The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Fall of the Great Republic (1886

Copyright, 1885,
By Roberts Brothers.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

THE FALL
OF THE
GREAT REPUBLIC.
(1886–88.)

BY
SIR HENRY STANDISH COVERDALE
(Intendant for the Board of European Administration
in the Province of New York.)

“O Liberty! Liberty! How many crimes are committed
in thy name!”

By Permission of the Bureau of Press Censorship.

NEW YORK:
1895.

It is my purpose to relate the fall of the Great Republic. I shall be brief, yet shall omit no detail necessary to a perfect comprehension of the causes which underlay the catastrophe and the events through which it came to pass. I shall set forth the curious sequence of ignorance, wickedness, and folly which led to the terrible result. I shall show how the boasted wisdom of the fathers became the inherited curse of their descendants. I shall describe the political and social revolution by which in a few months a nation of grand8 promise, and with a history unequalled for its century of growth and achievement, was transformed into the most pitiful wreck of all time. I shall narrate the story whose outcome has proved to the world the utter futility of the experiment of popular self-government, until men shall have attained a richer knowledge and a sweeter morality than thus far exist.

The citizens of the United States felt at the close of the Civil War of 1861–1865 that they had demonstrated their ability to govern themselves wisely and successfully. They considered the experimental stage of their history passed, the volume completed and closed, the verdict rendered. They imagined the possibility of no greater strain on their institutions than had already been triumphantly endured. In truth, there was the appearance of reason in their conviction. No nation had ever more successfully passed the ordeal of civil9 strife. The magnanimity shown to the conquered rebels after the war, even after the assassination of Lincoln; the temperate endurance with which the country suffered the incubus of Johnson’s maudlin administration; the rapidity and ease with which the enormous war-debt was paid off; the general good-nature which averted bloodshed during the disputed election of 1876; the smoothness with which the administrative machinery bore the shock of Garfield’s murder,—all these events, coming closely after the vindication of the national idea and of personal liberty in the suppression of the Southern rebellion, convinced the people of the United States, and those of other lands as well, that “the experiment of popular self-government” had really achieved success.

And yet there had been warnings enough of the volcano smouldering underfoot, if the eyes and ears of public men had been open to see and hear. Beginning10 at the time of President Garfield’s assassination, the one cry which went up from the common people, the working people of the land, was for years that of “Hard Times.” Business received a blow in that year from which it did not recover. Trade was slow and meagre; purchases of all sorts were made “from hand to mouth;” workshops and factories lay idle because there was insufficient demand for their products; men who felt keenly the disgrace of failure to support their families were compelled to beg for public aid to keep their humble homes and to supply even the most sordid demands of life. For years the country’s economic policy had been such as to poison the air with false doctrine and enervate the energies of commerce by vacillating action. It would be a bootless task to discuss now the relative merits of “Free-trade” and “Protection” to the United States. Perhaps either policy, adhered to with reasonable fidelity and11 administered, as to its details, with such common-sense as men are accustomed to use in the conduct of their private affairs, would have obviated the loss of work and the consequent poverty and want which filled the land, from 1882 to 1887, with a constantly deepening tide of misery. But the whole subject was made the shuttlecock of petty politics and pitiful politicians, until the nation ceased to have a policy which could be recognized or was of any avail as a stay before the sweep of commercial failure and pecuniary distress.

It is asserted that no less than two and a half million operatives and working-men were idle in the fall of 1887, when the first serious outbreaks occurred. By far the larger number of these had been unable to earn enough, during the preceding two years, to pay the rents demanded for their cottages and hovels, and were constantly in danger of ejection, without the hope of finding another home. The land12 was filled with idle workmen, many of them foreigners unaccustomed to free institutions, and bitter in their denunciations of all government, which was to them the synonym of tyranny. Few, of either foreign or native birth, were possessed of sufficient discrimination to discover the underlying causes of their misfortunes, or of wisdom enough to set about remedying them.

Despite the world-wide knowledge of this lack of remunerative employment in the United States, the ranks of the unemployed and dissatisfied there were constantly recruited by immigrants from the most dangerous classes of Europe. The vigorous action which had been taken in 1886 and 1887 by the Governments of Germany, Russia, and Austria, looking to the extirpation in their dominions of socialism, nihilism, and their kindred poisons, and the refusal of Switzerland, England, and France to afford asylum to the expelled fanatics, had13 forced them to take refuge in America. One or two of the wisest and bravest among the statesmen of the land raised their voices against receiving and harboring these men. But the public had few statesmen in its service. Mere politicians and demagogues were in greater popular favor than statesmen who despised the cheap tricks and unworthy flattery which won the common ear. Public men generally had come to think more of majorities than of principles; to labor for their own election to office rather than for the good of the country. The newspapers were commonly partisan and devoted to purely partisan ends,—the chief of which was, naturally, partisan success. None dared to do or say anything which might offend and alienate voters; and so every steamship from Europe continued to bring to the Atlantic ports of the country full steerage-loads of men who were not thought fit to live under the Governments of Europe, but14 who, almost on their landing, became citizens and voters in the Republic. Added to these were the tens of thousands of Irishmen whom the stringent measures of Parliament, adopted after the dynamite explosions of 1884 and 1885, had driven from their native island. Over half a million able-bodied men, without mention of women or children, expelled outlaws of Europe, landed at New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in the two years of 1885 and 1886. They swelled the ranks of workmen without work, and helped reduce by competition and division the already scanty wages of labor. Every one of them was a poisonous ferment dropped into the already over-stimulated mass of popular discontent and agitation. They invariably united with the existing centres of socialism and Fenianism, making these organizations, even without other converts, tenfold more dangerous than they had ever been before.

It was in many respects a strange era; it justified the phrase which an eminent writer had suggested for it,—of the “moral interregnum.” Immersed in the cares of private business, and chiefly actuated by an insatiable craving for money or the luxury and social distinction which money brought, the majority of those men who should have been the stay and support of good government paid little heed to public affairs, but rather left them to the control of adventurers, of professional politicians who followed politics as gamblers follow cards,—for the sake of what they could steal from more honest men,—of the least intelligent and least moral members of the16 state. Their common pleas were, either that they were invariably out-manœuvred in the political battle by these veteran strategists, and that they could do no real good at the primaries and the polls, or that the solid good sense and honesty of the country could be relied upon to come out and assume control whenever things passed beyond endurance, and that, meantime, all effort was simply thrown away. It is a natural assumption, now that the end has been seen of all men, that those who used these arguments must have been either fools or selfish knaves. Yet they comprised within their number a large proportion of the successful business and professional men of the country, who could not have thus succeeded had they been devoid of all ability, and who certainly regarded themselves as honest men. The result of their neglect of their country in behalf of their pockets was that while domestic morality, both ideal and real, remained in many parts17 of the land upon a lofty plane, public morality practically ceased to exist.

Men were elected to office, not because they were fitted for the positions to which they aspired, nor because any one believed them fitted, but because they were “available;” because they happened to have few active enemies; because they were comparatively unknown, and nothing could be said against them; because they were rich enough to contribute liberally to corruption funds for the purchase of venal voters; because, in short, they were especially unfit for either honor, trust, or responsibility. The tone of public life became deplorably low. Officials of every station accustomed themselves to ask, when any course of action offered itself, not “Is it right? Is it wise?” but “How will it affect my continuance in office? Will it hurt the party’s prospects?”

Saddest of all and most disheartening was the almost universal extent to which18 this feeling spread among the people. They came to consider this dishonorable and cowardly attitude on the part of Government officers as natural and quite to be expected. The few who remonstrated or pleaded for a more honest official spirit were regarded with good-natured contempt as men meaning well and having lofty ideals, but too visionary for “practical politics;” as “doctrinaires,” “theorists,” etc. There has been corruption in other lands and under other forms of government. But the demoralizing fact in the United States was, not so much that official corruption and cowardice was the rule, as that the people who had the power to rebuke and reform such a condition of things condoned it, took it for granted, continued the corrupt and cowardly time-servers in office and responsibility, or changed them for other equally unfit but shrewder rogues.

It was not strange, in this condition of public sentiment, that other trusts than19 those of Government were abused. The last decade of the Republic was signalized by an unprecedented number of defalcations, embezzlements, and similar crimes against private trust. In the treatment of these crimes, even more clearly than in regard of public dereliction, the utter demoralization of public opinion was demonstrated. It is true that the public prints teemed after each new rascality with virtuous demands for the infliction of condign punishment. It is true that prosecuting officers commonly made complaints and issued warrants with exemplary promptness, taking good care that the newspapers were duly informed of their energetic action. It is true that occasional embezzlers were actually punished by sentences of imprisonment fixed at the minimum extreme of lax and unjustly lenient laws. But these were exceptional cases. Many of the embezzlers were men of social standing or of political importance; they had20 numerous friends; and, no matter though their guilt was clear as the day, it was assumed by the nonchalant public,—taken for granted, even by those who had suffered most,—that these friends would use all their influence to obstruct or prevent merited punishment. In a majority of cases they were too successful. Officials who should have stood faithful sentinels over the public weal to compel the enforcement of justice, generally bowed before the influence which might be exerted to oust them from their offices if they should prove inconveniently virtuous. Sometimes the embezzler was allowed to bribe his custodian and escape. Sometimes he was admitted to bail in such a trifling sum that a percentage of his stealings paid the cost of a default. Sometimes he was allowed to bargain with those whom he had robbed.

It was not considered disgraceful or wrong, if a bank cashier had stolen enough to ruin his bank, for the directors to accept his offer21 to repay half the amount stolen, in consideration of their agreement not to prosecute him. Public sentiment admitted that this compounding felony was objectionable, but refused to condemn the directors who committed the crime for trying to save some of their property from complete wreck. It was taken for granted that men cared more for their wealth than for their honor or the public weal. Even such embezzlers as were actually imprisoned seldom failed to secure from pliant pardoning boards such commutations as rendered their punishment farcical. It came to be a common saying that it was safer to rob a bank of a million dollars than to steal five dollars from a merchant’s till to buy food for a starving wife or child.

The courts, which should have remained the trust and reliance of the people, became as untrustworthy as public sentiment itself. Lawyers adopted the rule that it was their part to win causes for their clients, right or wrong. “Get money! honestly if you can;22 but get money,” was the motto of the business element. “Win your case! by fair means, if possible; but win your case,” was the motto of the legal guild. The advocate who won his client’s case by taking advantage of technicalities or by securing an incapable or prejudiced jury, or by the introduction of false witnesses whose perjuries could not be exposed at the moment, was sure to attain wealth and a high position at the bar. Actual jury-bribing was suspected in many cases; but those who should have been the first to ferret out such offences cared not enough about the purity of the courts to trouble their leisure with the matter.

The judges aided in many States to make the courts over which they presided inefficient and to bring them into public contempt by their blind adherence to outworn precedent and their indiscriminating affection for technical pleadings. Though generally men of the highest personal probity, they might23 be relied upon in any trial to ignore the spirit of the law and the interests of society if a clever attorney could point out in the letter of the law or in some century-old precedent anything to justify them in so doing. A misplaced comma was sufficient to overthrow the intent of an entire statute.

This characteristic of the courts found ample room and verge enough for the most fantastic tricks in a society which was governed by annual legislatures, pouring forth with each succeeding session a very flood and freshet of ill-considered and crudely expressed legislation. So complicated and unintelligible at last became the law that those judges and counsellors who really loved Justice and persistently sought after her, were seldom able to discover her form or features through the mist and fog of statutes and codes and revisions and amendments and precedents which filled the atmosphere in every court devoted to law and, ostensibly, to justice. The wisest24 men and those who devoted their life-long study to the subject were not always able to tell what the law really meant, or whether it meant anything, under the varying interpretations put upon it by different expounders.

Thus it came to pass that any suitor or defendant, provided he was rich enough to secure adroit and learned counsel, was generally able so to delay and hamper the naturally loitering steps of the courts as, by the very law of chance, to bring about opportunities for escape which time could not help affording him. The rich man, whether in a civil or a criminal trial, was much more likely to win his case, whatever its merits, than the man who was unable to employ counsel familiar with the quips and crookednesses of the law. In truth, the prisoner accused of crime who was unable to pay large counsel fees or to bring “influence” to bear in some way or other upon the prosecuting officials, was apt25 to be treated with comparative severity. Within the same year a bank cashier of New York stole $800,000 from his bank, but escaped all punishment by negotiating with the directors for the return of $400,000; while a young street thief of the same city was sent to the penitentiary for twelve years for stealing a penknife worth twenty-five cents! The needy mechanic who purloined a few dollars worth of old junk and sold it to buy either bread for his family or liquor for himself was fairly sure to be punished with as long a term of imprisonment as the defaulter who made away with millions. He was, moreover, certain of punishment, if detected; while the greater thief had at least three chances in four of escaping untouched.

In all directions public sentiment had become corrupted; the popular aspiration had declined to low and sordid levels: yet men looked calmly on the sham and humbug and selfishness and dishonesty26 and injustice which made up the social order of the time, and felt neither fear nor disgust. Even those whose moral senses were acute enough to perceive the rottenness around them stopped their moral olfactories and blinded their moral vision with the unworthy reflection that the existing fabric would last out their time; and then the deluge might sweep whither it would.

Meanwhile, below the thin and treacherous surface, the volcanic fires of a socialistic agitation were blazing up with daily increasing fierceness. The failure of work to laboring men; the widespread and intense suffering consequent thereupon; the conviction that this was not due to any lack of zeal or industry on their part, but to the unequal workings of an artificial and false social order; the growing belief that poverty had become a bar to civil rights, even in the courts, and that wealth had become a sufficient protector of injustice and crime,—all these things combined to add an irresistible weight in the minds of thousands of the less discriminating among the laboring class, especially those of foreign28 birth, to the arguments and appeals of the socialistic leaders in behalf of a complete overturn,—a “revolution.”

Some of these socialistic apostles were simply theorists who could not comprehend why their lofty ideals were in any way impracticable. Others were fanatics,—honest, zealous, earnest, and illogical as fanatics have always been. Others were really maniacs, whom a long life spent under the oppression and tyranny of foreign monarchies had driven into a fierce and virulent hatred of all government and all order. Others were men who would have been unwilling to earn their daily bread by honest industry, had the means been placed at their hands, but who foresaw in great popular disturbances possibilities for self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. All worked harmoniously, however, in the common direction of social anarchy. They had utterly unlike conceptions of the new order which ought to be established on the29 ruins of the old, but they were united in the one conviction that the old must be wholly demolished before the task of reconstruction could be properly begun. And so idealists of noble but impracticable aspirations, and brawling fanatics, and beery mountebanks, and maniacs ambitious for unbridled and orderless anarchy, though perhaps not on speaking terms with each other personally, worked together for one common end, and that end revolution and destruction.

The vigorous measures which had been taken by all the nations of Europe between 1885 and 1887 to clear their own borders of these revolutionists had been effectual in driving hundreds of thousands of them to America. They brought with them their theories, their fanaticism, their fierce hatred of all orderly society. Belonging for the most part themselves to the working-class, they mingled freely with the discontented and suffering workmen whom30 they found already too numerous in the land for the work which was offered either to labor or to skill. Everywhere they spread the infection of their destructive theories. Socialistic organizations sprang up, under one name or another, in almost every city and town and village. Beginning with the Hocking Valley riots in 1884–1885, and, like those disturbances, in constantly closer alliance with the trades-unions, these socialistic societies caused numerous local outbreaks in the districts where workmen were most numerous and work hardest to obtain. Pittsburg, Wheeling, and Fall River suffered especial loss in these riots.

So early as the winter of 1884–1885 it was estimated that in New York city alone eighty-five thousand would-be industrious workmen lay idle, in addition to other thousands never estimated, because outside the pale of any possible census-taking, who would not have worked had31 the opportunity been offered them. A little more than a year later it was freely asserted among the socialists of the country that twice this number were enrolled in their organizations within a radius of ten miles from the New York city hall. In the outbreaks which occurred at other places the officers to whom was committed the task of restoring order generally found themselves opposed most vindictively by men who, a few years before, would have been regarded as the “bone and sinew” of the land. It was noted, too, that these men were always the last to yield to force; that they were always the most sullen and revengeful when finally compelled to do so; and that, even when convicted and undergoing imprisonment, they never showed repentance or sorrow except for failure, constantly boasted of their determination to “try it over again,” and steadily adhered to the belief they would ultimately triumph.

But neither in the importation of exotic socialistic germs nor in the fungus-like growth of indigenous disaffection and corruption lay the only dangers of the Republic. The heterogeneous elements which made up the population of the United States had suffered a great and wholly unfortunate race-change since the foundation of the Government. At the close of the Revolution which separated the colonies from England the country was populated with a sparse but homogeneous people, possessing in an eminent degree the sterling virtues and the robust common-sense which characterize the Anglo-Saxon race. The freedom which these men won and had no capacity for abusing they felt would be33 safe forever in the hands of descendants sprung from their loins. The government they formed was exactly fitted for themselves and for a succeeding nation possessing their sense of order and their intelligence. But they saw a vast unexplored continent opening its wealth before them. Their numbers were but few for its conquest and reclamation. They felt the need of more men. Relying upon the freedom of the institutions they bequeathed and upon the virtue and vigor with which they endowed their heirs, they invited immigration from Europe. They took it for granted that the immigrants would be few in comparison with the native population, and that they would be absorbed and assimilated by the majority as snow-flakes falling in the ocean are absorbed by the great waters and made a part of them.

At first the stream of immigration which flowed westward was no larger than they had anticipated, and gave cause for little34 fear, either by reason of its size or of the classes and races which composed it. But before the first fifty years of the Republic had passed, it became clear that the asylum which it offered was being taken advantage of chiefly by the Irish, and by the very worst portion of the Irish at that. They found their own little island too narrow for them, and flocked to the United States by the hundred thousand. Coming, the most of them, from the lowest ranks of a degraded and ignorant peasantry, they found themselves, in the United States as at home, in a position of inferiority in everything save citizenship. Clannish by race and religious prejudice, they brought with them all their insular and ethnic narrowness and exclusiveness, and remained up to the end of the chapter a class by themselves. Other nationalities sent immigrants who threw off their old allegiances upon touching American soil, became in fact as well as in name Americans, intermarried35 with Americans, and brought up their children to become wholly American in deed and aspiration. But the Irish seldom married outside their own race; they brought up their children to be first Catholic and then Irish as themselves; they remained, and their descendants after them to the third and fourth generation, as much Irishmen as their cousins who continued to inhabit Leinster and Munster.

