The St. Albans Raid: The Civil War's Northernmost Battle

On October nineteenth, eighteen sixty-four, Confederate Lieutenant Bennett Young led twenty-one raiders across the Canadian border into St. Albans, Vermont, and robbed three banks of more than two hundred thousand dollars in a single afternoon. It was the northernmost Confederate military operation of the entire Civil War.

Young's men had slipped into town over several days posing as travelers. When they moved, they moved fast: simultaneous entries into the Saint Albans Bank, the First National Bank, and the Franklin County Bank. They gathered townspeople at gunpoint in the village green, fired shots, and fled north into Canada with the money before local forces could organize a response. One civilian was shot and later died.

Canadian authorities arrested the raiders, but a Canadian court ruled they were soldiers acting under orders and refused to extradite them. The stolen money was never fully recovered. The raid electrified the Northern press and raised fears of a Canadian-based Confederate guerrilla campaign that never materialized.

St. Albans marks the episode with a plaque. The town today is a quiet Franklin County seat with little outward sign that it once made national headlines as a battlefield.