Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 284 - The Fenian Raids

Episode Date: November 5, 2023

Once upon a time Irish-Americans thought it would be a good idea to invade Canada from the US. It did not go well. CORRECTION: Andrew Johnson* EDIT: I meant David Fincher Sources: https://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/chrono/1774fenian_e.html https://www.military.com/undertheradar/2019/03/15/civil-war-vets-wanted-invade-canada-liberate-ireland.html https://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/explore/online/fenians/index.aspx https://www.jstor.org/stable/24778340 https://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/Century19th/FenianRaids https://www.historynet.com/fenian-raids-invasions-of-british-ruled-canada/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the

show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today in the content caves, apparently as cold as I currently am, because he's wearing a hoodie with the head up while we're recording, is Tom. What's up, buddy? I like that you say as cold as you are, as if you're not in a t-shirt that says caffeine in kilos. Look, just because I'm cold doesn't mean I'm going to put a sweater on inside.

I don't know why that is. I blame the fact that I am from Michigan. If we were inside, you were not wearing layers. Maybe that's my family. I don't know. I haven't spoken to fellow Michiganders in quite some time. But I only put another layer on, a sweater a hoodie whatever if i step outside because it's like outdoor clothes my brain tells me it's like wearing shoes indoors

okay i agree with that also i was gonna say i thought you know you're wearing some sinoloa cartel merch but uh yeah no shoes inside that's that's freak shit that's freak behavior yeah it it's like it's also i've learned it's very cultural. Like, some people have, like, indoor slippers or shoes, which is fine. I'm a barefoot inside guy. Same. Which... Gotta let the dogs breathe.

Yeah, man. Shit, like, my feet are not wrapped unless I'm walking out the door. Speaking of which... Also, like, sometimes you drop something on the floor and you need to pick it up, but you don't want to bend over and you can pick it up with your toes. Okay, I don't do that. My toes are not that nimble. I can't feel the bottom of my feet

due to previously having immersion foot, sometimes known as trench foot. So for people who are unaware, and maybe Tom is editing this so I don't sound as sick as I am, I had to go to a pharmacy today in The Hague in the Netherlands. And Dutch folks, I don't know if this is a normal thing. Maybe this guy is intensely weird.

But he was standing there. Mind you, it is not warm here. I came from Armenia where it is still like 30 to 40 degrees. So it's been a bit of a climate shock. And I'm waiting in line at the pharmacy and the guy in front of me, who is Dutch, he's speaking Dutch, is

barefoot. I've heard that's normal in Australia and New Zealand and shit, but look, the roads are super clean here. I wouldn't be worried about stepping on anything but like it is not warm and this guy is full dogs out barefoot in the pharmacy and nobody there has a problem with it so he's not like he's not wearing like flip-flops he's just

like pitter-pattering around pitter-pattering around in his bare feet that is nonce behavior i'm sorry that like like bear we should put people who are pro barefoot you know like barefoot is natural into some form of camp doing the that weird grounding thing that hippies do but you're just standing in the middle of centrum and den haag like i'm i'm absorbing the earth's energy at this sidewalk like i i very much feel like that guy has a thc blood concentration that could kill a normal human i mean i am in the netherlands i have not smelled this much weed since i've been back in detroit how can you not be freezing fucking cold walking around on concrete which i don't know i don't't know. It was baffling to me. It wasn't the cold so much as like, that's

gross. Maybe I am too much of an uptight shoe elitist. And I enjoy being barefoot, but you're not going to... Even when I was living in Hawaii where nobody wears closed-toed shoes unless you're going to the gym or a funeral.

You're not going to catch me pitter- Yeah, wear a sandal. Yeah, you're not going to catch me pitter-pattering around unshopped floors with my bare feet. For one, my feet are ugly. I have treated them badly throughout my life. I'm keeping the motherfuckers hidden. And this guy, same, I will say. Like, on rate my feet, he'd be a 3 out of 10. uh like his like on rate my feet he'd be a three out of ten but uh i'm this is just further justifying our hatred of the dutch on this show like i have to retract a lot of that these days

if i want my visa to be approved i have spent so long going through every episodes and cutting out defamatory statements about the dutch so the dutch cia doesn't come after Joe. That's fine. That's good. I mean, the Dutch CIA is just the CIA. Pretty much. Tom, I have gathered you here today because we have talked about Irish history on this show a few times, every time you're hosting, other than before you joined the show, of course. So today we're going to flip it and we're gonna talk about irish history in the united states and i'm going to tell you about the fenian raids i'm assuming you are somewhat familiar with the time a bunch of irish americans invaded canada vaguely i'm just more

familiar with the uh the efforts of people like wolftone uh in fundraising in the u.s uh among irish americans that is how it all started yeah like the finnians started as a branch of the ira or the the irish brotherhood to raise funds for the struggle in ireland and then the civil war happened and things spiraled wildly out of control um And before you know it, a whole bunch of very confused Irishmen were storming the beaches of upstate New York. I feel like there's great adaptation potential for this for Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon. Look, if Mark Wahlberg was there,

the second plane would not in fact have hit New York City. look if mark walberg was there the second plane would not in fact have hit new york city um look all i'm saying is mark walberg gets a pass on a lot of things and he shouldn't because he's a racist hate criminal moving on yeah the man literally blinded uh someone in a hate crime and everyone's kind of forgotten about it and he asked as he And he asked for his charge to be expunged afterwards because of all of the work that he did. I'm like, what work, Mark? The happening or whatever? Like the movies? Yeah.

Being a B-rate action star is not a form of community service. But it's like, did you see that video the other recently? But it's like, did you see that video the other recently? That was like, oh, it was a guy who survived either Hiroshima or Nagasaki on American television. And the hosts brought out the guy who flew the Enola Gay. Oh, you mean the guy who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yeah. The only guy on Earth that when he saw a bright flash, he's like, fuck, I know what that is. Yeah.