But they seized with greater eagerness than was exhibited by any other immigrants every political privilege which was within their reach. In politics as in all other interests, their clannishness kept them mainly confined to one party; but even in that they stood as far as possible aloof from the real and patriotic Americans serving in the same organization. Coarse of feature and coarser of mind; servile in their devotion to religious forms, which were never any better than forms to them; superstitious to the last degree; blunted36 in moral sense so as to be amenable to fear alone as a restraining sentiment; utterly illogical and the slaves of ignorant prejudice,—it would be difficult to conceive of immigrants from any modern race less fitted than they for self-government or for exercising a share in the government of others. There were occasional brilliant and noble exceptions; but of the majority this picture is not over-colored. Wherever they touched the political garment they defiled it. In the cities, where their increase by steady immigration and by their own amazing procreative fertility gave them the majority, their power was invariably signalized by a corruption and local tyranny greater than that against which Adams and Jefferson and Washington revolted. As their numbers increased and they became more assured of their political power, their arrogance and reckless abuse of public trust became daily more and more exasperating.

Through all the political changes to which other voters were subject, they remained in practical effect an organization by themselves. As has been said, they grasped with insatiate greed every political right and privilege which the laws afforded them, but refused to become any the less Irishmen. They stubbornly persisted in putting loyalty to the land they had abandoned above loyalty to the land they had adopted and which had opened its hospitality to them. Instead of becoming in reality as well as name American citizens, they remained Irish citizens, an imperium in imperio, and spoke of their life in the United States, even while they were exercising the franchise or sharing in the emoluments of office there, as an “exile.” They boldly proclaimed themselves “patriots,” because, having fled to the United States and accepted its protection and its asylum, they still professed greater devotion and a heartier loyalty to the fatherland38 they had forsworn than to the country to which they had solemnly pledged, by becoming citizens of it, their voluntary and complete allegiance.

In immense numbers these “exiles” united in more or less secret and criminal associations for the “freeing of Ireland.” At first their schemes were comparatively peaceful and their meetings open; but as time passed on, and little visible progress was made in the task of abrogating English supremacy in Ireland, the plots of the wilder zealots grew in acceptance, and the machinations of the plotters took on deadlier aspects. Not only did nine tenths of the later immigrants hasten into these various societies, but fully as great a proportion of the American-born sons of Irish refugees went with them. Whatever may have been their original intentions, such societies as the “Ancient Order of Hibernians,” the “Clan-na-Gael,” the “Emmet Clubs,” the “National Leagues,” and the39 like became in the end a series of widely ramifying conspiracies. In their meetings the wildest schemes of vengeance against England were planned, and bloody plots deliberately woven, not only for the commission of the most fiendish and inhuman crimes against English men and English women and children, but also aiming at the embroilment of the United States in actual war with the other great Anglo-Saxon Power. A large proportion of the most brutal crimes committed in England and Ireland during the long agitation were planned in the United States by these organizations. By far the larger part of the money with which the agitation was fomented and the crimes paid for came from contributions made in the United States, openly and without any attempt to conceal the purposes for which they were made.

At the head of one of the worst of these Irish organizations was an agitator who40 had been driven out of Ireland on account of his persistent attempts against the Government, named Patrick O’Halloran, but more commonly known as “Patsy.” It was by this assumed addition to his name that he was best known. The gang of which he was the acknowledged leader conceived the idea of using dynamite, either in its crude form or made up into “infernal machines,” for the destruction of property and life in England. It was the natural weapon of cowards, who fancied they saw in it a means to inflict serious injury on their enemy without his being able to strike back. It was eagerly adopted by numerous Irish “patriots,” and a school of murderers and destroyers arose, calling themselves “dynamiters.” These American societies collected the necessary funds and sent emissaries to England to purchase or carry with them dynamite for use in blowing up public buildings.

During 1884 two explosions, thus planned, took place in London railway-stations. They were so calculated as to render probable the greatest loss of life among the travelling public; but by lucky chances failed to do anything more than cause much destruction of property and a few slight wounds. In the winter of 1884–1885 explosions of a similar nature occurred in the Tower and the Parliament buildings. By these several innocent sight-seers, including a number of little children, were shockingly mutilated. Shortly afterwards the police discovered and frustrated a plot to blow up the entire auditorium of the Princess’s Theatre during an expected visit of the Prince of Wales to that place of amusement. The details were kept secret, however, in the hope of finding some clew to the perpetrators of the villany. Beyond the discovery that an unknown Irishman had brought the explosive with him from America in a crowded steamship, thus endangering the lives of several42 hundred passengers, nothing was definitely found out.

It was inevitable that these events should have the effect of hardening the English heart towards Ireland and increasing the unwillingness of the English Government to grant anything like home rule to a people which showed itself capable of such crimes, and which almost unanimously applauded them. Nor, considering the Irish character and the utter inability of the Irish mind to reason where its prejudices are involved, could it be thought strange that the English severity which these outrages compelled was accepted by the entire Irish populace as a sufficient excuse to throw aside every figment of humanity to which they had thus far laid claim, and to join themselves, heart and soul, to the most barbarous schemes of the vilest wretches who professed affection for “Poor Ireland.”

In the early winter of 1886–1887 a state dinner had been prepared at Windsor Castle.43 A large number of titled and prominent guests had been bidden, and it was announced that the Queen would honor the banquet by her presence. Owing to a detention of a few minutes in the arrival of the train from London, bringing several members of the Cabinet, the hour originally set for the dinner was, at the last moment, changed, and a short postponement of the dinner ordered. In this interval, and not ten minutes after the time at which, had the original arrangements been carried out, the guests would have entered the dining-hall, there occurred under it a terrible explosion, by which it was utterly wrecked. As it happened, no one was in the room except a servant, who was engaged in arranging the flowers upon the table. His death was instantaneous; and it was hours before the mangled remains of his body were exhumed from the smoking ruins.

The news of this direct attempt on the Queen’s life filled England with a perfect44 fury of revenge. Popular sentiment demanded the adoption of stringent measures for the suppression of “dynamitism” and the punishment of criminals engaged in it. A flood of bills was let loose upon Parliament, the enactment of the mildest of which would have resulted in the depopulation of Ireland and its transformation into an English colony. Meetings were held in every part of England and Scotland to express detestation of this attempt to murder the Queen. The newspapers were filled with the most sensational appeals and the most scorching invective aimed at Irishmen.

In the midst of this turmoil the police arrested Timothy Gallivan, an American, born in Massachusetts and educated in its common schools, but the son of an Irish immigrant, full of half-crazy ideas about his “duty” to Ireland, and fevered with anxiety in some way to “revenge” her upon her “oppressors.” Secreted in one45 of the hiding-places to which Gallivan was tracked were found papers constituting an extensive correspondence. They proved that Gallivan was an American; that he was a member of an Irish society in New York; that he held office in that society; that he had been sent to London as its accredited agent and representative and at its expense; that his instructions had been to cause the death, by dynamite explosion, of some member or members of the royal family, “the nearer the top the better;” and that he had associated with him, either before or after his arrival in London from New York, some twenty kindred spirits. The names of his fellow-conspirators were obtained, either from Gallivan’s papers or from the confessions of those whose identity had been therein disclosed. When once any Irish conspiracy began to be unravelled, there never failed to appear at least half as many “informers” as conspirators, eager to betray their associates46 for reward or safety. This was no exception. In less than two weeks from the date of the explosion in Windsor Castle, every detail of the plot was in the possession of the public, and twenty of the “dynamiters,” including their leader and chief, were in custody, with amply sufficient evidence in the way of documents, confessions, and corroborating circumstance to send them all to the gallows. By far the most important and significant feature, however, in the whole murderous affair was the amount of proof it put into the hands of the police that the crime was exclusively Irish-American in its inception, its details, its payment, and even the personnel of the criminals.

Armed with this proof, the British Government peremptorily demanded of the United States that the Irish societies within its jurisdiction which were engaged in this crime be put down, and that action be taken to prevent further attacks on England by47 their associate organizations. The Secretary of State unquestionably appreciated the justice of the British demand. Unfortunately, however, for both parties, the British note was couched in a dictatorial and offensive style. Even this a man of the Secretary of State’s common sense would doubtless have excused as the natural outcome of a justifiable indignation, had not an incautious employé in his department allowed a copy of the note to fall into the possession of a New York daily newspaper. In twenty-four hours it had been read by every dynamiter in the country capable of spelling out words. Congress and the executive departments were promptly made to feel that upon the tone of the answer to England’s demand depended the political support of more than a million voters, whose withdrawal would insure the crushing defeat of the party then in power.

It was the same position in which the men who ruled in Congress and in the48 administration had been placed many a time before, confronting the question whether to do that which was clearly right and trust to a future public sentiment to justify them, or to throw conscience and judgment overboard, trim sails to the political squall of the moment, and hope for the chance at some indefinite future of using the power thus retained to undo the wrong committed in holding it. Popular sentiment had often enough shown that the man who did right to his own detriment was regarded as an impractical fellow, a theorist, a “doctrinaire.” It was the man who succeeded, who attained power the soonest and retained it the longest, no matter by what tricks or sacrifices of conscience, who was looked upon as “smart” and admired for his “ability.” So, when this time again the question came home to the men in place and station whether they could afford to do right and lose the support of the only element which gave their party49 hope of success in the North and West, or bow to the blast and continue in possession of the Government for four or eight years more, they yielded as they had become accustomed to yield in all similar dilemmas.

A curt and sarcastic reply was despatched from Washington to the English note, and care was taken that it should be published as widely in the United States as that document had been. It was received with a roar of Irish triumph. A few journals criticised it; but they soon found that there was so much resentment at the offensive tone of the British letter even among men who sympathized least with the Irish plot that the Secretary’s snub caused fully as much quiet enjoyment as annoyance. Other correspondence followed between the two foreign offices in constantly angrier spirit, and the spring of 1887 found both nations standing on the very verge of war, waiting only for some50 overt casus belli to draw the sword against each other.

Such was the domestic condition of the country, such the elements of convulsion and upheaval fermenting beneath the thin crust of its social order, such its relations with the greatest naval Power of the world, in the month of April, 1887. From that time the march of events was rapid to the final disaster.

The 19th of April was a fateful day in the history of the Republic. On the 19th of April, 1775, was fought the battle of Lexington, from which the nation dated its birth as an independent Power. On the 19th of April, 1861, the Massachusetts Volunteers, hurrying to Washington to protect the national capital from the threatened attacks of Southern rebels, were fired upon in the streets of Baltimore by a mob of rebel sympathizers. On the 19th of April, 1887, began in bloody earnest the revolution which was fated to end in the utter extinction of the Republic and the erasure of its once proud name from the list of nations.

The socialist leaders took to heart and profited by the lesson which the Cincinnati riots of 1884 had taught. Those disturbances began in the indignation of an outraged public, angered beyond endurance by the shameful, repeated, and demoralizing defeats to which justice had been subjected in the local courts of law. But they soon took on a different cast. What had at first been the protest of good citizenship was transformed into a saturnalia of crime and ruffianism. Yet the very fact that good citizens had been concerned in the first day’s imprudences made the task of putting down the outlaws and criminals who continued the riots on the second and third days so much the more difficult. The suggestion contained in this was not to lie fallow in the secret councils where anarchy was plotted. Long after the conspirators were ready to strike, they delayed the blow, till an occasion should arise in which they might seem, for a time at least, to be the53 allies of good and patriotic citizens. Had a leader with a purpose been behind the Cincinnati riots, they saw that the work of suppressing them, after their initial success, would have taxed the resources of the country as well as the State. They waited for an opportunity.

Composed of men whose grievance was against all law and order, and whose dream was of untrammelled personal liberty and license, the socialistic organizations had yet been gathered together, at this time, into a certain union. They aspired after anarchy, but had reason enough left to see that if they would destroy an organized government, they must themselves organize. They had a head, a mysterious centre known among outsiders and to the most of the socialists themselves as “The Council of Seven,” but whom the few fully initiated knew to be a single individual.

Even to this day the name of this person is unrevealed. Like “The Man in the54 Iron Mask,” his identity promises to become one of the mysteries of the ages. Those who were permitted to share his counsels were few in number, and bound to him and to each other by terrible oaths requiring them to preserve eternal silence. Among themselves his name was never uttered or written. He was referred to sometimes as “Number One,” sometimes as “Ben Hassan,” sometimes, with an approach to familiarity, as “The Old Man.” Whoever he was, it is certain that he must have been a man of vast executive ability, of iron will, of amazingly fertile resources, and of a hatred of civilization and of the amenities of humanity which would have done credit to the prime minister of hell. He received the advice of his “cabinet” of confidential associates; he was in constant correspondence with socialistic societies all over the Union and in Europe: but it is the testimony of all the correspondence of this period so far unearthed that his rule was55 autocratic, and that even those who protested most fiercely against all distinction of rank and position yielded him for the time being a slavish obedience, holding in complete abeyance their dearest theories until such time as their schemes of disorganization and anarchy should have become successful. His headquarters were never mentioned, and his orders emanated from widely separated parts of the Union; but it was commonly believed that his principal abiding place was in Chicago.

For years Chicago had been noted for the inefficiency and corruption of its courts, which were so manifest as to call down censure even from men who saw nothing serious in the decadence of courts elsewhere. Frequent miscarriages of justice had made the people of the city angry beyond measure; and the prophecy had been in many mouths that a repetition there of the Cincinnati riots, starting from a similar cause, was only a question of time.

On the morning of the 19th of April, 1887, the jury which had been sitting in the case of Alfred McKenna, a young man charged with the murder of John P. Quillinan, returned a verdict finding McKenna guilty of assault and recommending him to mercy. The murder had been a peculiarly atrocious one. Quillinan and McKenna had been rivals for some minor local office, and had quarrelled. McKenna had followed Quillinan to his home and shot him in the presence of his wife and daughter, seriously wounding the little girl, who endeavored to protect her father’s life. There was no denial of these facts by the defence. But McKenna was a man of some social position, of considerable wealth, of handsome person and winning address. Moreover, he and his friends wielded a powerful political influence. The case had required three trials. Twice the jury had disagreed. The third trial lasted nearly a month, and the jury took five days57 to agree upon their scandalous verdict. It was handed to the clerk of the court in writing during a temporary adjournment, and the jury separated, first allowing it to be known that they had originally stood seven for acquittal to five for murder in the first degree, and that the seven had refused to accept any compromise more severe upon the prisoner than the one finally adopted.

In less than an hour after the verdict had been announced, its character was known over the entire city. McKenna’s political friends rejoiced; but the vast majority of better citizens felt outraged beyond endurance. Angry knots of men gathered at every street corner. A fierce wave of indignation swept over the city. Into the midst of this public excitement came the news that McKenna had paid the fine of fifty dollars and costs which the court had imposed, and had left the court-house a free man, while Quillinan’s widow58 had been removed in a fainting-fit, her wounded daughter clinging to her dress, to the county poor-house. This news was like a shaft of lightning falling upon an oil-tank. In an instant the city blazed up with inextinguishable fury.

A crowd of maddened men, including in their number many of the best and most respected citizens of Chicago, hurried with frenzied yells to the court-house. They filled its lobbies and surged into the room in which the judge who had fined McKenna was presiding over another case. He saw mischief in the faces of the very first who burst unceremoniously upon the speech of the drawling advocate before him. He heard something worse than mere mischief in the roar of passion and vengeance which swelled in the courtyard and the street. Hastily adjourning the court, he fled, barely in time to save his own life.

Finding the jurymen who had returned the verdict in McKenna’s case already59 separated, the mob divided. A portion hurried in search of McKenna; others set out for the residences or places of business of the obnoxious jurymen; others remained to dismantle the court-room and hustle the officers who were unlucky enough to fall into their hands. McKenna heard of the mob and fled the city. Four of the seven jurymen who had voted “not guilty” also received warning, and escaped. Three were caught by the mob. Two were hanged to lamp-posts without a minute’s delay or the opportunity being given them to say a word. The third, who was reported to have said, before going on the jury, that “hanging was played out in Chicago as well as New York,” was compelled to watch the execution of the other two, and taunted with his remark. His terror and abject pleas for mercy finally prevailed with his captors, who spared his life and set him free, with a few sharp cuts from a heavy whip which60 a dealer in saddlery had seized as he ran out of his store to join the crowd. But a second party coming up, enraged because so many of the unjust jurors had escaped, seized him and hung him beside the bodies of the others.

A young man, afterwards found to be the brother of the widow Quillinan, sprang on a dry-goods box and made an impassioned harangue to the mob, telling of the misery of the bereaved family, then huddling together at the poor-house, while McKenna and his family were rolling in luxury. Instantly the cry arose, “Burn their houses!” With incredible speed the mob, already beginning to gather reinforcements from the vilest human scum of the vile city, rushed to the McKenna mansion. Its inmates fled from the rear as the mob poured in at the front. Petroleum was brought, and the house fired in twenty places.

The verdict of the jury had been announced61 at five minutes after ten o’clock in the morning. Before three o’clock the judge, the defendant, and nine of the jurors were fleeing from the city; three jurors had been hanged by the mob; a round dozen of the most palatial residences along Michigan Avenue, taking fire from the McKenna mansion, had burned to the ground. The police had made a feeble effort at the beginning of the riot to restore order; but the force was a partisan one, it was largely made up of the party to which Quillinan had belonged, and its sympathies were really with the mob. When the officers in command saw leading the rioters the very men to whose influence they largely owed their positions, they made but a show of resistance. The vengeance of the mob was allowed to burn itself out.

