“And betray my friends?” James Mulloy said. “No way to get that kind of money anyway.”
Then Colonel Mulligan came up with his brilliant and surprising scheme. Remember, Colonel James Mulligan sympathized with the Fenians. He denied that the British had any right to Ireland whatsoever, but if seeming to suspend his principles could help a fellow Irishman, well . . . Here was the plan:
Because James Mulloy had been born in Ireland, the British considered him a subject of the empire. The Sassenach refused to recognize the status of naturalized American citizens. Máire and I had gotten our papers soon after arriving in Chicago, eager to be Americans, as were all Irish people, but Great Britain said we still belonged to them. Made it easier to call all Fenians traitors, the colonel explained.
Now he said, “Let’s use the Sassenach to our advantage.”
As a British subject, James Mulloy, though fighting with the Confederate army, was not, strictly speaking, a rebel against the United States. Could he be paroled into the custody of the British consul and then handed over to us?
Colonel Mulligan pulled out law books and military codes and decided the idea was worth a try.
The next day, Máire and I were waiting in the office of the secretary to the British consul in Chicago. We had the proposal Colonel Mulligan had framed in the very best legal language and letters from both Alderman Comiskey and William Onahan. The colonel had decided that we should meet this fellow on our own—more sympathetic and fewer questions.
After nearly an hour, the secretary swanned in—narrow face, jutting chin, and that drawling voice typical of the tribe of English civil servants that had mismanaged our misery during the Great Starvation. He would deal with our case. The consul was much too busy. He took the colonel’s document, leaned back in his chair, and started reading.
Patrick Kelly had predicted that the British would favor the South, and events proved him right. The
Chicago Times
reported that Secretary Seward told the British prime minister we’d invade Canada if they didn’t stop aiding the rebels, but the British kept building ships for the Confederates, as well as raising money for the South, and transporting Confederate officials on their ships. What had Patrick said? They want a weak America, get some of those colonies back.
The secretary put down the document. “You expect
me
to claim this fellow as our citizen and then parole him to you? On what grounds? You have no standing—”
“I’m an officer of the Sanitary Commission,” Máire interrupted him. “I’m sure you’ve heard of it.” She started to list all the important women in Chicago who belonged.
But the secretary stopped Máire with this question: “Why would two enemies of Great Britain like Mulligan and Comiskey appeal to us? And why for a soldier in the army of the enemy?”
“To save a life,” I said.
He only laughed.
“Does this argument help?” Máire put the small leather bag on the table. “Twenty-five silver dollars, to cover any, uhm, fees.”
Alderman Comiskey had contributed ten dollars, the colonel and Mr. Onahan five, and we’d made up the rest. The fellow only stared at us.
“I believe,” I said, “that Alderman Comiskey mentions in his letter the business dealings of British citizens here—imports, land speculation, investments. The city council decides so many issues—licenses, tax levies, zoning—and the alderman is a very respected member.”
The secretary picked up the bag of money, felt the weight of it in his hand.
“Colonel Mulligan prepared a letter granting the parole,” I said, passing the letter over the desk to him.
The fellow put down the money pouch, dipped the quill pen on his desk into the inkwell, and signed the letter. Then he took the pouch and stood. “I’ll never understand you people,” he said.
“An Irish solution to an Irish problem,” Máire said as we laughed our way down Lake Street.
“A Chicago solution,” I said.
Máire stuck her hip out. “I don’t understand you people,” she drawled.
“And never will,” I said.
Two weeks later, James felt well enough to tell us his story. The whole family gathered to listen, James Nugent with us, a frequent visitor now.
“When we left Ireland,” James Mulloy began, “I was only two years old, so I’m not sure what I really remember and what’s been told me. I do remember the ship—the darkness and me crying—and then the island. My da’s told me about the Keeley brothers who sailed with us.”
“What did he say?” Máire asked.
“Only that two of the brothers lived, but the third one died, and his wife with him.”
“And the children?” I asked.
“I don’t think he knows what happened to them. We were in Quebec a very short time, then walked for weeks and weeks through the woods, until we came to Saratoga Springs in New York.”
“You walked?” I said. “But isn’t that a far way?”