Yeah, that was incredibly fucked up now we do have to talk about something maybe you do know a little bit more than me before we get to that point why so many irish immigrants as much as 150 000 ended up fighting in the u.s civil war on both sides uh so partially it was because uh immigration to the u.s was so popular and at the time we're going to talk about why exactly that happened um there's this thing called colonialism yeah um uh and a lot of people were recruited through like pamphleting and pamphlets and stuff that were sent to ireland that were you know recruiting for like people to build railways people for infrastructure projects but also to join the military and as we've talked about on this show

um at this time armies had a great habit of you know uh not conscripting but um enlisting people who didn't speak the same language actually yeah we're a lot of irish immigrants were effectively shanghaied into the union army but irish immigration to the united what is today the united states is actually older than the united states itself the first significant significant influx of Irish immigrants to Boston and New England, shocker, I know, consisted primarily of Ulster Presbyterians and began the early 18th century between 1700 and 1775. Already around 200,000 of them would show up on the shores of colonial Americaica which is a massive portion of the colonial population i should say um we we've talked a little bit about uh colonial population back then during our uh during a different series and like that is a massive percentage

of the colonial american population i mean like look you know if you're a protestant in ireland at this time and you uh aren't getting enough joys about you know displacing uh irish catholics what are you going to do why don't you go slaughter some native americans actually that's exactly why um now we we talked about what was going on in northern ireland during this time back in our series in the troubles so i'm not going to rehash that too much and they these presbyterians would eventually be joined by the first wave of Irish Catholics who were fleeing discriminatory English penal laws. Though there was an encouragement to get these Protestants to come to the United States or

the colonies at the time. In 1718, Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shutt agreed to allocate free land to Ulster settlers. His goals had nothing to do with liking the Irish, of course, this is early American history, but rather because an uptake in his population would help his territorial claims to Maine, as well as act as a bulwark against Native Americans who were, of course, not super happy with their current lot life with their new shitty neighbors. So he would take all of these Irish immigrants, give them land that regular American colonists didn't want, and they'd effectively act as a buffer between them and the natives and, you know, do the things that settlers do, namely kill the natives.

It's the weirdest episode of Deadliest Warrior before TV. We have 200,000 mix versus an entire continent of native americans look if that show didn't get cancelled we probably would have got that because we did get the ira versus the taliban at one point yeah um their numbers and fun fun fact about that so like um obviously um the muhajideen were trained by the American state apparatus and in part some people who had served in a certain part of Ireland. devices they essentially just showed them how the ira made them because they were so complex and so well made that they were like yeah no the russians will just not be able to disarm these at all yeah i mean it makes a lot of sense i mean when you think about what we know today as like urban irregular warfare with like improvised explosive devices a lot of what we know both from planting them and countering them comes from the troubles.

So it doesn't surprise me at all. I mean, some of the original... Because I joined the Army back in 2005. And a lot of the original things that we were being taught about improvised explosive devices came from the British military. Which is wild when you think of how far in the past it actually was. And then it makes you think like, wow, we didn't think about this at all until we started a couple of wars, huh? Because we're using this shit from the 80s. So the Irish numbers continue to swell as they

played a massive part in early American life and even the revolution. For example, six people that signed the Declaration of Independence were born in Ireland, though only one was Catholic because they probably followed the same quota currently held by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I have to say I'm proud of that one. Now, as you can imagine, with me calling the majority of these guys Ulster settlers, they were largely English loyalists. So after the American Revolution, the immigration numbers of these Ulster folks began to slow down. However, as we talked about in our Trouble series, things were not getting better in Ireland. They're getting remarkably worse in the 1800s.

Discriminatory laws, landlords, and of course, the Great Hunger drove thousands to begin fleeing in the 1840s. Though inside this story is actually a much more nefarious one. This massive refugee crisis was actually sponsored by the local English lords and functionaries within Ireland. They're like, yeah, sure. You want to leave Ireland. Here's a ticket. You don't have to pay for it. Get on this boat. Because this benefited them. They wanted to clear the Irish from... Specifically Irish Catholics from the land. And so they're like, get on a boat, go to fucking America, please for the love of God. And a lot of these boats were a little more than floating death traps. These ships earned the nicknames Coffin Ships and killed at least 20,000 Irish during their journey from Ireland to mostly New York, New England area, either from disease, starvation, or because they were put on ships that were purposefully rickety as shit

and simply sank before they ever got to north america and like the thing with coffin ships is that like it retrospectively when you look at those figures in terms of mortality like there is some arguing to be done about like how many people you know died of disease how many people you know died of starvation or various other means um but like the really interesting thing about this is the informal kind of information network that formed around these ships that were going to the u.s and like kind of continued well into the 20th century is because because obviously you couldn't like send a text to someone and say like oh when you go here go to

this place they'll get you a job but quite often what historians have found is that on tickets you know written on the back of them like a lot of people got their tickets bought for them by family members who were already in the u.s or had been sponsored by local people you know a family would club together to send someone to the US so they could then send money back in a gradual process of people moving over. But what happened was this informal network developed of, okay, you were given kind of information,

go here, go to this pub, or go to this, you know, this place in the docks. They'll help you find a job, somewhere to live. And pretty much what happened was that information kept flowing backwards, back to Ireland. So that's how you had large Irish communities start to form in places like the Bowery in New York, in Boston, because they were reaching the East Coast of America, getting off, being told to go to one place or another and then that person would then give them more information

kind of like you know various levels of a of a side quest in skyrim now by the time of the u.s civil war hundreds of thousands of more irish had made their home in the united states with the majority of them being in new york and Boston, to the surprise of nobody. To the point that one Irish immigrant joked, New York is a grand, handsome city, but you would hardly know you had left Ireland. I mean, it's kind of like being in London now. Yeah. And whoo boy, did the Americans fucking hate the Irish. Now, we've often joked that this is the era where Americans... What was considered American then was so intensely racist, they also hated white Europeans, which is true to some extent. But the Irish that showed up in the United States are not...

