With the abrogation of the Reciprocity Treaty between Canada and the US in 1866, smuggling once again became a dedicated pastime for citizens in border towns and cities. The narrowness of Lake Erie and the large number of natural harbours and inlets made it particularly suitable for smuggling, and notoriously difficult for customs vigilance.
Spirits produced in the Buffalo area would be smuggled across the river to Canada to avoid the provincial excise tax of fifteen cents on the gallon. US coal oil could be sold in Fort Erie for three or four times the purchase price. Butter, eggs, horses, cattle, and other goods would find their way from Canada to the other side, circumventing the protectionist US tariffs.
Sam Johnston, a known smuggler, was staying at a hotel in Fort Erie on May 31st, 1866 when he heard news from a diamond trader that the Fenians were loading arms on a boat at the blast furnace dock in Buffalo. At one o'clock in the morning, he was awakened by the beat of horse's hooves outside his window. Corporal Nolan, one of six Royal Canadian Rifles, a British unit stationed in Fort Erie, was riding to telegraph news of the Fenian invasion to Ottawa. Other townspeople were awakened as well, and were coming out of their houses.
Johnston, a veteran of the American Civil War, took a double-barreled shotgun and went out into the street. We pick up the narrative in his words:
"I hurried out of the hotel, after giving the alarm, and ran up the hill to warn a family living there. Then I turned and ran back across the common to tell another family. As I turned to retrace my steps I saw the Fenians coming. They were about two hundred yards from me. They saw me and opened fire. Three bullets cut through my clothing, one grazing my right arm."
Johnston had encountered Owen Starr's Kentucky 17th as they entered Fort Erie, capturing Nolan and the rest of the Royal Canadian Rifles, and taking possession of the smaller docks. The main Fenian force would not be far behind.
"The bullets flew around me pretty thick. I noticed a picket fence ahead of me, and I made for it, and they ceased firing. I struck out to the upper end of the town, and ran under the old railway dock and passed under it until I reached the lower end. They (the Fenians) were about a hundred feet below me. I stood under the dock and took an estimate. They were marching eight to the column across I counted the columns and there were one hundred and thirty six. At that rate there were one thousand and eighty eight men."
Armed with this information, Sam went in search of a horse to further raise the alarm. He travelled across the back lots of Fort Erie until he came to Henry Benner's farm. Benner was in the process of taking his family away from the impending invasion. He allowed Sam to have one of his stock, "the best bred horse in Welland County" in Johnston's words.
Sam, his brother William, and a few other Stevensville farmers continued to track the Fenians throughout the day on June 1, encountering skirmishes and pickets along the Bowen Road. In the evening Johnston and a neighbor went out again, riding eastward along Bowen Road past Buck's Corner. He observed the Fenians starting to move along Frenchman's Creek, through the cedar swamps of Beaver Creek and then on to Bowen Road itself. At times he was close enough to hear them talking. He started to return to Stevensville, but stopped at a crossroads blacksmith to have his old pistol oiled. "I look up" he narrates, "and saw ten mounted Fenians behind me and three in front. I jumped on my horse and made a dash just as they tried to get me." The Fenians fired after the fleeing Johnston, but failed to hit him. He continued his hair-raising ride into the village of Ridgeway. The Fenians meanwhile, set up camp north of the intersection of Ridge Road and Bertie.
Johnston arrived in Ridgeway just as the train carrying the 841 members of the Canadian militia arrived. The militia was made up of members of the Queen's Own Rifles (Toronto), the Thirteenth Battalion of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, the Caledonia Company, the York Rifle Company, and an assortment of Frontier Constabulary detectives, customs agents and other law enforcers. They were under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Booker, a qualified military commandant, but one who lacked combat experience.
"I then approached the Colonel and asked him if he was in command" Johnston relates. "He said he was and I told him the Fenians were within two miles of us and coming this way. The first question was 'Have they any artillery?' I said no. He then asked if they had any cavalry. I said no and told him they had some men mounted, but didn't have saddles and carried no swords. He asked me how many men they had. I told him fifteen hundred. I spoke to him then and used these words: "Why not ambush them?" He wore glasses and instead of looking through them, looked over them with the expression 'Are you in command or me?'
The irony here is almost palpable. Johnston was a veteran of the Civil War, a member of the Fiftieth New York Engineers in Grant's Army of the Potomac. He fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the War along the Rappahannock in Virginia, and with Sheridan in the Shenandoh. Booker had yet to fight in armed combat. With his soldier's eye Johnston had seen a densely wooded location on Ridge Road where the Fenians could be easily ambushed. Booker, held by some to be 'scheming, pompous and ambitious', dismissed Johnston's advice out of hand and proceeded on a course of action which would lead to a critical tactical error on the battlefield, one of the deciding factors in the Canadian militia's defeat.
Sam Johnston's part in the battle did not go unnoticed by the Buffalo Fenians. They vowed that the next time they invaded Canada, they would bring his head back on a pole. Subsequently Sam worked as a driver on the horse cars in Buffalo. One Fenian in particular, a 250 pound bully named Jim Lyons, had it in for him. He laid in wait for him at the end of the line one night and attacked. Johnston, born in Ireland of Scots descent, had the volatile temperament and pugilistic abilities of both races, and simply floored him. Lyons came back another day with 8 companions to settle the score. Again, the same result. Sam thrashed Lyons so soundly that he died a few months later of his injuries.
