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Show THE RAIDS' INTO UUU THE WARLIKE EXPEDITIONS OF THE FORMIDABLE FENIANS. Invasion of the Queen's Dominion Brief Description of the Little Battle of Ridgway. The Washington correspondent of the New York Freeman's Journal is of the opinion that the recent talk of a j Fenian invasion of Canada has had the effect of arousing the martial spirit of the queen's loyal subjects across the American border. The story of a Fenian Fen-ian invasion was evidently started bv English agemts to put the Canadians to drilling. When the Canadian parliament parlia-ment meets the I'enian scare will be held up like a bug-a-boo, whenever any of the liberals attempt to speak agaim t the transport of more troops to the Transvaal. Ever, if the French Canadians Cana-dians succeed in preventing the dispatch dis-patch of more soldiers the scare will have operated to bring out all the martial mar-tial spirit of the real John Bull Canadians, Cana-dians, and make them more bitter than j thuy might othe.rwi.-.e have baen. i In thia connection, the following ac- j count 'of the Fenian invasion ofVan--ada is given by the New York Tribune, Tri-bune, a pro-Boer organ of the rankest i kind: In lS6u the close of the civil war loft without occupation a large number num-ber of American citizens of Irish birth or parentage who had seen much active military snrvice. Most of these were imbued with a strong hatred of England Eng-land an1 many of them had distinguished distin-guished thomrIve-' not only by the usual Irish gifts of physical courage, but also by the display of higher qualities; as leaders. Among the latter was Colcr.e.1 n'Neil. a graduate of Wtr.t Point. Circumstances seemed to I indicate to the bitu-rly anti-British I Irish in this country the expediency of j a gre.a.t military organization in Lfu.rthsranice of their political dceigns. ! Seven yc.aia before, in 1S5S, the "Fen-! "Fen-! ian" movement, with a name taken from one of the legendary heroes of the primitive Irish racer, had begun in Ireland. The "Fenian Brotherhood" now sprang into what was said to be a thoroughly organized and equipped existence in this country. It was ro- I ported at that time to have a following I of mere than T.0.0U0, as well as a regular gcvornmemt. with an offico "in the neighborhood of Union square." Its organization waa certainly complete enough to encourage it to attempt a rising in Ireland. Jamen Stephens, the famous "head -center." landed in that country, but was arrested and put in jail. The Fenian rising of lS6,r. failed, and while Stephens remained incarcerated incar-cerated the leaders on this side fell out amng themselves. Of the two factions in the Brotherhood, Brother-hood, the credit of the first attempt to i raid British North America, with the I United States aa a base of operations, belongs to the "O'Mahoneyites." In April, 1SG6, they assembled a force of .500 men at Eastport, Me., and there received re-ceived T50 stands of arms, paid for with the money of their secret sympathizers. sym-pathizers. Upon complaint of the British consul at Eastport. the United States government confiscated these arms. The British, on their side, having hav-ing been forewarned, sent troops from St. John to Campobello, N. B., the threatened point, and, on this side. General Mendi, with a body of I regular troops, kept watch at Calais, Me. So ended the first attempt, remembered re-membered among the supporters of Fenianism as "Killian's Raid." Next month, however, Stephens himself, him-self, having escaped from prison, arrived ar-rived in New York. and his arrival was the occasion of-rnncihins like a reconciliation recon-ciliation between the two factions, whose animosities had been accentu-' accentu-' ated by the failure of the Campobello attempt. Stephens himself hi said to have been opposed to another border raid, but Roberts, the leader of the anti-O'Mahoncy faction, now triumphant tri-umphant in the councils of the Brotherhood, was determined on such a plan. Neither their own dissensions nor the seizure of more than 2,000 rides by the United States; government could turn them from their purpose. The Fenians from many states assembled and held a secret convention at Buffalo, and from Buffalo disquieting rumora of a Fenian invasion crossed the Canadian border. Between the middle of May and the end of that month there was great military mili-tary activity in Canada. Reinforcements Reinforce-ments of regulars, sent