I put aside the Bross document and pondered it again. Despite its high-flown rhetoric, it did describe a situation which was consistent with the situation in the North while the War dragged on. Granting some exaggeration, did the story not seem plausible?
There almost certainly was an uprising in the prison on the night of the arrest of the plotters. Captain Shurly, the second in command and no friend of Colonel Sweet, which was his actual rank at the time he smashed the conspiracy, confirms that fact:
In October, 1864, one of the prisoners requested an interview with the commandant of the post, General Sweet. The message was sent to headquarters. In the absence of General Sweet, I ordered the prisoner sent to my office. He told me that for some time there had been an organization amongst the prisoners of war to break out of the prison square—and that one hundred men had taken an obligation to lead the way, to break the fence, attack the guard in rear of camp, and in the confusion that would ensue, the 11,000 prisoners taken in charge would escape. He said that at eight that evening was the time appointed—this was about 6 P.M. that the interview mentioned took place. It was a cloudy evening, and dark—looking like rain. After dismissing the prisoner, I started for the prison square. The officer in charge told me there seemed to be an unusual activity among the prisoners—advised me not to go round without a guard. This, I knew, would attract attention, if not suspicion. At this time the barracks occupied by the prisoners were in rows raised on posts, and each barrack contained from one hundred and fifty to two hundred men. I noticed there was an unusual stir among the prisoners in the barracks. After completing the tour, I returned to headquarters satisfied that there might be truth in the statement of my “spy.” I at once sent an order to the commanding officer of the Eighth regiment to take post on the south and west of the camp. I ordered the Pennsylvania regiment on the rear of that, and around it. I had notified the officer in command of the guard of what might be expected, at the same time had strengthened the guard by turning out the other two reliefs. The rain began to fall, and it seemed to me that the camp was unusually quiet. The disposition of the troops had been made so quietly that the prisoners had not suspected it. I greatly regretted the absence of General Sweet; but I carried out his plan to the best of my ability. Eight o’clock had scarcely sounded, when crash! went some of the planks from the rear fence, and the one hundred men rushed for the opening. One volley from the guard, who were prepared for them, and the prisoners recoiled, gave up, and retreated to their barracks. Eighteen of the most determined got out, but in less time than I can relate it, quiet was restored. I had the Pennsylvania regiment gradually close in from the outer circle of the race course to the camp, and recaptured all of those that had escaped. I think eight or ten were wounded, but they gradually recovered.
I put the two documents side by side. They were the basic primary sources for the theory of the Great Camp Douglas Conspiracy—one written in baroque style and the other in the plain language of a military officer. Something had happened all right, no doubt about it. The captain seemed much less worried about a prison outbreak than the editor. What had actually happened?
I packed the two documents, which I had already given to Nuala along with some commentary of my own, in my briefcase.
I added the final document, the one which in my own head I was already calling “Irish Lace.”
9
WHEN I arrived at her apartment, Nuala Holmes, brilliant detective, was wearing jeans, a blue blouse, sandals, a nice scent, and no makeup. She was well scrubbed, and her hair was tied in a ponytail. Her apartment was again as neat as a nun’s cell. No nap for her this af ternoon.
I resisted an urge to crush her in my arms and hold her forever. Instead, I brushed her lips modestly, once and then, for good measure, again.
Even that transient affection seemed like pure glory. It was, after all, the first time I had been invited to her house for supper.
Hopelessly in love, was I? I’d been in that condition since O’Neill’s pub, across the street from St. Anne’s Church (C. of I.), down the road from Trinity College.
An old window fan was striving mightily to drag fresh air into the room. It didn’t seem to make much difference in either the humidity or the heat.
She placed the ham and cheese—in a fresh croissant—on the coffee table and a pasta salad next to it. Then she poured the promised nice cup of tea. The show was elegant and graceful, winsomeness and sex appeal (however muted) compensating for the sparseness of my supper.
“There’s a second sandwich if you want one.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“And some chocolate ice cream, too.”
“I’ll need that.”
“Didn’t I know you would?”
She sat in the easy chair across the table from me and spread a paper napkin on one of her knees.
“I like the salad. Where did you get it?”
She giggled.
“Sure, didn’t I make it meself?”
“Just for me?”
“Well, for both of us.”
The room was heavy with erotic tension. I shifted uneasily. As tantalizing as the prospect might be, I was not quite ready to be seduced.
Then, with the equivalent of a wave of her magic wand, she dissolved the lustful fog.
“Your man’s a gobshite,” she said brandishing the complete text of Deacon Bross’s paper. “A terrible liar altogether.”
“Indeed?”
“Your other man”—she jabbed a finger at Shurly’s account—“is telling the truth but not the whole truth.”
“So?”
“Where’s the second half of this report?” she demanded.
“This is a memoir,” I handed the text to her, “written many years later by one Letitia Walsh, daughter of the alleged ringleader of the conspiracy.”
“I was wondering when you were going to get to her.”
I was taken aback. I had told Nuala nothing about the Irish Lace. How did she know about Letitia?