“Unimaginably ex-ten-sive, according to my father,” James said, making Gracie and Bridget laugh.
“Brave of you,” I said.
“There were other families with us. A kind of network of Irish settlements and farms scattered throughout the North Woods. We found help with them.”
“Your father wrote to us about my husband’s brother—Patrick Kelly. Did he ever say anything to you?”
“Is he the man with the golden staff? There were stories told about him in our family. In fact, there was an Irishman came to Nashville before the war started, recruiting Irishmen to the federal side. They said he carried some kind of relic. Would that be him?”
“That’s Uncle Patrick.”
“We stayed away from the fellow,” James Mulloy said. “But then . . .”
He stopped and looked at Paddy, in uniform, and at James Nugent, with his lieutenant’s bars. They only shrugged their shoulders. We weren’t fighting the war in this parlor. Still, better to stay in the past.
“But why did you settle in Saratoga?”
“The racetrack, of course. Da found a job as a stable hand, then became a trainer. My brothers worked with him. We won a fair number of races.”
“You would,” I said.
“We moved to Tennessee, near Nashville, where Da started to breed horses.” He smiled Katie’s smile. “Da used to say, ‘Someday I will have a great horse, and I will name him Askeeboy and we’ll race on the grandest tracks of the country. And my old friend Michael Kelly will read about it in the papers and one day he’ll come to us. He’ll stand in the doorway with Honora and Paddy and Jamesy and Bridget.’ He didn’t know about you, Stephen, or Michael.”
“Probably forgot me,” said Máire.
“He talked about you, the most beautiful woman in five parishes, the Snowy-Breasted Pearl, he called you, and sang a song about you.”
“Ah,” said Máire. “Owen always was a grand man.”
All through April and May, James Mulloy was with us. One night early in his stay, some rowdies came pounding at the door, shouting that we were hiding an enemy soldier. The boys went down and there was a bit of a punch-up.
Then Paddy told these fellows that James Mulloy was a cousin of ours, in a Tennessee regiment loyal to the Union. Paddy’s unit had escorted the prisoners to Camp Douglas. James was on sick leave. Any other questions? No? Then Paddy asked them: Why weren’t
they
in the army?
We had no more trouble. Even our close friends preferred to believe Paddy’s explanation.
But the battles had started up again. Conscription was expected. A year of war and no end in sight. Rage was building against “the enemy”—best to keep James Mulloy’s identity quiet.
Molly Flanigan said to me after one Holy Hour, “I saw Gracie and that lad out walking. I hope he’s a
distant
cousin.” I told her James Mulloy was a Kelly relation, no connection to Gracie.
“How’s your prisoner?” Colonel Mulligan would ask me. He never spoke to me of hating the “sessechs”—war was a job of work to be done, and done quickly.
Colonel Mulligan had gone to Washington, determined to get the Brigade a new assignment.
It was the first day of June. I got up before first light to enjoy that early morning time I considered my own, when I heard voices from the parlor.
Paddy was talking to James Mulloy. They must have sat up all night, drinking whiskey and solving the problems of the world. They didn’t hear me walking in my bare feet over the plank floor, automatically avoiding the creaks. I stopped in the hallway.
“So,” James Mulloy was saying, “would you explain to your mother why I have to go back to camp?”
“She’ll not understand.”
“Darby Lee and I enlisted together in Nashville,” James Mulloy said. “He’s eighteen. He was in the Saint Patrick’s Club. Darby Lee. Hard to believe he’s dead. How many from the Tenth have died?”
“Near twenty, I’d say.”
“All fever?”
“Dysentery, too. Listen to me, James. If you go back, you’ll catch some disease yourself. I’d rather put you on a train headed south,” Paddy said.
“You couldn’t do that to your family and Colonel Mulligan. You’d be Copperheads for sure then. You might even get arrested.”
“But the camp’s worse now than when you first came. Some fellows like to bully the prisoners. One guard’s brother was shot dead at Erin’s Hollow fighting your regiment. He says he’s going to kill one of you before he leaves—an eye for an eye.”
“He should go gunning for that Yankee general McClernand. He sent those poor bastards running up the hill into our guns. What can you do when the enemy charges except fire at him?” James Mulloy said.