Suddenly, near the close of the afternoon, as if by magic, every dead wall and hoarding of the city took on a sinister aspect.62 From top to bottom, and from end to end, they glowed with huge red posters, bearing in white letters in the centre these words:—

It was the preconcerted signal for the socialist uprising, though of course nothing of the sort was suspected at the time. In the midst of the rioting of the day the work of a thousand hands, fastening these posters to the walls, had not been noticed. Nor was the effect of the proclamation immediately apparent. The mob slowly dissolved. Night came on. A few detached bands of marauders wandered about the streets. They were summarily dispersed by the police, who had recovered their activity and energy as the character of the rioters changed. The city newspaper offices were filled with busy scribes preparing sensational63 accounts of the outbreak for the morning issues. The proprietors congratulated themselves in advance upon the enormous editions which would be sold the next day. Long accounts were telegraphed to newspapers in other parts of the country. In scarcely one of these was the appearance of the mysterious placards mentioned. The riot was believed to be over. The very citizens who had taken part in the scenes of the morning could be relied upon for aid in suppressing any unpleasant attempts to renew them. And so the night wore on.

The city bells began to strike the hour of midnight. Suddenly into their measured and musical strokes clashed the discord of a fire-alarm. Before the trained ears of the professional firemen could count the number of the box whence it was sent, another followed. A third and fourth came almost simultaneously. It was impossible to tell how many different alarms64 were being sounded, or what was the number of a single one. The firemen were confused and uncertain. Messengers arrived at the engine-houses, in hot haste, begging for help in half a hundred different directions. The night skies were reddening with the light of conflagrations which seemed to be raging in every quarter of the city at once. Above all continued the unmeaning clangor of the bells. The engines were sent to the nearest fires of which the firemen could obtain information. But they found at every burning building a foe more terrible than the flames.

Obedient to the orders of their chiefs and pursuant to a carefully arranged plan, the socialists, the anarchists, the communists, the nihilists,—all the combined lawless hordes of the great city had gathered to strike their first real blow at society. They met with open opposition the firemen’s efforts to extinguish the flames. Hose was cut as fast as it could be laid.65 Engines were attacked and rendered useless. The entire police force was ordered out; but the fires, which by this time were raging in a hundred different streets, compelled their division into small parties. The firemen had been fought only by destroying their apparatus and by driving them from the buildings they were trying to save. The police, however, found that the mob was armed for them with deadlier weapons. Revolvers and rifles were more numerous among the rioters than clubs among the police. Divided as they were, and without hope of aid from reserves, the police were speedily overcome, one detachment after another falling back in defeat. The mayor was besought to order out the militia. But it was evident at once that he either sympathized with the mob or was afraid to take any earnest steps which might anger it. He had been elected as the representative of the worst political element in the city and nation.66 He professed to have scruples lest it should be found beyond his legal powers to summon the militia. Some of the merchants, disgusted and dismayed by his conduct, sent hasty despatches to the State capital, telling what was going on and begging for instant help. From Springfield orders were issued directing the entire militia of the State to rendezvous at Chicago.

Morning dawned at last. It found every piece of fire-extinguishing apparatus in Chicago a useless wreck; it found the firemen scattered and unable to perform their duties; it found over seven hundred buildings in ashes, and a still greater number on fire and doomed to certain destruction; it found ninety-one of the police force dead on the pavements, and twice as many more suffering from disabling wounds in hospitals hurriedly extemporized in the parks and among the suburbs; it found the city in the complete possession of a maddened mob, a mob numbering over eighteen67 thousand fully armed men; it found gathering to oppose them a force of ill-armed, half-drilled, utterly inexperienced militia, numbering about one third as many. No one at Springfield had a correct appreciation of the magnitude or character of the émeute. Even the officers commanding the militia failed to comprehend the difficulty of the task before them.

Hastily forming in front of the Chicago and Alton railroad station, two regiments, numbering a little over a thousand men, undertook to clear the street. The rioters met them with a determined front. As usual with citizen soldiery, their muskets were loaded with blank cartridges, and they hesitated to fire upon fellow-citizens. They believed that their appearance would be sufficient to cow the rioters into submission. They marched steadily to within a few yards of the mob. The officer in command stepped out in front of his troops and besought the crowd to disperse quietly,68 and thus prevent bloodshed. His answer was a laugh of derision, in the midst of which a rifle-shot was heard, and he fell mortally wounded on the pavement. The troops fired a volley from their blank cartridges. The mob responded with a rain of bullets from rifles and revolvers. With a wild yell they charged on the militia. Not a bayonet was fixed. The troops stood the onset but a moment, then broke into disorder. In two minutes they were in full flight, each one seeking a hiding-place to save his own life.

Elated by this success, the rioters—or the revolutionists, as they henceforth called themselves—formed in a cordon around the remaining militia. Among the State troops was one regiment gathered chiefly from Chicago. Seeing familiar faces in their ranks, some of the mob shouted to know if they would murder their friends. The regiment contained many who were themselves affected by socialistic doctrines.69 The men wavered. A signal for attack was given from the mob; and with a shout which rang over the roar of the burning city like the scream of ten thousand demons, it flung itself upon the little body of militiamen. The Chicago regiment threw down its arms and refused to fight, a considerable portion of its men going over to the revolutionists. The others fought desperately, seeing that it was for their lives. Their struggle was in vain. The enemy was as brave as they, four times more numerous, and better armed. Many of the troops had been summoned in such haste that they had not donned their uniforms, but appeared in the ranks in their ordinary dress. These, by throwing down their guns and mingling with the mob, escaped. Of those in uniform not a corporal’s guard survived.

An officer who contrived to escape unhurt sent the news to Springfield. Even before the arrival of his despatch the Governor70 had become alarmed and had telegraphed to Washington, asking aid from the National Government. As soon as he learned the disaster which had fallen upon his militia, he sent another appeal for haste. The national authorities responded with promptness and zeal. Before noon of the 20th, orders from Washington had been forwarded to all the available troops east of the Rocky Mountains to proceed to Chicago without delay and by the most expeditious routes. General Brook was ordered to take command of the forces which should meet there, and to suppress the riots.

It was not till the 23d that he felt himself strong enough to move on the city. On that day he had fifteen thousand troops at his command, and knew that other detachments, to the number of nearly five thousand more, were nearing his lines. Shortly before noon his advance entered Chicago.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the gloom of that entry. No city which had suffered the pillage and sack of a horde of Vandals in the early ages of the Christian era ever showed a more terrible picture of ruin and desolation than Chicago presented to the view of the soldiers as they marched slowly across what had once been its business centre toward Michigan Avenue, where it was reported the rioters were preparing to make a stand against them. All but the revolutionists and the Irish inhabitants of the city had fled from it. There was no sign of life in any of the stores or shops which had escaped the flames. Their doors and windows were generally open, but only to disclose the fact that they had been gutted by the mob. By far the greater portion, however, had been burned. The fires which had been kindled on the night of the 19th had raged all the following day and night, but had been partially extinguished by a heavy rain which fell all72 the night of the 21st. The city was still covered by a dense pall of smoke, and here and there flames showed themselves among the ruins. It was evident that there would be no lack of work for the troops, after the rioters were dispersed, in saving what was left of the city. Not a sign of life was to be seen along the streets, except when a party of pioneers, hurriedly searching some house in which there was the possibility that sharpshooters might be hiding to fire on the troops, now and then stirred up some drunken ruffian from his alcoholic stupor and dragged him into the light. The business portion of the city and that occupied by the residences of the wealthier citizens presented the most complete ruin. As the soldiers debouched on Michigan Avenue they saw that not a single one of the magnificent palaces which had once lined that street was left standing.

As had been expected, the revolutionists were found drawn up here, protected in73 front by a rude barricade, in which trunks of trees, paving-stones, pianos, and pieces of elegant furniture were inextricably confused. They had seized anything which had bulk, without reference to its character, to build into the barricade. It was open towards the lake, and was so clumsily and unskilfully constructed as to afford almost no protection to the six or eight thousand men who were seen huddled behind it.

General Brook did not disdain to learn a lesson in tactics from the action of the mob itself during the fight with the militia. He halted out of range of the barricade till detachments could be sent so as to surround it on all sides. Gatling and Hotchkiss guns were brought to bear upon it from three directions. Neither the general nor his men had been predisposed by the sights they had witnessed on their march through the city to show consideration to the rioters. It was nearly six o’clock when everything was ready. The74 Gatling guns opened with a fierce fire upon the barricade, which threw the crowd behind it into utter confusion. When their fire ceased, the troops with a ringing cheer sprang forward and attacked the flimsy defences. The contest was soon over. The revolutionists broke into uncontrollable disorder. Some one among them raised a handkerchief on the end of a stick, and the troops were ordered to stop firing. About five hundred of those who seemed most active in the mob’s ranks were arrested; the remainder of the crowd was allowed to slink away. The riot was ended; and the soldiers, after first scouring the city to make sure that no more resistance was likely to be offered them, turned to the task of extinguishing with such means as were at their hands the smouldering fires, which still threatened danger.

It was found that about twenty-five hundred buildings had been burned. As the insurance companies did not insure against75 destruction by riot, the loss was complete and irremediable. How much property was stolen or destroyed in buildings which were not burned was never known; but there were few stores or houses giving promise of containing anything valuable which had not been looted. Nor was the loss of life ever accurately learned. Weeks after the restoration of order, dead bodies were discovered in cisterns and sewers or floating in the lake. It is not probable that all were recovered; but over seven thousand four hundred deaths are known to have occurred.

A few trials followed the arrests which were made by the army between the 23d and the 30th of April. But the socialistic poison had invaded the jury-box; and despite the horror which all the better class of citizens felt at the barbarians who had sacked the city, it was found next to impossible to secure a jury which would convict upon anything but the most overwhelming76 proof of actual complicity in some specified crime. This was of course difficult to obtain. Two men who had been recognized by several firemen as the murderers of a policeman who attempted to drive them from an engine which they were destroying on the morning of the 20th, were hanged; a few were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment; a few others were fined: but against the greater number all proceedings were dropped, and they were set free.

No words can adequately describe the fear which fell upon good men all over the land when the real character and purpose of the riot became known. Considerable sympathy had been felt for the first day’s movement, which was rightly regarded as a protest against the stupid inefficiency of the courts, rather than an outbreak against the established order. But when the awful anarchy of the succeeding days came to be understood, and the true nature of the plot against society to be appreciated, there was something like a panic among men who had stakes in the prosperity of the nation, and whose wealth or homes depended upon the maintenance of order.

It was not a hopeful sign that, in the midst of this horror and dread which fell upon men of property and standing, the socialists everywhere openly expressed their sympathy with the “revolution,” and their belief that the Chicago riot was only the first gun in a battle which was to rage over the length and breadth of the land. Nor was the attitude taken by the Irish any the more reassuring. They had not engaged in the riots at Chicago, neither had they opposed the rioters. So far as could be learned, not a single member of any of the great Irish societies had been molested in person or property during the riots. In other parts of the country, too, the Irish leaders spoke with a new and strange tone. They expressed a strong condemnation, it is true, of the excesses into which the rioters had been “driven;” but in no case did they denounce the rioters themselves, or fail to express their sympathy with what they were pleased to term79 “an oppressed and struggling common people.”

Two days after the troops had taken possession of the city, the leading daily paper managed to collect enough material and men to issue a small four-page sheet. The leading article in this issue, in deliberately chosen but unmistakable language, charged that the Irish organizations of the city had not only sympathized with the rioters, but had in many instances actually given them material aid, furnishing them arms, acting as spies for them, and offering some of the leaders hiding-places when search was made for them after the restoration of order. No denial was made to this. But the Irish Press responded to the charge with a counter-accusation. It declared that the article was the result of partisan spite, inspired by the fact that the Irish usually acted with the political party to which their editorial assailant was opposed. With few exceptions, the Press of that party took up80 the cry, and charged his paper with having insulted “a vast and respectable body of citizens, in order to make contemptible political capital.”

The excitement gradually subsided,—as it was the misfortune (or the wickedness) of the American people that excitement over public wrongs always did. But good men everywhere continued to look to the future with a dread which they did not dare to put into words.

A considerable body of soldiery was retained in barracks close without the city till midsummer. The withdrawal of so many troops from the frontier encouraged several of the Indian tribes, who had been most cruelly cheated and robbed by the Government, to take the war-path. The Gros-Ventres, the Nez-Percés, the Utes, and the Apaches revolted at almost the same time, and began attacks on settlers and frontier posts. The troops were ordered once more to the West; and before81 the middle of July there was an even smaller proportion of the regular army east of the great plains than before the Chicago outbreak.

This situation of affairs roused the better citizens, irrespective of party, to the necessity for some action to protect other cities from any attempt on the part of their socialists to imitate Chicago. Congress was still in session. It had been debating a river and harbor bill for two months, and had taken up, as a relief, the momentous question whether a half-million-dollar post-office and sub-treasury should be built at Mandan. There was every prospect that two months more would be spent in orations and committee hearings and bargainings over this question. The members, as usual, appeared to have no conception of the needs of the country, and no regard for any dangers which might menace it. A few attempts had been made to secure some action which might avert the war82 with England, into which the continued plots and crimes of Irishmen in the United States were dragging the nation. But both parties were afraid of the Irish vote,—more afraid of it than of committing a great wrong on a friendly Government; and these attempts failed to secure any seconding from either side. After the riot at Chicago, several set speeches had been delivered,—that is to say, printed in the “Congressional Record,”—and a committee had been appointed to investigate the matter. But the committee was unable to decide whether the son of the senator from Arkansas, who was chairman on the part of the Senate, or the nephew of the member from Connecticut, who was chairman on the part of the House, should be their secretary; and so they had not yet undertaken to hear anything concerning the matter on which they were appointed. The majority in both Houses reposed in a sort of intellectual and moral torpor.83 When any member did partially awake, it was only to cast his eye far enough into the future to scan the chances of his own re-election.

At this juncture a convention of representative business men from all parts of the land was called at New York to consider the state of the country. The situation was discussed with freedom, and it was unanimously resolved that the dangers to which society was exposed demanded such an increase of the army as would allow the constant retention of a considerable force within calling distance of the larger cities, in readiness for another possible outbreak. A petition was drawn up to this effect, and numerously signed in all the cities. A committee, consisting of a leading and representative man from each one of fifty-eight cities, was deputed to present the petition to Congress and urge the passage of the law suggested.

Congress received the petition, and a member from New York introduced the bill proposed. Never was a stronger proof given of the truth of the old saying, “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” Instead of hastening the passage of the bill, which asked an increase of only twenty-five thousand men for the army,—making its total strength but fifty thousand,—Congress delayed any consideration of it for two weeks. When it finally secured a hearing in the “committee of the whole House,” it was met by the familiar outcry against the danger to the Republic of a great standing army. For three weeks more the “Congressional Record” was filled with high-sounding and attenuated repetitions of that outworn demagogism. One hundred and thirty-two speeches were delivered, during these three weeks, upon a measure the importance of which was manifest upon its face, and the necessity for which it had not taken a convention85 of business men as many days to agree upon. Before this eruption of cheap eloquence had ceased flowing, the time for useful action had passed. The blow had been struck.

By the latter part of July a considerable portion of the population had returned to Chicago, many of its business houses were open again for trade, and others were in process of rapid re-erection. The wharves were crowded with vessels bringing materials and supplies. The streets rang with the sound of workmen hurrying forward the construction of the new city. An intense rivalry sprang up between the proprietors of different stores as to which should be ready first for business. The workmen were pushed to the utmost; and it was not uncommon to see a whole street brilliantly illuminated by electric lights from sunset to sunrise, while work was pushed87 twenty-four hours in the day and seven days in the week. This moment was seized by the mysterious “Council of Seven” for the grand coup. The former riot had been only a rehearsal; the curtain was now rung up on the drama itself.

At noon on the 18th of July a large majority of the workmen employed upon the new buildings laid down their tools and compelled those who were not in the plot to do the same. Their plea was that no man had the right to exact over eight hours work for a day’s wages, while many of them were compelled to work twelve hours, and that for seven days in the week. They demanded fifty per cent increase of wages or a reduction in the hours of work. In their anxiety to complete their tasks, a few builders yielded. But the particular “strikers” who had thus won their case refused to begin work again till all the builders and contractors of the city should have agreed to their demand. This, too,88 was finally brought about. By that time the arrogance of the “strikers” had increased,—rather, their orders from “The Old Man,” as they called the revolutionist head, had been modified,—and they refused to take up hammer or trowel till the city council should pass an ordinance making eight hours a day’s work, with no deductions for holidays or for absences by reason of sickness, and with double pay for all night and Sunday work, whether of necessity, mercy, or caprice.

Roused at last to a conviction that they were being played with, and that the demands of their men were merely pretexts, a secret movement for the collection of fresh workmen from abroad was begun by certain contractors. It was manœuvred with so much secrecy and success that no news of the scheme escaped till the 10th of August, three weeks after the beginning of the strike. On that day two long trains loaded with workmen from neighboring89 cities rolled into Chicago, and the jubilant contractors who had secured them led them to the unfinished buildings, which loomed amid skeletons of scaffolding in various parts of the city, and set them at work.

The news spread like wildfire among the “strikers,” and angry crowds gathered before every building on which work had been begun by the strangers. The interlopers were ordered to lay down their tools and leave the city. They treated these demands with contempt; and the superintendents, owners, and contractors, armed with revolvers, succeeded for a time in keeping the crowds at bay while the “strikers” waited for orders. Late in the afternoon the orders came. Messengers were seen forcing their way through the sullenly biding crowds, and issuing directions on either side as they passed. In an instant the aspect of affairs changed. The men, who had thus far shown no deadlier90 weapons than sticks or occasional bricks and paving-stones, suddenly drew the revolvers with which they were secretly armed, and began a deadly attack on the workmen who had refused to drop work at their bidding.

It would be useless to relate in detail the story of what ensued. The socialists, having formed an alliance with the Irish societies, had also absorbed the trades-unions,—another of the curses with which foreign immigration had endowed the country,—and had chosen them as the means through which to precipitate this second revolt. Once more the city was delivered up to a lawless and ravening mob, fourfold more vindictive and ferocious than that of the April émeute.

The Government was again appealed to for troops. But the army was among the mountains and plains of the farthest West, engaged in the most desperate Indian war which had yet been waged. Congress was91 besought to do something. It continued to emit vast quantities of eloquence (?), unmingled with common sense, over the dangers attending an increase of the army. The President issued a proclamation and sent a message to Congress asking for instructions and authority to summon volunteers.

