also reported his concerns about the enormous Grand Army of the United States, almost a million men still in uniform after the end of the Civil War six months earlier. There had been a gnawing fear in the British American colonies that as soon as the Union armies had defeated the Southern Confederacy — of which Britain had been steadfastly supportive — the entire fury and force of the victorious troops would be turned north to wreak vengeance on the British. Such an assault and conquest would be consistent with the ideas of the powerful William Seward, Lincoln’s and then Johnson’s Secretary of State who made no secret of his belief in the Manifest Destiny of the United States.
As for the Fenians, there was a strong possibility that any attack they might make across the border into British America would be the spark to ignite a serious confrontation between Britain and the United States, which could easily escalate into another war.
The Fenian Brotherhood united all its Irish American members into a strong emotional force with one intent: to free Ireland from British “subjugation.” To further that cause, the leaders of one militant branch of the American Fenian movement, filled as it was with veterans of the Civil War, had decided to go to war against the British in North America.
The Fenian movement — the main political manifestation of the Roman Catholic Irish who had flooded into America since the 1840s — was motivated not only by the traditional anti-British emotions of true sons of Ireland but also by the belief in the Manifest Destiny of their new-found nation, which they could assist by conquering British America. Thus the Fenians began assembling in Buffalo and Detroit in 1866. With much public show they started to parade and train, sure the word of their presence and intended attack would seep across the border and put the fear of God into the British colonials.
Rumours abounded in Canada that the Fenians would strike on that most symbolic of Irish occasions, St. Patrick’s Day, March 17. Macdonald’s intelligence network was certain that an assault across the Detroit and Niagara rivers would occur on that day.
It did not. The attack came many weeks later, on the night of May 31, when Colonel John O’Neill led a force of fifteen hundred Fenians across the Niagara River north of Buffalo. On the morning of Saturday, June 2, near Ridgeway, O’Neill’s “army” was confronted by a column of eight hundred and fifty Canadian militiamen. In the ensuing battle nine Canadian and many Fenians were killed, scores injured. On Sunday, learning of new British forces soon to arrive, O’Neill withdrew his men back into the United States.
That Fenian assault, combined with two other incursions and rumours of more to come that summer, convinced the British American colonies of the urgent need to seek military assistance from the United Kingdom. Finally, on August 27, on the advice of Macdonald and Sir John Michael, the General Officer commanding the regular Imperial forces in Canada, the Governor General, Lord Monck, sent off an urgent cable to Carnarvon appealing for immediate reinforcements. It was a request that was not answered by the sending of more troops.
The Fenian raids also solidified the intent of Canadians and Maritimers to combine their colonies into one nation loyal to the British Crown, safe from the threat of Seward’s Manifest Destiny.
The trip from Newbury to Paddington Station took much longer than scheduled because a thick you-could-cut-it-with-a-knife fog had settled on London, reaching as far west as Slough. The train finally entered the cavernous station at nine thirty that evening, three and a half hours late. It took an additional hour and a half to cover the short distance from Paddington to the Westminster Palace Hotel, as the cab driver and his lively young horse cautiously picked their way through the classic, thick, dark London fog.
It was well past eleven o’clock when the three weary travellers entered into the anteroom that led to their separate rooms on their second-floor suite, their bags hefted in behind them by the night porter and his assistant.
Macdonald, exhausted, bade his companions goodnight, but not before saying to them, “I must have said this a dozen times today. I’m really worried about the sale of Russian America to the Yankees. I’d like to brief the conference on the situation as soon as possible. Alex, when can you have ready a rough draft of the financial terms really?”
“First, I have to know how much we are … the British are prepared to offer, if anything.”
“The main number?”
“How much are you prepared to offer?”
Macdonald’s brow furrowed. “Use ten million dollars U.S. as your calculating base. If a higher or a lower figure is decided on, it’ll be easy to recalculate. I’ll talk to Carnarvon when he gets back to London. He can open the Prime Minister’s door for me as well as the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s.”
“Next Monday, the seventeenth,” Galt said. “I’ll need until then. Eight thirty, here in our anteroom. I’ll get breakfast organized. All right, George?”
Macdonald smiled. “Have a good sleep, chaps.”
Moving with hesitant care in the darkness, Macdonald entered his bedroom, the dim wavering light from the hall candles giving his tired, searching eyes nearly no aid in finding his way across the carpet to the foot of the bed. But once he reached it his hand groped along the soft edge of the eiderdown until his fingers felt the table as the bedside, then the candle that would bring the room alive with its flickering flame. He fumbled for a match from his waistcoat pocket. There it was, its slim wooden shaft moving warmly between his thumb and forefinger, which were far more used to holding a glass.
He shoved the head of the match down to the rough underside of the tabletop and moved it swiftly across the coarse surface, his favourite place for match-striking in the comfortable high-ceilinged corner room. The first attempt was unsuccessful but the second brought a spark of light as the sulfur started to burn. Then, with a billowing burst of yellow-white flame and a rush of sound from its minuscule explosion, Macdonald’s match was alight.
His shaking hands — that shaking had just recently started, nothing severe and only in spurts — held the match to the candle’s waxed white cord until the shaft of blue-tipped light was transferred completely to it. As the candlelight spread, Macdonald stood for a moment, his eyes transfixed by the dancing fire. Then he blew out the match flame as it nearly reached his fingers. Looking around the room, he saw with pleasure the pile of newspapers on the bed, the Times on top. Good. The concierge, as he had been asked to do, had delivered all the day’s papers so that Macdonald would have them to read upon his return from Newbury. Newspapers were the most important documents — that’s what he called them — in Macdonald’s life. From their pages he absorbed information, facts, and opinions the way a sponge soaks up liquid. Newspapers were the stuff that John A. Macdonald, by his own account a workaday politician, thrived on.
It was time to get into bed and read those beckoning journals. He went to the water closet down the hall, then back to his room, shutting but, as was his custom, not locking the bedroom door. After all, this was London, the most civilized city in the world and the most crime-free. Carnarvon’s words of caution had already been forgotten.
Macdonald undressed, put on his flannel nightshirt, left his socks on to keep his feet warm, and, climbing into bed, grunted with satisfaction as the bedclothes enveloped his long, tired body. He reached for the Times while slipping his spectacles onto the bridge of his slightly bulbous nose.
Laying back, his large head on two pillows, he held the Times in both hands, scanning the headlines of the front page. There was, of course, no news from British North America. There never was anything about the colonies in the London papers. It was as if they didn’t exist. But as to what was going on in the United States and Europe, that was a horse of a different colour.
Macdonald
