Niagara Was the Confederate Headquarters in Canada

The last of the Confederate Niagara exiles to return was also one of the first--Jubal Early. He remained in Canada until the spring of 1869 as the last and least reconstructed of the Confederates. His burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania had darkened his name in the U.S., and he did not deem it safe to return until after a great deal of dust had settled. And so, as Kirby puts it, for the exiled Confederates "Niagara was, in a sense ... their headquarters in Canada. They were welcomed and kindly treated by the townspeople until they finally one after the other, bade us adieu and returned to their ravaged houses and estates in the South."

--Nicholas Rescher, Niagara-on-the-Lake as a Confederate Refuge, 1866-1869 (Fox Chapel, PA: NAP Publications, 2003), 15-16.

The Niagara Mail Defends the Right of Southerners to Choose Their Own Form of Government

Davis stayed in Niagara-on-the-Lake until June 3rd, his 59th birthday, when he returned to Montreal via Toronto, again accompanied by Mason. After he had returned to Montreal, the Niagara Mail amply reciprocated Davis' cordial sentiments:

It is a subject of pride to Canadians that they can offer the hospitality of the soil and the shelter of the British flag to so many worthy men who are proscribed and banished from their homes for no crime, but that which, according to all American principles, is no crime at all, viz. to assert the right of every people to choose their own form of government.

--Nicholas Rescher, Niagara-on-the-Lake as a Confederate Refuge, 1866-1869 (Fox Chapel, PA: NAP Publications, 2003), 12-13.

Jubal Early: The Confederate Point Man in Niagara-on-the-Lake

During the last two years of the war, the Confederacy was thus well represented by agents and friends in the environs of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Of these, however, only Beverly Tucker became one of the postbellum exiles in the town.

After the end of the war, the point man for the Confederate exiles in Niagara-on-the-Lake was Jubal Early, who arrived in the summer of 1866. He continued to live principally in Toronto, but often stayed for extended periods in Niagara. He remained in Canada until the spring of 1869.

--Nicholas Rescher, Niagara-on-the-Lake as a Confederate Refuge, 1866-1869 (Fox Chapel, PA: NAP Publications, 2003), 6-7.