While some may view the Civil War as something that happened long ago and far away, the actual proximity of that great conflict was much closer. In fact, Calais was the site of the northernmost attack on the United States by members of the Confederate army -- an attack that could have been catastrophic had it not been for the sheer bravado of the assailants.
      When the raid occurred in 1864, Calais was a prime target. Like most of Washington County, Calais had turned out huge numbers of men to fight in the battles to the south. With a recorded population of 5,621 in 1860, Calais mustered 775 soldiers -- or almost 14% of its population -- for the fight, and many of them did not come back.
      Calais, Eastport and most of Washington County were Union supporters, though rebel sympathizers existed in pockets around Machias and over the border in Saint John. Encouraged by the presence of sympathizers and eager to launch a northern military raid that would storm south to Boston straight through to Kentucky, Confederate officer William Collins formulated a plan.
      Collins was an Irish immigrant who grew up in New Brunswick. As an adult he traveled to work in New York, where he met a Southern plantation owner and became acquainted with his ideologies. After working as a plantation manager in Mississippi, Collins signed up for the Confederate army when the war began. He soon proved his value operating as a spy behind Union lines.
      Collins was not alone in his beliefs among his countrymen or his family, as his brother David was one of 16 New Brunswickers who seized the steamship Chesapeake while it was off of Cape Cod just the year before. The commandeered Chesapeake steamed to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to re-coal with the intention of bringing it to Wilmington, N.C., afterward. However, the U.S. Navy took issue, and five warships pursued it to the British harbor, arresting three of the men on shore and setting off a series of events that nearly prompted Britain to enter the war against the North.
      The Chesapeake was eventually returned, though most of the rebel crew escaped. Those who were tried attested they believed they were engaging in an official act of war on behalf of the Confederacy, but it was later found that their letter of marque had no legal basis -- and, as such, the event was regarded as an act of piracy and diplomatically treated as such.
      Crucially, while William's brother was clearly a Confederate sympathizer like himself, not everyone in the Collins family was. While at his sister Mary's home in Saint John, William laid out his plans to rob a bank in Calais, burn the town to the ground and fly the Confederate flag "on the heights near the city," as The New York Times reported.
      Mary became alarmed by William's intentions and relayed them to another Collins brother, Reverend John Collins of New York. Upon hearing of William's plans, John went straight to Saint John to attempt to dissuade him. Making no progress, John reported his brother and the pending raid to James Howard, the U.S. consul in Saint John. In doing so, Reverend Collins may have prevented significant destruction and casualties -- all while illustrating the painful reality of families divided by ideologies that characterized the war.

The raid unfolds
      Carrying a Confederate flag bearing the words, "The Confederacy forever / To defend her rights / From home and friends we'll sever," William Collins set out on July 18, 1864, with his sights set on Calais. He was joined by Francis Jones, a member of the Missouri Volunteers and guerilla warfare combatant who crossed 32 times into Union territory on missions of sabotage and information gathering, and William Phillips, a sailor of Irish descent. Also joining them was William Draymond -- ostensibly a Union Navy deserter, but secretly an operative under Consul Howard.
      The four men walked into the first target of their raid, the Bank of Calais, at around noon. The plan was to ask for change for a few gold pieces and then draw their pistols as soon as the guard was at ease. With the gold, silver and notes from the vault secured, they'd then set fire to the town and ride to Bangor to meet up with more rebels.
      As soon as one of the raiders started to pull out his gun, however, the teller -- along with three other Union soldiers who were posing as customers -- drew on the foursome. The "teller," in this case, was Lieutenant J.E. Gates, and he and his impromptu militia were among several patrolling the town after the local guard got word from Consul Howard just two hours before.
      With numerous guns trained on them, three of the raiders surrendered on the spot. Draymond, likely knowing of the impending arrest, ducked out the door and was later pardoned when his true allegiance to the Union was revealed.

The aftermath
      The three captured Confederate raiders were stripped of their revolvers and brought to the Calais city rooms. A boisterous crowd gathered outside, with The St. Croix Herald reporting that some were calling for the prisoners to be dealt with on the spot in consideration of their intentions to burn the town and murder its inhabitants. Order prevailed, and the men were scheduled for trial in Machias in October.
      For several weeks after the raid in Calais, a contingent of 50 men under the command of Captain Flint patrolled the streets day and night, ensuring that no further attack occurred.
      Outside the Machias courthouse in October, the men were met by numerous rebel sympathizers who cheered as the men adulated Jefferson Davis in defiance of their captors. Machias had more sympathizers for the rebel cause, due in part to the editor of The Machias Union, who openly advocated for the Confederacy. The editors of The Eastport Sentinel, The Calais Advertiser and The Machias Republican were staunch Union supporters and frequently waged editorial warfare with The Machias Union, according to Al Churchill of the St. Croix Historical Society (SCHS).
      Collins, who would have been around 28 years old at the time, maintained that Confederate President Jefferson Davis would soon be demanding the release of himself and his fellow raiders. He further asserted that if the 20 or so additional men who were planned to show up at the bank had come, Calais would be in ruins.
      When Davis failed to liberate Collins and his men within a few weeks, Collins liberated himself. In November 1864, he was one of five convicts to attack a guard and escape from the Maine State Prison. Of the five, one was captured before leaving the grounds, another drowned in the nearby river, a third made it across the river but was so wet and cold he errantly sought shelter in an unsympathetic citizen's house, and a fourth was found hiding in a limekiln on the prison side of the river. Only Collins made good his escape, aided by two Maine families who fed him and warmed him despite his prison uniform.
      Within the month, Collins was back in Calais and crossed the bridge into New Brunswick without incident. He hid in his sister Mary's home until he could safely make his way south to Mississippi once again.
      After the war, Collins lived for a time in Mississippi before heading to Florida to try his hand at growing oranges. He returned to Mississippi and died in March of 1887, most likely of malaria, according to Mason Philip Smith's Confederates Downeast.
      Looking back at Collins's bold plan, Al Churchill of the SCHS says that "his problem was not the failure of the rest of his raiders to appear but his failure to maintain secrecy." Even without the 20 or so men that Collins was anticipating for the raid, he and his two loyal companions may have succeeded. "The three could have robbed the bank before the locals had time to react and even set fire to the city."
      Calais was vulnerable to fires due to being primarily made of wooden buildings at the time, Churchill explains, and a few well-placed blazes would have been enough to cause significant devastation. "As nearly all of Calais's young men were off fighting the war in 1864, there would have been few available to fight a fire."
      The proof of such destructive potential is readily available, Churchill says, in the Great Fire of 1870, when "some boys started a fire in a pile of straw near the livery stable in back of what is now Karen's Diner and most of the commercial center of Calais burned to the ground."