Dr. Roger W. Anderson, Independent Scholar, Monterey, CA (USA)
Canadians are our strongest allies and most important trading partners. Notwithstanding, history is full of surprises, including the fact that the assassination of our most important president, Abraham Lincoln, implicated French Canadians.
The Copperheads
During the Civil War, the Underground Railroad operated throughout Ohio, as did networks of pro-Confederacy, anti-Lincoln activity.
The Copperheads, a group of Midwestern Democrats who were sympathetic to the South, were most active in Ohio. In the animal kingdom, copperheads are handsome but venomous snakes found primarily in southeast Ohio. They are not known to be aggressive, but rather defensive. The political group also despised President Lincoln’s curtailment of political rights, such as habeas corpus, the right of citizens to legally challenge accusations made by the government against them. Indeed, Lincoln defied a federal court ruling that declared that Lincoln had overstepped and usurped congressional power (Bomboy, 2023).
The leader of the Copperheads, Ohio politician Clement Vallandingham, was a vocal opponent to the Union’s war against the newly formed Confederacy. He was banished from the U.S. by a military tribunal for voicing this opposition, which Lincoln had curtailed using emergency powers. Unrelenting, Vallandingham found refuge in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, where he ran unsuccessfully in absentia for Ohio’s governorship in 1863.
The various plots the Copperheads hatched are discussed in a fascinating, six-part podcast series called The Copperhead Conspiracy. Unlike most podcasts debating American history, it features bona fide historians and was funded by the Ohio Humanities Council.
Their plans included a bioterrorism scheme to spread yellow fever among the Union’s civilian population by distributing infected clothing in Northern cities.
In addition, plots were hatched to kidnap President Lincoln and demand the release of Confederate prisoners. Apparently, this deed nearly succeeded, had Lincoln not changed his travel plans at the last minute.
U.S. Chaos Forged A New Nation: Canada
Across the border, Canadians were drawn into the American Civil War. Canada was the ultimate terminus of the Underground Railroad, where African-Americans fled enslavement and could live safely beyond the reach of roaming slavecatchers.
Approximately 40,000 Canadians fought for the Union (BBC, 2017) while several hundred, mostly from the Maritime provinces, fought for the Confederacy (Shenandoah Civil War History, 2025). Many Canadian businessmen sold weapons to both sides (L’Encyclopédie canadienne, 2024).
Yet following the Mexican-American War and the U.S.’s annexation of Texas, Canadians were fearful their land would be annexed next. They were not wrong to be fearful: Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, was the most ardent proponent of “Manifest Destiny,” the belief that the U.S. was destined to control the entire North American continent. His ascension to Lincoln’s cabinet panicked Canadians. It was Seward who purchased Alaska for the U.S. shortly after the Civil War.
A committee bill to annex Canada was even proposed in 1866, but it never reached the full House of Representatives for a vote (5HR 754, 1866).
Canada was still not a unified country independent of Britain, but rather a collection of loosely affiliated British colonies. Seward’s politics and American instability catalyzed the unification of Canada into a defensible, independent nation, beginning with the Charlottetown Conference in the Fall of 1864, following Lincoln’s assassination (L’Encyclopédie canadienne, 2024).
The French-(Canadian) Connection
In that era, Montreal was a haven for pro-Confederate activity. Canada generally was no different: “many Canadians were sympathetic to the South, not so much because they supported slavery but out of fears that an eventually victorious Northern army might then turn its guns toward this country” (Kalbfleisch, 2017). Montreal even allowed the formation of a Confederate Secret Service, an intelligence agency (Rountree, 2018, p. 1).
While Montrealers were not necessarily supportive of slavery, they despised Lincoln’s suspension of fundamental liberties. They found particularly contemptible Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. Some found encouragement in the Confederacy, a smaller power, challenging a larger one (L’Encyclopédie canadienne, 2024).
From Montreal, Confederate agents plotted attacks against Union vessels on the Great Lakes, plotted to set fires in New York City, and sought to disrupt the Republican convention to renominate Lincoln for a second term (L’Encyclopédie canadienne, 2024).
Moreover, Saint Albans, the first city in Vermont south of the Canadian border, was the target of Confederate agents’ attacks. From their base in Quebec, they robbed the city’s bank, attempted to burn the city, and then retreated back to Canada. Their success and multiple acquittals enraged communities of New England (Copperhead Conspiracy, 2026). This marked the northernmost conflict of the Civil War.
Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, traveled to Montreal in October 1864, where he likely plotted with Southern sympathizers. He murdered Lincoln in Washington, D.C., in April 1865.
Finally, one of Booth’s co-conspirators, John Suratt, evaded the reach of the Union and hid out in Montreal. Later, Catholic priests concealed him within their establishments outside of town (Copperhead Conspiracy, 2026). Suratt’s mother, Mary Surratt, a Southern sympathizer who ran a Washington, D.C. boarding house that Booth frequented, was convicted of complicity in Lincoln’s assassination and executed.
Even the “President” of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, who served a two-year prison term for treason, made his way to Quebec. In Montreal, he rejoined his family. It was reported that 7,000 cheering admirers greeted him in Toronto (Kalbfleisch, 2017). The Journal de Québec even referred to this day as a “great act of justice and humanity” (Query the Past, 2018).
References
BBC. (2017, Sept. 18). Canada unveils its first US Civil War monument.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41310587
Bomboy, S. (2023, May 28). Lincoln and Taney’s great writ showdown. National Constitution Center. https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/lincoln-and-taneys-great-writ-showdown
Kalbfleisch, J. (2017, Nov. 25). From the archives: Jefferson Davis and family found refuge in Montreal. Montreal Gazette.
L’Encyclopédie canadienne. (2024). American Civil War and Canada. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/american-civil-war
Query the Past. (2018). A Confederate in Canada. https://querythepast.com/jefferson-davis-canada/
Rountree, L. (2018). A “military despotism” and a danger: Montréalais Perception of the American Civil War. Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/253_Lillian%20Rountree.pdf
Shenandoah Civil War History. (2025, Jan. 20). Shenandoah Valley’s Civil War History.
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