So there it was from on high, without filter or equivocation: the Irish would not fight to liberate enslaved blacks. God himself may well have spoken. Line drawn. In his defiance, the archbishop had the support of the Irish American press. What Meagher did not know as he bounded to the stage on the night of July 25, what nobody in the armory could know, was that three days earlier Lincoln had drafted a proclamation that would eventually free four million people from their chains—at least on paper.
