Sons of Liberty

From Turtledove

The Sons of Liberty were a terrorist group wanting the North American Union to be made independant and "free" of Britain. In addition, the Sons wanted the NAU to be free of Negroes, Jews, East Indians and Chinese. Their doctrine called for the land to be occupied by only the pure and original settlers. An inconsistency in their demands was that they also wished the land to be rid of the Red Indians who predated the white settlers.

The Sons' rabid racism actually hindered the achievement of their stated purpose, to achieve independence from Britain - since it prevented them from forming an alliance with other groups potentially opposed to British rule, such as the Spanish-speaking Nuevespañolans in the Southwest of the NAU or the French-speakers at Quebec to its Northeast.

The ethnic group where the Sons found most support were the Irish - especially the impoverished coal miners doing hard work at appalling conditions, but also many of the better-off Irish at Boston.

The Irish continued to nurture, even after a century and more, the bitter memory of the Potato Famine and of many forms of oppression and injustice which they suffered both in their homeland and in America. The great wave of immigration by desperate Irish across the Atlantic in the 1830s and 1840s coincided with the British government freeing the Black slaves in North America, as elsewhere in the Empire, and providing Blacks with opportunities for upward social mobility, especially via the civil service. The Irish feeling of envy and frustration, born then, would have reinforced the same strong anti-Black bias held by the former slave-owners of the NAU Southeast who were already members of the organization.

In June 1995, the Sons successfully stole The Two Georges from the governor's mansion in New Liverpool while the painting was on a tour of the NAU leading to a continent wide investigation by Colonel Thomas Bushell.