How do I say this without sounding really badly? are not what you think of when you think of Irish today. Now, at the time, well, at the time, America had really no Catholic population. Catholicism was seen as a very, very foreign religion. And remember, this is the 1800s. The vast majority of the people moving to the United States from Ireland spoke Irish. They didn't speak English. So you have this group of people who look nominally white practicing an intensely foreign religion to them and speaking a language that Americans have never even conceptualized before. So they did the thing that any group of people do and immediately start hating this new outsider vehemently. start hating this new outsider vehemently but so like a big part of this is one the large majority of the settlers in the u.s around this time are coming from england the netherlands germany so

in general it is like kind of white somewhat anglo protestants that are landing in the u.s at the same time you have agitation for home rule in ireland which gave birth to the very common phrase of home rule is rome rule you know so like if we give if we give you know the irish the right to rule themselves they'll just listen to the pope and i mean that's something that the u.s kind of shares with the english and that aspect is like even up until until like the time of JFK being elected president who was Catholic, there was a lot of pretty open conspiracy theories like, oh, if we elect a Catholic, the Pope's actually the one in charge. And you even got it a little bit when Biden was elected. Again, you know, decades and decades later when you think that like people would be past that insane shit. decades and decades later when you think that like people would be past that insane shit so like americans i mean maybe it's because uh you know being founded on like intense calvinism

and mostly protestants and things like that are still kind of innately suspicious of catholicism which as an american is is very strange to me like my mom is Catholic, not practicing like any good Catholic. But yeah, they saw... It was one of those things. And a lot of that could be immediately transposed onto Italian immigrants, which the US would be also intensely racist towards. So anyone who wasn't from an immediate peer culture to some extent, like the Germans, the Dutch, the Dutch,

the British, were immediately looked at like subhuman. And this wasn't helped by the fact that they're greeted by something called the Know Nothing Party, which is this little footnote in American history that is kind of the gene seed, if you will, of violent anti-immigrant great replacement shit. if you will a violent anti-immigrant great replacement shit and they kind of tried to do that like the great replacement theory which i do not invite you to google um it's bullshit and insanely racist and neo-nazi shit um but but they did it with the irish this is like i saw the other day like some freak works for a think tank which is called the pale horse research institute suspicious yeah yeah um but like yeah so you had the

intensity kind of like anti-catholic and particularly because like so much capital in the u.s prior to the civil war was uh dependent on connections to Great Britain. Obviously, we spent four episodes talking about it earlier on in the year. So you had that old world rivalry holding over against the Irish when they arrived in the US. Also as well like when you look at the formation of the u.s so much of it is like you said hinged on like insane calvinist presbyterian anglican like protestants arriving and saying like well you know europe has gone to um satanic for us so you know we got we got to go be pure on a different continent yeah and like the knownothings did a lot of the same stuff that's happening today. Like, you know, generally speaking, if somebody starts worrying about

like birth rates, it's to be suspicious. And surprise, surprise, facing racist pressure and not even being allowed to assimilate, the Irish formed their own communities, largely centered around the Catholic Church. However, while many Irish immigrants were fleeing a genocide, others were fleeing the chains of English prison systems after the collapse of the 1848 Young Islander Rebellion. Probably our most important character of the episode that came out of this is John O'Mahony.

O'Mahony. Say it right, Joe. I did. I did my best. I didn't say O'Mahony. You did your best. Yeah, true. You did your best.

Now, in 1855, he, along with Thomas Kelly, Michael Cochran, and a few others, formed what would become known as the Finian Brotherhood, Cochran and a few others formed what would become known as the Finian Brotherhood, a revolutionary Republican group that was closely connected with the Irish Republican Brotherhood back in Ireland. Now, the Finians... They're called the Finians. There's an E there, Joe. That's what I said. I said it perfectly. This isn't Phineas and Ferb. That would be cool though. Phineans and Ferb. That would be cool, though. Fenians and Ferv? No.

The Fenians' original goal was to simply raise money and get weapons for their comrades back in Ireland. Because, you know, despite the U.S. Civil War not quite happening yet, guns are very freely available in the United States and very easily shipped back to Ireland. Then the U.S. Civil War blew the fuck up. Now, by the time the US Civil War kicked off, many Irish were now subject to conscription, as they'd automatically became naturalized American citizens by being a resident within five years. A fact that many Irish simply did not know until they got drafted. to be fair it had never happened before many of them had no idea they were even american citizens it's not like they're like a draft like a member from the ins showed up at the door like here's your passport seamus like i can't wait for like the absolute apocryphal like irish guy ends up with native americans

dances with wolves movie that's eventually gonna happen when someone digs it once we run out of you know uh enthusiasm for big world war two movies and it becomes culturally appropriate enough for like to have an ir well i suppose is it scorsese's kind of doing that with killing of flair's moon or killing of the flare moon so you know we'll see it soon. Well, we'll get to how that probably seems unlikely in a little bit. Does it involve scalps? Oh, it involves a lot of Irish racism.

Let's just consider it them trying to fit in. Okay, yeah. Once again, if you want more info on this, read How the Irish Became White. Yeah. Now, this draft was a product of what was called the Enrollment Act of 1863, which required all single men between the ages of 20 and 45, as well as married men to the ages of 35 to register for conscription. Now, this created a moment of unity between what were considered white Americans and Irish Americans, who they previously saw as subhuman. One of those unifying factors was racism.

Now, the Conscription Act really only targeted the working class because you could pay a fee of $300 and get out of it. So that meant a lot of normal working class dudes had no way out. And this unifying factor was, white Americans are poor working class, Irish Americans are poor working class, and that meant they couldn't pay their way out of the draft. And so- US military recruitment exploiting working class people. That sounds familiar. Don't worry about recruitment. You don't have a choice in the matter.

