The Welland Canal is a crucial waterway in Ontario, that sits just west of Buffalo and occupies the Niagara escarpment. The canal connects Lake Ontario to Lake Erie and eliminated the need for a portage around the difficult falls. First constructed in 1824, it was enlarged and updated by mid century with a rail line that ran alongside. The Niagara River was the traditional defensive line for any invasion attempting passage between the lakes. American forces had made several successful attempts to ford the river at its southern terminus in The War of 1812. The completion of the canal now made this the new line against any possible American advance into Canada, but the Americans didn’t seem to be coming anytime soon. From 1860-1865, Canada’s neighbor to the south was involved in a brutal Civil War. It was in this conflict, where unseen future enemies gained crucial skills and insight into the bloody business of war.

Irish unemployment in New York City reached almost twenty-five percent by the start of the Civil War and they were hungry, pay offered by both the Union and Confederate forces was enticing. Over one million Irish had crossed the western ocean since the start of the “Great Hunger” in 1845, leaving behind over a million dead on the Emerald Isle. Abusive British Landlords, inept governmental responses, and eight hundred years of occupation had led to a Genocidal situation in Ireland and the resulting diaspora was seething with resentment. New York City was about one quarter Irish by the mid 1850s and these denizens packed into horrendous tenements on the Island of Manhattan. Faced with incredible discrimination by Protestant “No-Nothings,” the desperate population was fertile recruiting ground for resistance organizations against British rule in Ireland.

The great famine on the island had lead to rebellion in 1848, but this was quickly squashed. It’s leaders fled abroad and sought to reorganize their movement into an international organization seeking the independence of Ireland. In 1855, a former rebel by the name of John O’Mahony, helped found the Fenian Brotherhood and sought to use the masses of Irish immigrants in the US to further his cause. The US Civil War saw more than 220,000 Irish soldiers fighting on both sides. Recruits viewed their role as gaining experience for another struggle in which Ireland would be pitted against the British, while proving the bigoted Protestant public was wrong about their supposed lack of dedication to their new land. The Brotherhood was kept afloat by the hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants who bought bonds, these were assured to be made good six months after Ireland had been seized from the British. The Civil War had honed and hardened the Fenians by 1863, where in Chicago they launched a formal government in exile.

At war’s end in 1865, The Fenians expanded their government at a meeting in Philadelphia and turned their eye toward the application of military force. The brotherhood had organized a supply network centered on Buffalo, which was strategically located in upstate New York. The plethora of arms left over from the war and deep Fenian connections to army itself, allowed the organization to properly stock supply depots aimed at dismantling British rule in Canada. They were able to obtain over 4,000 muzzle loading rifles through auction and US government programs that allowed Union veterans to buy their arms kit. Fenian goals were to seize and hold British transportation networks in Canada, these gains would be exchanged for Ireland’s freedom.