During the wearisome and fruitless debates with which Congress had occupied the previous month, bands had been formed in several of the larger cities, under the title of “Protective Associations,” or “Protectors,” to defend local interests in case outbreaks should occur before an increase in the army could be secured. In despair of securing efficient aid from any other source, the Governor of Illinois—for the Mayor of Chicago had long since shown himself unwilling to take any action against the revolutionists—sent an appeal to such cities in the West as had organized these associations, begging for whatever92 help they could send him. His appeal met with a ready and generous response. Detachments started with all speed for Chicago from Cincinnati, St. Louis, Louisville, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburg, Rochester, Buffalo, and other cities. They were undisciplined, but fully armed, and animated as one man with the determination to crush the revolutionists so utterly that they should cause no further danger to Chicago within a generation. Among them were many who had seen service in the Union army during the great rebellion. The detachments which first arrived found the enemy stronger than they had supposed, and discovered that their task was likely to be a severe and costly one. It was determined to summon still more men; and New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston were called upon. From all, the response was prompt and loyal. Fully fifty thousand men converged upon the environs of Chicago.

It does not seem to have occurred to any of those who thus gallantly hastened to the relief of their sister city that in so doing they were exposing their own homes, defenceless, to the danger of attack from domestic organizations in sympathy with the Chicago rioters and acting under the same direction. But this was the very event for which the master-spirit of the combined revolutionists had waited; the one which he had foreseen; the one upon which he had based his plans. While the trains bearing the last of the reinforcements from New York and Boston to the “Protectors” before Chicago were flying across the Illinois prairies, he issued his final order, and struck his long-delayed but crushing blow. Its effects were instantly and simultaneously felt in every quarter of the land.

As the little army of citizens, aided by a few national troops which the Government had been able to gather from forts along the Atlantic coast, were busily preparing94 for a movement upon the revolutionists, telegrams began to pour in upon them from New York, Boston, and the other cities which they had left, announcing the rising of mobs in each one and the impossibility of resisting them in the absence of so many of the natural militia at Chicago. The truth dawned, with the suddenness of lightning and with equal distinctness, upon the entire country. It was seen that the revolutionists had waited till a large proportion of those citizens bound together for the defence of law and the maintenance of order had been massed in another direction. They had then, in accordance with a thoroughly understood plan, risen in every city and begun the work of destruction for which their souls had long thirsted.

From East and West and South flashed over the shuddering wires dire tidings of riot, rapine, pillage, murder, anarchy. Destructive and insatiate mobs ruled in what had been the seats of order and prosperous95 trade and happy homes. Every city in the Union was turned into a veritable gateway of Gehenna. The scenes of barbarous vandalism which had made the name of Chicago a reproach in the ears of the world were re-enacted in scores of her sister towns. Leaving Chicago to its fate, the men who had been summoned to its aid hurried frenziedly homeward in the hope of saving their families or their possessions from utter annihilation. The nation stood aghast, panic-stricken, and bereft of its usual energies before this great horror of incredible wickedness which had burst with volcanic suddenness and havoc upon the land. From Boston to Galveston, from Savannah to Minneapolis, the heavens were thick with the smoke of burning cities bearing upwards in its coils the reek of innocent blood.

At last Congress and the executive departments awoke. The act for an increase of the army, asked for two months before, was hastily passed. It was even amended so as to give the President power to call out a hundred thousand volunteers from the natural militia of the States, if such a measure should in his judgment become necessary. But the action, which might possibly have been useful in the early summer, came too late at the end of August.

The war which had broken forth was such a combat as had never before been waged. There have been civil wars in other times and other countries, but they97 always have been more or less sectional. Whether eventually successful or not, there always has been a part of the land involved in which the friends of existing government were in the majority, and which could be relied upon as a base for operations against insurgents. But this revolt was at every man’s door. Except in a few rural and sparsely populated districts, all forms of government were disrupted or blocked. The law-abiding citizens found themselves suddenly without organization and at the mercy of predatory bands, which fell upon them one after another. The anarchists, by a strange paradox, were the best disciplined and the best organized.

Here and there hasty levies were made among the friends of good order; but they did not know whom to trust. A man’s nearest neighbor, who never had been suspected of sympathy with the socialists, was not unlikely to prove their agent and propagandist in secret, and in communication98 with them, revealing the intentions of their opponents. Volunteers, who under other circumstances and to repel any other form of attack would have flocked to the Government’s service from the smaller villages and country towns, dared hardly stir out of their own fields, from fear of attacks on their homes.

In the midst of this panic, and uncertainty, and lack of organization, the telegraph lines between the chief centres of communication were cut. It was made impossible for the authorities to transmit information or to perfect arrangements. Despatches from the National Government to the governors of different States or to its own subordinates were stopped by agents of the revolutionists and reported to their own chiefs. These leaders in some instances acted upon the intelligence thus secured in defeating the Government’s plans. In other cases they sent back misleading answers, purporting to come from the officials99 addressed; thus doubly confusing the Government’s operations.

In many cities and towns the very officers whose duty it was to preserve order and repress riots felt themselves dependent upon the votes of the mob for their positions, and dared not do any active work against it. Wherever it was possible to call out the local militia, the citizen soldiery were found true, except in a few of the larger cities where the socialistic contagion was rankest. But the panic which had fallen on other citizens had not failed to affect these young men, many of whom had entered the militia for amusement rather than any more serious purpose, and who were nicknamed by their opponents “holiday soldiers.” Nowhere were they called into service till it was too late for anything but overwhelming force to prevail,—such overwhelming force as they could not muster. Nowhere were the civil magistrates willing to apply heroic treatment100 till more pacific measures had been tried. The revolutionists, drunk with fanatic frenzy and elated with the success of their first days of destruction and pillage, rushed on the militia, whenever a collision became inevitable, with reckless bravery and desperation. The result was that a score of regiments in as many different States were actually cut to pieces by raging mobs, while pallid-lipped mayors or aldermen were reading the riot act or expostulating with them in the hope of inducing them to disperse. It would have been as sensible to harangue a jungle full of hungry tigers, or to read the riot act against an inundation of the lower Mississippi.

In a few of the smaller places, especially those near which detachments of the regular army were stationed, a sort of precarious order was restored. In all the larger cities the revolutionists soon held complete power. City and State governments were101 overthrown. The leaders among the rioters established themselves in the offices of public administration. “Universal liberty” was proclaimed, and the abrogation of all law. “Property is robbery” had been the cry of the socialists from the beginning. The residences of such citizens as had been known for their wealth were taken possession of as the barracks of first one and then another band of marauders. Such storehouses and shops as had escaped the pillage of the first days were thrown open, and every one bidden to help himself from their contents to that which he needed. The poorer people were generally unmolested. If they had nothing worth stealing they were advised to remain in their homes, and told that the revolution was for them. There should be no more wealth; consequently, argued the socialists, there could be no more poverty. All men were declared equal in point of rights, of duties, and of possessions. Nothing belonged to102 any one, for everything was the common property of all. But it was observed that the socialist leaders did not fail to secure possession of all the silver and gold upon which they could lay their hands,—“to be used in the public defence, if needed,” they said.

The alliance between the socialistic societies and the various Irish organizations had for some time been impossible of concealment. Still the Irish had taken a less active part in the bloody inauguration of the revolution than had the others. The Government at Washington found communication with the various State Governments practically shut off. It was helpless for offence or defence. With such troops as it had been able to collect from Fortress Monroe and a few other neighboring garrisons, it had barely kept down the revolutionists in Washington. A band of some ten thousand now set out from New York and Philadelphia to reinforce them and104 seize the capital. At a Cabinet meeting held to consider the situation it was decided to call on the Irish members of Congress to use their influence with Irish organizations throughout the country, either to detach them altogether from the revolutionists, or to bring about some understanding by which a peace might be patched up till the next national election should afford the people an opportunity to pass upon the whole matter.

These Irish members had distinguished themselves, during the long debates which had dragged through the early summer and the heated tirades which had succeeded the first outburst of the revolutionists, by sitting unmoved in their seats, taking no part in the proceedings except when some chance allusion by another speaker afforded them the pretext for uttering a fierce demand that the United States undertake “the cause of Ireland.” They seemed to have lost all sense of American citizenship, and105 to have become engrossed by the mania that their only duty was, fas aut nefas, to aid the rebellion which was smouldering in Ireland. This had been the general opinion regarding their motive. But now it was seen at last that they had been acting in accordance with a consistent plan to do nothing and say nothing which could be construed as unfriendly to the revolutionists. How much influence did they possess with their own compatriots and with the revolutionary leaders? That was the question which the Cabinet determined to settle. They were summoned to the White House, and their good offices besought by the President in person.

In other times, the spectacle of the President of the United States begging a dozen Irish politicians to intercede with a mob for the safety of the Republic would have been received with derision. But the people never heard of this last shame upon them. The newspapers, excepting those106 whose sympathies were with the revolutionists, had been among the first to go down in the general wreck. The ordinary means of spreading information among the people had ceased to exist, and whatever news was published was colored and distorted by the prejudices of the socialist and Irish editors, who alone were allowed to continue their business.

The Irish members thus appealed to asked time for consideration and for consultation with other Irish leaders; but they promised that there should be no disturbance of the Government in Washington till their answer was ready. Transportation was irregular and slow. The railroads had suffered not only in material and men, but in the practical annihilation of their business by the riots. The Irish members set out for New York by such routes as were most practicable, arriving there the second morning after leaving Washington. A hastily called meeting of107 Irish leaders in the metropolis heard their statements of the condition of affairs at the capital. The conference lasted all that day and far into the following night. Messengers were constantly hurrying around the city, summoning additional advisers from among the best known of the dynamiters. Several prominent socialists and a few not so well known at the time were seen to enter the hall where the conference was held.

On the fifth day after their first summons to the White House the ambassadors returned to Washington. They were tired out and travel stained, but they repaired at once to the executive mansion. The President met them with an anxious face. During their absence nothing had arrived from the States to give him encouragement. Instead of being able to offer the National Government any assistance, the State Governments, many of them in flight from their own capitals, were anxiously108 calling on it to extricate them from their own difficulties.

Without any attempt to smooth over or disguise the harshness of their message, the Irish members laid before the President the ultimatum of the Irish societies. They demanded the appointment of O’Halloran “Patsy,” of New York, as Secretary of State, and Cincinnatus Wagner, of Illinois, as Secretary of War, in place of the then incumbents. O’Halloran had for some time been known as the real executive head of the Irish societies. His appointment would conciliate them. The appointment of Mr. Wagner they believed would be received as an overture of peace by the socialistic organizations. They professed to have no authority to speak for these latter, but insisted upon Mr. Wagner’s appointment as strenuously as upon that of Mr. O’Halloran. With these two men in the Cabinet, they had no doubt the revolutionists would meet the Government109 half way in arranging at least a truce upon the basis of the statu quo. Anyhow, if the terms suggested were accepted, and the President agreed to be governed by the advice of the men named, they were willing to guarantee that in twenty days the Irish societies alone would furnish the Government with a force sufficient to protect itself and to begin the task of re-establishing order. If the terms proposed were not accepted, they felt bound to warn the Government that it must prepare to defend itself from immediate and powerful attack.

Astounded at the audacity of the demand thus made upon him, the President at first peremptorily refused to consider it. Congressman Hagarty, of Chicago, who acted as spokesman for the party, replied only by calling his attention to the hopeless situation the Government was in without the aid offered. The President sought to temporize. Was it not possible to110 modify the terms proposed? He was told that modification was out of the question; that the proposition made him was the result of a conference with nearly all the leaders of the various Irish societies; and that the men who had acted merely as messengers were powerless to alter it in any way. The President asked how it was possible to reach O’Halloran and Wagner and secure their presence in Washington in time to be of avail. He was informed that O’Halloran had returned from New York with the Irish members, and was at that moment waiting to know whether he should remain or return to New York, while Wagner had been telegraphed before they left New York to meet the President at Washington, and would arrive in the course of a few hours. The President still refused to accept the Irish proposition, but was persuaded to consult with the Cabinet before returning a definite answer.

The Irish members retired, and messengers summoned the President’s advisers to the White House. The Cabinet meeting was a long and gloomy one. From no quarter of the political heavens was a single ray of light apparent. Plan after plan was proposed, discussed, and abandoned as impracticable. Day was breaking in the east when the Secretary of State, with a firm voice but a haggard face, rose and expressed his belief that no chance remained unless by the acceptance of the Irish terms to gain perhaps a little time. It was not possible, he said, that the revolutionists comprised a majority of the people. They would grow constantly weaker, and the internal dissensions which were sure to arise would divide them, perhaps set them fighting among themselves. Every day’s delay offered at least a chance to strengthen the Government and unite the friends of good order, still in a scattered and demoralized condition. He112 advised that the Irish terms be accepted, and O’Halloran and Wagner invited to the Cabinet. His resignation was at the President’s disposal. The Secretary of War briefly expressed his agreement, and also tendered his resignation.

When the Senate met, at noon, the President sent in the names of O’Halloran and Wagner as nominees for the places demanded. One of the Irish members who had been sent to New York volunteered to take the message from the White House to the Capitol. Many of the senators were absent, having hurried from Washington in order to protect their families when the first general outbreak occurred. But a quorum remained. An executive session was ordered the moment the message was received. Before the Irish member who bore the document presented it, he had carefully interpolated a sentence which was construed by the Senate as a threat on the President’s part to resign if the nominations113 were not confirmed. It was supposed by the Senate to be a genuine part of the message. Under its influence, and despite the astonishment caused by the character of the nominations, they were speedily confirmed.

Without ceremony the new secretaries took possession of their offices. Messages were despatched in the name of the Government to the heads of Irish organizations all over the country, ordering them at once to send men, fully armed and equipped, to Washington for Government service. O’Halloran drew up a proclamation, signing it with the President’s name as well as his own, and affixing the great seal of the United States, calling on all insurgents “in the name of the Republic, by the hope they cherish of carrying liberty to their oppressed kindred beyond the sea, and as the surest and speediest way of securing the rights of all the down-trodden,” to lay down their arms and send delegates to a great peace114 convention, which he announced would be held at Washington on the first secular day of the next month, October. He did not go through the formality of showing this document to the President, but hurried it to the telegraph office for circulation over the country. For days the Government had been unable to transmit messages to New York, on account of the control which the insurgents held of the wires. But this pronunciamento met with no delay. It is a fact that copies had been struck off in the form of placards, and were being read on the streets of New York before the President knew that a proclamation had been issued.

It is needless to say that the President did not endure with silence this ignoring of his rank and, in fact, of his very existence. He sent for O’Halloran, who appeared at the White House, accompanied by Wagner, Congressmen Hagarty, Tomlinson, and several other ardent and influential Irish “patriots.” This gathering of the clans warned the President that O’Halloran understood the purpose for which he had been summoned, and was prepared with a reply and a backing. Nevertheless, the President did not hesitate to rebuke him in sharp words for his imprudence and meddlesomeness.

O’Halloran’s response was an angry declaration that he had assumed office at the116 President’s request, and with the implied understanding that his policy was to be that of the Administration. If he was not wanted, if his policy was not to be accepted, he would decline to retain the secretaryship, and would leave the President to his own devices. So, he added, would the Secretary of War. Mr. Wagner truculently confirmed this remark of his colleague. O’Halloran’s friends joined uninvited in the debate, which soon became undignified and angry on both sides. It ended by O’Halloran flaming into a simulated but apparently uncontrollable rage and defying the President.

An Irish regiment, which had left New York for Washington in suspicious proximity to the departure of “Patsy” and the Irish members of Congress after their conference in that city, had that morning arrived at Washington and was encamped on the Mall. O’Halloran begged the President to take notice of this regiment’s presence,117 and of the fact, hitherto not mentioned, that twenty thousand more armed men of the same race and actuated by the same spirit were, under his orders, en route for the capital. They were his followers. They would obey him. He would see if the Administration could safely deny its promises to him, and fail to sustain him in whatever course he saw fit to undertake. “When you send for me next on such an errand as this, I will bring them with me,” he shouted. Turning his back on the President, he strode out of the White House, followed by his friends, who had been at no pains to conceal their hearty approval of his defiance and his threat.

O’Halloran proceeded straight to the Irish camp on the Mall. The President, summoning a public carriage, whose movements would attract no attention, drove to the residence of the Ex-Secretary of State. A few other friends and prominent men were called in. While they were debating118 what steps should be pursued under the new circumstances which had arisen, information reached them that two more bodies of men had arrived at the Pennsylvania station, one, like the regiment then on the Mall, unquestionably Irish, the other as indubitably composed of German and Austrian socialists. They were marching in a certain order and discipline to join the body already in the city. Other messengers brought the news that O’Halloran was in close and secret conference with the officer commanding the regiment then in camp on the Mall.

It was clear that the President was in personal danger, and that a deliberate plot to overthrow his authority was in process of execution. With the few national troops at his command it would be impossible for him to protect the Government buildings and property, or even to defend any one of them against the attacks of the armed revolutionists already in the city, reinforced by119 the local socialists and Irish, and in constant receipt of additional forces from all directions, even then in motion towards Washington under orders from O’Halloran and Wagner.

Hastily and secretly preparations were made for leaving the capital. A few of the most important documents from the executive office and a few bundles of treasury notes were packed into trunks. Orders were sent to the general officer commanding the regulars in and about the city, directing him to evacuate it as early as possible that night and to set out for Richmond, destroying railroad tracks and bridges behind him. At nightfall the President, accompanied by the loyal members of his Cabinet and the heads of several bureaus, all in closed carriages, drove across Long Bridge and took the cars at a small Virginia station for Richmond.

Swift and secret as their movements had been, however, they were discovered by the120 revolutionists, who instantly threw off every disguise of loyalty with which they had thus far masked their treason. The regulars, marching to the river soon after ten o’clock, found the bridge torn up and a large force gathered to dispute their passage. It was only after severe skirmishing that they succeeded in re-laying enough of the scattered planks to enable them to cross. Arriving on the other side, they found that the engines and cars which had been sent across earlier in the evening to await them had been dismantled and the tracks torn up. Leaving all their impedimenta behind them, the troops set out on foot across the country, the officers, in the absence of cavalry, acting as scouts and pushing ahead to endeavor to discover some means of transportation. This they were unable to do; and it was not till the fourth day after leaving Washington that the footsore and weary troops finally marched into Richmond. They121 found that city in ruins, the work of a revolutionary mob which had risen in obedience to orders from Washington the day after the President’s arrival. They also found that the President had escaped, but that the party which accompanied him had been compelled to separate and fly in different directions, no one could tell them whither.