No benefits. Just fuck you. Get in a blue uniform. Now, Irish and white Americans, I'm using those terms to differentiate the two, of course, thought that if they allowed themselves to be drafted, if they submitted to conscription, their jobs would be taken by freed black men in the North. So some places, and of course, the North had also been an escape point for runaway slaves from the South. There was freed black people in the North already who were lower

on the totem pole than they were. And they believe... And of course, they were not subject to conscription. So they believe if we submit the conscription, all these black guys are going to take our jobs. This led to... Shout out to Harriet Tobman. All these black guys are going to take our jobs. Shout out to Harriet Tobman. This led to a horrifically violent draft riot that were really more like race riots as white Americans and Irish Americans burned down huge parts of New York and lynched black men on the streets. This was only stopped when units of the Union Army, fresh from fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg, were sent to the city and put it down. Yeah, this is going to be the start in a long line of Irish Americans being super fucking racist.

Yeah, unfortunately. Now, not every Irishman did this, and not every Irishman is drafted, of course. Thousands enlisted as soon as the conflict started. Seeing a steady government salary, as well as a way to prove to their fellow racist Americans that like, hey, I'm American too, by serving in uniform. Now, this is not new to the Irish. Virtually every minority in the United States has tried to do this and it's failed every single time.

Yeah. The Irish people were the only ones that really loved that blue uniform. In fact, the first two recorded Union deaths of the Civil War were born in Ireland, though I should point out that they were killed in something of a comical accident when a cannon was overloaded and exploded when they happened to be standing next to it during a 100-gun salute at Fort Sumter. Whoops. Never forget. So many Irish volunteered to fight in the war that they formed their own regiments. However, one of them, the 69th nice New York State volunteers

may have just been the most Irish unit of them all. The entire backbone of the unit started from members of the 1848 rebellion in order to encourage Irishmen to enlist. Furthermore, virtually all of their senior officers were Irish and members of the Fenian Brotherhood, including their commander, Michael Cochran. This was despite the fact he had temporarily been fired from that job because when the prince of wales visited the u.s he refused to lead his regiment on the parade field

now this unit fought at virtually every major battle of the u.s civil war all while carrying the regimental standard you want to guess what it was oh was it a green flag with a yellow plow on it it was a green flag overlaid with a golden harp yeah see but the the so the old irish flag is a blue flag with a yellow harp on it's the flag of the irish republican brotherhood um obviously you know not allowed to fly that anymore um for reasons um mostly simtex related reasons where does gaddafi come into this story now they were by far not the only irish regiment and definitely not the only one to be all but completely controlled by the fenians by the end of the war, 12 Irishmen were generals in the Union military. Every single one of them were a member of the Fenian Brotherhood. However, they were not the only Irishmen

to fight in the war, because the majority of the Irish immigrants landed in the North. Far more Irishmen fought for the Union than the Confederacy, but fought for the Confederacy they did. The Confederates did the same thing that the Union had done. They centered Irish units around Irish battle standards, Irish officers to encourage more of them to enlist. However, the vast majority of Irishmen who fought for theederacy had done so voluntarily coming from the north come on lads the irish did not want to see the emancipation of the slaves for the same reason that we already talked about they figured americans look at us like we're barely one

step above black people if all the black people get free they're gonna steal our jobs um it's like it's so funny because like because like frederick douglas came to ireland and like toured around it and like he like he was kind of you know explained that like over here like i'm the same as you like in the u.s like it it's so weird seeing all this this is not an opinion that was shared by the Irish Republican Brotherhood back in Ireland. They were ashamed of what the Fenians were doing in the United States. And that will come up later. For instance...

The beginning of a schism between the beliefs of Irish Americans and actual Irish people. Yep. Now, this might be a bit apocryphal. Yep. Now, this might actually, this might be a bit apocryphal. However, it's largely believed that the famous rebel yell of the Confederates came from an Irish unit fighting under the command of Stonewall Jackson during the first Battle of Bull Run, which to me says it should have been like, oh, you fucking cunt or something. Now, the U.S. Civil War acted as something as a proving ground for these Irishmen, with the Fenian contingent, many of whom had become generals,

becoming well-drilled in the art of war. O'Mahony believed that this sudden glut of Irish combat veterans should immediately return home, and they would be the the backbone of a new irish like rebellion and because there was more irish combat veterans from the civil war than the entire english army yeah like it's it's really interesting that like so like frederick

daniel o'connell aka the great liberator, a kind of hero of Irish history about fighting for Irish independence, home rule. He was a letter writer to Frederick Douglass and brought him to Limerick. He was called the Black Daniel O'Connell. In January 1846, he described the oppression of irish people like this is like way before what we're talking about is like he described the oppression of the irish as the same degradation as the american slave and like he said the suffering of one is the suffering of all and he caught he said that like there was a common cause of humanity between both struggles and i was i'm just like why why i genuinely america pilled because burger pilled i have a theory

about irish people that like when we cross that threshold of either the atlantic or the irish sea there is like a 50 50 chance that they are going to become the most insane people ever. I feel like it's a lot of the diaspora of everywhere, honestly. Now, this bred a schism between the Fenians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and honestly, even like multiple different sides of the Fenians themselves. Part of them, led by O'Mahony

and another man named william roberts uh like omahani is like we need to go home bring our muskets and free uh the irish state roberts is like i got a better idea let's fucking invade canada let's let's start a new ireland's start Ireland, but with snow. I mean, to be fair, Irish men and women between the ages of 18 to 35 are currently trying to do that with Vancouver. As crazy as this sounds, and it is, their idea was to seize territory in Canada, which is, of course, a British territory at the time, and ransom it back to England in exchange for a free Ireland, or failing that, force them to divert military resources to deal with them and open a pathway for another, hopefully more successful Irish rebellion in Ireland, or create such tension between the United States and England, because

obviously the Fenian invasion is going to be launched from the United States, how that occurs, as we'll talk about in a second, would lead to a war between them, because American opinion of England after the Civil War was effectively an all-time low. The English had all but officially helped the Confederacy. They had built ships for them um they were there was like english advisors witnesses whatever you want to call them with

the confederate military not a great relationship between the two at the time so after a few conventions the pro-invade canada faction of Fenians took over, but they were still kind of powerless to do anything. The Brits were also acting. Now, small problem here. At no point were the Fenians' plans to invade Canada kept secret from fucking anybody. This is just Pete Ellis all over again. It's just a drunk guy telling all his plans in a pub.

