Blood and Daring (40 page)

Le Caron attended Fenian meetings and infiltrated the organization to the point that he became one of its chief spokespersons and organizers. Meanwhile, he was writing to McMicken and eventually reporting personally to Macdonald and, under three aliases, to the British home office. The effectiveness of the Canadian infiltration of the American Fenians resulted in Macdonald’s being well informed and justifiably nervous. In December 1864, he learned of armed Hibernians openly drilling in a number of Canadian communities, with the expressed purpose of helping their American comrades to overthrow him and his government.
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Monck was hearing similar warnings from London. The growth in wealth and numbers of the radical Irish nationalists in the United States, Canada and Britain, along with their increasing militarization and reports of their intention to attack British ships in American harbours, led the British ministry in Washington to take them seriously.
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In December
1864, Foreign Secretary Russell ordered Monck and British consuls in the United States to heighten their diligence and report any word of Fenian activity immediately and directly to him.
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William Seward had meanwhile quickly recovered from the wounds suffered in the carriage accident and assassination attempt, but he was never the same. Old friends and colleagues were shocked upon seeing him, as he was as changed in physical appearance as he was in the uncharacteristic sense of calm surrounding him. His two sons had recuperated slowly from the tragic night, but his wife, who had for some time suffered poor health, never did. She had died in June. Despite his pain and heartbreak, Seward was back at his desk, dealing with a new president he supported but with whom he often disagreed, and with a host of new problems involving Britain and Canada.

Russell wrote to Seward complaining that the Johnson administration had been allowing the Fenian Brotherhood to actively and openly plot against Canada. Seward responded with a reminder that the group had done nothing illegal. In America, he sneered, the Constitution protected free speech and assembly.
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Johnson spoke privately with British minister Frederick Bruce and assured him that his government was doing all it could to discourage the Fenians, but Macdonald’s spies in America were reporting that Johnson and Seward had met with the Fenian Brotherhood’s treasurer, Bernard Killian, at the White House. The president had given Killian his assurance that if Canada was invaded and its government overthrown, the United States would acknowledge the legitimacy of a transitional Fenian government.
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As the Fenian movement grew in the United States, O’Mahoney, its founder, was criticized for his lavish spending and for his contention that the movement should focus only on the ultimate goal of fighting for Irish independence in Ireland. At an August 1865 Fenian convention in Philadelphia, one-armed retired brigadier general Thomas Sweeny became the brotherhood’s secretary of war. William Roberts was elected president. In their opposition to O’Mahoney’s tactics and strategy, a Fenian schism was revealed. Sweeny and Roberts proposed an exploitation of the
opportunity presented by the numbers of unemployed, experienced and trained Irish-American soldiers in their ranks, to restructure and formalize the movement’s military wing, recruiting even more veterans and purchasing more weapons. Sweeny and Roberts openly advocated using the powerful force they could create to attack Canada, establish a provisional government and then trade Canada for Ireland’s freedom.
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This was not the first time Irish-Americans had threatened Canada. In 1848, the colony had been struggling through a decade of violent unrest and rebellion, during which the Parliament Buildings had been burned in a riot started largely by conservative businessmen, and powerful political and economic leaders had actively sought annexation. Governor General Lord Elgin had been in the midst of it all and in April had written to London of another threat: “A secret combination of Irish in Montreal is found and bound together by oaths, having designs imical to the Government; that the number enrolled is at least 17,000 and that they look to the acquisition of arms and powder stored on St. Helen’s Island.”
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The significant difference between 1848 and the post–Civil War situation was not just that the war had ramped up anti-Canadianism and that there were thousands of battle-ready soldiers available, but that talk of Confederation now gave Irish-Canadian nationalists greater reason to attack Canada sooner rather than later, because a confederated Canada would be stronger and more difficult to conquer. And there was more.

The perfect storm had also been abetted by American consul general to British North America John Potter, a diligent but arrogant former Wisconsin congressmen who had arrived in Montreal in July 1864. After speaking with just a few Montreal businessmen, Potter reported to Seward early the following year that Canadians yearned to be annexed to the United States and that the desire to become American was growing stronger every day.
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He ignored all evidence to the contrary, including the opinions of the popular press, the building of fortifications, the training of militia and the Confederation initiatives.

Potter’s views dominated a convention hosted by the Detroit Board of Trade on July 12–14, 1865. The convention’s purpose was to discuss
the future of the Reciprocity Treaty and so delegates from American and Canadian Boards of Trade were invited. Potter wrote to Seward proposing that he and others use the convention to promote the end of the treaty as a way to damage the Canadian economy, thereby advancing the day when Canadians would beg to become Americans. Seward, who had long advocated—and still fervently believed—that Canada should become part of the Union and improve the American economy through the expansion of territory and influence, supported Potter’s stand.
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Potter arranged for others to carry his message to the convention floor, but he spoke at a large meeting hosted by the New York delegation. Potter’s remarks were interrupted by a group of Canadian hecklers in the audience, but he was undeterred. A
Globe
article reported on his speech, noting that American talk of making economic policy decisions, such as the killing of the Reciprocity Treaty, to promote annexation had become the convention’s dominant theme.
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Other newspapers, including the
Montreal Gazette
and the
Halifax Morning Chronicle
, picked up the story, with similar attacks on Potter and his ideas.
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A group of Montreal merchants collected signatures demanding Potter’s recall and sent it to Macdonald and Monck.
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While Potter and the convention made headlines, his ideas were not particularly new. In 1863, the same argument had been made by America’s consul to British North America Joshua Giddings. He had flooded Seward with reports urging that the treaty be immediately scrapped, with the intention of causing such economic pain in the British colonies that they would beg to be subsumed by America.
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At the 1864 National Union Party convention in Baltimore where Lincoln was nominated as presidential candidate,
New York
founder and
Times
editor Henry Raymond had earned great cheers from the floor when he argued that at the war’s conclusion Canada should be attacked and made American, and that getting rid of the Reciprocity Treaty should be the first step.
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The Civil War’s conclusion, which freed thousands of armed veterans to march on Canada, made these old ideas more viable and so, to Canadians, more alarming than ever. Seward did nothing to calm growing Canadian
fears and left Potter at his post. Civil War hero and soon-to-be Johnson administration cabinet secretary, Ulysses S. Grant, visited Montreal the next month and was asked about the American desire to swallow Canada. He diplomatically ducked the question of annexation and invasion, but left the door open by telling reporters that the United States would consider invading Canada if Britain supported France in Mexico.
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McMicken had Canadian spies in Philadelphia and Detroit, so Macdonald received first hand reports of both meetings. Canadian spies had also infiltrated a number of major American Fenian circles and were attending their meetings in New York, Cincinnati and Chicago. They were paid $1.50 per diem with a bonus for the submission of useful information. McMicken told Macdonald that the plans to invade Canada were real and that preparations were underway.
⁵⁶

