Schemes

 Mary Ann Shadd had already done much as a journalist before the war based out of Canada. During the Civil War she actively recruited black men for the Union, and turned out to be good at the job. She would later earn a law degree.

Garland White had been a slave, escaping that life and settling in London, Ontario, becoming a pastor. He was commissioned a chaplain to black soldiers, and saw the end of the war in a dramatic manner, reunited with his mother in the fallen Richmond.

The Chesapeake Affair was another one of the incidents of the war that heightened tensions between the Canadian colonials and the Union. Confederate sympathizers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia hijacked the Union ship Chesapeake to give it to the Confederacy. The Union navy pursued the ship into Nova Scotia waters.

Ironically it wasn't the only example of Confederate sympathies in Canada. Southern intelligence operatives worked out of Canada and launched schemes and irregular operations, the most infamous of which was the St. Albans Raid, in which the raiders crossed the border into the town of St. Albans Vermont to rob banks. Blockade runners were welcomed in Maritime ports.

St. Lawrence Hall, a 19th century hotel in Montreal, was a hotbed of Confederate intelligence operatives. This display case features a Confederate jacket, a sheet from the hotel registry, and a photograph of one of the most infamous men of all time- the actor John Wilkes Booth, a spy for the Confederacy who stayed at the hotel.

This is the registry sheet. Booth's signature is second from the bottom. A chilling reminder of an evil man.

While some Canadians went south to fight in the war, some Americans came north. Skedadlers were dodging drafts. Crimpers were recruiters who were known to resort to kidnapping to bring recruits south to the Union army.

Tensions got to the point where the colonial governments knew they would have to step in to reinforce neutrality and man the border. The Union was reinforcing the northern border even as they were fighting the rebels.