Then the word came. Spread like wildfire along the bayous, swamps and levees.
Louisiana had seceded from the union of States.
If the news sent a shiver through the great plantations along the Mississippi, it was one of excitement and pride. Not a shiver of fear at impending war.
‘At last! At last!’ Emeritus Labiche pronounced. ‘We are ready to take our place among the nations of the earth. No longer will we be under the Yankee yoke. Make no mistake …’ he addressed Stephen, recently returned from Richmond, who had joined Patrick and Oxy on a trip to Versailles, ‘this war, if it comes, will be a War of Northern Aggression!’
Then, still in defiant mode, Emeritus Labiche further addressed his guests. ‘I have heard, my young friends, that the Irish in the North are enlisting in their droves. Selling out to the Anglo-Saxon aggressors against their Southern cousins,’ he levelled at them, in accusatory tones.
‘Some will go to the North, some with the South,’ Stephen responded. ‘It is all a matter of geography over ideology … where one lives.’ Stephen’s answer cut little favour with his host.
‘The Celtic races should stand together,’ the Creole planter explained, with barely-tempered patience. ‘It is a folly to think that fighting on the side of the aggressor will make the Irish any more “white” in the eyes of the North. The same folly that a perceived “freedom” will make the Africans any more equal in the South.’
He stood up before them, moving to where his hunting rifle lay cradled on the wall.
‘Blood is good for soil and when the fields are red, true freedom will flourish!’ He seized the gun, patting its black metal. ‘The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the rights of individual States over a Federal system. What else does a State’s rights consist of if not the issues of commerce, taxation – and our property?’
With that Emeritus Labiche brandished the weapon, salute-like, above his head – as if to the Almighty. ‘I pray that this Southern rifle may bring tears from many a Northern mother before this thing is over,’ he said chillingly.
The guests of the house retired to bed that evening, heads aflamed with the wrongdoings of the North and the ringing tones of Emmeline and Cordelia’s final duet of the evening.
God Save the South!