I shivered as she read the memoir.
My dear children and grandchildren,
Many of you have asked me recently whether your grandfather and great grandfather, Lord have mercy on his soul, was really part of the Camp Douglas Conspiracy thirty years ago. Some of you have even shown me that terrible article by William Bross, one of the greatest liars who ever lived, in the Chicago Historical Society Journal. “Deacon” Bross, as everyone called him because of his sanctimonious hypocrisy, dreamed up the “conspiracy” as an excuse for arresting Democrats at the time of the 1864 election. Colonel Benjamin Sweet made the dream a reality, most likely because the Deacon, who was president of the Tribune, was influential enough to win Sweet his brigadier’s stars. I must note that the Deacon told the story of how he learned about the conspiracy many different ways. The one he narrates in the Historical Society journal is the fourth or fifth version, unlike any of the previous ones.
You have suggested that I put down on paper the true story of what happened during that terrible summer. I believe that is a good suggestion. The truth should be told somewhere so some people will know what a terrible criminal Colonel Sweet was.
Let me put three questions before you as I prepare to write down the story.
(1) If Granddad was a traitor and a conspirator, why did his cartage company haul the United States mail for years after the war? Why does it continue to haul the mail now, even after he has gone home to Jesus?
(2) If such a terrible crime was really committed, why was he pardoned after only a few months in jail?
(3) Why did Mr. Lincoln, a man for whom I have never had much respect, refuse to believe in the Conspiracy and order one of the men released immediately?
I cannot believe that if Mr. Lincoln had not been killed by that awful fool John Wilkes Booth there ever would have been a trial.
I believe all the trouble started because of our house. When Daddy came home from the Mexican War and left the Army, he built the house at what is n
ow Ellis Avenue, even before Senator Douglas, Lord have mercy on him, great man that he was, bought his huge tract of land along the Lake. When they built Camp Douglas, its walls were only two blocks away from our house.
When Daddy built the house, there was nothing out there at all besides prairie land as far as we could see in any direction. To the north there was always a smudge of smoke on the horizon, but that was all we saw of Chicago. The three of us, the “three sisters,” as we were always called, were only little girls when we moved out there. Your Aunts Mary and Margaret, the first a year younger than me and the second two years younger, and I loved the house and the prairie. It was a big house with plenty of room for everyone and lots left over, even though Mommy and Daddy eventually had twelve children. We played in the house and played in the garden and played on the lawns. We never needed neighbor children because there were so many of us.
Daddy didn’t want any of us growing up in the city because it was such a horrible, dirty, foul place.
“We must not pretend it’s not there, children. We must not hide from the truth. But it is one thing to know about the place and face its sinfulness and quite another to live in it all the time.”
In those days I never was quite sure what Daddy meant by “sinfulness.” Later I found out what he meant and I was quite shocked. I am still shocked by what men do to women in some of the buildings in the city.
But we all did travel in on coach every day to St. Xavier’s Academy and the Mercy nuns or to St. Patrick’s Academy and the Christian Brothers. The city was scary at first, but we quickly got over it and hardly noticed it on rides to school and then back to home every day. We all stayed in school till we were fifteen which is more than most young women did in those days. After we left school, we made lace for sale and helped towards paying for our living expenses. Daddy was not poor, but there were, after all twelve hungry mouths to feed At least there was food for us, unlike the poor men in Camp Douglas.
Mom was quite accomplished, as many of you remember. She could sing and play the spinet in the parlor and make drapes and curtains and read to us from wonderful books. All of the girls were taught to be accomplished, too. The most fun for us was when Grandma, Mom’s mother, would teach us to make lace. Margaret and Mary and I became enthusiastic lace makers and all of us still are, even if our eyes become a little tired these days. I’m sure you’ve all heard me say it a thousand times, still I want to say in writing for any young women who might read this memoir in years to come: lace making is a very artistic skill. Once you’ve learned the basics, you can put into the lace almost any design that you imagine while you’re working on it. Lace making is both challenging and rewarding.
“The three of you are all Irish lace,” my good and wonderful husband Pat Murray used to shout in his loud and lovely voice. “Thin and delicate and pretty, and just a little complicated.”
And I would say to him, “Well, Patrick Murray, you’ve changed your opinion. You used to say I was very complicated!”
And he’d say, “Complicated enough for one man.”
I made an Irish-lace gown for our marriage night that he liked. Still does, if I am to believe him.
My mother protested that it was a scandalous garment when I showed it to her.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t wear it?” I asked dubiously.
“Certainly not, my dear!”
So you see we were not quite so old-fashioned in those days as you might think.
I suppose I have told you often that I saw your father when I was thirteen years old at a social at St. Mary’s Church and fell in love with him on the spot and never stopped loving him. He says the same thing, but I tell him that’s his blarney doing the talking.
I am wandering, which is an old woman’s privilege.
