back home to vote
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