In what is now largely considered a footnote in history, Americans invaded Canada along the Niagara Frontier in 1866. The group behind the invasion—the Fenian Brotherhood—was formed in 1858 by Irish nationalists in New York City in order to fight for Irish independence from Britain. At the end of the American Civil War, Fenian leaders attempted to use Irish Americans, many of them combat veterans, to seize Canada and make it the "New Ireland" as a means to force the British from "old" Ireland. New York State was both the epicenter of Fenian leadership and a key support base and staging area for the military operations. Although relatively short-lived and with some of its military operations being somewhere between farce and tragedy, the Fenian Brotherhood had a very important impact on nineteenth-century New York and America, but remains largely forgotten. InRebels on the Niagara Lawrence E. Cline examines not only the Fenian operations and their impact on Canada, but also the role the United States and New York played in both the initial support for the Fenian movement and its subsequent collapse in America.

Acknowledgments
Maps
Foreword

1. The Fenian Brotherhood in New York and the US

2. The American and Irish Fenians

3. The Fenians, American Society, and the American Government

4. “The Great Schism”

5. The Campobello Island Raid

6. Preparing for Invasion
photo gallery follows page 84

7. The Invasion in the Niagara

8. The Other Fenian Invasion Wings

9. The Aftermath

10. The Interregnum

11. 1870: Invasion Redux

12. The Withering of the Fenian Brotherhood: The Birth of “Fenianism”

Appendix 1 The Fenian Constitutions of 1863 and 1865
Appendix 2 A Fenian Soldier’s Account of 1866
Appendix 3 General Sweeney’s Proclamation to the Canadians in 1866

Notes
Bibliography and Suggested Readings
Index