"I don't want to talk about political parties today," she said, and enough applause erupted to drown out the jeers. "I want to talk about what's facing the United States. It will be trouble. I don't see how it can be anything but trouble. The government now ruling the Confederate States does not respect the rights of its own people. That being so, how can we hope it will respect the rights of its neighbors?"
That got a big hand. She went on, "Many of you came to the United States or had parents who came to the United States to escape pogroms in Europe. And now we see pogroms in North America. Is a man any less a man because he has a dark skin? Jake Featherston thinks so. Is he right?"
This time, the applause was sparser, less comfortable. Again, Flora had thought it would be. She'd seen again and again that the plight of Negroes in the Confederate States did not get people in the United States hot and bothered. When people in the USA thought about Negroes, it was generally with relief that the vast majority of them were the CSA's worry.
That wasn't right. Flora drove the point home: "A lot of you have ancestors who came here because someone was persecuting them in Europe. Someone is persecuting the Negroes in the Confederate States right now, and we won't let them in. We turn them back. We shoot them if we have to. But we keep them out. And don't you see? That's wrong."
Now she got almost no applause. She would have been more disappointed if she were more surprised. "A lot of you don't care," she said. "You think, They're only niggers, and you go on about your business. And do you know what? That sound you hear from Richmond is Jake Featherston, laughing. If you don't care about a wrong to people in his country, he thinks you won't care about a wrong to people in your country, either. Is that so?"
"No!" She got the answer she wanted, but from perhaps a third of the throats that should have shouted it.
"I'm going to say one more thing, and then I'm through," she told the crowd. "If you say that oppression of anybody anywhere is all right, you say that oppression of everybody everywhere is all right. I don't think that's what the United States are all about. Do you?"
"No!" This time, the shout was louder. A lot of people clapped and cheered as she went back to her seat.
Governor LaGuardia introduced another member of Congress. The man, a Democrat, harangued the crowd about how good they were and how wicked the Confederates were. He said not a word about the Negroes in the Confederate States. To him, the Confederates were wicked for no other reason than that they presumed to challenge the people of the United States of America.
He told the people in Central Park what they wanted to hear. They ate it up. The park rang with cheers. Flora had done her best to tell the people the truth. They hadn't liked that nearly so well.
The dignitary sitting next to her leaned over and said, "I see why they call you the conscience of the Congress."
"Thank you," she whispered. Someone, at least, had understood.
Then he went on, "But really! To get excited about a bunch of niggers? Those black bastards-pardon my French, ma'am-aren't worth it. We'd all be better off if they were back in Africa swinging through the trees."
He was, she remembered with something approaching horror, a judge. "What do you do if one of them comes into your court?" she asked.
"Oh, I try to be fair," he answered. "You have to. But they're usually guilty. That's just how things go."
He didn't see anything wrong with what he said. The only way Flora could have let sense into his head would have been to bash it open with a rock. She knew that. She'd met the type before. If she did it here at a Remembrance Day rally, people would talk. Even telling him off was useless. He'd just get offended. She could talk till Doomsday without persuading him.
Sitting there quietly felt as much like a compromise with evil to her as letting the Confederates do what they wanted to the Negroes in their country. She made herself remember there were degrees of wickedness, as there were with anything else. If you couldn't tell the difference between one and another, how were you supposed to make choices?
You couldn't. She knew that, however distasteful she found it. The Confederates were worse than the judge. That still doesn't mean he's good, she thought defiantly. At the microphone, the Democratic Congressman kept on laying into the CSA. The crowd ate up every word.
When Jake Featherston told the people who protected him that he was going to make a speech in Louisville, they started having conniptions. They screamed about black men with guns. They screamed about white men with guns who didn't want to live in the CSA. They screamed about damnyankees with mortars on the other side of the Ohio River. For the USA to try to bump him off would be an act of war, but it wouldn't be a war he got to run if they went ahead and did it.
That last comment worried him, because he didn't think anyone else in the Confederacy had the driving will and energy to do what needed doing when the war started. But he stuck out his chin and told the Freedom Party guards, "I'm going, goddammit. You keep the people in Louisville from shooting me. That's your job. I'll worry about the rest. That's mine."
Even Ferdinand Koenig flabbled about the trip. "You're the one man we can't replace, Jake," he said.
These days, he was almost the one man who could call Jake by his Christian name. Featherston looked across his desk at the attorney general. "It's worth the risk," he said. "The Party guards'll keep me safe from niggers and nigger-loving bastards who wish they were Yankees. And Al Smith is too nice a fellow to turn his artillery loose while we're at peace."
Al Smith was a damned fool, as far as Jake was concerned. Had the USA had a dangerous leader-say, another Teddy Roosevelt-Jake would have done everything he could to get rid of the man. People like that were worth an army corps of soldiers, likely more.
But Ferd Koenig had another worry. Quietly, he asked, "And who's going to keep you safe from the guards?"
Featherston glared at him. He'd already lived through two assassination tries-three if you counted Clarence Potter, who hadn't come to Richmond to play checkers. The stalwarts who'd backed Willy Knight against him still shook him to the core. But he said, "If I can't trust the Party guards, I can't trust anybody, and I might as well cash in my chips. And if I can't trust them, they can try and do me in right here in Richmond as easy as they can in Louisville."
By the look on Koenig's heavy-featured, jowly face, he might have just bitten down on a lemon. "You're bound and determined to do this, aren't you?"
"You bet I am," Jake answered. "You take over a place, you need to let the people there get a look at you." He'd been reading The Prince. He couldn't pronounce Machiavelli's name to save his life, and if he wrote it down he wouldn't have spelled it the same way twice running. All the same, he knew good sense when he ran into it, and that was one hell of a sly dago.
He went to Louisville. He'd decided he would, and his deciding was what made things so. And when he went, he went in style. He didn't just fly in, make a speech, and fly out again. He took a train up from Nashville, and at every whistle stop all the way north across Kentucky he stood on a platform at the back of his Pullman and made a speech.
The Pullman had armor plating and bulletproof glass. Nothing short of a direct hit by an artillery shell would make it say uncle. The lectern on the platform was armored, too. But from the chest up and from the sides, he was vulnerable. The Freedom Party guards told him so, over and over. He went right on ignoring them.
Nobody shot him. Nobody shot at him. People swarmed to the train stations to hear him. They waved Confederate and Freedom Party flags. They shouted, "Freedom!" and, "Featherston!" — sometimes both at once. Women screamed. Men held up little boys so they'd see him and remember for the rest of their lives. The Party had organized some of the crowds, but a lot of the response was genuine and unplanned. That made it all the more gratifying.