Kind of. So the English did what they did best crush the irish they suspended habeas corpus within ireland so they had legal cover to target anyone that could be considered a rebel again rounding up anybody with athenian or nationalist affiliation within ireland itself however they fucked up around a 100 of those people they arrested happened to be American citizens of Irish descent. And now this was the unifying moment for real of Americans and Irish Americans, because with opinion already at an all-time low between Americans and the British, they saw them effectively arrest an American citizen for no reason.

Now, Americans also had a very short memory because habeas corpus was also suspended in the US not that long before during the Civil War, but whatever. Now, this not only enraged the American government, but the American public, who finally, with geopolitics at play and years of the Civil War in their very, very immediate past, decided to see the Irish as not only people for the first time, but fellow Americans being crushed by the British crown.

I don't like this. Now, this turn of American public opinion and government opinion against the British saw the Fenians unite behind their invade Canada guys. So like, this might actually fucking work. They purchased massive quantities of weapons and short of funds, they issued their own bonds to fundraise the invasion. And I already said this wasn't a secret.

So just for an example of how in the open this was, the bonds were in the name of the Irish Republic and written on them was a promise to be able to cash them within six months of the recognition of the new Irish Republic by the U.S. government. They hung recruitment posters up on the street looking for Irish Civil War veterans, and they openly discussed

it in American newspapers. They post that check. It's like, don't cash that too soon. Yeah, like, don't cash that for about six months. And then you only can do it at the Dublin Central Bank. You can't do it here. Now, at this point in the planning stage, as you could probably imagine at this point, everything was known about the US government.

But they did absolutely nothing to stop them. And it actually goes deeper than that. There is a chance, a decently high one, that the US government actively helped the Fenians. Firstly, most of their weapons have been purchased from the US military, though that could be very easily explained by low-level quartermaster-based corruption. However, secondly, the Fenians elected a secretary of war, a guy named T.W. Sweeney, to plan this entire thing. T.W. Sweeney was an active duty US military officer at the time and was given leave specifically so he could plan the invasion of Canada. Also, Thomas William Sweeney served in the Mexican-American War,

the Yuma War, as well as the Civil War. Furthermore, the U.S. was fully appraised of the coming raids due to the fact that Bernard Doran Killian, the Finian Secretary of the Treasury, actually met with the President of the United States, Andrew Jackson, and the U.S. Secretary of State, William Seward. It's not a good time if you're meeting with Andrew Jackson. I mean, to be fair, if there's one group of people that Jackson would be fond of shooting that are white, it would be the British. But still, like, it's fiery where that man is right now. Reportedly, the two American leaders were very openly supportive of the operation, but stopped just short of openly backing them. However, it was clear that the government

would do nothing to stop them, which is somehow more important. These people are organizing in public, stockpiling arms. The military is literally giving a colonel leave, like, hey, I need to submit my leave form like this is like me in the army like what are you doing i'm gonna go home and visit my family for christmas whatever tw sweeney is like oh i'm gonna invade canada and the u.s military is like yeah sure man i'll see you in a

couple months i mean like what they're gonna go fight some british and french people yeah they don't give a go on this only benefits the u.s i also believe the u.s didn't think that they were going to go through with it like that that's my that's my personal opinion is that this was pissing off the british just in its conceptual stage it's still it's still benefited the united states to be like yeah do your thing whatever but it's going to get real very shortly and that and that is when you're going to see the US kind of be like, what the fuck? They actually did it. It's the tripart war

between french fries, chips, and freedom fries. So, with possibly thousands of people lining up for an invasion, because remember, there's no shortage of Irish Civil War veterans. Most of them hold some kind of Fenian sympathies at worst. At best,

they're active participants, right? So they are stockpiling weapons. They have seeming support of the United States. The invasion of Canada is set to begin on March 17th, 1866, and is to be led by John O'Neill, a former Union general. Then O'Neill's invasion had to be called off because only like 12 guys showed up. Hey, this is just like the 1798 rebellion. What can I say? However, nobody decided to like telegraph ahead or send a runner or whatever

to Irish Fenians in Canada, in Waterloo, Quebec. So about six dudes were like, yeah, the invasion's coming, bro. Let's fucking go. They grabbed their muskets and they go out to where they're supposed to meet. And that's when, because at this point, the British know they're coming. Like, oh man, these guys are openly talking about they're going to invade. So the British military in Canada, as well as Canadian militias and whatever, are already alerted to everything.

So outside of Waterloo, Quebec, British military gets an alert like, there's like four to six very confused Irish dudes with guns wandering around the woods. So the Brits send out some guys on horseback and immediately arrest them without incident now and then we get the second attempt starting in dedham massachusetts around 50 people began to march north but the further they went i guess more people kind of decided like kind of want to just go home you know go to the pub or whatever so like dudes started dessert and then they went

home eventually a few of them were picked up by local cops for walking around armed and carrying battle flags and were arrested. So then they had to write home to their friends and family asking for bail money. Now, in May, O'Neill tried again and did better,

organizing around 700 men in New York on the American side of the Niagara River river his army was made up of fenians from around the u.s and were decked out in both union and confederate uniforms you know representation is important you know are you mixing like top and bottom or is it like they like split the uniforms down the middle and sewed them together i'd like to think both you know or are they like reversible so like if you see someone coming down the road like oh oh no it's a confederate i better change my uniform just imagine how weird it would be you're a civilian in upstate new york after the

civil war is over and you see like a grip of irish dudes walking by in confederate gray like what the fuck is going on this is the first ever you know like Irish stag do there's a load of drunk Irish guys wandering around it's like what the fuck is going on there's like 10 Irish guys in confederate grey one guy in a rugby shirt and then some dude dressed in like Fred Perry like sorry I'm late I missed the uniform

uh like I missed the uniform issuance I don't have you know the like the matching t-shirt that says like John O. Stagg, where on the back of it, it says the Nones. Eventually, O'Neill managed to secure boats and ferried his men across the

