Alexander Somerville

“ Without fear there is no courage. Of all the forms of danger from an enemy in battle the most trying to the manhood of the soldier, is bullet firing from forest thickets, from orchards, from behind curtains of concealment, out of houses, over garden walls, under covert of field fences; from behind trees. In such places the enemy is not seen or is but dimly discernable. In the greater fields of carnage where columns are undergoing rapid evolutions, and moving through massive formations exposed to quickly repeated vollies of artillery, men do not feel so acutely apprehensive, and sensitive. ”

“ American journalists—orators—statesmen. Such were the sentiments of Canadians towards the United States, with only the small exceptions indicated in the years of the war. Some of you now enjoy, what you term a “grim satisfaction” at the thought of the women and children of Canada being exposed to ravage, plunder, murder, who in no way offended you. And the large majority of men who felt your cause to be theirs—the cause of constitutional freedom, national stability, true conservatism, you are grimly satisfied because they are now, or but lately were, exposed to the contingencies of invasion. ”

“ The more a soldier knows of service before an enemy, not alone the service of battle, siege, or skirmish; not so much these, as the life of rough campaigning, marching hurriedly, eating irregularly, often long without sustenance, sleeping in the open air on the ground, doing duty on outlying piquets, penetrating the enemy’s lines as scouts, escorting stores through perilous obstacles,—the more a soldier knows of these trials of strength and health, of mind and body, the more he realizes the cardinal truth, that not alone are firearms and ammunition guardians of his life. ”

“ Canada trodden by the foot of hostile forces vowing to be avenged on the peaceful, industrious people of British America, for the grievances of Ireland, accumulating through the long historic ranges of seven centuries. The land we live in invaded. Whatever may be the incentives to war growing out of the traditions of seven hundred years, there is no questionable sentiment, within the living community which hears the tread of the armed stranger within its borders. ”

“ The wheels of Human Progress are reversed. Viaducts broken down [57] on this side the frontier and on that. Flying bridges of international amity now spanning the torrent at Niagara; or leviathans of the ferries, breasting the rivers in calm or storm or floods of crashing ice, at Sarnia, Windsor, Erie Ferry, Kingston, Prescott, and other passages of friendly traffic and social courtesies—all a wreck. And noblest victory of science, the monumental bridge at Montreal, each of its four-and-twenty pillars a monument, that overthrown ”

“ A trotting mare of beautiful form and high reputation, was ridden into the field of bivouac at the creek, hobbling painfully on three legs, two Fenians shouting and cursing in wild hilarity seated on her back, one with his feet to the left, the other with his feet to the right side, bundles of fowls, turkeys and other plunder on their shoulders, and a wild warrior on foot, who, a few minutes before had been a third rider, but had fallen off, inflicting bayonet wounds on the bleeding flanks of the groaning beast, one of whose hind quarters was pierced by a bayonet through and through. ”

“ And they who desire the permanence of British stability, or deserve the personal safety and freedom guaranteed by imperial laws, and by institutions at once venerable, and youthfully elastic in their adaptability to new circumstances, must by a logical necessity—if they hold any settled conservative principle—cherish a sympathy for other free nations, and hold in abhorrence a rebellious appeal to arms to overturn constitutional government. ”

“ What, to Great Britain, are the aspects of the contingency of an ‘open rupture’ or Roebuck’s ‘declaration of war?’ War with the United States, the Southern blockade broken, and secession achieved, involves either the defence of Canada by all the might of the Mother country or abandonment. Abandonment means, the confiscation of every man’s estate, every child’s heritage. ”

“ Offended humanity there, which is now as innocent of political feuds or evil intention to Canada, as any non-political farmer and his wife and baby on this side, will in turn cry for a reciprocity of vengeance. Patriotism on that side will be crime on this: the patriotism of Canada will be crime beyond the frontier. They who are least successful in devastation and in victory, will on their Fast days, pray to have a due sense of sin, and better success. The side which enjoys the highest satisfaction for defeats avoided, and battles won, will proclaim a day for thanksgiving and sky-rockets. ”

“ The men of the column now before us may have no demand made on them this day, to display the qualities commonly called heroic. The nervous and unsteady will sometimes rush upon an enemy with a vehemence which the world applauds. That is not heroism. The popular idea of high courage displayed in battle, is the charge, the shout, the rush with bayonet on the enemy’s line. That charge of bayonets has on occasions been effective, but it neither evinces high courage, nor is it often a safe movement. ”

