Hannibal had once been a stable hand to a family named McAllister in Tennessee. The McAllisters had lost all their money and had to sell off their property, and that included Hannibal Watson.
The sale included Hannibal's wife, Abigail, and their young son, Joshua. That they were breaking up a family was of no concern to the McAllisters or the man who ran the auction. Hannibal went as a horse handler to one family and Abigail a house slave to another. No one needed the two of them, although he overheard several men saying that young Joshua had good potential, and that Abigail was real good breeding stock. Hannibal had stayed in Tennessee while Abigail and Joshua were purchased by someone from Virginia.
For months, Hannibal had waited in torment and then could take it no longer. He ran away. His poorly thought out plan was to head north, where he thought he could be free and then come back to find Abigail and Joshua.
He had only been away for a couple of days before the slave catchers and their dogs had caught him. The catchers had let the dogs chew on him for a while, and then, just to make sure he got the point, hamstrung his right leg. Fortunately for him, they'd gotten falling down drunk by this time, and had only hacked at him with their knives and not crippled him like they'd intended. After that, they had flogged him until he screamed with pain and then passed out. He walked with a pronounced limp, but that was because he wished to. not because he needed to.
Hannibal had been sold again, and this time for very little money since he was a runaway and a cripple to boot. Drunken old son of a bitch Farnum had bought him and put him to work at the Farnum Plantation, a motley collection of poorly maintained buildings that Hannibal thought would embarrass a pig.
If Farnum had a virtue it was that both he and his whore of a wife were so drunk most of the time that little work was done on the farm. On the rare occasions when they were sober, they would take out their anger at being white trash on the slaves by beating them. Fortunately, this didn't happen very often. Mr. Farnum liked to couple with Bessie, the only female slave in the bunch. This neglect was why Hannibal felt safe standing in a field and thinking instead of pretending to hoe the weeds. Mr. Farnum wasn't particularly mean, just stupid. Mrs. Farnum, however, was shrill and cruel. She was particularly nasty to Bessie since she knew her husband was fucking the slave and not herself.
Hannibal made a decision. It was the most important one of his life. He would run away again. There was no hope in waiting for Lincoln and his soldiers to bring freedom. Lincoln and the North had failed. Hannibal knew that age would overtake him long before the North tried again. No, freedom would have to be taken.
Hannibal fully understood what had gone wrong the first time he'd run away. He had acted with his emotions and not with his brain. He knew he was intelligent and the leader of Farnurn's Negroes. This time he would plan.
His primary mistake was in letting his absence be discovered so quickly that the chase began before he had gotten very far. This would not happen again. He did not particularly wish to harm the Farnums or the other slaves, who he knew were scared to death of the thought of leaving, but it would have to be. Each hour his absence went undiscovered would mean a couple of miles between himself and continued slavery. He speculated that a couple of days' head start might even see him close to the Union army.
It had been ten years since he had been separated from Abigail and Joshua. He didn't even know if they were still alive. Perhaps Joshua had been sold to someone else. Why not; he'd be about fourteen now. He had to find them. It was eating him alive.
The Farnums and the weaker slaves would have to die. He hefted the hoe and wondered just how it would feel to drive the blade deep into old Farnum's bald red skull. He thought it would feel wonderful.
Attila Flynn explained himself clearly and carefully to Nathan Hunter and to a barely cordial General Scott. Flynn firmly believed in the old dictum that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Therefore, the United States, as well as being a haven for Irish immigrants, was firmly in the Irish camp whether it wanted to be or not. Nathan thought it was the other way around, but kept his counsel.
“People who are not Irish,” Flynn said, “have no idea of the depth of hatred that we feel for England. She has enslaved us over the centuries, deprived us of our right to worship in the true faith, denied us representation, and then starved us in an attempt to drive us out of Ireland.”
“Do you feel the famine was intentional?” Nathan asked incredulously.
“The blight that destroyed the potato crops for successive years was an act of God. The decision to withhold aid to the people of Ireland was an act of the British government. Are you aware that English landowners of Irish farms that did have successful crops actually exported foodstuffs to England and elsewhere?”
“No,” said Nathan. He caught General Scott watching Flynn carefully.
“Private charities tried to help us,” Flynn continued, “but they were overwhelmed. My mother died nursing my brother, who also died. My father just disappeared one day. I managed to lie and steal until I was old enough to enlist in the army. At least they fed me.”
“Then you served England,” Scott said.
“I would have served the Ottoman caliph and let him bugger me in the ass if he would have fed me. Yes, I served in the British army and wore their damned red coat.” He stood and whipped off his jacket and shirt. “Look at my back. See the stripes and scars? Sometimes I got flogged because I deserved it, but most of the time it was because I spoke funny, and the sergeants and officers didn't like that. There were a number of us Irish in Victoria's fucking army, and there are a lot of us veterans who've finally made it here to the States.”
“And that brings us to your point, doesn't it?” General Scott said quietly. His animosity towards anything Irish had diminished on hearing Flynn's story.
“Indeed it does, sir. I wish for America to raise an Irish army to fight the British.”
“But we do have an Irish Brigade,” said Nathan, referring to a number of Irish regiments from New York City. “And there are a number of Irish officers, perhaps even a general or two.”
Attila Flynn smiled. “Yes, just as there are Irishmen serving the Confederacy, although not in so many numbers as those who serve the Union. Fortunate you are that both Boston and New York are in the North. If more Irish had settled in New Orleans, like the rebel colonel Patrick Cieburne did before moving to Arkansas, then you'd have lost the war already. Don't you wonder what a good Irishman like Cieburne is thinking of now that he finds himself an ally of England? He may not be a general today, but he will be tomorrow.”
“Let's get back to your original statement,” Scott injected. “What specifically are you proposing?”
“Dear General Scott,” Flynn said, “while the Irish have joined on both sides to fight for their adopted countries, there are countless tens of thousands who have not. I wish Mr. Lincoln to do two things. One, I wish him to form an Irish army, not a mere brigade, for the sole and entire purpose of fighting England. They would not serve against the South. I believe you would have droves of volunteers.”
“And the second?” Nathan asked.
“I wish the North to actively subvert those Irishmen who are serving the South. Promise them amnesty, promise them farms, promise them anything, but get them out of the rebel ranks and, if not into ours, then out of the fight. I promise you that men like Patrick Cieburne are not sleeping well at night.”
“You know this Cieburne?” Nathan asked. Until this conversation he had never heard of Patrick Cieburne and he was reasonably certain General Scott hadn't either.