The Evening Telegraph

INVASIONS OF CANADA.

The Fenians rose, flourished, waxed rich during our war, and little trouble was apprehended from them in Canada. Indeed, the only "border invasions" of late years have come from that country itself, in the shape of St. Albans' raids. Perhaps it is coward conscience which now makes the Canadian shopkeepers look to their money-boxes, and the banks to their vaults, lest the St. Albans lesson be returned, with a bettering of the instruction. At all events, England and Canada for months saw complacently the American Fenians rallying, speechifying, wearing the green, and polishing cutlasses, and the servant girls subscribing to the cause. The quantity of centres, circles, spheres, and what not, existing and forming, did not worry them. At length the New York correspondent of the London Times, in whom, perhaps, professional pride got for a moment the better of patriotism, gave a grand puff for Fenianism, its strength, its object, and its means of success—and England burst into a flame. When Canada saw that England had burst into a flame, she also felt authorized to burst into a flame, and so originated scare No. 1. In like manner, when the constabulary began to deal without gloves with the Irish rioters, seized the Irish People, and arrested Fenians far and wide, including his Head Centreship Stephens, Canada hastened to believe she was going to be invaded, and got up another scare. And, finally, now that Parliament has authorized Lord Wodehouse to arrest Fenians without interference from that disagreeable marplot, the habeas corpus, and so has started afresh the Fenian fever, again Canada declares itself on the point of slipping into the jaws of the O'Mahony, or the Roberts, or both. It really seems that the Canadians fancy an army of infuriated Fenians to be hanging along the hither bank of the Niagara river, pausing upon its brink, not because it doubts whether the Rubicon should or can be crossed, but merely so as to get a better start—to moisten its palms, so to speak—for a better grasp of the national shillaleh.

Planned invasions of Canada from the United States have been really quite frequent during the last century. It is a little singular that they have nearly all come to nothing. At the opening of the Revolution, Arnold's advance through the wilds of Maine, upon Quebec, was almost as daring (and certainly far more trying), on a small scale, as Sherman's march through Georgia upon Savannah. It was unsuccessful. The invasion of 1812 was a series of grand failures. Hull crossed the Detroit in July, 1812, only to surrender his whole force a month later, without a battle, to General Brock. Van Rensselaer threw his advance across the Niagara in October, 1812, only to have it all captured, and Scott among the party, after a severe affair at Queenstown Heights. Dearborn, next year, landed in Upper Canada, and captured York, and crossed the Niagara, and captured Fort George; but there his movements ended. The campaign devised later in the summer for the conquest of Canada was an utter failure. It was to have aimed first at Kingston and then at Montreal, and, doubtless, would have gained both Canadas if successful, because Upper Canada would have been cut off from military supplies, and the greater part of Lower Canada would have followed with Montreal. Wilkinson sailed down the St. Lawrence in grand style, having published a proclamation that his army invades these provinces to conquer, not to destroy." It made very little difference, however, what his object was. The campaign, between himself and Hampton, entirely failed. It was exceedingly well devised. Kingston and Montreal are still among the key-points in Canada. If our good friends the Fenians can get there, they will surely be authorized to claim a genuine bona fide Irish Canadian Republic, with one Head Centre on the Lake and the other on the St. Lawrence. Should they come as near to these points as we more than once have, we believe they would not fail. But a fatality has always seemed to follow our penetration of the provinces.

In 1814 General Brown tried his turn at invading Canada. He was more fortunate than Hull, Van Rensselaer, and Wilkinson, because he fought the brilliant battles of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, after crossing the Niagara. Yet, as if a fatality pursued us, he managed to retreat from a won battle, and fell back, to let Drummond besiege us in Fort Erie. With a handsome repulse of one assault on the fort, and a brilliant sortie, ended the year 1814, and the series of active American invasions of Canada. For peace was declared next year.

Twenty years later came another threatened invasion of Canada. It resembled, in some respects, the Fenian efforts more closely than any of the plans already spoken of. In 1837 insurgent movements broke out among the French Canadians of Canada East. Our border people in Vermont and New York "sympathized" and enrolled themselves as "Canada patriots." Powerful as are the Fenians, if we remember aright these Canada patriots were stronger in available numbers, as bitter in determination, and better posted for effect. They were actually spread all along the line, and there was danger of a great raid into Canada. They were organized by the thousands. They had their lodges, corresponding to the Fenian Circles. They had a secret organization, their oaths and passwords, their military ranks of General, field and staff officers. They had a Provisional Government formed for Upper Canada, with a list of Cabinet officers as formidable as that of either of the grand New York Fenian Governments. Arms were furnished by border citizens or stolen from the unwilling, and even State arsenals were broken into. Like the Fenian move, this was undertaken by private persons in the United States, and against the neutrality obligations of the country. The President issued his proclamation against the movement, but with little effect. Several hundred men, under one Van Rensselaer, actually crossed from Schlosser, about a mile and a half above Niagara Falls, and took possession of a desolate spot called Navy Island, near our shore, but within the British line. The return outrage committed by Canadians in burning the Caroline on our own shore inflamed the general feeling. Blood was actually shed in this last affair. But after much excitement, and the prospect for many weeks of a general popular invasion of Canada, the armed bodies who hovered constantly on our border, ready to cross into the provinces, were gradually dispersed. The speedy end of the French-Canadian revolt had, in fact, taken away the ground of action.

Should we go on with later and more familiar examples the same result would be manifest. In 1839 and 1840, during the great Aroostook controversy, the disputed territory was actually occupied by Maine militia, and everything betokened an instant invasion of Canada. President Van Buren announced by special message to Congress that "the peace of the two nations is daily and imminently endangered," and Congress hurried through a war act, authorizing the President to call out the militia for six months, and to accept the services of 50,000 volunteers, and appropriated $10,000,000 for these purposes. We all know how this affair, which looked like instant war and the fall of both Canadas, really ended—quietly and bloodlessly. So it was with the Oregon difficulty, which came later.

Queerly enough, there seems to be a sort of fatality hitherto preventing Canada from being invaded. At one time we find ourselves in war with England, and by incompetency of commanders or the failure to supply force come to nothing. Next, we find popular movements for the invasion of Canada frowned upon and crushed by Government, in preservation of its neutrality. Finally, war which seemed inevitable and whose first step would have been the overrunning of Canada by our arms has been twice or thrice pacifically settled. Let not our Canada neighbors, therefore, get frightened too soon. It is true that a last time comes. Having cried "wolf!" so often, that unwelcome intruder may at last present himself in the shape of a full-blooded Fenian to the disconcerted Canadian. But history, at least, shows many crises to Canada more exciting and dangerous than the present one, so far as it has yet been developed.—Army and Navy Journal.

—Can a man keep his feet dry when he has a creak in his boots?