‘We’re fightin’ to become white, not to free the slaves,’ Lavelle said, to the small cluster of Union Irish who listened. ‘If we cannot live equally as Americans, we will at least die our way into Yankee hearts.’
The Irish Brigade had of late been involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the campaign and many familiar faces were no longer seen at campfire gatherings.
‘The piccaninnies of Alabama are better housed and better fed than are the free peasants of Ireland, in Boston,’ said the Little Bishop, as the speaker was known in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, from where he had been recruited – or ‘salvaged’, as he himself described it.
His rightful name was MacEneaspey … Benedict MacEneaspey. All six feet seven inches of him, from the Connemara coast. Until some wag with a smattering of Irish had broadcast it over the Kitchen, what the English translation of his name meant – mac an easpaigh – son of a Bishop! But the Little Bishop had had the last laugh. Waited for the right night. Sent him, who mocked him, to eternity, a baling hook in his gut. Word was that the Little Bishop’s tormentor was closer to the truth than anyone in the Kitchen dare mention. He then ‘enlisted’ in the Union army to escape arrest, the local constabulary glad to have him fighting the Rebs instead of them. His name had followed him and indeed, the Little Bishop could pulpit talk as good as any prince of the Church. Particularly with stories of his earlier life.
Like, how when he was ‘full-grown’ to his present height, he had left for America, and how each of his six sisters in turn ‘had leaned down to me and kissed me on top of my head!’
Now the Little Bishop poured forth his latest homily.
‘In this war the Green fall equally with the Blue and the Grey. Irish blood reddens the plains of America – not for any other freedom – but that the cotton kings of Boston may spend nights as well as days in their counting houses.’
And so it was, Lavelle thought. The Little Bishop had it right.
‘Why indeed are we fighting?’ Lavelle later asked of himself. ‘Killing our brothers? Good honest men from the bare hills of Connaught and the fertile plains of Tipperary.’
He fanned the newspaper out in front of him, the Pilot – Boston’s Catholic newspaper. ‘And stamped with the imprimatur of His Lordship, the Archbishop,’ Lavelle announced to no one in particular.
He commenced reading: ‘What has the African done for America? What great or even decent work has his head conceived, or his hands executed? We pity his condition, but it is unjust to put him in the balance with the white labourer. To white toil, this nation owes everything; but to black, nothing.’
There it was in black and white – from the Holy Roman Catholic Church itself. It was the Irish who had built America, not the blacks.
Later on Lavelle showed the Pilot to the Little Bishop, commenting that, ‘The British Crown has stirred up the South for its own ends. Therefore, the Irish must fight, if for no other reason but to protect our second country – America – and our first – Ireland – against the Crown. Not one Irishman in a hundred has joined with the Union to liberate the slaves, but Lincoln and his warmongers have now seized on “freedom”, “democracy” and “emancipation” with which to justify seizing the riches of the South. Lincoln has betrayed us. No true Irishman should ever vote for him.’
‘No true Irishman ever will,’ the Little Bishop affirmed. ‘But for now we have to pacify those Rebs. Especially our own fightin’ for the Rebs,’ he said, looking down at his hands. Hands as big as Virginia hams. ‘Pat them on their astrayed heads and send them home safe to their mammies.’
The big man laughed, bringing his hands together in a thunderclap.
Lavelle would more have feared a ‘pat on the head’ from the Little Bishop as the full blast of a Confederate cannon at close range.
‘The Irish Rebs will need ladders to get at you, Bishop!’ Lavelle said. ‘Unless any of those sisters of yours have started producing!’
He ducked the swing that he knew would come his way and headed towards his tent with the sound of the big man’s laughter still ringing in his ears.
As he lay awake, Lavelle realised how weary he had become of the banter of war, and the newspaper columnists so safe in their cities. Throw in the lot of the ‘champagne’ generals, Yankees and Rebs alike, and even the ‘gallant fighting Irish’. He was weary of the whole lot of them. Weary of war itself.
What alone sustained him now was the faint hope of, after the war, still finding Ellen.
Until that time he would, tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that go out again.
Killing.