The Hidden History of the Battle of Ridgeway, June 2, 1866 Peter
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Combat, Memory and Remembrance in Confederation Era Canada: The Hidden History of the Battle of Ridgeway, June 2, 1866 Peter Wronski (Peter Vronsky) A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Toronto © Copyright by Peter Wronski (2011) Peter Wronski (Peter Vronsky) Ph.D. program, 2011 Department of History, University of Toronto ABSTRACT Combat, Memory and Remembrance in Confederation Era Canada: the hidden history of the Battle of Ridgeway, June 2, 1866. On June 1, 1866, one thousand heavily-armed Irish-American Fenian insurgents invaded Upper Canada across the Niagara River from Buffalo, NY. The next day near the town of Ridgeway, 800 Fenians battled with 850 Canadian volunteer soldiers, including a small company of 28 University of Toronto students who ended up taking the brunt of the attack. The Battle of Ridgeway (or Lime Ridge or Limestone Ridge) ended with a disastrous rout of the Canadians who in their panicked retreat left their dead and wounded on the field. It was the last major incursion into Canada, the last battle in Ontario and the first modern one fought by Canadians, led in the field exclusively by Canadian officers, and significantly fought in Canada. The Fenian Raid mobilized some 22,000 volunteer troops and resulted in the suspension of habeas corpus in the colonial Province of Canada by its Attorney General and Minister of Militia John A. Macdonald, but the battle which climaxed this crisis is only prominent by its obscurity in Canadian historiography. Almost everything known and cited about Ridgeway springs from the same sources—four books and pamphlets—three of them published in the summer of 1866 immediately after the event and the remaining one in 1910. This dissertation argues that the history of the battle was distorted and falsified by these sources and by two military board of inquiries staged to explicitly cover up the extent of the ii disaster. This study investigates the relationship between the inquiries and the contemporary author-historians of two of the sources: Alexander Somerville, an investigative journalist in Hamilton, Ontario, a recent immigrant from Britain with a controversial history; and George T. Denison III, a prominent young Toronto attorney, a commander of a troop of volunteer cavalry, a former Confederate secret service agent, author-commentator on Canada‘s military policy and presiding judge on both boards of inquiry. This study describes the process by which Ridgeway‘s history was hidden and falsified and its possible scope and significance in Canadian historiography. New archival and published sources are identified, assessed and assembled for a newly restored and authenticated micro- narrative of the battle. iii Table of Contents Maps v Source Abbreviations x Table of Values xi 1. Introduction: The Forgotten Battle of Ridgeway 1 2. The Origins of the Canadian Volunteer Army 35 3. The Rise of the Fenian Threat 51 4. The Fenian Landing in Fort Erie Morning, June 1, 1866 78 5. The Military Response in Upper Canada, June 1, 1866 97 6. The Seed to Disaster, Night, June 1-2, 1866 136 7. Limestone Ridge, Morning, June 2, 1866 176 8. The Stand at Fort Erie, Afternoon, June 2, 1866 231 9. Booker‘s Run and ‗The Whistler at the Plough‘ June-July, 1866 271 10. The Dennis Inquiry and the Fenian Raid Aftermath 1866 312 11. ‗Righteousness Exalteth a Nation‘: Memory and Remembrance 334 12. Conclusion 361 Notes on Sources 370 Bibliography 373 iv MAPS v REGION MAP BASED ON GEORGE T. DENISON’S SKETCH “ROAD LT.COL. BOOKER SHOULD HAVE TAKEN” (MG 29 E29 VOL. 43, FILE 1, LAC) vi vii viii ix Source Abbreviations ARCAT Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto CTA City of Toronto Archives DCB Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (http://www.biographi.ca) DFUSCF Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Fort Erie Canada 1865-1906, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, 1788-1964, RG84; (National Archives Microfilm Publication T465, roll 1) National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD. (NARA) DFUSCT Despatches From U.S. Consuls in Toronto, Canada 1864-1906 United States Consular Records for Toronto; Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, 1788-1964, RG84; (National Archives Microfilm Publication T491, roll 1) College Park, MD. (NARA) FEHM Fort Erie Historical Museum, Ridgeway. FRSR Fenian Raid Service Records, Adjutant General‘s Office, United Canada, Pensions and Land Grants, RG9 IC5; Volumes 30-32. Compensation of Injuries, Wounds, etc, Received on Active Service Fenian Raids 1866-1868, Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) LAC Library and Archives of Canada LBCC Letter Books of the Chief Constable 1859-1921 RG9/Fond 38 Toronto Police Service, Series 90, City of Toronto Archives (CTA) MRFR Miscellaneous Records Relating to the Fenian Raids British Military and Naval Records "C" Series, Miscellaneous Records RG8-1, Volume 1672; [Microfilm reels C-4299 to C-4300], LAC WDR War Department Reports 1863 – 1872, Division of the Atlantic, Department of the East, RG 393: Records of the U.S. Army Continental Commands, 1817 – 1940, Inventory Identifier 1428, National Archives Building, Washington D.C. (NARA) NA/PRO National Archives, UK, former Public Records Office NARA National Archives and Records Administration x TABLE OF VALUES $1.00 Canadian (c.1866-1870) = $26.70 (purchasing power in 2005)1 1 yard = 0.91 meters 1 mile = 1.64 kilometres 1 pound = 0.45 kilograms 1 ounce = 28.3 grams 1 grain = 0.064 grams (0.002 ounces) 1 James Powel, History of the Canadian Dollar, Ottawa: Bank of Canada, 2005. Appendix A, p. 88 xi Chapter 1. Introduction: The Forgotten Battle of Ridgeway In the early morning hours of June 1, 1866, approximately 1,000 Irish-American Fenian insurgents invaded Canada from Buffalo, N.Y. across the Niagara River. They occupied the town of Fort Erie and after seizing horses and supplies and posting pickets, the main Fenian force began heading inland threatening the Welland Canal system ten miles away. The next morning on Limestone Ridge near the village of Ridgeway, 841 militia volunteers from Toronto, Hamilton and York and Caledonia counties, fought with an approximately equal number of Fenians. After a two-hour battle, the Fenians forced the Canadians to retreat back towards the Welland Canal. Aware that British and Canadian reinforcements were in the vicinity, the Fenians did not pursue the retreating volunteers but instead wheeled back to the town of Fort Erie just across the river from the safety of their base in Buffalo and U.S. territory. Arriving in force at Fort Erie in the afternoon, the Fenians found the town now held by a small 71-man detachment of local Canadian marines* and artillery gunners armed only with rifles, dropped off on the shore by a high-speed steam tug. The vessel contained some 50 Fenian prisoners captured earlier that day by the unit. Outnumbered ten-to-one, the Canadians made a stand against a massive wave of attacking Fenians descending down upon them from the town‘s hillside while the boat that brought them there cast-off without them. A vicious house-to-house battle unfolded in the town‘s streets, storefronts, yards, railway tracks and riverside wharfs in which several Canadians were severely wounded while thirty-seven were taken prisoner by the Fenians. Among the few who managed to escape was the commanding officer of the detachment. * Although Canada had and has no formal ‗marines‘, the ship borne company of infantry trained with its vessel to deploy from it to shore and was formally called a ―Naval Brigade.‖ 1 2 Early the next morning on June 3, the Fenians finding their supplies and relief cut off by U.S. Navy gunboats on the Niagara River decided to withdraw from Canada. Releasing their prisoners, the Fenians attempted to cross back into Buffalo but were intercepted by the gunboats and taken prisoner, ending the Fenian raid into Canada West (as Upper Canada was formally called then.) Thus while the Canadians were defeated on the battlefield, the raid itself was a failure, the Fenians retiring before they could be destroyed by numerically superior combined British and Canadian infantry reinforced by cavalry and artillery assembling nearby. The battle at Limestone Ridge in the morning and the battle of Fort Erie that afternoon, sometimes collectively referred to as the Battle of Ridgeway, were the last battles fought in Ontario against a foreign invader. They were also Canada‘s first modern battles and the first battles fought exclusively by Canadians and led in the field by Canadian officers. Except for one British liaison officer, a captain from the Royal Engineers, no British military personnel fought in the battle. On June 2, 1866, Ridgeway became the melancholy baptism of the modern Canadian army where it suffered its first nine battlefield deaths: its first officer, sergeant, corporal and six privates killed in action or shortly afterwards succumbing to their wounds.1 Another six (two in Lower Canada) would die from disease within the next few weeks, while forty-one men sustained battlefield wounds, many of them serious disabling injuries as a result of particularly lethal ammunition today outlawed on the battlefield. Typical of nineteenth century warfare, another 31 shortly afterwards contracted disease. By the end of that summer the casualties in both Upper and Lower Canada as a result of the Fenian raid would be nearly doubled by disease contracted by the troops while on frontier duty, contributing to a final sum quietly calculated by the government in 1868 of 31 dead and 103 wounded, injured or sick, a toll 1 The regular permanent Canadian Army was formally established in 1883, while its militia regiment, which sustained the casualties, has been continuously in service since 1860 as an active component of the Canadian Armed Forces primary reserves.