New York - The Novel

who had reason to be grateful to him for finding them a place to live, or a job, and generally easing their transition into this dangerous new society.
    He was still close to Mayor Fernando Wood. Wood’s brother Benjamin, who’d owned a newspaper and written a book, would come into the saloon from time to time. And though Mayor Wood had fallen out with the other Tammany Hall men recently, Sean maintained good relations. One of them, known as Boss Tweed, had quietly told him: “You’re loyal to Wood. We respect that. But you’re still one of us, O’Donnell. Come to me when Wood’s gone …” At elections, Sean could deliver a thousand votes on his own authority.
    In his saloon, he was king. Young Hudson had witnessed this soon after he’d started working there. In the fall of 1860, no less a person than Queen Victoria’s son, the Prince of Wales, had made a goodwill visit to Canada and the United States. After watching Blondin cross over Niagara Falls on a tightrope—and politely declining the funambulist’s offer to take him across the same tightrope in a wheelbarrow—the nineteen-year-old prince had arrived in Manhattan. The city had given him a royal welcome, for the most part. But to Irish immigrants, who blamed England for the Famine, his visit could not be welcome. The 69th Irish Regiment, to a man, had refused to parade for him. And to be sure, nobody was planning to take him round Five Points.
    Why some well-meaning people, conducting him round the newspaper quarter, had suddenly decided to show him a New York saloon, nobody ever discovered. No doubt they reckoned that, with its regular daily clientele of journalists, O’Donnell’s would be a pretty safe bet. But whatever the reason, at one o’clock that day, a party of gentlemen, among whom the incognito prince was instantly recognizable, entered the saloon and politely asked for drinks at the bar.
    Naturally, there were a score of writers and fellows from the print trade in the place at the time. But there must have been twenty Irishmen too.
    And the saloon fell silent. The newspapermen looked curious, but theIrishmen were giving the young man a terrible, cold stare. Even a pair of Irish policemen in one corner had a look on their faces that suggested they might, at any moment, fail to see or hear anything. The royal party got the message. They were glancing around anxiously, wondering what to do, when, cutting through the awful silence, came Sean’s calm voice.
    “Welcome to O’Donnell’s saloon, gentlemen,” and now his eyes moved round every man in the room, “where we show Irish hospitality to travelers who have lost their way.”
    That was it. A quiet hum resumed. The royal party were served and, soon afterward, gratefully made their escape.
    But the talk last night had been of a very different nature. This had not been about the Famine, or Irish resentment of England. It had been about the Union and New York. If his instincts were right, it meant trouble. Big trouble. And neither his nor anyone else’s moral authority would be of any help at all.

    Every politician knows how the public mood can change. Sometimes the change is gradual. Sometimes, like water held back by a barrier, it will suddenly break through and rush down like a flood, sweeping all before it.
    When Fernando Wood had suggested the city should secede from the Union, his words might have been intemperate, but they caught the mood of many New York Irish at that time. Yet only a few weeks later, when the Civil War began, both the mayor and his Irish supporters had changed their tune entirely. Why was that?
    Well, the South had made the running—cutting out New York shippers, refusing to pay their debts, and firing on Fort Sumter. But even so, New York’s show of loyalty had been astounding. In the first year, it had fielded more than sixty regiments of volunteers. Every immigrant community had taken part: Kleindeutschland’s Germans, the Polish legion, the Italians’ Garibaldi Guards. And none more so than the mighty Irish Brigades. God knows how many regiments of brave boys, blessed by Cardinal Hughes, had marched out proudly under their Irish banners. Their mothers and sweethearts and other family had lovingly sewn those banners—Mary O’Donnell had eagerly sewn one of them herself.
    Of course, the boys were getting paid. Ninety days of fighting service, and a return home with cash in your pocket—it wasn’t such a bad deal fora brave young fellow out of