from England, had already reached the Dominion, and Oil nlnn. U -N-l'o n-o 1 - V. 1 cm muiij; me niaf,a;a UI1U Hie UOI - dera detachments were ready to resist the invaders. On May 31. however, when Colonel O'Neil, the officer selected select-ed by "General" Sweeney of the Brotherhood Bro-therhood to carry out this enterprise, crossed the river at Buffalo, he found Fort Erie, on the British side, unoccupied. unoccu-pied. The numbers of the force which actually landed on Canadian soil have been variously estimated. They probably prob-ably did not exceed ,100. For more than a day and- night O'Neil's little army ranged about the neighborhood of Fort Erie, and it is said to the credit of their leader that while they foraged upon the inhabitants, after the manner of regular regu-lar invaders, their conduct was generally gener-ally free from excess. ' The actual collision did not" tak? place until June, when the Queens Own volunteers from Toronto and the Ham-! Ham-! ilton militia met the invaders near the village of Ridgeway. Details of the battle are not plentiful in hi:s:ory. The losses on the British side were put down at nine killed and thirty wounded and they retired upon Ridgeway and Fort Colborne. A Canadian tradition savs that a volunteer bugler sounded the "retreat by mistake. At the same time it is certain that a large number of Fenians Fe-nians were taken nrisnners hv tho Canadian troops. If the defenders of the Dominion retreated, so did the invaders. in-vaders. Falling back on Fort Erie, O'Neil found that General Grant, having hav-ing arrived at Buffalo that day, had promptly stopped the forwarding of supplies to the Fenian army across the river. Nothing was left for them but to get out of Canadian territory as quickly as passible, which they attempted attempt-ed to do, though 700 of the entire force were cut off by the United States gunboat gun-boat Michigan. General Barry, to whom had been assigned by Grant the guarding of the frontier on this side, exacted from a large number of the Fenian nrisoners their parole "to abandon our expedition against Canada, desist from anv violation viola-tion of the neutrality laws of the United Unit-ed States, and return immediately to our respective homes." The number of whom this parole was taken must have included hundreds who 'had not succeeded suc-ceeded in crossing the Niagara river. iwo weeks later a proclamation was issued in Ruffalo signed "M. W. Burns, Brigadier General commanding Irish army at Buffalo." requesting the "brothers" to return to their homes. This proclamation bears witness that "the extreme vigilance of the government govern-ment of the United States frustrated our plans. It was the United States and not England that impeded our onward ! march to freedom." But in the meantime other alarms of Fenian invasion 'had disturbed the Canadian frontier. These were mostly exaggerated, if not altogether groundless. ground-less. On June 7, the Fe.nial General Sweeney was arrested at St. Albans Vt., from which place, already memorable memor-able for a "raid" made upon it from Canada by Confederates during the Civil War. it had been intended to make a descent in some force. The Fenian army, it seems, had actually crossed the frontier, but upon the arrest of their general and the approach of a considerable consider-able body of Canadian volunteers they I retired. ' After this Fenian raiding of Canada languished. O'Neil himself made two more abortive attempts, one in 1870 on lower Canada, the other the follow ing year, on Manitoba. Tn the latter case the vigilance of the United States government manifested itself in the prompt action of the troops at Fort Pembina, Minn. Colonel O'Neil never suffered any very long or severe- imprisonment for these violations of the neutrality laws He spent the last six or seven years of his life in Nebraska, lecturing and promoting pro-moting schemes of his Irish colonization. coloniza-tion. Tne after effects of the "raids" have appeared chiefly in the interchanges inter-changes of requests between the governments gov-ernments of Washington and London for clemency toward captured invaders in the growth among the British of a more perfect faith in the honesty of this country's intentions, and in" the j more thorough organization and equip- I ment of that Canadian volunteer and I militia army which is now able to soare several thousand men for service in South Africa without fear of denuding the Canadian frontier of its defenders |