In desperation, they turned towards the mountains of West Virginia and Tennessee. The population there had always been loyal, and had healthfully resisted the revolutionary infection; the mountains themselves afforded opportunities for defence, and possibly for the gathering of an army which, with the regulars as a nucleus, might be able to make some successful stand against the revolutionists. After another toilsome march, about fifteen hundred of the soldiers succeeded in reaching the mountains, though closely pursued by greatly superior numbers of the rebels.

In the mean time the President had been stealthily conveyed to a farm-house, some twenty miles from Richmond, belonging to a loyal gentleman of that city, with the intention of sending him farther South by the earliest opportunity. During the night he was attacked by pneumonia. Enfeebled by physical weariness and mental strain, he rapidly sank. His identity was concealed to the last, and, excepting the gentleman in whose house he lay and the physician who attended him, not one of the inmates knew that under that roof the last President of the United States passed away. Even after his death the secret was kept, and his fate was never made known to the revolutionary leaders, who had themselves fallen before the story was told.

While one portion of the revolutionary forces at Washington had been disputing the passage of the regulars into Virginia at Long Bridge, another portion was scouring the city and arresting the members of123 Congress who remained and could be found. Few of them knew what had happened, and their capture was easy. When the next morning dawned, it found all the Congressmen, except those in secret sympathy with the revolution, herded in the District jail, and the building surrounded by armed detachments from the revolutionary forces.

O’Halloran and Wagner issued another proclamation. This time it was addressed directly to the “revolutionary army” and to the allied organizations in sympathy with the new order of things. It announced the flight of the Administration and the withdrawal of the national troops. Its signers declared, with audacious and impudent hypocrisy, that they deplored the disorder and destruction of property which had followed the revolution in many cities, and which they feared might be imitated in Washington unless immediate steps were taken to carry on the government. The various organizations engaged in the revolt were again invited to send delegates to125 an October “peace convention.” In the mean time O’Halloran and Wagner summoned Herr Van Liest, a prominent anarchistic agitator, to join them, and announced that the triumvirate so composed would administer the government till a permanent arrangement should be perfected.

In this disposition of authority, as in all the subsequent procedure of the revolutionists, the apparent disappearance from the scene of action of that mysterious leader calling himself the “Council of Seven,” whose edicts had been the controlling force in the riotous inauguration of the outbreak at Chicago, was one of the most perplexing features. It gave rise at first to the suspicion that his identity was concealed in the person of one of the three new rulers. This, however, was not so generally accepted as the theory that they were simply the instruments he had chosen through which to work out the schemes126 plotted in his secret councils,—the tools with which he, still unseen and undiscovered, did his work. Whatever the explanation, certain it is that from this time forward the apparent leadership of the revolution centred in the Washington triumvirate, from whom emanated the only orders which were obeyed by the allied hordes of sedition and anarchy.

The bells in the few churches which the socialists had left standing were rung, cannon fired, and bonfires made in several cities over the revolutionary success. Herr Liest hastened to Washington, accompanied by Julius Kopf, a beer-selling socialist, Petrovitch Metron, a dynamite “professor,” and many other equally malignant anarchists. The country was fast in the power of a triple combination representing fanatical hatred of law and order, foreign revengefulness, and native corruption,—all in their worst forms. But the leaders, fanatics and zealots though they127 were, had foresight enough to see that the alliance could not last unless its continuance were constrained by the pressure of outside danger. All of them had animosities to gratify against foreign Governments. Their desire of vengeance and the necessity of self-preservation united in urging them to foreign wars.

Most of the foreign representatives had fled from Washington during the stormy scenes which followed the departure of the President. But the English, German, and French ministers remained, confiding in the protection of their national flags, and actuated by a sense of duty towards their fellow-countrymen in the United States, who were more numerous than those of other nationalities. They were speedily shown that revenge was a stronger motive in the breasts of the new rulers than prudence.

Even before the arrival of Herr Liest in Washington, O’Halloran, smarting under the memory of British prisons and the129 wound an English enemy had inflicted on him, had cabled to London a long message, signed by his own name alone, and addressed to “The British Government,” demanding the instant release of certain specified criminals and prisoners waiting trial in British jails, on the ground that they were American citizens. Of course no notice was taken of the message in London; but without twenty-four hours’ delay for the receipt of an answer, if one should be made, O’Halloran ordered the arrest of the British minister then at Washington. The astounded diplomat was informed of the message which had been sent to London, and told that he would be confined until a satisfactory answer was received. If the demand was not granted in full within sixty days, he was threatened with trial by court-martial on the charge of complicity in the Englishman’s assault upon the Irish agitator. He was informed that he might send his Government such130 account of his imprisonment as he saw fit; and he was also at liberty to add that, in the event of the British Government’s refusal to accede to the Irish-American terms, not only would he (the minister) assuredly forfeit his life, but ships and men enough would be sent to Ireland from American ports to effect the release of the prisoners specified, by whatever force might be necessary. The minister availed himself of the privilege offered him, and sent a long despatch from his cell to the British Foreign Office.

The English Government and the English people had been enraged already to the utmost limit of endurance by the unfriendly indifference of the Washington authorities to the dynamite outrages in England, which had been planned in American cities by American citizens, paid for by American contributions, and carried out by American agents. This affront to England’s accredited representative and131 its flag was more than could be endured for a moment. The Cabinet was in consultation when the minister’s despatch arrived in Downing Street. It was supplemented within a couple of hours by another from the secretary of the legation, corroborating the arrest of the minister and giving the additional particulars that the embassy had been forcibly entered by a band of armed men acting under O’Halloran’s instructions, and all its papers and records removed.

Parliament was in session. That night the news from America was announced to both Houses, and the Government stated that it would be prepared at the next evening’s sitting to ask for a vote of credit. This declaration was received with loud applause. In the Commons, an Opposition member was instantly on his feet with the notice that he would on the next day move that the outrage committed on England’s representative demanded swift and summary132 vengeance. A member of the Cabinet dryly remarked that perhaps the Government would by that time have something to propose rather more to the point. The retort was greeted with louder cheers than ever; and before Parliament adjourned for the night it was clear that a declaration of war was the matter of but a few hours in the future.

The minister’s arrest took place on the second of September. When Parliament met on the third, the Government announced that war existed between Great Britain and the United States by the act of the latter Power, and asked a credit of twenty millions sterling to maintain British prestige and avenge British wrongs. The few Irish members who retained seats in Parliament attempted to use their customary dilatory tactics. For once they were cowed by the roar of indignant derision which greeted them from floor and galleries. In actual fear of personal peril, they gave over their133 “filibustering,” and shortly slunk out of the House. There was no division. Without a single dissentient voice the credit asked for by the Government was voted. When the Speaker declared it carried, the Secretary of War rose and stated that the utmost exertions of the Government had been set in motion, even before the vote was taken, to put every war vessel in its possession in readiness for service, and that over three thousand active seamen had volunteered that day to serve on the expedition which would shortly be sent across the Atlantic. The news flew to every hamlet in the United Kingdom, and the next day saw an outburst of loyal zeal such as was never witnessed in England before. Within four days more than two thousand steam ocean-going vessels had been offered to the Government for use as troop-ships in conveying soldiers across the Atlantic. The same spirit which actuated the ship-owners moved every other134 class, and the Government found all the wealth of the nation and all its men freely dedicated to the war.

The very day that witnessed the British Government’s acceptance of the war saw another complication added to affairs at Washington. The two ministers of France and Germany visited the White House, where the triumvirate, O’Halloran, Wagner, and Herr Liest, had taken up their quarters, to urge upon them the folly of their course in arresting the English minister, and to plead for his release and dismissal from the country. It happened that Liest and Kopf were angrily reproaching O’Halloran, at the very moment of their arrival, for his action in involving the revolutionists in a war with Great Britain while the cause of their brethren in Germany was utterly neglected.

When the German minister entered and began his plea for his English colleague,135 Herr Liest took the answer out of O’Halloran’s mouth, and began a fiery tirade against Germany and the German Government. The diplomat listened in amazement for a few minutes; then, without deigning a word of reply, turned his back on the party and stalked haughtily out of the room, followed by his French colleague. The moment they had gone, Herr Liest, with his voice rising to a shriek, in a frenzy of anger demanded that they both be treated as the English minister had been. Kopf seconded the demand with a vehemence as great as Liest’s. O’Halloran attempted to calm their passion and point out to them the impolicy of angering at the same moment three of the strongest Powers of the world. They would not listen to him. Instead, they taunted him with showing weakness in the common cause. Wagner sided with them, though less violently. O’Halloran saw that it would not be safe for him to give them the chance to accuse136 him of lack of energy or zeal. A guard was hastily sent after the diplomats, and they were incarcerated in the same jail which held the British minister.

The moment this was done, the revolutionists saw that they must hasten, if they were to strike the first blow against their old-time European “oppressors,” before attack should be made on them from abroad. Acting under orders sent out by the three self-appointed dictators, detachments from various revolutionary organizations at the different seaports seized possession of all foreign vessels lying at their wharves. The officers were put in confinement and the crews sent ashore, except such as chose to enlist in the revolutionary service. Cannon of every sort were dragged aboard them, and they set out in fleets from every Atlantic port to prey on whatever commerce might fall in their path.

The moment he had assumed the duties of secretary of war, Mr. Wagner had set137 about the organization of an army. He passed over the usual authorities. Not a message was sent to the governor of a single State. Nowhere was the militia ordered out, nor volunteers asked for, nor a draft ordered. The various Irish and socialistic societies were notified that men were wanted, and their answers were prompt. Camps were formed near New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and other cities. In them rapidly gathered motley armies of Irish dynamiters, German socialists, French and Italian communists, with here and there Russian nihilists, Swiss anarchists, and outlaws of every nationality. With these mingled a larger proportion than two years before would have been regarded as possible, of native-born workmen who had been inveigled into the revolutionary ranks by the plausible pleadings of agitators, or driven into them by their own sufferings and wrongs. Among the138 Irish were a few who had served in the armies of 1861–1865; but in the main these camps were noticeable for the absence of men who had seen service in the cause of their country during the civil war. Still their numbers were formidable. Altogether, they mustered something over five hundred thousand men, armed with such weapons as the arsenals which they had looted could furnish, and obedient enough to the orders sent out from Washington, so long as those orders did not conflict with those of “the Old Man.” And it was no longer a secret that such conflict was impossible, inasmuch as the triumvirate there were known to be but puppets in the hand of that mysterious central authority.

Meanwhile, in several quarters attempts to organize bodies from the population opposed to the revolutionists had been crushed with terrible cruelty. Except such weapons as chanced to be in their possession139 before the outbreak, it was impossible for the really patriotic people of the land to find arms and ammunition, or even to organize. Every attempt on their part to meet in large numbers was prevented. Guerilla bands lurked among the mountains in States which afforded them such shelter. Thence they maintained a desultory warfare on such small bodies of revolutionists as they could safely attack. No quarter was shown them; they showed none in return. Civil war raged in every congressional district,—it might almost be said in every town. But all the great centres of communication were in the undisputed possession of the revolutionists. The depots of supplies were in their hands; they held all the arsenals; they had confiscated the public treasure. It is probable that the patriots really outnumbered the revolutionists; but they were without arms, they lacked money, they lacked supplies, they lacked140 organization. The revolutionists spared no pains, hesitated at no tyranny, forbore no cruelty which promised to keep them deprived of arms and to prevent combinations among them.

The month of September wore away. October came, and with it the opening of the “peace convention” which O’Halloran had called on the first day of his power at Washington. But its sessions were cut short by the unexpectedly speedy action of England. On the declaration of the British Government that war existed with the United States, cable communication between the United Kingdom and the United States had been broken. The arrest of the French and German ministers had caused irrepressible indignation in the Governments they represented, and the refusal of the triumvirate in power at Washington to heed their demands for142 reparation and apology had been followed by almost simultaneous declarations of war from Paris and Berlin. All communication with the United States from any part of their dominions was peremptorily forbidden. No news could be received from Europe except by roundabout and tedious routes, and little was known of what was being done there; but no one among the revolutionary leaders dreamed of a blow being struck before the opening of the ensuing spring.

It was therefore with something like stupefaction that they heard, on the morning of the very day on which their farcical “peace convention” met, of the arrival in the port of Halifax of a powerful British fleet, consisting of seventeen armored fighting ships and thirty of the largest steamships formerly plying across the Atlantic, which had been transformed for the time being into troop-ships, conveying an army of twenty-eight thousand men and an immense143 amount of ammunition and warlike supplies. This fleet, said the first despatch which was handed to O’Halloran just before he rose to open the convention, was coaling up as rapidly as the conveniences in the port would permit, evidently with the intention of making a speedy descent at some point on the American coast. O’Halloran showed the despatch to Wagner; but both considered that it must be a hoax. It was impossible, they agreed, that England could have had a fleet in readiness and transports at hand, and men and arms prepared so as to strike across the three thousand miles of intervening sea within a month from the date on which hostilities had been declared. They consequently decided to ignore the despatch. But other despatches soon followed, confirming the news. They came from such sources that even O’Halloran was convinced of their entire truth. Summoning the two other members of “the Government,144” he laid his additional information before them.

Nothing had been done to strengthen the defences of a single seaport along the eastern border of the land. Built many years before, and to withstand the fire of comparatively small guns, the forts which stood at the entrances of the Atlantic harbors were practically of no offensive or defensive value whatever. They could neither withstand the shot of modern guns nor reply with missiles likely to injure in the slightest degree the sides of modern armored vessels. There was not, in all the waters of the world, a navy flying the American flag which was able, unitedly, to combat the weakest of the ironclads named as making up the English power at Halifax. Upon the first outbreak in April, the little band of regular-army officers engaged in experiments with torpedoes at various stations along the coast had been compelled to join their regiments,145 and had not since returned to their experiments. The Revolutionary Government had done nothing except issue “subventions” to a few long-haired, half-crazed socialists and dynamiters to enable them to continue pottering and unscientific attempts at the invention of new explosives. There were not experienced gunners enough in the entire revolutionary army to man completely and to work efficiently the guns in half the forts along the coast, such as they were.

It was naturally assumed that New York, the richest city of the country and the real centre of the revolution, would be the first object of British attack. There were already about one hundred and fifty thousand men in or about the city. They were hastily sent to the forts of the harbor. Orders from Washington set a hundred thousand more in motion towards the metropolis from Western cities. Canal-barges and tow-boats were seized, loaded146 with stone, and sunk across the channel at the Narrows. Others were loaded with petroleum and made ready for use as fire-ships to send against the attacking fleet.

The convention speedily broke up. It held two sessions, but these were spent in wordy wrangles; they failed to result in even the choice of a presiding officer. The real leaders of the revolutionists hurried towards the East on the confirmation of the news from Halifax. Others followed in rapid succession, till, on the second day, less than half the delegates remained in Washington. The convention dissolved. It did not adjourn, it simply ceased to exist.

But Admiral Seymour, who commanded the British fleet, did not aim at New York. While the revolutionists there were working with the energy of desperation to block the approach to their water-front, he turned into Boston Harbor, and, a little before noon, the 8th of October, fired his first147 shot into Fort Warren, the structure defending the lower main channel. The little garrison in the fort responded bravely for an hour, but they could do nothing to harm the British fleet. Their numbers were small, their guns old-fashioned and weak, and their ammunition was soon spent. Their missiles seldom reached the sides of the British vessels; when they did, they rebounded and fell off as if they had been nothing worse than pebbles. The British fire was not rapid at first, but terribly exact, and the fleet steadily drew to closer quarters. The leading vessels approached within less than a fourth of a mile of the fort. Their fire became more rapid and destructive. The garrison was driven from the casemates and compelled to retreat under such shelter as could be found. The flag was shot away. A landing-party from the fleet rowed down upon the fort, under the fire their own vessels were pouring into it. Before they reached it, a white flag148 appeared on the walls, and firing ceased. The fort surrendered.

Leaving a few men to dismantle it and destroy the magazine, the fleet proceeded up the harbor without meeting further resistance. Its appearance off the outer light had been announced in the city during the morning, and every road to the North and West was blocked by flying fugitives, who expected each moment to hear the shriek of British shells hurtling above them through the air. Admiral Seymour drew up in front of the city and within a quarter of a mile of the wharves, each vessel swinging broadside to and anchoring bow and stern. The guns were manned; and in this position he waited an hour for any message that might be sent him from the shore.

But the mayor of Boston was himself an Irishman who had become known as a sympathizer in the dynamite outrages. He had made several virulent speeches against149 England and in eulogy of the “Irish martyrs,” as it was the custom of his kind to denominate such murderers as were hanged for assassinating landlords in Ireland or blowing up women and children in London. He dared not show himself on board an English war-vessel. In truth, he had been among the first to flee the city on the news of the English approach. The city council had been hurriedly convened; but time was wasted in a search for him before his flight became known.

During this hour of waiting, a party of young and reckless Irish bravos had managed to steal unobserved into Fort Independence. This was an antiquated stone fort in the upper harbor, entirely deserted, and mounting a few harmless cannon. With these they began firing upon the nearest British vessels. Their missiles had no more effect on the armored war-ships than pop-guns could have had on Achilles’ shield; but they ended the respite which150 Admiral Seymour had given the city. A shell from his flag-ship was the signal for a volley from the whole fleet. But the second round had not been fired when a white flag was seen moving down Long Wharf and a party of men taking a boat. An alderman boarded the flag-ship and begged that no further destruction be done, as the city was defenceless and no opposition would be offered to the operations of the fleet. In fact, he begged that a guard might be landed at once to take possession of the public buildings and save them from utter destruction in the disorder which was rampant once more in the city, and which the authorities could not repress.