So we had a very happy childhood. Our mother and father were strict disciplinarians, but their manner was always gentle and reasonable so we did not feel unduly restrained. We sang together and performed musicales and little dramas and made lace. The three of us came to be called “The Irish Lace,” which we all took to be a compliment.
Then the war began in 1861 and our lives changed. The Government built the camp almost in our backyard. Daddy said not to worry because the war would be over in a few months.
Daddy supported the war at first. He helped organize Mulligan’s Regiment at Camp Douglas itself, because he said that States couldn’t be permitted to drop in and out of the Union whenever they wanted. There certainly had to be agreement with the other parties of the contract, meaning the other States. Colonel Mulligan, Lord be good to him, you may recall was the colonel who, when mortally wounded at Winchester, Virginia, told the men who were carrying him off the field of battle, “Lie me down, boys, save the flag!”
His burial monument is at the entrance of Calvary Cemetery up in Evanston.
My Pat signed up for that regiment, even though he was only seventeen. “Don’t worry, love, I’ll be back in three months.”
He didn’t come home to stay for three years.
As for the slaves, Daddy felt that slavery was evil and wanted it to be abolished. However, he said that the government should buy the slaves from their owners to set them free. A long and horrible war was too high a price to pay, he said, when the matter could be handled much more simply by a financial transaction.
Then the prisoners began to arrive from Fort Donaldson and Shiloh in the Spring of 1862. Daddy would stand in front of our house and watch the men marching into the camp, weary and sick, and shake his head in dismay.
“Brave fighting men,” he said. “Look what defeat and capture does to them.”
Mommy and Daddy and the rest of us would go over to the camp every week to bring food and clothing to the prisoners.
Once Mommy sent little Dickie, who was only two years old, to carry a coat the last twenty feet between her and a prisoner. The guards thought it was cute and let the man keep the coat. He escaped the next night in a complete suit of clothes that we had smuggled in to him.
“They’re human beings,” Mommy said, “enemies or not.”
The Irish Lace would come home from each visit and vomit because what we saw was so terrible. Still we went over every week, as did many others because we felt so sorry for the poor boys.
As long as Colonel Mulligan was in command, the Union Army did its best. Daddy would say that they were overwhelmed with the prisoners, but they were working hard. He had been responsible for some prisoners during the Mexican War and said that it was a strict rule that they should be treated as gentlemen would treat other gentlemen.
“However,” he would add, “we had nothing like these many prisoners.”
When Mulligan’s Regiment went to the front, and, as you may believe, all my prayers with them, the condition of the men became much worse. Every day we would see several of Mr. Jordan’s hearses passing by on the way to the Chicago City Cemetery.
As if to torment the prisoners, some rich men constructed the Chicago Driving Park within a stone’s throw of the camp. It was a popular gathering place for these rich men and their ladies who had nothing better to do with their time during the war years. The poor boys in the camp heard the shouts and the laughter of these feckless people every day of the racing season.
Daddy did not believe in racetracks though he enjoyed the racing of horses. As he said, “All Irish delight in racing.”
“That place is evil,” he told us sternly. “It’s not a racetrack. It’s an outdoor gambling den with the same fancy women who populate the indoor dens. It is not fair to the prisoners, poor starving devils that they are. It must drive them out of their minds to hear the laughter of those painted ladies and to catch a glimpse of their lascivious bodies.”
The Irish Lace pretended to be shocked However, the next time Daddy was away on business, we dressed in our finest spring frocks and strolled over to the Park. We left after the first couple of races.
“I do not think that we would be very successful as painted l
adies,” I told my sisters.
“You’re more beautiful than any of them, ’Titia,” Mary told me. “Those men devoured you with their eyes.”
“I was not flattered,” I said firmly.
In my heart of hearts, I was a tiny bit pleased to discover that without paint I was more attractive to many men than the painted ladies.
“Those poor women,” I continued to my sisters, “are just as much prisoners as the poor men in the Camp.”
Daddy stopped talking about the camp, except to become angry on rare occasions and actually swear at the incompetence and corruption of those who were running the camp.
“The men should be turned loose and allowed to find their way home. It would cost the Union less money. Many of them would not want to fight again in this terrible war. Many others would not be able to fight. What harm would be done?”
As far as I can see, no one has ever provided an answer to that question.
Much later, after he was released from prison, Daddy heard about the Confederate camps like Andersonville from men who had managed to survive.
“They were much worse than ours,” he would say. “Still, two wrongs don’t make a right. Surely the governments involved ought to have been able to arrange prisoner exchanges more readily than they did.”
I heard some of the men who were Daddy’s friends tell him that he was “obsessed” with Camp Douglas.
“How can I not be?” he would say in that powerful, commanding voice of his. “When I have to look at that hellhole every day?”
We would bring as much food as we could every week to the men and whatever warm clothes we could find. They were so happy to see us. We’d chat with them for a few minutes and try to make them laugh. Then we’d come back the following week and ask for a man who had red hair or who was from Texas or who sang for us and learn that, as one soldier said, “The boys in blue gave him a free ride up to the North Side. One way.”
Irish Lace Page 15