London Ontario's Unrepentant Confederates, the Ku Klux Klan and a Rendition on Wellington Street

"At the end of the American Civil War in 1865 two of the Confederate States' most prominent families, the Mazycks and Manigaults, fled into exile at London, Ontario, Canada, where their homes soon became the terminus of a new sort of 'Underground Railroad'. Ku Klux Klan fugitives, wanted for murder and mayhem, arrived at their doors seeking sanctuary under the British flag. Welcomed by their countrymen and the people of London, these hunted men found employment, established businesses, and passed the next decade undisturbed. That they could do so was the surprising outcome of the rendition of one of the first Klansmen to reach the city. In June 1872, Dr. James Rufus Bratton was kidnapped in front of his Wellington Street boarding house and transported back to the United States in chains. Within days a firestorm of protest raced from London City Council, to Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, through the British Foreign Office and on to Washington DC. In less than two weeks Bratton was back in London; restored to freedom with all charges of murder, assault and civil rights violations withdrawn. The 'Bratton Affair' demonstrated a long-standing sympathy among Londoners, and Canadians generally, for the Confederate cause. It also revealed the young Dominion's sensitivity in matters of sovereignty and its continued dependence on the muscle of Great Britain in foreign affairs. For unrepentant Southerners it confirmed that Canada was a safe haven."--