“ Thus, from the enemy’s point of view on those heights above concession road, it is seen that while nothing was observed detracting from the steady, soldier-like gallantry of the Toronto and York and Caledonia Rifles, who wore green uniforms, the equally soldier-like gallantry of the Hamilton 13th is vindicated. The enemy, against whom a force advances in mortal conflict is the best judge of the effect which it produces. ”

“ The enemy armed and hostile, supposed to be in league with some among ourselves; how many none can tell; some among ourselves but not very many. That possibility of an enemy in our own city, or street, or house, inspires to prompt action. In all ages of mankind, among all races, in all lands, the alarm of—“the enemy within your borders!” ”

“ The people of this Province, reclaiming the wilderness, creating property, building up a country, a social fabric, and desiring to enjoy what they are toiling to establish, what have they done that Irishmen, in the United States, in name of the wrongs of seven centuries, should invade them? Most of them were in their own persons, or in the persons of their fathers, poor, hard-working laborers in England, Scotland, Ireland, before coming to Canada to toil. My forefathers lost their land in Scotland by political revolution as many in Ireland have. ”

“ War-tracks of wreck, vessels and canals all a wreck, on lake, river and canal navigation. Mutual destruction along the frontier lines of railway, American and Canadian—populated Canada nearly all a frontier as yet.
“Locomotive engines, offspring of genius more godlike than human, now carrying civilization through the primeval forests, dispensing the elements of social happiness as they go, these, compelled to be their own executioners. ”

“ O’Neil’s pass. Fenian sentry. Sergeant of the picket.
The village corporation of three at Waterloo, and the less timid of seven hundred and fifty inhabitants, breathed more freely at nine a. m. than they had done any minute since daybreak. The “breakfast for one thousand men” had been amply furnished, and heartily eaten. The armed multitude, fierce and hungry before, were now filled, and lay stretched in sleep on the green slopes, or under the trees, or kept watch by the river side, or as railway pickets. But noon was fast approaching. The thousand men would be hungry again. ”

“ The losses on the Fort Erie frontier were about $6,000.
As this page closes rumors of another invasion, more secretly planned, and on a wider scale than that of June, and the military preparations to meet it occupy the minds of the people of Canada. Some public personages who assume to be leaders of opinion, and who, whether with good intention or evil design, resisted for several years a full organization of a defensive Militia, are, in this supreme crisis, engaged in reviling public men who happen to be in possession of power, and who have practically evinced the capacities of statesmen. ”

“ Sons of Canada resident in the United States left employment and social ties, and hastened to their own land to defend it, to assert that British America will remain British. A goodly number of these came from Chicago to Toronto, five hundred miles. Many more would have quickly followed if wanted.
Who is she, that elderly woman on the railway platform, looking eagerly to the cars, into the circles of friends, crowding around the men as they alight? She is looking if her son has come. ”

“ They had no pioneers, no spades, axes, nor other entrenching tools. The Fenians, as was seen in chapter II. looked for spades and axes first thing on touching Canada. They had not been taught how to fold their overcoats so as to carry them on their backs without impeding the action of loading, capping, aiming, and firing. From the American Bull Run of 1862, they had profited nothing in the matter of advancing upon an enemy in a wooded country, carrying no water, no food, nothing but bold confidence, [46] which in war is something but not everything. ”

“ The fire-brand or revolutionary section of the Canada press, happily a very small and misguided minority of the whole, which in mockery of common sense retains the name of ‘conservative,’ or ‘moderate,’ yet has outraged moderation, and put rational conservatism to shame by spreading along and across the peaceful frontier the elements of discord and convulsion—takes its turn of ‘sentry go’ on dark and stormy nights, in sleet, or snow, or rain, or sultry summer heat ”

“ To relate incidents of British campaigns, victories, defeats, retreats, army panics, and the difficulties of the greatest generals in all wars, as a study indispensable in Canada, where the new militia of this year, 1862—fifty thousand undisciplined men not yet obtained, are proposed to do what fifty thousand veteran troops continuously in the field, might fail to do—defend Canada against an army of the United States, now trained or being trained, to arms, should it be directed at once against all accessible landing places on her vastly extended frontier. ”