“I know. Same at Lexington. All the noise and smoke and men rushing at you. You just shoot.”
“I didn’t even aim,” said James. “I couldn’t see.”
“We couldn’t either,” said Paddy.
“Then the woods caught fire.”
“What?”
“At Erin’s Hollow, the Yankees carried their wounded into a stand of trees. There must have been shells near the trees, and what with the dry weather and the heat, the woods exploded into flames. You could hear the wounded screaming. Our colonel McGavock called a cease-fire and sent a bunch of us down to help the Yankees. We rescued some, but . . . it was terrible. This Yankee soldier and I saw a boy with half his face burned away, carried him out. The soldier, an Irish fellow, was from Galena, Illinois. Once we got the wounded out to the field hospitals, we all stood around talking, both sides. Mostly about stupid orders from dumb officers. But what can you do?”
“Nothing,” said Paddy. “Only keep your head down and fight like hell.”
I backed down the hall, then walked back to the door, making plenty of noise.
“Well, you boys are up early. Who’s for coffee and a bowl of porridge? James Mulloy, I’ve work for you to do today. Paddy, tell the colonel our prisoner’s gainfully employed.”
“I will, Mam.”
James tried to talk but I wouldn’t let him. I kept going on and on about how I needed his help until Paddy whispered to James, “Surrender.” They ate their breakfast together.
This reprieve will end soon, I thought. The colonel was sure the Brigade would be ordered to Virginia any day—big battles there. Paddy and James Nugent would go.
And now Thomas had surprised us by enlisting in the Irish Brigade. “In honor of my brother John,” he said.
Jamesy and Daniel told Máire and me that they planned to join the new Irish Legion and march away under their own harp and shamrock banners.
James Mulloy would be exchanged into the fight.
Patrick Kelly was out on some battlefield somewhere.
Seven of them.
And Stephen and Michael only waiting.
Mrs. McGrath’s song went through my mind—her son Ted forced into the British army came back from the wars with two wooden legs:
“Oh, Teddy, me boy,” the widow cried,
“Your two fine legs were your Mammy’s pride!
Those stumps of trees won’t do at all;
Why didn’t you run from the cannonball?”
Run away, I wanted to shout at Paddy and James Mulloy—at all of them. Run away, all of you. But I knew they wouldn’t.
C
hristmas was less than a month away, 1863 was almost over, and the boys had been fighting in the South for more than a year.
They had marched away singing. Paddy and Thomas left in mid-June with the Irish Brigade, the 23rd Illinois, shouting out that same promise to come safely “home again, to the girl I left behind me.” Jamesy and Daniel, in the new Irish Legion, got an even more glorious send-off in August, because it was Father Dennis Dunne, pastor at St. Patrick’s, who’d organized this second unit, the 90th Illinois.
Father Dunne had said the highest of High Masses for them at St. Patrick’s. Stephen had been an altar boy. He’d swung the gold censer with great energy, sending up such clouds of incense that Máire whispered to me, “He’ll choke the life out of them before they get to the fighting!” The nine hundred members of the Irish Legion were blessed by Father Dunne, Father Tom Kelly, and a dozen other priests. Michael had sung a solo with the choir. At the end of the ceremony, the pipes sounded their call. It was Jamesy played “The Minstrel Boy to the War Is Gone,” and every man in the Irish Legion sang the words. They roared out the final chorus:
Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
They shall never sound in slavery!
President Lincoln finally freed the slaves. James McKenna had said the president would wait until
after
the election, worried about votes. But he hadn’t. “Now our cause is truly noble,” Father Kelly told us in his last sermon before he’d gone off to be chaplain for the Irish Legion at their camp in Tennessee.
There’d been celebrations among the colored people in the neighborhood south of us. We’d gone over to see the bonfires, hear the singing. I thought of Congo Square, of M’am Jacques and her children, of Sister Henriette, how happy they must be. I’d come to know a woman from this neighborhood. I’d met Mrs. Williams on my walks along the Lake, and she’d told me that most of the colored families living in their community had been free for a while, but there were some escaped slaves among them who were certainly relieved. Her sons are serving in a colored unit of the army.