Irish Lace

by Andrew M. Greeley

  The press conference faded away. The reporter told the anchorperson that State’s Attorney O’Hara was unavailable for comment.

  “Welle,” Cindy said as she dashed back into the interrogation room, “that should do it. What did you think, Nuala?”

  Nuala blessed her with a hug.

  “Weren’t you grand? And isn’t it wonderful your family likes me? What would I be doing without you?”

  “I was just the first Irish lawyer that got here, Nuala. There’ll be a ton of them this afternoon. We’ve got Zack in a real bind this time.”

  “Will me friends be deported?”

  “I’m afraid so. They are here illegally. But I also think that once they’re cleared, there’ll be many Irish lawyers figuring out how to get them back in the country legally, which will be a lot better for them.”

  “You think they’ll be cleared?” I asked.

  “What do you think, Nuala?”

  “Sure the whole frigging lot of them couldn’t come up with a good conspiracy if their lives depended on it. That Billy Hernon is another matter.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “I’m sure he’s out of the country.”

  “What went on at the meeting?”

  “Me friends said that Billy did a lot of talking about special orders from GHQ and the resumption of the fighting and the need to obtain funds by whatever means. He didn’t mention any specific plans though.”

  “There’s your man on television.”

  This time “your man” was Gerry Adams.

  “I cannot speak for fringe groups over which we have no control. However, as I’ve said repeatedly, we have chosen the path of peace. We have suspended all operations. That includes robberies to raise funds. After all that President Clinton has done for us, it would be mad to attempt anything like that. I categorically deny that any of our units are involved in the theft of fine art in Chicago.”

  “That settles that,” I said.

  “Wasn’t he grand? Sure, if we have peace it will be because of him. And John Hume, too.”

  The poor shy child was still an excitable nervous wreck. The downs and up of the tumultuous morning had pushed her to the brink of hysteria.

  A very young and very embarrassed assistant state’s attorney (female) entered the interrogation room.

  “Ms. McGrail,” she said, keeping her eyes glued to the floor, “here are your papers, including your visa. You are free to go now. We ask, however, that you remain in the vicinity of Chicago. Please sign this receipt for your documents.”

  Nuala became very formal and self-possessed, another persona flowing into place.

  “Of course,” she said politely, as she signed the receipt. “Thank you very much. I appreciate your cooperation.”

  The kid grinned sheepishly and fled the room.

  “That was very nice, Nuala,” Cindy said. “Very generous of you.”

  “Sure, it wasn’t her frigging fault, was it, now?”

  The media people swarmed around us shouting questions as we left the station.

  “Do you want to make a statement, Nuala?”

  Does a bee like honey?

  A new persona slipped into place: Nuala the smooth, charming, gracious public figure.

  She waited till the media arranged themselves around her.

  “I want to thank Ms. Hurley for obtaining my release and recovering my visa for me. I am delighted that the American justice system works so quickly. I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep and returning to my job tomorrow. I’m also grateful for your support.”

  “Do you think your friends are guilty?”

  “I don’t believe that my friends were involved in stealing art.”

  “Are they illegal aliens?”

  “You’d have to ask them.”

  “What do you think of Mr. O’Hara?”

  “He has a very difficult job. All of us make mistakes occasionally.”

  “Who is the romantic interest in Ms. Hurley’s family?”

  Bright smile.

  “That would be telling, now, wouldn’t it?”

  Then she ducked away from them and walked Cindy and me around to the back of the parking lot.

  “I’ll buy you lunch.”

  “We’re not dressed for it!” Cindy protested.

  “You won’t need to be.”

  Inside the Benz, Cindy launched into a paean of my lover’s performance with the media.

  No one in my family seem to comprehend that herself was an actress. Give her a stage—and all the world was a stage for her—and a role to play, and she would rise to the occasion; and she would love the excitement of playing the role. When the role ended, she would revert to her previous persona, on this occasion a disheveled and traumatized shy child.

  I had noted that “my” had replaced the “me” of her usual speech and that the brogue had faded. There was enough of it left to be charming, but it was T.C.D. and not Galway. None of this was cunning or artificial. It was merely Nuala.

  I took them to an “ethnic” restaurant on Irving Park, across from St. Benedict’s Church. Cindy plowed into Hungarian goulash, while herself nibbled at a hamburger after she had taken it out of its bun.

  “Just not hungry, Derm.”

  “Your privilege, Nuala.”

  “That goulash thing looks grand.”

  “I’ll bring you back here again. It’s where I hang out before Cub games.”

  Nuala, with the Irish obsession with all things sporting, had been “studying” baseball, though she did not understand it nor why one would be a Cub fan, and themselves on a rebuilding program which started half a century ago.

  After lunch I drove Cindy back to her van and turned on Western Avenue.

  “Dermot!” Nuala gasped, hand at her mouth. “Me job! Sure, won’t they have fired me altogether?”

  “I don’t think so. What’s the phone number?”

  I punched it on my car phone. Your man congratulated her, praised her for her courage and poise, and told her to take the rest of the day and the next one off. Nuala was shyly grateful, but hardly a church mouse.