“ The oldest Fenian tradition, a dim glimmer of uncertain light seen through a tunnel more than two thousand years long, by way of ancient Greece, and Phoenecia, leads the idea to war-fires lighted in Ireland to warn the owners of the soil, cultivators and herdsmen, of those remote centuries that Phoenician invaders were within the Irish coasts. Other dim lights shew the Fenian descendants of Irish Phoenicians burning war-fires of alarm to announce the approach of Danes, Normans, and Norman English, as the Scotch did. ”

“ While backing to clear the crossing of the Buffalo and Lake Huron line, and [111] while it was yet barely daylight, a person came on the Welland line platform, at a running pace, carrying a cloak, and a sword and belt loose in his arms. This was Colonel Booker. In manner and language, excited and incoherent, he cried; “For God’s sake send back this train to St. Catharines. I want to go—to go now. We are attacked in the woods a mile back, the alarm has just sounded, I want to go to St. Catharines at once, send this train special!” ”

“ There is no man breathing who approaches the verge where the enemy’s fire may open, or who being within it hears the whiz of mortal missiles of death, but fears to be a victim. Courage is not a condition of mind which has no fear ”

“ More news arrived from the States and flew on wings of a free press through the Province. The people not dismayed one shade of countenance, but on the contrary fired with newer, bolder energy to muster, march, give battle and conquer. This was circulated at Toronto, after noon. Cincinnati, June 1. The Commercial’s Columbus, Ohio, despatch says that 450,000 rounds of ammunition were shipped from that place to New York, and 150,000 to Chicago, and 30,000 muskets to Buffalo, within a few days, which it is reported were intended for the Fenians. ”

“ Nothing could exceed the delight which evidently filled the breast of every man of them. Upon arriving at the station it was ascertained that they were not to go by railway, but to take the City of Toronto upon her return from Port Dalhousie at two o’clock. They were then marched back to the drill-shed, and there awaited the hour of embarkment. When the order to again “fall in” had been given, they formed into two companies marched to the Yonge street wharf and immediately proceeded on board the steamer which was lying at the wharf ready to receive them. ”

“ No. 1 Company reached the ground. They hurrying over the railings into the road, were about to form in rear of that reserve, now half square half column, when it broke. It broke through No. 6 of the 13th, and through No. 1. Capt. Grant was violently thrust against the fence rails on a heap of stones. He saw some of his men trodden down. Ensign Roy of No. 6 and some of his men were trodden down. And in that moment of emergency Lt.-Col. Booker called the orderly who held the horse, Major Skinner’s horse, and quickly vaulting into the saddle rode off rapidly to the rear. ”

“ The restive cows were subdued as the horses were, by hobbling them with telegraph wires. When the beasts had been teased and milked all the afternoon and evening, with nothing to eat for the night, and men were heard talking of killing one or more to roast on some of the many fires which they had made of fence rails in the orchard field, one of the sons of Mr. Newbigging asked Colonel O’Neil to give him permission and a pass to the lines of sentries to drive the cows to the pasture field. ”

“ Some men got half a herring; others a whole one; some had crackers; some had none. They who ate no herring were the most fortunate; for that June day became hot, and they had no canteens in which to carry water.
“Move not later than 5.30, at five if bread be ready.” He knew he had made no requisition on the baker. Officers of the “Queen’s Own” were running hither and thither in search of food. Meeting Mr. McGrath of the Welland railway they implored him for something to eat. He gave them crackers for which they were thankful. As there was no bread to wait for, Booker left Colborne at 5-8 a. ”

“ Every man is not a hero who is wounded or killed, though a generous courtesy confers on the killed and wounded that high distinction. I do not profess to be an infallible authority. But in the matter of the Niagara frontier campaign, claim to have been careful in research, in collecting and collating evidence. ”

“ Thus Canada would have been invaded from every available point.”—Correspondent New York World.
“The Fenian forces advancing from the different western lake cities, on Canada West, must necessarily as a measure of safety, have drawn all the best troops from Montreal, to cover the exposed points, such as London, Hamilton, Toronto, and Kingston. This movement of Sweeny’s would certainly have left Montreal uncovered to the attacks of Spears and Murphy, who were to co-operate in two different columns, marching on left and right of the Richelieu river on Montreal.” ”