River Nakanda, occupied Fort Erie and raised the flag of the Irish Republic. Others advanced forward and began cutting telegraph lines while O'Neill settled in to secure their supply lines for ammo, food, and reinforcements. These stayed open for about 13 hours, and he managed to amass over 1,000 men and thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition on the Canadian side of the border. Around now, the U.S. decided shit was getting a little bit too real for them to keep

allowing it to go on, so they dispatched a U. a us navy gunboat the uss michigan to sail down the river and tell athenians back on the american side to fuck off and stop crossing the river and they did they didn't even bother they didn't fire a shot there was no arrest there's like go home and it was like yeah all right they just deployed you know like 19th century iggy pop on the banks just like a scrawny emaciated dude that's acting real weird and like i don't like the look of that guy let's go home dual wielding heroin needles and covered in his own shit covered in peanut butter o'neill and his army decided to fuck it and they continued into canada but pretty much as soon as he crossed the border min once again was really like i kind of want to go home and began deserting him.

Like the Americans before him during their invasion of Quebec, an episode we will talk about in the future, during the American Revolution, O'Neill believed that Canadians would support his mission because they thought Canadians saw the British the same way they did. They're like, ah, we're going to throw off our colonial yoke or whatever. But not really. Every time they went to like a Canadian town or whatever and they told them what to do, it's like, why don't you lads go and fuck off?

See, they should have done a pincer movement joining with the Quebecois who hate the Queen as well. Yeah, well, I think a lot of it had to do with Canadians also hated the Irish.

Yeah. Now, we weren a lot of it had to do with Canadians also hated the Irish. Yeah. We weren't well liked on the global stage at this point. By the end of the first day of the invasion, only about 650 of his original force were still sticking by him. The Brits were also acting, knowing that the Fenians had been playing this for a long time, you know, because everybody was openly talking about it. They had garrison troops and supporting Canadian militias already in the area and waiting. On June 2nd, O'Neill's forces camped out near the Limestone Ridge, having not run into any resistance so far. This is when the British force, under the command of Colonel Alfred Booker, about equal size to the Finians, arrived. And the battle began. The Finians quickly

discovered a weakness in their entire plan that, for some reason, nobody had thought about. Yes, they were combat veterans. Yes, they were led by generals who absolutely knew what they were doing, but they had never actually trained together. They hadn't done their drilling. The Finian units were a mismatch of different Civil War veterans from across the US and the Confederacy, many of them had little familiarity with one another. So when confronted by the British and Canadian forces who actually had drilled and trained together, things quickly began to go badly for the Fenians. A few things pulled their asses out of the fire, however. They had a fuckload of ammo, way more than the Canadians and the Brits. Because of this, and the fact that the

individual Fenian riflemen was much more hardened than the Canadians and the Brits. These guys just steeled through the US Civil War. So despite the fact that they were fighting a much better trained and organized force, organization more important in this aspect. Having a couple hundred dudes exchange salvos with them didn't even make them break a sweat. They're used to battles with thousands upon thousands of men. Also, because they're so combat trained that when musket balls started hissing by their ears, that it didn't slow them down. Whereas the Brits and the Canadians, when they got a whiff of the musket fire, they began to panic. They weren't reloading as fast.

They weren't reloading as well. They weren't aiming. Meanwhile, the Fenians could pour three times more fire into the Brits than they received because they're like, it's only like 200 of them. Who cares? Yeah, you got to hand it to them.

You know, that's real efficiency. Then of course, one final thing it to them. That's real efficiency. Then, of course, one final thing that helped them most of all. Good old-fashioned battlefield stupidity. The Canadian militia saw Fenians on horseback and thought they were about to take a cavalry charge, but they weren't. They were actually just scouts hanging out on the distance.

The Fenians didn't have anyone dedicated to fighting on horseback. However, the Canadians saw them, panicked, and began attempting to form themselves into a square, which for people who are unaware, this is the ye olde main anti-cavalry formation for infantry of the day, but they did so without orders. is just about as complicated as an infantry maneuver you could do back in the day. So they completely fucked it up because they were panicking. They had no orders. They have a bunch of Irishmen who don't even seem to be wincing every time they get hit by a fucking musket ball. So different wings miscommunicated with one another.

And soon this square shape turned into more of a clusterfuck, a mess of screaming and lost Canadians. And finally, the Canadians had fucked this shit and they ran from the battlefield. The rest of the army, now outnumbered, had no choice but to keep up with the fleeing militia, running all the way back to the town of Ridgeway, which is where this battle gets its name, the Battle of Ridgeway. With the road wide open to his advance, O'Neill hesitated and decided that his army was going to turn around and head back towards Fort Erie. On their way

there, they ran into another British force who was outnumbered 2-1. After shooting at each other for a couple minutes, the British decided we didn't want any of this smoke and they left behind a couple soldiers who were then captured by the Fenians. Hey, yeah, you guys hang around just make

sure nothing weird happens if you get captured it's fine they're irish they're not gonna they're not gonna cut you up and cannibalize you and boil you with like corned beef and cabbage i am actually kind of impressed with how chill they were towards their pows normally in the grand scheme of history resistance fighters and revolutionaries or whatever you want to call them, are not the nicest to captured prisoners. I would posit maybe it's because there's so much Irish cultural memory, particularly at this time of the penal colonies, Irish people being sent to Van Diemen's Land, which is now Tasmania, or being sent to the Caribbean and stuff like that. They're like, maybe we know being sent to the caribbean and stuff like that they're like maybe we'll be nice to the prisoners i also think that they knew that they're doing with doing this with the full allowance of the united states and if they began like lining up british pows against

the wall and and firing squatting them like the us would be like yo what the fuck yeah also like tactically i think it's a it would be a bad gambit if you, like, you capture your first POWs and you're going up against, you know, the British at this time, you know, at the almost peak of colonialism and, like, saying, like, oh, yeah, we just shot a couple of your citizens.