After the Philadelphia meetings, the Fenian leadership kept Seward’s support a secret, but no longer concealed their designs on Canada. They needed the publicity for their recruitment and fundraising efforts. Fenian goals and plans filled American newspapers. The
New York Herald
’s front page of October 24, for instance, reported on the growing power of Sweeny and Roberts, and noted that the Fenian Brotherhood boasted over half a million members, with representation in every Northern state and many Southern ones. As before and during the war, the paper seemed to relish anti-Canadian, anti-British rhetoric: “Their first step will be to seize Canada with an army of one hundred thousand fighting men.… The Fenians will establish a provisional government, and operate for the deliverance of Ireland. The United States will play the neutral game, precisely like Great Britain in our contest with the rebels.… England will find before many years, that the neutrality game is one that two nations can play at.”
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While Fenians prepared, New Brunswick pondered. Pressure, politics, fear and hope had been slowly changing minds about joining Canada. Despite having been formed by the slimmest of margins, New Brunswick’s Smith-Wilmot government had assumed its mandate to be the death of
Confederation, but when it sent delegates to London to argue against all that Macdonald was proposing, Cardwell had informed them that the British government fully supported the adoption of the Quebec resolutions. They were offered neither lavish dinners nor an audience with the Queen.

A by-election scheduled for November 6 in New Brunswick’s York riding was seen as a test of Confederation’s popularity. Former premier and determined Confederation advocate Leonard Tilley wrote to Macdonald arguing that his man Charles Fisher could win if eight to ten thousand dollars was poured into the campaign.
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Macdonald made arrangements with many of his political allies as well as Grand Trunk Railway executive Charles Brydges, and Fisher soon received all the money he needed. Even George Brown, who had resigned from cabinet over a patronage spat and was now focusing on his businesses and newspaper, contributed $500.

With the money to buy drinks, favours and votes, Fisher crisscrossed the riding, reminding everyone of his attendance at the Quebec conference and of the political, economic and military value of Confederation. He painted his opponent as pro-American, anti-British and a tool of the Fenians.
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To parry this thrust, anti-Confederation speakers were shipped in from Fredericton and Halifax, to warn of the untrustworthy and distant Canadians and tout the advantages of stronger ties to the nearby Americans. Many unscrupulous folks refused to stay bought and bargained for the price of their votes.
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In the end, Fisher won decisively and the Smith-Wilmot government and the anti-Confederation movement faltered.

While the York by-election offered a victory to celebrate, new Fenian activity needed to be addressed. In the week after the York contest, fore-warnings of an impending attack surfaced in Canada West. Macdonald called for militia units to be mustered in the southwestern portion of the province, and banks in the small town of London took the precaution of removing money from their vaults and hiding it.
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Macdonald notified Grand Trunk’s president that he had approved plans to slow the Fenian advance by tearing up rail lines.
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The rumours proved unfounded, however, and the militiamen went home.

In February 1866, the Fenian’s Sweeny-Roberts faction met in Pittsburgh and outlined not just an intention but a plan for the invasion of Canada. It would involve a number of simultaneous cross-border attacks led by regiments of Civil War veterans. Specific Canadian fortifications, canals and railway centres were targeted. Fifteen hundred dollars was approved to establish a secret service corps in Canada that would organize Hibernians to cut telegraph wires and burn bridges to frustrate Canadian militia and British regulars attempting to meet the advancing Fenians.
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Brigadier General Sweeny boasted that by May, all of Canada and the Maritimes would be under the Irish flag and their authority would be recognized by President Johnson.
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American and Canadian reporters had been invited to the conference, so Sweeny’s plans and promises became quickly and widely known.
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The growing public awareness of Fenian invasion plans brought the question of the American government’s stance on those plans, and the Fenian Brotherhood in general, to President Johnson’s February 9 cabinet meeting. After the president was told of the military preparations on the Canadian border, a long debate ensued on the advisability of denouncing the Fenian talk of invasion. It was finally decided to remain publicly quiet but to send word to local law enforcement officials to be extra vigilant.

Asking police to do their jobs was the very least the president could do, but at that moment it was about the most he could muster. Johnson was in the middle of a titanic struggle with Congress about reconstruction policies that would see him veto, among other things, the First, Second and Third Military Reconstruction Acts, the Freedman’s Bureau Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Tenure of Office Act, which gave Congress control over whom he could fire from his cabinet.
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Johnson would veto twenty-nine bills, doubling the previous record held by Andrew Jackson. Congress overrode fifteen of those vetoes. Political gridlock ground the gears of progress, and the broken country suffered as the branches of government fought a lot and fixed little.