  She pecked my cheek when we pulled up to her house.

  “Dermot, I’m going to take a shower and have meself a nice nap. May I call you this evening?”

  “Woman, you may.”

  “Will those nice men be guarding me?”

  “They will.”

  “Thank you ever so much.”

  Another very brief kiss.

  She permitted me to open up the car door for her and then dashed up the steps before I could offer to accompany her. At the top, as usual, she turned and waved.

  I called Reliable just to make sure they were still on the case.

  Then I drove home, swallowed two more Advils, and headed for the swimming pool.

  As I swam I wondered whether the new rules which were supposed to govern our relationship were still in force.

  I also wondered where Billy Hernon was.

  8

  ON THE five o’clock evening news, the media people were giving Zack O’Hara a very hard time.

  When the network news began, my phone rang.

  “Dermot Coyne.”

  “The seanachie?”

  “The very same.”

  “Derm, would you ever come over to my house for supper? I’ll make you a ham-and-cheese sandwich and brew you a nice pot of tea.”

  She pronounced it “samich,” just as we had done on the West Side of Chicago.

  “An offer I can’t refuse.”

  “I want to talk about Camp Douglas.”

  “Grand.”

  In preparation for this conversation, I opened my file on Camp Douglas and reviewed what I knew about the official side of the “Great Camp Douglas Conspiracy” story.

  The principal document and the source of all subsequent history of the Camp Douglas Conspiracy was the text of a long speech by William Bross, an editor of the Chicago Tribune and a rabid Republican. It was pub
lished in the review of the Chicago Historical Society and represents a paper that Bross read at a meeting of that society on June 18, 1878, thirteen years after the alleged conspiracy. It is titled “History of Camp Douglas,” but is, in fact, a history of the purported conspiracy. Until very recently, most historians of the city took his report at face value.

  There were some preliminary facts about the case, facts concerning which there seems to be no controversy:

  In the spring of 1864, the Confederacy, close to despair because the war was turning decisively against the South, sent a secret agent, one Thomas R. Hines, to Canada. He was to determine whether it was possible to use escaped Southern prisoners in Canada, Confederate sympathizers from that country, and Union citizens who leaned towards supporting the Confederate cause to begin serious war campaigns behind the Union lines. It is argued that Hines had $800,000 in federal money to finance these plans, but since that would have been $5 million in Confederate dollars, the sum may be an exaggeration. The Confederacy also dispatched three “commissioners” to oversee the work of Hines and his agents.

  Inside the camp, massive escapes were being planned at the same time. The “supreme council” of the prisoners had organized the camp into “regiments” and “brigades” which were to storm out of the camp after a hundred volunteers, willing to lose their lives in the attempt, overwhelmed the guards on duty and commandeered their guns.

  Hines was persuaded that a combination of pro-Confederacy “Butternuts” (downstate Democrats similar to the “Hoosiers” in Indiana and the “Buckeyes” in Ohio), opponents to the war in Chicago, like the Sons of Liberty and the Golden Knights and other “Copperhead” groups and Southern officers smuggled into Chicago might enable him to break into Camp Douglas, free the prisoners, and burn Chicago to the ground.

  The plan was communicated by code to the “supreme council” inside the camp, though the links between the two sets of conspirators were thin. The first target day was July 4, when the Democratic National Convention was meeting in Chicago. Why would you burn the city down when a political party opposed to the war was meeting? Would they join the burning of Chicago? Not very likely. Or would they be burned by the liberated prisoners?

  The convention was postponed till August 29. The breakout was scheduled for July 20 and then August 29. Again, nothing happened. Hines expected 5,000 Copperheads to attack the camp. At the most he had twenty-five men.

  Yet another phase of the conspiracy was allegedly set for the day before the November election. Whether or not that was a real conspiracy is a matter of debate. At that time, however, the prisoners staged their own attempt at a breakout; it was easily suppressed by the guards who had been warned that it was coming.

  “Deacon” Bross adds rich detail to this story. He claimed that save for the vigilance of General Benjamin Sweet, the commandant of the camp and himself, Chicago would indeed have been burned to the ground. He begins with the first of the alleged plans to break into the camp at the time of the Democratic convention.

  Before the convention assembled I was standing near the Journal office then in front of the Tremont House when a friend said to me, “Do you know there are ten thousands of arms secreted in cellars and basements within four blocks of us?” I said I presumed that the rebels have that many hid in different parts of the city. During the afternoon, several similar stories were told by others, and in the morning, thinking General Sweet should know them, I called on him at Camp Douglas. He listened to the fact and suspicions I narrated with great attention; he said he would investigate them and call at my office the next day at eleven o’clock.

  I had previously, if any, a mere casual acquaintance with General Sweet, but his close attention and careful analysis of the facts I had given him gave me great confidence in his ability and fitness for the important post he occupied. He called promptly as appointed and I found his entire detective force had been busy all night searching the city through, that they had verified some of our suspicions, and got track of many more. He had, subsequently, trusted men in every Golden Circle of the Knights and by ten o’clock the next day he knew what had occurred and the plans that were made all over the city. Almost every leading rebel that arrived from the South or from Canada was spotted and tracked to his den and could not move, even for the most trivial purpose, but sharp loyal eyes were upon him.

