By 1860, the Grand Trunk was on the verge of bankruptcy and in no position to expand further east to Halifax. On the eve of the American Civil War, it stretched from Sarnia in the west to Rivière-du-Loup in the east and Portland in the southeast. Colonists in the United Province of Canada, some who experienced their territory being attacked by the United States fifty years earlier (in the War of 1812), were uncomfortably close to the giant Union Army and faced terrorist attacks during the mid-19th century in the form of Fenian raids.