What are you going to do about it? No, you don't really want to give them more of an excuse to kill Irish people in Ireland. Yeah, they don't need one. They're already doing it. You don't need to make it any worse. Yeah, they don't need one. They're already doing it. You don't need to make it any worse. Yeah, they're doing a pretty good job of it at this time. You know, it's 1866.

Yeah. Though O'Neill kind of knew at this point his plan was completely boned. The river was closed off. He couldn't get reinforcements. And with the invasion started, the British were quickly pulling most of their military strength in Canada towards his direction. And he would be vastly outnumbered. O'Neill knew he'd have to get back to the US and live to fight another day. So he let his prisoners go, rightly assuming the US authorities probably would be pretty upset if he transported British POWs across international lines and ordered his men to

recross the Niagara River. However, that was easier said than done. There weren't enough boats anymore, so men slapped together rafts, stole local boats, and in some cases just jumped and swam for it to get back to the U.S. Waiting for them on the other side were units from the U.S. Army, who pleasantly greeted the Fenians and calmly

asked for them to please leave your weapons on the ground and go home. O'Neal's... At least they were polite about it. Yeah, they weren't going to arrest anybody for it. O'Neal's mission ended with two of his men dying and another eight being wounded, while the Brits and Canadians lost nine killed in action. However, they did lose 22 more men from random shit along the way,

including one man accidentally shooting himself, and another dropping dead from heat stroke and of course a wave of cholera yeah it's kind of hard to fight against cholera yeah you can't shoot it you just have to have clean water which nobody had figured out yet that wouldn't be invented until 1948 once again nobody's taking solid shits yeah everybody here is just a pantload of diarrhea i'm thinking like unwicked wool pants full of shit in like the summer heat not great this is why nobody smelled good until like 1959 yeah actually i stand by that same it's even a full joke hey maybe we'll find out that the reason josephine was so attracted to uh

napoleon was because you know he actually didn't smell like shit after reading his memoirs i'm not so sure about that now this it turned out to be the high water mark of the fenian plans for canada because it would all go rapidly downhill from here another fenian group invaded saint armand quebec and they were charged down by a force of cavalry which caused them to retreat rapidly downhill from here. Another Fenian group invaded Saint-Armand, Quebec, and they were charged down by a force of cavalry which caused them to retreat. Another crossover from Vermont at the end of June fired a volley at some Canadians,

missed, and then ran back over the border. Some Quebecois soldiers like, oh my god, what are these paddies doing in Canada? Though the Fenians weren't done yet and they kept planning new invasions into 1870. This led to the Battle of Trout River in May of 1870.

This one was also led by O'Neill, but his forces badly outnumbered. And after exchanging a few rounds with the Canadians and the Brits, they retreated back to the US, where this time O'Neill was arrested, sentenced to two years in prison, and then his sentence was immediately pardoned by President Ulysses S. Grant. However, my personal favorite is the last and dumbest invasion, which occurred a year later.

O'Neill asked the Fenian Governing Council to greenlight his new invasion of Canada, this time out of the Dakota Territory. But they refused. They're like, nah, we're kind of done doing that now. Hasn't really worked out. So he resigned and kind of turned into an Irish freebooter doing it on his own. He allied.

He set up a go for me. It's a Patreon with a $100 limit of Invade Canada. He allied. He set up a GoFundMe. It's a Patreon with a $100 limit of Invade Canada. New Patreon goal, by the way. Yeah, if we reach, I don't know, what, like 50 grand a month, we'll invade Canada. I feel like the IRS would have a problem with that. I'm not entirely sure.

That's for my accountant to figure out, I think. Yeah. Now, he allied with a French native leader named Louis Riel, who promised to help him stick it to the Canadians and the Brits. That kind of, sort of Fenian raid with their French native allies charged forward, seizing two buildings without resistance. Then Riel turned on him and tried to turn him over to the Brits. then real turned on him and tried to turn him over to the brits uh and uh but he failed because that's when o'neill looked out his window and was very confused when he saw a couple u.s soldiers simply calmly walking up to the buildings that he had captured because it turned out he was still two miles inside of the United States. He had accidentally invaded the Dakotas from the Dakotas.

He was again arrested with that incident. People should learn to read maps. The U.S. decided not to charge him for accidentally invading the United States from the United States, I assume because his embarrassment was punishment enough. States from the United States, I assume because his embarrassment was punishment enough. Now, despite the Battle of Ridgeway, as it came to be known, being the first Irish battlefield victory over the Brits in 100 years, and honestly, also probably the last one period, nothing that favored the Irish came from these invasions. In fact, the opposite happened because it became a touchstone of early Canadian

nationalism. And it was actually one of the reasons why Canada gained self-governance. Of course, this also led to a massive crackdown against Irish people in Ireland. It never works out well for us. See, Irish we're not good at invading we're being good we're good at being invaded i'll say that but not invading oh that sounds familiar

unfortunately now o'neill gave up the armed struggle against the brits or canada whichever i don't think he could tell the difference anymore. Though he didn't stop being very, very weird. He resisted calls for Irish Americans to assimilate into the United States and said called for a new Ireland to be created in the American Great Plains, saying, quote, We could build up a young Ireland on the virgin prairies of Nebraska and there rear a monument more lasting than the granite or the marble to the irish race in america you want to guess people aren't a race you want to guess how successful he was at this i really good i i everything i know about the great plains you know very fertile land that has lasted up until now i mean he was successful in moving getting convincing people to move out there thousands of irish moved to nebraska following his lead this of course is ironic

now that he was stealing indigenous people's lands but he didn't care too much about that because he was also an intensely racist prick to the point that the irish republican brotherhood turned on him yeah i mean like i think spending time in the confederate army would do that to someone oh he wasn't in the conf Army would do that to someone. He wasn't in the Confederate Army, though he was friends with a lot of people who were. So, you know, do with that information what you will. Yeah, the company you keep says a lot about you. Now, O'Mahony fell from his prominent position within the Brotherhood by continuing to hate

black and Native people long after the US Civil War, with a former member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood saying of omahony and specifically the entire fenian branch in new york that they were a quote bloated carcass of gaseous manhattanism hey bar absolute solid gold bar he's got away with words yeah and he died penniless and eventually his body was transferred to dublin where i believe there is currently a statue of him i mean look you know tale as old as time for irish people once they die penniless and your body gets sent back home now the man with the most normal ending of all this is t.w sweeney the man who planned the entire thing is the Fenian Secretary of War. So remember, he had leave from the army

to commit an invasion of Canada. Now, he was released from jail without charge for invading Canada, was immediately reinstated into the US Army, retired as a general, and lived on his pension in Long Island until he died. The older option for an Irish person in America.

