Albany, New York
October 1863
John Lane sat in a chair reading in his boarding house in Albany. He was mindful of the light coming through the single window. He would wait until dark before venturing out in search of information. He was vaguely aware that the chair was perhaps the least comfortable piece of furniture he’d ever encountered. The tall straight back forced him to lean slightly forward and cut into his shoulders. The seat, made of wicker or some such material, had long since begun to unravel, and the thin cushion didn’t prevent his rear from sinking through. The perfect conveyance for preventing idleness, he thought. He’d considered reading in the bed, but his mother had taught him long ago that beds are for sleeping at night, and not for passing the time in daylight hours.
If he didn’t know the book by heart, it wasn’t for lack of trying. It had been a gift from his father on his twelfth birthday, the first book he owned, and the first and last birthday gift he’d ever received. Lane had read History of the Irish Rebellion a dozen times. It had passed the time on the sea voyage from Liverpool to Boston, and he’d read it by lantern light during the war. The other soldiers in his company carried bibles. This was his bible.
It was this book, as much as anything, that had brought Lane to membership in the Fenian Brotherhood, a secret, oath-bound society dedicated to freeing Ireland from British rule. Now, ironically, he thought, to hatching a plan to commit treason against his adopted country, the United States of America.
He placed the book on his lap. Seven hundred years under the British thumb. Unable to practice our religion. Our land confiscated. Our Parliament dissolved. Banned from the professions. But occasional outbreaks of rebellion, under the old Gaelic aristocracy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. So close in 1798, with uprisings all over the country, if only the French had committed more troops. Then semi-comical risings, not worthy of the name, in 1803 and 1848.
Lane thought of O’Mahony. This time it’s a horse of a different color. These were hard-bitten men, not romantic dreamers. They weren’t recruiting poets and students this time. They wanted soldiers. They imagined a huge armada of ships, filled with Irish veterans of the Union Army, bound for Ireland. Hard men, armed to the teeth, the British garrison forces no match for them. A triumphal march into Dublin, raising a green flag over Dublin Castle, for centuries the seat of British rule in Ireland.
Lane laughed bitterly to himself. Poetic, romantic nonsense. Another grand plan, just like 1798 and 1848, that would come to nothing. My plan makes more sense. That vast host of Irish veterans, instead of sailing to Ireland, would help the British and their Confederate allies defeat the Union, and in return the British would grant Home Rule for Ireland. It all came down to a single calculation; it was in Britain’s interest that the United States, a rising power with vast potential, see her territory and population cut in half, and that she be boxed in, north and south, by hostile powers. Home rule for Ireland would be a small price to pay indeed for putting a lid on the rise of America as a competitor.
It had grown dark outside. Lane placed the book on the small table next to the chair, stood, and put on his coat. If I were back in Ireland, he mused, or Boston for that matter, and I needed information, I’d find a public house. Right. So off to get a drink and find the British Army.