Night had already begun to fall; nevertheless a strong party of marines was landed from the fleet. Most of the public buildings had been destroyed by the mob during the outbreaks in the summer; but the State House was still standing, though its interior had been dismantled, and the post-office151 was intact. These buildings were taken possession of, and put in readiness for defence against any attacks such as might be made by a mob; small garrisons were left in them, and other bodies encamped on the famous “Common” and in the Public Garden.

The next morning’s dawn saw the harbor black with the smoke of a score of transports, from which whole brigades of red-coated soldiers were disembarked at Long Wharf. As fast as landed they were marched through the city and pushed out beyond the suburbs in every direction, where they began the work of fortifying themselves. From Hingham to Revere, earthworks were thrown up and mounted with guns taken from the forts in the harbor and pieces brought by the invaders. Describing a vast semicircle, these fortifications cut off every landward approach to the city. Detached forts were built on strategic points in advance of the152 general line, and behind the semicircle a double line of railway track was laid, so that every point of the fortifications was within half an hour of relief from any other post. Transports arrived almost daily with fresh troops and munitions. The city was turned into a vast British camp, and evidence soon came that it had been chosen as the winter quarters, from which operations would be begun in the spring. General Wood, of Afghan and African fame, arrived a few days later and assumed command.

The revolutionists had not allowed this work to proceed without making all the trouble they could. As soon as the attack on Boston had developed itself, large detachments had been hurried from New York to the assistance of the small number which had been left watching the New England metropolis. But transportation was so slow and facilities so inadequate that they found the British in force occupying the most important positions153 around the city, and already strongly fortified, before they could gather strength sufficient to warrant an attack. They brought with them only field-pieces in the way of artillery, and were overmatched even by the old-fashioned guns from the harbor forts with which many of the earthworks had been mounted. From these guns the English gunners constantly dropped shells among them, reaching their camps at a distance from which they could make no reply. One or two desperate assaults were made on the intrenchments; but a near approach showed that these were not only mounted with numerous long-range pieces, but that their parapets fairly bristled with Gatling guns and mitrailleuses, which mowed the assailants down in actual swaths as they came within rifle-shot. Hopeless of success, the revolutionists sullenly retired to Worcester, Springfield, Providence, and other interior cities, and the Washington triumvirate prepared to154 wait till spring. Then they hoped to muster a force great enough to overwhelm, by sheer weight of numbers, all the British who might be sent across the sea.

When the city was first captured, a number of prominent Irish leaders had been seized by the troops under Admiral Seymour. In one of the assaults made on the British earthworks in Medford, a few days later, about two hundred revolutionists, including two officers calling themselves generals, had been captured. They were conveyed to the jail on Charles Street, and incarcerated with the Irishmen previously arrested. The next day General Wood called the city council together at his headquarters, which had been fixed in the State House, and directed them to inform the General Government at Washington, “or the persons in whose custody the English minister and his colleagues of France and Germany are detained,” that these prisoners would be held as hostages155 for the safe keeping and delivery of the diplomats within British lines. Furthermore, the council was advised that all non-combatants would do well to remove from the city, as the general would not be responsible for the preservation of the city itself should news arrive of any harm to these foreign representatives. For themselves, they were relieved from their offices, as the city was to be put under martial law.

When the winter opened it found Boston turned into a British fortress, without a trace of self-government left, with its streets guarded by detachments of British soldiers, and all its public affairs administered by a board of British officers. Nevertheless, there was better order and less suffering under the management of these foreign invaders than were experienced in any of the cities in which the revolutionists retained control. Business revived under the stimulus of the presence of a large156 army, and merchants, despite the menace of Admiral Seymour’s warning, which still hung over the city, felt more confidence than they had known for many a month. Throughout the rest of the land the control of the revolutionists was supreme, except in some of the rural portions, where small bands, composed of those who had once been the best and most loyal citizens, disputed their rule and maintained themselves by a sort of guerilla warfare.

During the winter several of these bands united in the upper portions of Vermont and New Hampshire, and succeeded in opening communication with others in New York, Ohio, and the Southern States. The old spirit of republicanism was found stronger in the South than in any other portion of the country, and the revolutionists were proportionately weaker there. A considerable force of loyalists was known to be lurking in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. Slowly the hope grew that a157 combination might be effected between the scattered bands in the North and West and these in Tennessee, which would be recruited rapidly from the South, and which might attain sufficient size to warrant a movement against the revolutionists, now distracted by the British attack. Among the patriots were many officers of the regular army and a considerable number of veterans who had seen service on both sides in the civil war of 1861–1865. Their efforts were devoted to drilling and instructing the loyalists in such simple and rudimentary tactics as could be taught to them individually or at the occasional and secret meetings when a few score could be collected without danger of discovery. With great difficulty and in the face of apparently insuperable obstacles, two armies, of about eighteen and thirty thousand men respectively, were at last collected in northern New England and western New York. If they could be united, and especially158 if the loyal forces, which were known to have increased to some eight or ten thousand in eastern Tennessee, could be joined with them, and the command of the whole army put into an experienced officer’s hands, it was felt that there was a chance for striking a blow which should inspirit the loyal people all over the country and make possible a general uprising against the brutal and cruel and utterly irresponsible rule of the revolutionists. This scheme was carried out toward the close of the winter in so far as the union of the two northern bands was concerned. But it was found impracticable for them to join the Southern force, or for it to reach them, until spring opened. Before that time other events occurred, which must now be chronicled.

France and Germany had replied to the outrage upon their plenipotentiaries at Washington by almost simultaneous declarations of war. But their action came later than that of England, and it was felt by each Government to be impossible for it to do anything of importance before the coming spring. Moreover, it was a grave question how they should act so as to avoid the possibility of complications with each other and with England, whose fleet and army were already actively engaged. Each Government detached a small fleet with instructions to harass the coast, seize as much American shipping as possible, capture privateers, and destroy160 supplies. But they were not to attempt any serious warfare until further details should be arranged. The diplomatic correspondence which followed showed that all three Governments were impressed with the danger, not only to themselves, but also to civilization, of allowing the American excesses to go unpunished.

The maniacs who had secured control of affairs in the western hemisphere had practically declared war against the whole world and against civilization itself. It was found that the other European Powers sympathized with England, Germany, and France in their feeling that the revolution must be crushed out at any cost, and so completely that there should be no danger of its reviving. Hardly a Government in Europe but had had experience with the men now in power in America. Not a Government in Europe but knew that in its own dominions thousands of other socialists and anarchists were waiting the161 triumph of their brethren across the water to rise themselves in fierce revolt.

Early in January a conference representing all the European Governments was held at Berlin. Representatives from Russia, Austria, Spain, and Italy were there, as well as from England, France, and Germany. For once the instinct of self-preservation overcame the hereditary distrust of these generally antagonistic Powers. The debates of the conference were characterized by a plainness of speech, a directness and unanimity of agreement, and a promptness of action which were new to the history of diplomacy. It sat but five days. During that time it perfected a European alliance in which all the nations represented united for the object of crushing the anarchistic revolution in America. It was decided that the actual conduct of the war should be left to the three Powers already involved; but the other Governments agreed to close their162 ports to American vessels, to refuse supplies for use in America, and to sustain in every way short of actual war the Powers which should act in behalf of Europe in the field and on the ocean.

Of the three nations already at war with the revolutionists, England was unquestionably the greatest Naval Power. It was determined that the united fleet of the allies should be put under the command of Admiral Seymour, already in American waters. Germany and France forgot their traditional hatred for the time, and vied with each other as to which should succeed in relinquishing to the other the supreme authority over the army. It was finally agreed that General Count von Blücken, the strategist who had succeeded to the command of the German army, should have control in the field, with a staff comprising an equal number of French, German, and English officers.

Before the middle of January, 1888, the arrangements perfected by the conference163 had been ratified by the various Governments interested, and preparations were being pushed rapidly forward for the spring campaign. General Sir Evelyn Wood had been put in command of the British forces in and around Boston. Admiral Seymour returned to London early in January, and held a long consultation there with General Wood, General von Blücken, and General de l’Isle, who was to command the French contingent. Long Island Sound, itself an immense land-locked harbor, was selected as the rendezvous of the fleets. On the northern shore of the Sound was marked out the point for the collection of the army. Before the end of February Seymour returned to America. He was accompanied by considerable reinforcements for the British garrison in Boston. Within a week after his departure the first convoy of the allies sailed from Havre. It consisted of seven powerful ships of war and a fleet of transports under their protection, bearing164 nearly fifty thousand men. Only a day later the first German contingent sailed from Bremen.

Day by day and week by week others followed. The allies knew that they had undertaken a Herculean task in the subjugation of the United States, torn and divided though its once impregnable power had become. They determined to make no mistake in underestimating the resistance which they were likely to meet. Before the end of April they had in the Sound, occupying various harbors along its shores, a fleet of one hundred and twenty men-of-war. On shore, including the British troops garrisoning Boston, they had an army of half a million men, all trained soldiers, all armed with the most perfect weapons which modern science had discovered and modern skill invented, and in receipt, even after that enormous number had been reached, of constant reinforcements.

Practically no opposition had been offered to their landing along the Connecticut shore. The revolutionists had no information of the point which the fleet intended to strike, and naturally assumed that Boston, which was already in foreign hands, would be selected as the base of the contemplated invasion. When they discovered their error it was too late to make a hopeful defence. They contented themselves, therefore, with strengthening their fortifications around New York, and calling to that city as many of their men as could be spared from watching the British at Boston and the patriots in the interior parts of the country.

The loyalists, it need not be said, viewed this invasion of foreign troops with almost as much alarm as they had felt at the uprising of the native revolutionists. There had been division in their councils before this. The news of the European alliance still more completely split them into factions.166 One party frankly owned that they regarded a foreign conquest as vastly preferable to a continuance of revolutionary rule. The other party, though hating the revolutionists with equal hatred, asked what was likely to be the result upon the fortunes of the Republic of a victory by the foreign allies. Long and anxious discussions were held during the latter portion of the winter and the early weeks of spring. Attempts were made to ascertain the intentions of the allies in case they should defeat the revolutionists; but no one among the invaders was found who could undertake to answer that question. Many left the little band of patriots and returned to their homes, refusing to share longer in a movement which could not be regarded as anything else than an alliance with a foreign invasion. The others determined to remain inactive for the time, and wait the events of the summer.

As the spring opened and it became certain to the revolutionists that New York167 was the object at which the allied attack was to be first aimed, they summoned more of their forces from the interior, and left the patriots greater opportunity to move with freedom. The two little armies of northern New England and of western New York united near Lake George and slowly moved down the western bank of the Hudson to Newburg, where they could watch events and take such part as might seem best at the time. They numbered altogether about fifty thousand men.

As soon as the spring weather allowed, the revolutionists renewed their efforts to put the metropolis in a condition of defence. The approaches to the harbor were entirely closed by the sinking of additional barges and scows laden with stones. Torpedoes were thickly planted outside these obstructions, so as to make any attempt to remove them as dangerous as possible. Relying upon the inability of the attacking squadron to pass these obstacles and enter168 the harbor, the revolutionists imitated the tactics of Admiral Seymour at Boston, and removed most of the guns from the forts below the city to the earthworks and intrenchments they had thrown up to the northward and eastward of it.

The allies lay encamped along the Connecticut shore of the Sound, mostly between Bridgeport and Greenwich. From New Rochelle to Yonkers the revolutionists erected a chain of strong works, stretching entirely across the peninsula whose point is occupied by New York city. Three separate lines of intrenchments were constructed, each one of which was capable of being defended after everything in front of it was in the possession of the enemy. Detached forts and redoubts were thrown up on every elevation or commanding point.

On the Brooklyn side the defences were less elaborate, but still strong. It was evident that the possession of Brooklyn by the169 allies would render New York untenable; but the revolutionists felt confident that they could transport troops faster from the forts above New York to the Brooklyn side than the allies could be moved across the Sound to attack from Long Island. They had the inner and shorter circle on which to move. Besides, a defeat of the allies, if they should be defeated, on the island would be vastly more disastrous to them than a repulse from the works on the mainland. It was not likely that General von Blücken would take such an unnecessary risk. In fact, the revolutionists were right. He intended from the outset to make his attack on New York from the northward.

During the winter the British troops in Boston pushed their way out into the interior, especially developing their strength towards the southwest, in the direction of the camp of the allies. Early in March they took possession of Providence,—still170 a fair and beautiful city, despite the havoc and ruin which the rule of the lawless hordes of the revolution had wrought in it. The revolutionists who were driven out of the city joined those at Worcester and Springfield, and by the middle of March regained the main force in New York by way of Albany and the eastern shore of the Hudson. This left the whole of lower New England practically in the undisputed possession of the allies. They speedily repaired the railway lines leading from Boston towards New York, and thus secured ready communication between the main army and several other important ports and depots of supplies besides New London, at which most of the army’s material had hitherto been landed.

Early in May the outposts of the opposing forces were face to face, and occasional skirmishes had already taken place. The two armies were nearly evenly matched in point of numbers. The allies counted up five hundred and twenty-two thousand men on shore, besides a naval force of about thirty thousand, in one hundred and twenty-two ships of war belonging to one grade or another. Only thirty-five of these vessels were iron-clad, but all carried effective armaments. In addition, the Sound was filled with an innumerable fleet of transports, tugs, and similar craft, acting as tenders on the larger ships.

With the force which had been withdrawn from New England, the revolutionists mustered in New York and Brooklyn about five hundred and fifty thousand men. Whatever reinforcements they received after the first of May were cantoned in Jersey City and Hoboken, to watch the movements of the loyalists up the river at Newburg. It was possible that they might move down the west shore and cut off communication with the South and West, as the allies had already cut off communication to the North and East; and this was to be prevented at all hazards.

On the third of May, the allies carried by assault and at the point of the bayonet a detached earthwork, known as Fort Schwab, which commanded the village of New Rochelle. It was an isolated work, and most of the garrison escaped behind the cover of their lines to the rear. But they did not have time to spike their guns; and during the entire night these pieces continued a173 harassing fire upon them. The morning of the fourth, attack was resumed along the whole line. All that day the contest raged with inconceivable fury. Again and again were the allies repulsed; again and again were they pushed forward. Their sledge-hammer blows were repeated first at one point, then at another, with persistent and terrible iteration. Twice, after actually capturing the outer line of defences, they were driven back into the open field. They returned to the charge the third time, and nightfall found them in possession of an entire division of this line. The revolutionists, though not trained soldiers, saw that they would be unable to hold the remaining portions, and under cover of the night withdrew to the next line of defence. Though they had suffered a technical defeat, they felt in no way disheartened over the result of the day. They had held the allies in check and had inflicted losses which they knew from the174 number of their own dead must have been terrible. They still retained possession of a double line of intrenchments stronger than the one which had been taken. They anticipated a delay of some days, if not weeks, before another attempt was made.

That very night, while the revolutionists were sleeping, General von Blücken despatched a force of fifty thousand men across the Sound to Long Island. They landed in silence, and without discovery approached the revolutionary lines so closely that at daybreak they were able to surprise a small earthwork and carry it by mere rush of numbers, without the firing of a single shot. But the surprise was short-lived. The revolutionists sprang to their arms and fought bravely as soon as the allied advance reached their next defence. The alarm was sounded, and assistance from other parts of the Brooklyn lines was despatched to the support of the overmastered socialists. Reinforcements175 were hurried across the river from New York. The fight surged back and forth, and the roar of conflict which reached New York was as loud and as menacing as that of the preceding day’s battle near New Rochelle had been.

The attack on that side was wholly suspended during this action. The scouts and outposts of the revolutionists reported that transports were to be seen moving in great numbers across the Sound to the Long Island shore, loaded with troops and returning empty. The revolutionary generals hastily decided that Von Blücken must have changed his original intention, owing to the resistance he had met with above the city, and that he was moving on what they felt to be their weakest point, Brooklyn. They must defend that city at all hazards. Over two hundred thousand men were withdrawn from the works to the northward of New York and hurried across to the aid of the Brooklyn garrison.

Not till it was too late did the revolutionists discover that they had been made the victims of a mere feint,—one of the simplest tricks of war, though in this case shrewdly managed. It was true that the transports which were kept plying across the narrow waters of the Sound did, for an hour after daybreak, carry considerable reinforcements to the allied forces which were engaged in the attack on the Brooklyn intrenchments; but this was continued only until General von Blücken felt sure that he had enough men on Long Island completely to engross the enemy’s attention. During all the rest of the morning the transports, which seemed to be full of men on their southward passage and empty on their return, were really bringing back to the mainland more troops than they carried over. Each one, on its southward trip, was manned on the side towards the revolutionists’ lines with dummy figures, among whom a few men moved about to give them177 the appearance of life. On their return these figures were hidden below the bulwarks, and the wounded, after whom the transports were really sent, were taken below decks where they could not be seen. Several complete regiments, whose services were found to be unnecessary for the success of the feint, were brought back hidden in the same way, and rejoined their divisions before the northern forts.

About the middle of the afternoon the allies drew back from Brooklyn towards Great Neck, and the revolutionists recovered all the ground which had been wrested from them in the first surprise. But their assailants showed no signs of leaving the island, and were kept constantly marching and countermarching so as to produce the conviction that they were in greater numbers than was the fact. This belief, corroborated by the reports of the outposts north of the city as to the immense number of men who had been178 transported across the Sound, was still further strengthened in the minds of the revolutionists by a fierce attack which a small brigade made on them from the side towards Coney Island during the night. A regiment of German hussars actually dashed upon a camp of over ten thousand men on the extreme southern wing, sabred their way through it, and carried off several prisoners. The boldness of the affair convinced the revolutionists that a strong force had arrived on that side of them, ready to attack them there next morning while the army resting at Great Neck renewed the fight from the northward. The officers at the New York defences reported that only an occasional gun had been fired from the works of the allies there during the day, and that a sham attack had been made on a bastion about the centre of the line, but that very few men were to be seen.

All but about one hundred and fifty thousand of the revolutionary forces were sent179 to the Brooklyn side; and it was determined to take advantage of the earliest dawn to turn the tables on the foreigners by surprising them, without giving them the opportunity to repeat their tactics of the day before.

