Rebels on the Niagara: The Fenian Invasion of Canada, 1866

by Lawrence E. Cline

Offers a detailed account of the political and military history of the Irish American Fenian Brotherhood in the nineteenth century. In what is now largely considered a footnote in history, Americans invaded Canada along the Niagara Frontier in 1866. The group behind the invasion—the Fenian Brotherhood—was formed in 1858 by Irish nationalists in New York City in order to fight for Irish independence from Britain. At the end of the American Civil War, Fenian leaders attempted to use Irish Americans, many of them combat veterans, to seize Canada and make it the “New Ireland” as a means to force the British from “old” Ireland. New York State was both the epicenter of Fenian leadership and a key support base and staging area for the military operations. Although relatively short-lived and with some of its military operations being somewhere between farce and tragedy, the Fenian Brotherhood had a very important impact on nineteenth-century New York and America, but remains largely forgotten. In Rebels on the Niagara Lawrence E. Cline examines not only the Fenian operations and their impact on Canada, but also the role the United States and New York played in both the initial support for the Fenian movement and its subsequent collapse in America. “A brilliant new account of the forgotten 1866 invasion of Canada by Fenian Irish American Civil War veterans. The Battle of Ridgeway, fought during the Fenian Raids in the Niagara region, was the first Irish victory over the forces of the British Empire since the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. Lawrence Cline gives us a new look inside the mad and daring Fenian invasion plan to take Canada and hold it hostage in the name of freedom from British rule in Ireland.” — Peter Vronsky, author of The American Fenian Invasion and the 1866 Battle That Made Canada “This book examines in fascinating detail a neglected event in US and Niagara Frontier history. Lawrence Cline’s study of the Fenian invasion of Canada will be of interest to students of unconventional war, the Irish independence movement, and US-Canadian relations, as well as to the general educated reader. It is a valuable contribution to the literature.” — Thomas R. Mockaitis, author of Conventional and Unconventional A History of Conflict in the Modern World

264 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2017

Reviews

[M. Apple · Rating 5 out of 5]

Newly published (early 2018), this book offers an entertaining, and depressing, account of the Fenian Brotherhood, which attempted to invade Canada from the US in the name of a free Ireland.

They failed. Three times. Almost comical ineptitude, but the IRB's attempts influenced later independence movements up to the 1916 Easter Rising, and may have been a major impetus toward the establishment of the Canadian Confederacy.

Well-researched and well-worth a quick read.