Robert Dabney Minor

“ So confident were we of success and so admirable were our arrangements, that we had all assembled at St. Catharines, on the canal, waiting in hourly anticipation the arrival of the steamer, when the storm burst upon us in the shape of Mr. Stanton's telegram to the mayors of the lake cities to be on their guard against a Confederate raid, which he had been notified by the Governor-General of Canada (Lord Monck) had been organized in Canada for operations on Lake Erie. ”

“ Pierson, the commanding officer, is said to be a humane man, and seeing the disadvantage at which we would have him, with the prisoners by this time clamorous for their release, he would have been compelled to surrender, and, with the half-dozen steamers at the wharf in Sandusky, we could have speedily landed the whole 2,000 prisoners on the Canada shore, distant only some forty miles ”

“ Thus, my dear admiral, with victory, and such a victory, within our grasp, we were foiled; and so anxious were the British authorities to keep on good terms with their detested neighbors (for they do detest them) that the troops who were about to be removed from Port Colborne, the Lake Erie terminus of the canal, were ordered to remain at that place, with instructions to arrest any vessel passing through the canal with a suspicious number of passengers on board. ”

“ As soon as it was definitely settled that the expedition was to go for the President said it was better to fail than not to make the attempt, as it had been vaguely talked of in Montreal) , our preparations were made. Thirty-five thousand dollars in gold, or its equivalent, was placed at our disposal by the Navy Department, and a cargo of cotton, which was subsequently sold at Halifax for $76,000 (gold) by the War Department—in all some $111,000 in gold, as the sinews of the expedition. ”

“ Mary's, about seventy miles to the eastward of Halifax, but before I could get to her with my crew and officers, with the idea of making her a regular cruiser, she had been forced by stress of weather to put into a British port, where her arrival was telegraphed, and, as a great excitement had been made over her novel capture, both English and Yankees were endeavoring to get her ”