A greater surprise than anything they meditated awaited the revolutionists. General von Blücken had been busily, though secretly, at work all that day and night gathering forces at a point just above Mount Vernon and near the centre of the opposing line. Before midnight he had massed there more men than were behind the whole extent of the works in front of him. A show of activity and watchfulness was kept up in the allied camp on Long Island; but before daybreak all the troops sent there to join in the feint had been withdrawn again, except a couple of flying horse-batteries and a single squadron of cavalry, which were ordered to retire whenever attacked and keep out of range,—as they could easily do, owing to the almost180 total lack of cavalry among the revolutionists with which to pursue them. When the besieged “surprised” the besiegers’ camp, at daybreak the next morning, they found only empty tents and smouldering watch-fires which had been burning untended for several hours.

They were allowed scant time to reflect upon the probable meaning of this trick. Before they had really discovered what had happened, from the allied parallels beyond New Rochelle a single gun boomed forth in the clear morning air. It was Von Blücken’s signal for a general attack. A thousand cannon mouths answered its summons, and told the revolutionists on Long Island that deadly work was beginning for their friends in the weakened intrenchments above the city. They strove with desperate speed to return in time to be of assistance; but they were not able.

This attack was no feint. In overwhelming numbers the allies poured over181 the earthworks which confronted them. Redoubt after redoubt, breastwork after breastwork, fort after fort was carried at the point of the bayonet. The resistance made was desperate, and the retreat sullen and slow. But the attenuated line of defenders at no moment was able to stop or even delay the advance of the solid masses of men which were hurled against it, first at one point, then at another. The carnage was frightful. Whole regiments on both sides were literally swept out of existence. But not for an instant did the attacking columns waver. On and on they pressed: now charging with a rush like an avalanche upon some fortification in which a more than usually stubborn resistance was being offered them; now moving in compact and splendid order along the routes which, long before he had ordered the assault, had been marked down for them to follow by the brilliant strategist commanding them.

It was not yet noon when Von Blücken, coming up from the rear, found the enemy in flight from a redoubt near the centre of their last line of defence, and the flag of his own Fatherland waving above it. Riding to the fort, he ordered its guns to be instantly turned in either direction upon the works which still held out. The revolutionist forces from Brooklyn, hurrying pell-mell through the city, on their arrival at the front found the allies in full possession of a half-dozen portions of the last line of works, with guns already mounted in them which commanded the city itself. Nowhere was a tenable position left in their hands. Had the allies been desirous of doing so, they could at once have entered the city. There was no power which could prevent them from taking possession in the morning. It was seen that the city must be evacuated.

All night the ferry-boats, which offered the only means of escape to westward and183 southward, were kept hurrying back and forth between the city and the New Jersey shore, loaded with the retreat. Slowly the rear-guard of the revolutionists drew backward down the city as the troops below crossed the river. In almost every block from which they retreated they left “infernal machines” of more or less elaborate construction, calculated to explode after a set time and destroy everything about them, or to burst into flames after the same interval and fire the buildings in which they were placed. Some fires were set directly by impatient hands, and it was not long after midnight that the allied sentries reported the city in flames.

General Wood, who had charge of the army during the night, was notified, and rode forward to an eminence from which he could see the city, by this time casting a brilliant light upon its own destruction. He saw that the fire was confined, thus far, to the upper portion, while the lower184 streets were still dark, and evidently held by the revolutionists. He surmised at once that they were retreating to Jersey City. Reports from the river bank soon verified this belief.

But what were they going to do with the city? Were they simply burning the upper portion, so as to oppose a real wall of fire to the allied advance, till they could safely complete their retreat? Or were they determined to destroy the entire city rather than have it fall into the allies’ possession? If any attempt should be made to save it from destruction by sending soldiers to extinguish the flames already raging, was it not likely that they would run great risk of being destroyed by scores and hundreds in the explosion of the “infernal machines,” which were the favorite weapons of the revolutionists, and which they had no doubt scattered thickly along the route the troops would have to take?

General Wood sat on his horse for some moments, watching the flames. Turning at last to a staff officer beside him, he remarked: “They are going to destroy behind them all of the place that will burn. I doubt if our men will find much shelter left them.”

“The fire might possibly be checked if we should go at it now,” responded the officer.

General Wood replied with abrupt decision: “That has been an Irish city for forty years. It has been worse than Dublin. It has been more dangerous to England than all Ireland itself, because it has been beyond our reach. For the last dozen or twenty years it has been the rottenest centre of socialism in the whole world. I would not risk the life of a single honest and decent soldier to save the whole Sodom from utter destruction!”

All night the sentries on picket duty along the allied lines watched the flames186 extending and the light growing in intensity. Occasional explosions from the midst of burning areas showed that General Wood had been correct in his suspicion that deadly mines lay in wait for any who might try to extinguish the conflagration. At daybreak he reported the condition of affairs to General von Blücken. The commander approved his action, but ordered several of the smaller vessels to reconnoitre immediately the Hell-Gate passage of the East River and report if that route was practicable for transports or war-ships.

Admiral Seymour had anticipated the need of this knowledge the moment the burning and abandonment of the city was reported to him, and at the earliest dawn three small vessels—two of them tugs and one a light-armored cruiser—had pushed through the Gate and descended safely as far as Blackwell’s Island. Their report was brought to General von Blücken by187 Admiral Seymour in person, shortly after seven o’clock in the morning. A force of seventy-five thousand men was instantly ordered to embark and to proceed down the river to the Battery. If that was deserted, they were to push across the Hudson and attempt a landing on the New Jersey shore. Before the transports started, about twenty-five of the lighter-armored and swifter of the fighting vessels in the fleet steamed in advance down the narrow East River to clear the way and draw the fire of any of the enemy who might still linger in their retreat. At the same time a slow and cautious advance was made by the army from the North directly upon the burning city.

It was soon found that the entire upper half of the town was in hopeless ruins. But as morning approached, the retreat had become more of a flight, and less time had been left the hurrying revolutionists to devote to destruction. All through the lower half of the city buildings188 were found on fire, but there had been no such universal incendiarism as had caused the obliteration of every structure above Central Park. No apparatus for putting out fires had been left in working order in the city; but by the demolition of surrounding buildings the allies succeeded in confining these detached conflagrations to narrow limits, within which they eventually burned themselves out.

The revolutionists made no stop at Jersey City on their retreat. They knew that in a very short time it would be under the guns of the allied fleet. They had been compelled to abandon all their artillery except a few batteries of field-pieces, and could make no reply that would be felt within the iron sides of the armored vessels. Picking up the detachments which had been left along the west shore to watch the loyalists at Newburg, they pushed on towards Philadelphia.

Though driven out of New York, they189 were by no means conquered. They felt that they had been beaten by strategy and trick. In open fight they still had confidence in their ability to hold the invaders in check, if not signally to defeat them. The moment the news reached Washington that New York had fallen, O’Halloran, Wagner, and Liest despatched orders to every socialist and Irish organization in the North and West, calling for their last available men. The three themselves hurried northward to meet the retiring army, reaching Philadelphia at the same time that its advance-guard arrived. Most of the troops had been compelled to march on foot across New Jersey, owing to the failure of railroad transport; and it was not till the fourteenth of May that the last brigades arrived.

In this emergency, and by consent of the other two members of the “Directory,” O’Halloran, who showed by far the most endurance and courage of all, was190 given supreme military command. He found that he was still in control of a formidable army. It had lost by death and desertions about a hundred and fifty thousand men since the allies landed. But the detachments which had been collected from the cities on the shore of the Hudson opposite New York, the detail which had been met at Philadelphia, the forces which had been brought from Washington and Baltimore, and the reinforcements which had already arrived from points to the westward, had more than made good these losses. O’Halloran found that he could oppose to the invaders as numerous an army as had met them before New York, while he assumed that they would be unable to replace the men whom they had lost.

In a measure, this was true; yet General von Blücken had repaired his losses much more fully than O’Halloran suspected. During the attack on New York of the191 fourth of May he had sent to Boston for twenty thousand men from the British garrison there. The day that New York fell, eighteen thousand more were called to his force, leaving only about five thousand to hold Boston, and as many more along the line of communication southward. But the retreat of the revolutionists had made this force ample. Meanwhile several troop-ships had arrived, bringing reinforcements from Europe.

Two days after he had taken possession of New York, Brooklyn, and the New Jersey cities, General von Blücken found his strength so far recruited that he was able to push forward in pursuit of the retiring foe. At the same time a portion of the fleet, with a considerable force of marines, was sent to make a demonstration against Washington, and if the city was found undefended, to seize it. Another smaller detachment was ordered up the Chesapeake to try Baltimore.

The contending forces were too large to admit of rapid movement on either side; but the better discipline and greater attention to detail on the part of the allies gave them an advantage in the race, and they slowly but surely gained on the revolutionists. The latter were falling back, with the evident intention of resting behind the defences of Washington, when the advancing troops of the allies began to press upon their rear. By a strange fatality, this encounter took place near the town of Gettysburg; and it was on that historic field, which saw the most decisive struggle of the civil war, that the last battle of 1888 was also fought.

It was the 11th of June when the two armies found themselves once more face to face. For the whole of the preceding day and evening impassioned socialistic and Irish agitators had been passing around the revolutionary camp, inciting their hearers to wilder and fiercer fanaticism. So successful had they been that even the camp followers who had fled in panic out of New York to escape the allied guns, became clamorous for an opportunity to meet their victors once more in open fight.

Early the following morning (June 12, 1888) the battle opened. For two days the desperate fight raged around the little town; and the two “Round Tops,” whose summits were the objects of constant attack by one party or the other, once more shed rivulets of blood down their steep and rocky sides. The allies were by far the better armed and the better disciplined; but the revolutionists fought literally “to the death.” They introduced a new and194 terrible element into civilized warfare by refusing to give quarter to their prisoners. The allied soldiers soon learned of this barbarism, and, despite the attempts of their officers to restrain them, retaliated in kind. Their rage became as furious as the fanaticism of their opponents.

The close of the second day found the hordes of the revolution in panic and flight. They were more than defeated, they were annihilated. Their disorganization was as rapid and complete as had been their first successes, a year before. Not a brigade was left to guard a retreat. The whole array of survivors dissolved into mere bands and scattered over the country.

Many thousand prisoners were taken, among them a few who had become known as leaders in the different revolutionary organizations. Kopf was caught hiding in a farm-yard, near Harrisburg, several days after the battle; he was sent to Germany for trial. Herr Liest had been killed195 during the first day’s battle. Wagner escaped, and has never since been heard of. It is thought he perished of starvation, or was killed during one of the raids which were frequently made by small bands of outlaws on scouting parties of the allies during the summer and fall. O’Halloran was captured during the pursuit after the battle. He had thrown himself into a ditch, and tried to conceal himself by hiding in a pool of mud and water, with his head covered by the weeds which grew from the sides of the filthy drain. He was dragged out and almost immediately recognized by an English soldier who had once met him in Ireland. He was court-martialled on the spot, charged with responsibility for the order to his followers to give no quarter to their prisoners, and shot at sunrise the following morning. A few other prisoners, who were proved guilty of murdering wounded and helpless men, were similarly tried and executed. Several thousand, who196 had been known in Europe as professional plotters and agitators, were sent back to their respective Governments in irons for trial on account of old offences.

Zealous effort was made by the allies to discover and arrest the mysterious leader whose edicts, emanating from the “Council of Seven,” had been so powerful in the early days of the revolution. Nothing was ever found to furnish even a clew to his identity. There are those, even now, who believe that he is still living, hidden in obscurity and seclusion, and ready to seize the first opportunity which chance may afford him to resume his warfare on organized society. But this is not likely. Whether he still lives, or whether he perished in the bloody closing of the revolution, the mystery in which he purposely enshrouded himself at the beginning of the struggle still hangs over him, and there is no real ground for the expectation that it will be ever lifted.

The revolution was at an end. For two months there was skirmishing and occasionally a fierce contest that might almost be called a battle between detachments of the allies and disintegrating bands of socialists or dynamiters who had taken refuge in various fastnesses of the land. It was six months before the last of the privateers which they had fitted out to ravage commerce was captured, and the seas were once more pronounced safe to trading vessels. But so far as any organization or real strength was involved, the struggle at Gettysburg had been conclusive. One by one the cities and forts of the whole country were garrisoned by the allies. The land was put under martial law.

Then came the question to the conquerors, What shall we do with the fruits of our victory? The problem was debated at length and anxiously in Paris and London and Berlin. At first it was proposed to imprison all the socialists, anarchists, nihilists, and dynamiters remaining in the country; but it was speedily found that this was impracticable. To say nothing of the others, the Irish who had taken active part in the revolution or contributed to its support, and who sympathized with the dynamite warfare on civilization, were not less than eight millions. All the jails and prisons in the world would not have confined them. Their organizations were199 proscribed and their meetings prohibited; but it was clear from a thousand indications that their spirit of hatred and cruelty remained unchanged, and that they waited only the opportunity to renew their crimes. The same was true in even greater degree of the socialists and anarchists. They regarded themselves as the friends and martyrs of liberty. The allies were to them simply minions of tyranny who had combined to crush out human freedom. It was believed that the patriots of the country, loyal to the old republican idea, still outnumbered the anarchists, and would outvote them at the polls. But they were peaceable men, devoted to trade and industry, and had already been proved powerless to enforce with arms the decrees their majorities might render at the ballot-boxes. The summer and autumn passed away, and the problem remained unsolved. It was decided at last to hold another pan-European conference, this time at Washington,200 in which all the Powers which had taken part in the conference of January at Berlin should meet and reach some definite decision regarding the future.

This foreign congress met on the first Monday of December,—the very day on which, in happier times, the Congress of the United States had been accustomed to convene. It met in the Senate Chamber of the Capitol, over which the Stars and Stripes floated no longer. The national flag was replaced by the flags of the various Powers represented in the conference, that of each being displayed one day at a time in regular order.

England and France were disposed to restore the republic to the people, and trust to them to defend themselves against domestic convulsions; but they stood alone in this. They were unable to reply to the objections raised by the other Powers, that this would inevitably result in another revolution, and the necessity upon Europe, as201 the guardian of civilization, once more to conquer the country. Was it expedient to accept the risk of such another war? Moreover, who was to bear the expense of the struggle just completed? For herself, Germany protested that she was unwilling to forego her right to demand indemnity from the United States. England also took this view. There was no possibility that such an indemnity—amounting to fully three thousand millions of dollars—could be obtained if the autonomy of the nation were restored. The following recommendations were finally drafted by the conference:—

That the signatory Powers should continue in occupation of the United States at least until another conference should agree as to the safety of establishing some sort of local government; that the supreme authority should be vested in a board of European administrators, to be appointed, one by each Power, and to choose a president202 from their own number; that this board should levy taxes and customs, from which they should repay to Germany, England, and France such sums as those Governments had respectively expended in the war; that the cost of maintaining the army of occupation should also be defrayed from the local taxes; and that a sufficient direct tax should be imposed to result, within three years, in the payment of three hundred and fifty millions of dollars to each of the three Governments at London, Berlin, and Paris, to be applied towards pensions required for the sufferers by the war.

The recommendations of the conference were accepted and adopted by the Governments concerned. Their armies still garrison the land; their agents sit in the Capitol at Washington. Cities and towns are allowed to elect local councils, but they administer only such local affairs as do not involve the power of taxation or of expending money. The purse-strings are held in203 the hands of the European administrators and their subordinates. Not even a road tax can be levied except on their warrants; not even a school-district meeting held without their permission and the presence of their guards to preserve order and repress possible sedition.

Nevertheless there are many who find the subject position of the country quite as endurable as its condition before the revolution. To be sure, taxation is heavy, but its burdens fall equitably upon all. Business men find themselves much better protected in their pecuniary dealings than ever before. Bank cashiers who steal funds committed to their care are punished with such severity that the crime has almost ceased to be known. Not a single defalcation has been reported during the two years of 1894 and 1895.

The courts are presided over by foreign judges, it is true, and they are not generally favorites with the lawyers. But the people204 are not wholly dissatisfied. A New York attorney who was suspected in the fall of 1893 of trying to clear a murderer by the introduction of false testimony, was actually tried, convicted, disbarred, fined to the last cent of his ill-gotten wealth, and sentenced to prison for ten years. Those who depend upon the courts for justice are not entirely displeased by such things. The newspapers are held in strict accountability. There is no longer such an issue as “politics” for them to discuss and play the demagogue over. They are confined to the publication of news and the discussion of such topics as cannot be twisted into a seditious turn. Under the influence of the prevailing tendency toward honesty and fairness, they are actually coming to aim at the truth in their news.

In brief, throughout the whole land the moral atmosphere is purer and healthier than it ever was before. Socialists and anarchists and dynamiters still lurk beneath205 the surface, but they have little opportunity for organization, and a single overt act on their part is the signal for an instant exercise of such severity as men use towards a nest of poisonous reptiles which show a tendency to attack innocent passers-by.

There is no longer private liberty within the land, but there is public order. Individual rights are respected, protected, and enforced; the law is justly administered; crime is punished as surely and as severely when committed by men of rank and station as when committed by less intelligent, and therefore less responsible, men. There are signs that the popular mind is beginning to feel aspirations after honesty and fairness for their own sakes, and to regard successful dishonesty and corruption with less respect than were common during the existence of the Republic. If these signs continue and increase, there is the possibility that the Great Republic of the206 past may at some future time arise once more from the ashes in which its memory now sleeps, and on a purer, nobler, more enduring foundation than that on which the men of 1776–1888 builded. But it will hardly come in our time. The mills of the gods grind slowly when their task is to grind into perfect flour the grist of a corrupt and ignorant humanity.

