IN THE WAKE OF THE CONFEDERATE VICTORY AT GETTYSBURG, Britain declares war on the United States and invades from Canada. Seizing opportunity, Irish patriots in the Union Army ally themselves with the Confederacy and the British in exchange for a promise of Irish freedom following the war. Can Lincoln and the Union hold out against this powerful alliance? Success or failure rests on the shoulders of an unlikely but well- known figure.

IN THE WAKE OF THE CONFEDERATE VICTORY AT GETTYSBURG, Britain declares war on the United States and invades from Canada. Seizing opportunity, Irish patriots in the Union Army ally themselves with the Confederacy and the British in exchange for a promise of Irish freedom following the war. Can Lincoln and the Union hold out against this powerful alliance? Success or failure rests on the shoulders of an unlikely but well-known figure.

Blood and Daring will change our views not just of Canada's relationship with the United States, but of the Civil War, Confederation and Canada itself. In Blood and Daring, lauded historian John Boyko makes a compelling argument that Confederation occurred when and as it did largely because of the pressures of the Civil War. Many readers will be shocked by Canada's deep connection to the war—Canadians fought in every major battle, supplied arms to the South, and many key Confederate meetings took place on Canadian soil. Filled with engaging stories and astonishing facts from previously unaccessed primary sources, Boyko's fascinating new interpretation of the war will appeal to all readers of history.

In what is now largely considered a footnote in history, Americans invaded Canada along the Niagara Frontier in 1866. The group behind the invasion—the Fenian Brotherhood—was formed in 1858 by Irish nationalists in New York City in order to fight for Irish independence from Britain. At the end of the American Civil War, Fenian leaders attempted to use Irish Americans, many of them combat veterans, to seize Canada and make it the "New Ireland" as a means to force the British from "old" Ireland. New York State was both the epicenter of Fenian leadership and a key support base and staging area for the military operations. Although relatively short-lived and with some of its military operations being somewhere between farce and tragedy, the Fenian Brotherhood had a very important impact on nineteenth-century New York and America, but remains largely forgotten. In Rebels on the Niagara Lawrence E. Cline examines not only the Fenian operations and their impact on Canada, but also the role the United States and New York played in both the initial support for the Fenian movement and its subsequent collapse in America.

Chronicles the growth and Civil War activities of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood in America and examines effects of Fenian efforts to invade Cana and provoke Britain on Canadian Confederation.