Canadian Battle of Lime Ridge, June 2, 1866
The Battle of Lime Ridge was contested near Ridgeway, Canada West, currently Ontario, Canada on June 2, 1866, between Canadian troops and an irregular army of Irish-American invaders, the Fenians. It was the largest skirmish of the so-called "Fenian Raids". The New York City-based Fenian Brotherhood was attempting to support related groups in Ireland to force the United Kingdom into negotiating toward the formation of an independent Irish Republic. They took advantage of the ready supply of arms in the United States after the recently concluded Civil War, and of the ample number of unemployed young men who had emerged from that conflict with some degree of military training. It was still a ragtag army, however, that assembled on the American shore of the Niagara River during the last weeks of May 1866. The Fenians had made little attempt at secrecy, and both American and British authorities were aware of the imminent military operation. The made only half-hearted attempts to prevent the Fenians from crossing the Niagara river, and invading Canada; the government was loath to go out of its way to help the British/Canadians after the failure of the invasion of Canada during the War of 1812 and their perceived support of the Confederacy in the Civil War. The Fenian troops, led by General John O'Neill, a former Union cavalry commander, secured boats and transferred some 800 men across the Niagara, landing just above Fort Erie, before dawn on June 1, 1866. O'Neill spent the first day trying to rally the local citizenry to the Fenian cause and to commandeer supplies for his mission, but his force was plagued by desertions almost from the outset. By nightfall O'Neill estimated he had perhaps 500 effectives remaining.
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Photo credit: © Historical Art Collection (HAC) / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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