In the first light of June 2, 1866, Colonel John O’Neill of the Fenian Brotherhood deployed his troops along Lime Ridge just outside Ridgeway, Ontario. The former Union cavalry officer must have wondered if the 500 Irish-American volunteers under his command would stand and fight when opposed by a Canadian militia brigade. He had chosen the battleground to his advantage and was well-aware that the approaching Canadian force was composed of poorly equipped, amateur soldiers. But at this point, all the young commander could do was wait.

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O’Neill’s force was one brigade of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a secret revolutionary group founded in Dublin on March 17, 1858, by James Stephens. John O’Mahony headed the IRB’s American wing, popularly known as the Fenian Brotherhood, which was composed of immigrants and Irish Americans whose ultimate goal was to free Ireland from British rule. While the IRB’s original ambitions were limited to Ireland itself, a militant Fenian faction, led by William Roberts, advocated extending the war of liberation to British North America, an idea that gained popularity after the IRB leadership in Ireland was infiltrated and most of its leadership, including Stephens, was captured in September 1865.

The task of implementing Roberts’ grand scheme was delegated to Brig. Gen. Thomas Sweeny, a veteran of the Mexican War (in which he had lost his right arm) and the Civil War, who had been appointed as the Fenians’ secretary of war. A five-pronged attack would strike north across the border from Chicago, Ill.; Milwaukee, Wis.; Buffalo, N.Y.; Vermont and along the Saint Lawrence River. The objective was to hold Canada hostage by seizing major cities and transportation centers. If the Fenians were successful, they would enter negotiations with the British empire to exchange Canada for Ireland’s independence.

More realistic members of the Fenian Brotherhood understood the far-fetched nature of the plan. They focused instead on the more likely possibility that the attack could precipitate war between the United States and Great Britain, or at least cause enough of a disturbance to force the British empire to reinforce Canada with large numbers of Regular troops. Either of those circumstances would create a favorable climate for an armed uprising in Ireland itself.

By April 1866, thousands of volunteers, many of whom were Civil War veterans, had been organized into secret Fenian regiments. Former Union and Confederate soldiers, united in a common Irish cause, drilled and imparted their experience to new recruits. The Fenian hierarchy had established a centralized command structure and a clandestine system of logistics, which was financed by donations from Irish-American communities. They had weapons, ammunition and manpower. It was time to strike.

The journey toward Ridgeway began on May 22, when O’Neill received orders to mobilize the men of his 13th Tennessee Fenian Regiment and move to Cleveland, Ohio, by train. At Louisville, Ky., he was joined by Colonel Owen Starr and the 17th Kentucky Fenian Regiment. Word reached them in Cleveland that the attack across the Great Lakes had been aborted, effectively pruning one prong from the original offensive plan. The two regiments, with a combined strength of 342, were ordered to proceed to Buffalo.

When O’Neill’s and Starr’s Fenian regiments arrived in Buffalo on May 29, they were quickly broken up into small groups and taken into the homes of members of the local Irish-American community. The Tennessee and Kentucky troops, combined with the 18th Ohio Fenian Regiment and the 7th New York Fenian Regiment, swelled the ranks of the Irish-American force in Buffalo to more than 1,000.

‘Fighting Tom’ Sweeny met with senior Fenian leaders to finalize the plan of attack and designate a chain of command, since the appointed commander had failed to arrive. In the end, 32-year-old Colonel John O’Neill was placed in overall command of the force.

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