“Working-men! Throw aside your tools; take to guns; destroy your oppressors; tear down the barriers which close the way to happiness, to true manhood and freedom; secure for yourselves such conditions as shall enable every one who is willing to work to enjoy to the utmost the fruits of his labor! And you tramps, who, hungry, cold, and homeless, wander through the country, a moving picture of our splendid civilization, while a lazy, paltry crowd in their well-warmed palaces treat themselves to the products of your labor,—you may yet hope soon to have a reckoning, and take what belongs to you. You, too, will yet be able to enjoy life if you will resolve to use the power208 which Nature has given you, and which makes it possible for you to produce riches. Band together, then, and arm yourselves! To the fight, working-men! up, proletariat!... Among the friends of freedom, socialists, and other revolutionists, the fixed idea is still met with, that the good must in the nature of things certainly prevail sooner or later. This, too, is a remnant of religious superstition. For the idea can only be maintained on the assumption of a certain conformity to a purpose in the course of history; and this in turn pre-supposes the existence of a higher conscious being. That this idea must enfeeble and narcotize the energy is evident. It is the most dangerous opiate that there is for revolutionists. Religion, authority, and State are all of a piece. To the devil with theory! The savior of the present world must be one who will free us from the savior of the old world.... His common name is ‘Reason.’ ... His proper name is ‘Atheism,’ or ‘Disbelief.’”—The Anzeiger, New Haven, Conn., February, 1885.

“The anarchist leaders met yesterday in secret session in a saloon on Pennsylvania Avenue. There were delegates present from nearly all the manufacturing towns in this section of the country. The meeting was called by J. W. Gorsuch and Samuel Fielden, who were sent here by the anarchists from Chicago to present a plan whereby the work of the cause could be carried on among the working-men unknown to the employers.

“Fielden before he came here spoke at all the manufacturing towns. He found, he said, that many laborers were socialists at heart, but were afraid to attend the meetings. They came to the conclusion, therefore, that the work must be carried on secretly until the time when the final blow is to be struck. He argued that it was time to revolt. There was no use denying the condition of the working-men, as the producers had grown steadily worse,210 while the non-producers increased their wealth to enormous degrees. This system was criminal to workmen, who must strike for their freedom.

“Gorsuch said Americans were not free men now, and that the only way they could demonstrate their right to the title was by destroying the system which perpetuates the galling contrast of princely wealth and degrading poverty. Fielden was asked, ‘Do you believe in dynamite as a means of warfare?’

“‘We will not hesitate to use anything when the time arrives. A revolution is near at hand. It must come. We want to abolish the present system of government. Some one must suffer in every reform, and lives must be sacrificed. I am in favor of the quickest means for the accomplishment of our purpose.’”—Despatch from Pittsburg, Pa., to the New York World, Feb. 22, 1885.

“Mrs. Parsons, who is a colored woman, made an unusually fiery speech. She began by berating her hearers as cowards, and unworthy of the name of manhood, because they allowed the aggressions of capital to continue and their daughters to barter their virtue for bread. If they were men, as they claimed to be, she said, they would blow up every house on the adjoining avenues before they would submit to it. They would demolish the police-stations, court-house, and jails, and fling dynamite in the faces of the army and navy. If they were afraid to do this, however, they need not look for a captain, for she would fill her apron with dynamite and lead them along the avenues of the city where the rich reside, destroying as they went.

“Her husband advised his hearers to study chemistry and take lessons from those expert212 in the manufacture of deadly explosives.”—Extract from a newspaper report of a meeting of “the dynamite section” of the Chicago socialists, Feb. 22, 1885.

The “New England Anzeiger” of March 14, 1885, appeared with a first page framed in gory red, and containing lurid accounts of the revolutions of March 14, 1848, in Vienna; of March 18, 1848, in Berlin; of March 18, 1871, in Paris; and of the assassination of the Czar of Russia, March 13, 1881. The following extract shows the tone of the article:—

“The dead of the 14th of March were buried, and with them the revolution; for everything that then happened in Berlin—yes, in all Germany—proved the political immaturity of the people; and the friend of humanity looks on in sadness to think how much good might have been accomplished in the year 1848 if the people had known what they know to-day,—to-day, when all the countries of Europe have213 behind them the powerful and deep-seated labor movement of more than twenty years, and when the principles of atheism, communism, and anarchy are daily and hourly, in the hut and in the palace (in the former with enthusiasm, in the latter with anxiety), considered and pondered over.”

“There are worse things than dynamite. The godless and law-defying forces back of it constitute the real danger. These forces are arrayed against civilization. All over the world the masses are in a state of agitation. New ideas and false theories are being presented and expounded by fanatics, charlatans, and demagogues. In an age of free speech and free print new doctrines spread rapidly. The poor, unsuccessful, dissatisfied, and lawless elements of society are boiling over with the maddening thought that somebody is doing them a great wrong. The restlessness of these214 people has been intensified by the teachings of earnest and well-meaning but misguided men. Henry George’s opinions have spread like wildfire, and taught millions to believe that private property in land is against the laws of nature and of God. Hyndman, in England, and other writers are spreading the notion that capital is the enemy of labor, eating up all the profits and keeping the working-man on starvation-wages. Others follow Prudhon, and declare that ‘all property is robbery.’ Others argue that religion, morality, government are all tricks of the oppressor, designed to keep the people down and out of their rights.”—Editorial in The Atlanta, Ga., Constitution, March, 1885.

“The communists were in high feather last night at the Germania Assembly Rooms. They met to commemorate all operations of rebellious societies against governments in215 general and the Paris revolution of 1871 in particular.... When the speaker referred to the barricades, and prophesied an early recognition of the ‘establishment of human liberty’ and the destruction of all crowned heads by an agent more powerful than the dreaded guillotine, the sons of Clavis sent up a roar of applause and bravos, intermingled with an occasional ‘hear, hear!’ from a dozen nitro-dynamiteurs who came to explore the prospects of an alliance, offensive and defensive, with their fiery Continental brothers on behalf of the ‘rights of man.’”—New York Tribune report, March 23, 1885.

“The existence of passion, favoritism, nepotism, and subjection to the behests of party, instead of love of country, thoughtfulness, and systematic business principles in the administration of government, with too much esotericism in its conduct, gives posts of honor to216 servants that impede, and retains officials that resist reform and accuracy in the civil service of the country. They forget that they are chosen to be about their country’s business, in which every citizen has an interest. Thus the want of business capacity and fidelity to the people’s trust furnishes many causes for the law’s delay, and some for its death.”—Chief-Justice Thomas F. Hargis in the North American Review for April, 1885.

“The predominant vices of America, especially as represented by its great cities, are its irreverence, its recklessness, its impatience,—in one word, its materialism. A nation in which the artistic sense is almost dead; which is practically without a literature; which is impatient of all sanctions and indifferent to all religions; which is corrupt from the highest pinnacle of its public life down to the lowest depth of its primalism; which is at once thin-skinned under criticism and aggressive to criticise; which worships material forces in every shape and form; which despises conventional conditions, yet is slavish to ignoble fashions;217 which, too hasty to think for itself, takes recklessly at second-hand any old or new clothes philosophy that may be imported from Europe, yet, while wearing the raiment openly, mocks and ridicules the civilization that wove the fabric,” etc.—Robert Buchanan in the same number of the same Review.

“One of the main reliances of the criminal element of our city for escaping from the clutches of the law is the subornation of perjury. A class of professional false swearers has grown up, and their aid is invoked without hesitation in the criminal courts. This startling and shameful fact was fully revealed to the public on the Ford trial. Society can find no protection under the ægis of the courts until this iniquity shall have been uprooted and cast out. The ermine sits under a upas-tree as long as men and women in droves dare commit the crime of perjury. No jury can justly218 decide any case if a terrible blow be not first struck at false testimony. And there are back of these perjurers the suborners. The master should be reached as well as the hireling.”—Editorial in the New Orleans Picayune, March 2, 1885.

Early in February, 1885, the New York Produce Exchange presented a Memorial to the Congress of the United States, setting forth, among other things, that the city of New York and the adjacent cities of Brooklyn and Jersey City “represent an interest in house ownership and real estate amounting to over $3,000,000,000; that all this realty is entirely unprotected from an attack by hostile fleets, which could bombard the city and the neighboring populated districts without even entering the Narrows.

“It is known abroad as well as at home,” the memorialists say, “that the shores of this country are entirely unprotected; and it would219 be only an act of reasonable precaution that New York, the chief city of the nation, should be defended by such permanent forts, floating batteries, gunboats, and torpedo service as will give us a guaranty against sudden invasion until the country shall have time to build an adequate fleet for defensive purposes.”

The hundred and seventh anniversary of Robert Emmet’s birth was celebrated in Faneuil Hall by the Irish citizens of Boston in February, 1885. The chief address of the evening was delivered by the Rev. P. A. McKenna. In the course of it he said, as reported by a Boston daily paper:—

“It seems almost advisable that since the Prince of Wales goes to Ireland as an invader, he should be treated as such. There is one principle which justifies the taking of human life, and that is the principle of self-defence of the person or the nation. It would not be220 becoming to advocate extreme measures; but let Irishmen contemptuously ignore the presence of the Prince of Wales.” [Applause.]

Mrs. Marguerite Moore was introduced as a woman recently from Ireland who had suffered incarceration for the cause. She spoke of love for Ireland, of hate for England, and pictured the misery of her native land in the past and in the present. “The Irishmen of America demand vengeance. The opportunity has come in England’s present difficulty, and advantage will be taken of that fact. The sappers and miners, who blow the people up, are as necessary to the Irish army as are dashing cavalry or steady infantry. [Applause.] Every man to his like in this respect,” said she. [And voices cried out “Dynamite!”]

Thomas Riley spoke on the topic of “Dynamite.” He did not think it necessary to say that they preferred to use that mode of warfare, but they would insist that they had no tears to shed at the consequences. “Is there anything wrong in the use of dynamite under certain conditions?” [“No, no!” cried out a dozen voices.] Dynamite, the speaker declared, had done no more injury than had221 other methods used by England. O’Donovan Rossa was mentioned, and a continued round of applause, cheers and “tigers,” followed. The speaker urged unity among Irishmen. “Ireland is ripe,” said he, “and the hour is approaching. If England but raises her hand against any nation, even a third or fourth class nation, Ireland will stab her in the back and stab her to the heart; and if she needs the knife, we’ll send it to her.”

The meeting closed with three cheers for O’Donovan Rossa; but before so doing, passed, as suggested by the last speaker, resolutions as follows:—

“Whereas the present unsettled condition of Europe, especially our old enemy England, indicates that an uprising of the oppressed people will in the very near future occur;

“And whereas the Irish and those of Irish-American descent have been for a long period of years proclaiming to the world Ireland’s sufferings and wrongs and England’s unlawful and brutal usurpations;

“And whereas, as in the past the principal cause of our weakness and failures to effect the removal of said usurpation was222 disunion among ourselves, through which unhappily the common enemy was armed and we disarmed;

“And whereas, if we expect to effect the freedom of Ireland it must be accomplished as united brothers tolerant of each other, working harmoniously in the same sacred cause, to secure the same holy object;

“Therefore be it resolved that we, Irish-American citizens of Boston and vicinity, in Faneuil Hall assembled, send forth from this historic cradle of liberty an earnest appeal to all aspirants and workers for Ireland’s disenthralment to forget all past differences and unite for the opportune crisis, fast approaching, to strike the successful blow for Ireland.”

“That a deep-rooted feeling of discontent pervades the masses, none can deny; that there is a just cause for it, must be admitted. The old cry, ‘These agitators are stirring up a223 feeling of dissatisfaction among working-men, and they should be suppressed,’ will not avail now. Every thinking person knows that the agitator did not throw two millions of men out of employment.... That the army of the discontented is gathering fresh recruits day by day is true; and if this army should become so large that, driven to desperation, it should one day arise in its wrath and grapple with its real and fancied enemy, the responsibility for that act must fall upon the heads of those who could have averted the blow, but who turned a deaf ear to the supplication of suffering humanity, and gave the screw of oppression an extra turn because they had the power.”—T. V. Powderly, 1885.

On April 7, 1885, O’Donovan Rossa delivered an address in Tremont Temple, Boston. From a report of his remarks which appeared224 in the “Boston Herald” of April 8, the following extracts are taken:—

“The papers of New York and of Boston represented him as a man who took dynamite to bed with him. [Laughter and cheers.] But this very thing England used in all her wars, and now had tons of it in Woolwich. Mr. Parnell told them two years ago that he had all the resources of civilization at command. He meant then that he only wanted an excuse to send over more of this destructive material. [Laughter and applause.] Scientific warfare alarmed England, and she would like Ireland to keep petitioning and not go to arms. Then they were asked, while they had the Coercion Acts, to come out and fight in honorable warfare. [Laughter.] He would rather fight in the open field if allowed, but the speaker went in for fighting the devil with his own weapons. [Applause.] He would not wish to hurt an Englishman, but there was no other way to root English government from Ireland. [Cheers, and a voice: ‘Yes, and we will root them out.’] He would show that it would cost England more to hold Ireland than it was worth. [Cheers.] After England had passed all her stringent225 laws, the recent explosions had occurred. Until England gave up Ireland, dynamite would go in.... There might be some who did not like to deal with dynamite, but they only wanted it done secretly. They said the speaker blew too much. [Laughter.] Well, he had to blow a bit to get them in. He had to make a noise, or else he would not get any aid for the men who are fighting England so as to make her understand it would be advisable to give Ireland a Parliament like that of 1801. [Cheers.] When they had that, he would rest for a time. But if she wished to stop the dynamite work in London, let her give Ireland justice. Till she did that, he would ask the people of Boston to give all the aid they could.... In conclusion, he asked his audience to do something to help the brave men working for the liberty of Ireland. He said there were to-day Irishmen working for the cause in England who had never seen America; but the scare they were giving England in the heart of London was doing more than twenty thousand men in the field. He did not like dynamite, and the English did not [laughter]; but he had no objection that the Irishmen in London or in Ireland226 should use all the dynamite they could get. [Applause.] England had done all she could with fire and sword to exterminate the race in Ireland. Why, she had sold the Irish people as slaves. England had banished the Irish people, and she kept doing it. He asked the chairman, if his family had been separated and forced to go to a strange country by the work of a Government, would he object to using dynamite, or hell-fire itself? [Great applause.]”

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		PAGE
I.	Introductory.—The “Hard Times” of 1882–1887	7
II.	The Moral Interregnum	15
III.	The Socialistic Poison	27
IV.	The Rule of Ireland in America	32
V.	The First Eruption	51
VI.	Anxious Forebodings	77
VII.	The Revolutionists’ Master-stroke	86
VIII.	The Reign of Anarchy	96
IX.	Attempts to save the Government	103
X.	The last President of the United States	115
XI.	A Precious Triumvirate	124
XII.	War with England	128
XIII.	Capture of Boston	141
XIV.	The European Coalition	159
XV.	The Allies attack New York	171
XVI.	The Final Struggle	192
XVII.	Foreign Occupation	198

6APPENDIX.
I.	The Socialistic Spirit in 1885	207
II.	A Revolution near at Hand.—“It must come”	209
III.	A Female Socialist’s Advice	211
IV.	Atheism, Communism, and Anarchy	212
V.	The Forces arrayed against Civilization	213
VI.	The Prospects of an Alliance between Dynamiters and Communists	214
VII.	Two Contemporary Criticisms	215
VIII.	The Courts.—One Journalistic Warning out of many	217
IX.	The Unprotected Atlantic Coast	218
X.	A Single Illustration of the Irish-American Spirit	219
XI.	The Army of the Discontented	222
XII.	Defending Dynamite Assassination	223

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Fall of the Great Republic (1886-88)

THE FALL
OF THE
GREAT REPUBLIC.
(1886–88.)

CONTENTS.

I.
INTRODUCTORY.—THE “HARD TIMES” OF
1882–1887.

II.
THE MORAL INTERREGNUM.

III.
THE SOCIALISTIC POISON.

IV.
THE RULE OF IRELAND IN AMERICA.

V.
THE FIRST ERUPTION.

VI.
ANXIOUS FOREBODINGS.

VII.
THE REVOLUTIONISTS’ MASTER-STROKE.

VIII.
THE REIGN OF ANARCHY.

IX.
ATTEMPTS TO SAVE THE GOVERNMENT.

X.
THE LAST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES.

XI.
A PRECIOUS TRIUMVIRATE.

XII.
WAR WITH ENGLAND.

XIII.
CAPTURE OF BOSTON.

XIV.
THE EUROPEAN COALITION.

XV.
THE ALLIES ATTACK NEW YORK.

XVI.
THE FINAL STRUGGLE.

XVII.
FOREIGN OCCUPATION.

APPENDIX.

Transcriber’s Note

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Fall of the Great Republic (1886-88)

THE FALL OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC. (1886–88.)

CONTENTS.

I. INTRODUCTORY.—THE “HARD TIMES” OF 1882–1887.

II. THE MORAL INTERREGNUM.

III. THE SOCIALISTIC POISON.

IV. THE RULE OF IRELAND IN AMERICA.

V. THE FIRST ERUPTION.

VI. ANXIOUS FOREBODINGS.

VII. THE REVOLUTIONISTS’ MASTER-STROKE.

VIII. THE REIGN OF ANARCHY.

IX. ATTEMPTS TO SAVE THE GOVERNMENT.

X. THE LAST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

XI. A PRECIOUS TRIUMVIRATE.

XII. WAR WITH ENGLAND.

XIII. CAPTURE OF BOSTON.

XIV. THE EUROPEAN COALITION.

XV. THE ALLIES ATTACK NEW YORK.

XVI. THE FINAL STRUGGLE.

XVII. FOREIGN OCCUPATION.

APPENDIX.

Transcriber’s Note

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

THE FALL
OF THE
GREAT REPUBLIC.
(1886–88.)

I.
INTRODUCTORY.—THE “HARD TIMES” OF
1882–1887.

II.
THE MORAL INTERREGNUM.

III.
THE SOCIALISTIC POISON.

IV.
THE RULE OF IRELAND IN AMERICA.

V.
THE FIRST ERUPTION.

VI.
ANXIOUS FOREBODINGS.

VII.
THE REVOLUTIONISTS’ MASTER-STROKE.

VIII.
THE REIGN OF ANARCHY.

IX.
ATTEMPTS TO SAVE THE GOVERNMENT.

X.
THE LAST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES.

XI.
A PRECIOUS TRIUMVIRATE.

XII.
WAR WITH ENGLAND.

XIII.
CAPTURE OF BOSTON.

XIV.
THE EUROPEAN COALITION.

XV.
THE ALLIES ATTACK NEW YORK.

XVI.
THE FINAL STRUGGLE.

XVII.
FOREIGN OCCUPATION.