I just think it's great to like, oh, so how was your summer vacation or leave? Everyone are like, good, visited Canada. Just doesn't elaborate. Imagine how racist he was against Italians in Long Island. Oh my God. Yeah, that and not only is he just vehemently racist against Italians, but is the only guy in

the block who reserves a certain kind of special hatred for canadians that everyone is concerned about and everyone's really confused about and doesn't really understand why because he doesn't talk about his stag do in ontario uh very much and and that tom is the fenian raids into canada how do you feel about uh your your comrades the irish americans you know there's a saying that like i don't just support women's rights i support women's wrongs and i feel the same way about irish people i just had water come out of my nose i i have to say i didn't know a lot about this going in other than the fact that it happened like i wasn't aware of that you know the minute details and how they accidentally invaded dakota uh one of the dakotas which to be completely honest i'm

fine with um i don't actually believe that north dakota exists i don't recognize its sovereignty um we we should only respect larger dakota i i respect greater dakota which somehow encompasses everything west of ohio um i'm becoming a dakota revanchist it's fine like it's so funny because at this time just like there is so many just insane Irish people in the US. Like I'm working on an episode about Commandant John Barry, who is the father of the US Navy. And just like all of the insane people who are just floating around at the time. Also, if you're listening and you happen to be Irish American and live in the Plains states, now you know how your parents got there.

They're attempting to create like, you know how your parents got there. They're attempting to create like, you know, Nebraska and Ireland, which is... They're trying to create an ethno-state in the middle of America.

Not the first group of people to do that and not the last. Populated exclusively with people who have fucking massive heads. Listen here, lads.

What if we did... What if we recreated Ireland but with corn? Hey, Charles Trevelyan took all errors, so... I can recommend a song about that. Tom, we do a thing on the show here called Questions from the Legion.

If you'd like to ask us a question, the Legion donate to the show. You can ask us on Patreon. You can ask us on our Discord, which you'll also have access to if you support the show. Or you could, I don't know, load it into an ear of corn and fire it towards London and Tom will answer it. See, Ireland's relationship with corn, if we had had corn, imagine we had cross-cultural exchange with central america and we just had irish tacos like corn tortillas irish tacos the irish long to eat corn the long way now uh today

today's sucking on it like a lollipop just like like dragging my teeth along the length of the cord to just like scrape them into my mouth today's question is what is a tv show that would have been awesome if it wasn't cancelled oh um mind hunter in is that comes first to mind like i don't really care about serial killer stuff or it was so well done i mean it's also because it's done by david litch yeah um other than that i can't think of like many shows that got cancelled um well not necessarily cancelled but uh unfinished is a hunter hunter uh that's another one that'll never be finished yeah or berserk yeah well literally that will never be finished now no they're continuing work on it um like his assistants are gonna do it which i know but no muir muir is dead look it it died to me at the end of like what chapter 273 so i think look the easy answer here is firefly um

i hate that show so you're fired you're fired from this fucking podcast and i don't know how but i'm gonna find a way to deport you somewhere awful not even ireland you're gonna go to fucking like i don't know somalia i'm sorry if i could wipe one person's cultural impact for off the face of the planet it will be joss whedon look i'm not here to be a joss whedon defender and in fact another member of his crew uh the bald one whose first name is escaping me at the moment once started an argument on twitter with me um like despite all of that i still love the show but that's the easy answer the hard one i think is a show called terriers um okay it was i believe on fx years and years ago

best shows come from fx yeah they either put out the best shows that last forever or really good shows that immediately get canceled or really shitty shows that somehow continue forever um but terriers is a really cool show i think it went for one one whopping season and um it was funny it was deep it was well written so of course it had to die uh yeah in reality the real answer for this show is deadliest warrior no that should have that should have never left the drawing board that show is fucking terrible it rules though it's definitely an era of I believe it was the History Channel or Discovery Channel

they went through very similar eras oh no Deadly's Warrior was like Bravo wasn't it? oh fuck no it was Spike TV yeah it was even better it was the show it was the network for men which meant it had the worst shows ever on it.

Yeah, it was real bad. Bring back Deadliest Warrior. Look, bring it back, but give it to the sci-fi network. I want to see ISIS versus I don't know these guys, the guys who invaded

Canada. Who's going to win? Look, they're going to ally and establish a caliphate in Dublin. Everyone's going to be really confused. Anyway. The extended caliphate of Cavan. That is a podcast. Tom, plug your show. Listen to Beneath the Skin, the show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing.

At the time of recording, we have just released an episode about H.R. Giger. We had a expert in Giger, Miroslava Hartman, who is also, you know, an art curator and a writer, on to talk about the one and only Hans-Rudy Giger. His name is not Giger. The reason people think it's Giger is because it was mispronounced at the 1980 Oscars. Famously the creator

of the Alien from Aliens or the Xenomorph if you're going to be a nerd about it. An incredible artist, was really influential on tattooing but is just a super interesting guy and we had a really cool conversation with Miroslava about his life and his influence. Thank you very much.

This is the only show that I host. But if you like what we do here, consider supporting us on Patreon. You get episodes like this early. You get access to our Discord. You get five plus years of bonus content. You get eBooks. You get audiobooks. You get stickers and some other things I am probably forgetting. Or, and leave us a review on wherever it is you listen to podcasts. It helps us immensely. And until next time, invade Canada. They know what they did.