  For a week or more I saw General Sweet frequently, and I found that his detectives tracked like sleuth-hounds every scent and rumor to its source, and his plans and the way he carried them out filled my highest ideal of the ability needed to cope with his adversaries, and I therefore soon gave the matter little further care and attention.

  On Saturday, August 26th, the Democratic politicians, many of them very respectable gentlemen, with their blowers and strikers, began to arrive. As day after day passed, the crowd increased till the whole city seemed alive with a motley crew of big-shouldered, blear-eyed, bottle-nosed, whisky-blotched vagabonds—the very excrescence and sweepings of the slums and sinks of all the cities in the nation. I sat often at my window on Michigan Avenue, and saw the filthy stream of degraded humanity swagger along to the Wigwam on the lake shore and wondered how the city could be saved from burning and plunder, and our wives and daughters from a far more dreadful fate. Many besides myself would have been in despair had we not trusted in the good providence of God, General Sweet, and the brave boys under him. We knew that he had small squads of men with signs and passwords in all the alleys in the central portions of the city ready to concentrate at the point of danger at any moment.

  In the loyal states, and in our own city especially, venomous Copperheads kept up their warfare to the very end. They were bent on letting loose the ten thousand prisoners in Camp Douglas, that they might burn and destroy the city, and thus prevent an election here. And besides, they had lists of scores of our loading citizens whose property and lives could alone atone for the part they had acted throughout the war. General Sweet and his brave officers at Camp Douglas were equally active and vigilant. The appointments at the post were strengthened by every means in his power, so that as small a force as possible might safely guard the prisoners and a large detail might be spared to station in the city at the time of election. Detectives were kept intensely busy to watch every suspicious character that arrived by the cars, and some were sent to Canada to learn from officers there what villainous schemes they were plotting for the destruction of Chicago. Others went to the virulent Copperhead districts in central and southern Illinois and found that large detachments were to be sent here, ready for carnage and plunder, should the prisoners break out, and in any event to vote early and often in the infected sections of the city.

  Hence, on the Saturday before the election Tuesday, the 8th of November, General Sweet knew where all the dens of the Knights of the Golden Circle were, and what was going on in them; what gangs were expected from our own state, and what officers were expected from Canada to lead them and the rebel hordes in Douglas in their bloody raid upon the city. To know them was to know how to provide against and defeat them. To be more specific: At first it proposed to let loose the prisoners two weeks earlier, but for various reasons the thing was postponed till the night before the election. During the previous week, delegations began to arrive from Fayette and Christian countries, in this State. Bushwhackers journeyed north from Missouri and Kentucky. Some came from Indiana, and rebel officers from Canada. But so perfectly had General Sweet made himself master of their movements that in the early morning of Monday, he arrested Colonel St. Leger Grenfel, Morgan’s adjutant general, in company with J. T. Shanks, an escaped prisoner of war; Colonel Vincent Mar maduke, brother of the rebel general of that name; Brigadier General Charles Walsh, of the Sons of Liberty; Captain Cantril, of Morgan’s command, and others. In Walsh’s house, General Sweet’s officers captured two cartloads of large-sized revolvers, loaded and capped, and two hundred muskets and a large quantity of ammunition. In his official report, General Sweet says most of
these rebel officers were in the city in August, on the same bloody errand that brought them here when arrested. When the officers were secured, General Sweet’s boys turned their attention to certain parties of a baser sort. Twenty-seven were arrested at the “Fort Donaldson House”—a base misnomer, of course—all well armed; another lot was captured on North Water Street, and by evening Camp Douglas had an accession of at least a hundred of these wretches. During the day the “secesh” sympathizers telegraphed their friends in the central and southern parts of the State that the trap had been sprung; parties on the way were notified of the fate that awaited them here, and they got off at Wilmington and Joliet; but some fifty who had missed the notice arrived on Monday evening, and were at once duly honored with an escort to Camp Douglas. Some of these visitors had boasted in Vandalia, on their way here, to intimate friends, that “they would hear of hell in a few days,” and generally they were of the most desperate class of bushwhacking vagabonds.

  The plan, as derived from confessions of the rebel officers and other sources, was to attack Camp Douglas, to release the prisoners there, with them to seize the polls, allowing none but the Copperhead ticket to be voted, and to stuff the boxes sufficiently to secure the city, county, and State for McClellan and Pendleton, then to utterly sack the city, burning and destroying every description of property except what they could appropriate to their own use and that of their Southern brethren, to lay the city waste and carry off its money and stores to Jeff Davis’s dominions. Thanks to a kind Providence, all this was averted.

  The degraded rabble, by the way, were Irish Catholic Democrats whom many Republicans like Bross feared even more than they feared Jeff Davis.

  Winners write history and losers don’t. More than a decade after the end of the war, Bross’s account became the received wisdom. In desperation, the South had thrown together a massive plot to seize victory from the jaws of defeat. Southern agents had put all the pieces of this brilliant conspiracy in place, and if it had not been for the ingenuity of General Sweet, the conspiracy would have worked.