In one of those odd twists of fate, Sam Johnston, successful smuggler, was hired to be a customs inspector, a job he carried out with pride and thoroughness for three years. A true adventurer, he went to British Columbia in 1898 and was a prospector for the next twenty-five years.
Spirits produced in the Buffalo area would be smuggled across the river to Canada to avoid the provincial excise tax of fifteen cents on the gallon. US coal oil could be sold in Fort Erie for three or four times the purchase price. Butter, eggs, horses, cattle, and other goods would find their way from Canada to the other side, circumventing the protectionist US tariffs.
Sam Johnston, a known smuggler, was staying at a hotel in Fort Erie on May 31st, 1866 when he heard news from a diamond trader that the Fenians were loading arms on a boat at the blast furnace dock in Buffalo. At one o'clock in the morning, he was awakened by the beat of horse's hooves outside his window. Corporal Nolan, one of six Royal Canadian Rifles, a British unit stationed in Fort Erie, was riding to telegraph news of the Fenian invasion to Ottawa. Other townspeople were awakened as well, and were coming out of their houses.
Johnston, a veteran of the American Civil War, took a double-barreled shotgun and went out into the street. We pick up the narrative in his words:
"I hurried out of the hotel, after giving the alarm, and ran up the hill to warn a family living there. Then I turned and ran back across the common to tell another family. As I turned to retrace my steps I saw the Fenians coming. They were about two hundred yards from me. They saw me and opened fire. Three bullets cut through my clothing, one grazing my right arm."
Johnston had encountered Owen Starr's Kentucky 17th as they entered Fort Erie, capturing Nolan and the rest of the Royal Canadian Rifles, and taking possession of the smaller docks. The main Fenian force would not be far behind.
"The bullets flew around me pretty thick. I noticed a picket fence ahead of me, and I made for it, and they ceased firing. I struck out to the upper end of the town, and ran under the old railway dock and passed under it until I reached the lower end. They (the Fenians) were about a hundred feet below me. I stood under the dock and took an estimate. They were marching eight to the column across I counted the columns and there were one hundred and thirty six. At that rate there were one thousand and eighty eight men."
Armed with this information, Sam went in search of a horse to further raise the alarm. He travelled across the back lots of Fort Erie until he came to Henry Benner's farm. Benner was in the process of taking his family away from the impending invasion. He allowed Sam to have one of his stock, "the best bred horse in Welland County" in Johnston's words.
Sam, his brother William, and a few other Stevensville farmers continued to track the Fenians throughout the day on June 1, encountering skirmishes and pickets along the Bowen Road. In the evening Johnston and a neighbor went out again, riding eastward along Bowen Road past Buck's Corner. He observed the Fenians starting to move along Frenchman's Creek, through the cedar swamps of Beaver Creek and then on to Bowen Road itself. At times he was close enough to hear them talking. He started to return to Stevensville, but stopped at a crossroads blacksmith to have his old pistol oiled. "I look up" he narrates, "and saw ten mounted Fenians behind me and three in front. I jumped on my horse and made a dash just as they tried to get me." The Fenians fired after the fleeing Johnston, but failed to hit him. He continued his hair-raising ride into the village of Ridgeway. The Fenians meanwhile, set up camp north of the intersection of Ridge Road and Bertie.
Johnston arrived in Ridgeway just as the train carrying the 841 members of the Canadian militia arrived. The militia was made up of members of the Queen's Own Rifles (Toronto), the Thirteenth Battalion of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, the Caledonia Company, the York Rifle Company, and an assortment of Frontier Constabulary detectives, customs agents and other law enforcers. They were under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Booker, a qualified military commandant, but one who lacked combat experience.
"I then approached the Colonel and asked him if he was in command" Johnston relates. "He said he was and I told him the Fenians were within two miles of us and coming this way. The first question was 'Have they any artillery?' I said no. He then asked if they had any cavalry. I said no and told him they had some men mounted, but didn't have saddles and carried no swords. He asked me how many men they had. I told him fifteen hundred. I spoke to him then and used these words: "Why not ambush them?" He wore glasses and instead of looking through them, looked over them with the expression 'Are you in command or me?'
The irony here is almost palpable. Johnston was a veteran of the Civil War, a member of the Fiftieth New York Engineers in Grant's Army of the Potomac. He fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the War along the Rappahannock in Virginia, and with Sheridan in the Shenandoh. Booker had yet to fight in armed combat. With his soldier's eye Johnston had seen a densely wooded location on Ridge Road where the Fenians could be easily ambushed. Booker, held by some to be 'scheming, pompous and ambitious', dismissed Johnston's advice out of hand and proceeded on a course of action which would lead to a critical tactical error on the battlefield, one of the deciding factors in the Canadian militia's defeat.
Sam Johnston's part in the battle did not go unnoticed by the Buffalo Fenians. They vowed that the next time they invaded Canada, they would bring his head back on a pole. Subsequently Sam worked as a driver on the horse cars in Buffalo. One Fenian in particular, a 250 pound bully named Jim Lyons, had it in for him. He laid in wait for him at the end of the line one night and attacked. Johnston, born in Ireland of Scots descent, had the volatile temperament and pugilistic abilities of both races, and simply floored him. Lyons came back another day with 8 companions to settle the score. Again, the same result. Sam thrashed Lyons so soundly that he died a few months later of his injuries.
In one of those odd twists of fate, Sam Johnston, successful smuggler, was hired to be a customs inspector, a job he carried out with pride and thoroughness for three years. A true adventurer, he went to British Columbia in 1898 and was a prospector for the next twenty-five years.