Canada’s Civil War

Over the course of America’s bloody four-year Civil War from 1861 to 1865, around thirty thousand to fifty thousand Canadians enlisted to fight. Most signed up for the Union Army under the United States’ abolitionist President Abraham Lincoln, but some took the side of the Southern Confederates, who wanted to secede from the American union and keep the institution of Black slavery. But Canada wasn’t just a recruitment ground for soldiers. Many members of Canada’s political and financial elite sympathized with the Confederacy, and Montreal in particular became a hotbed of Southern spies and agents seeking to launch attacks on the Northern states.

Raising Hell in Montreal

A ragtag bunch of Confederates made Montreal their base during the American Civil War.

Canada’s Secret Police

Spymaster Gilbert McMicken ferretted out American agents operating north of the border.