Chapter II: Part 2

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. 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. 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 eighteen 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, 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. 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 Governor 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 all 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 in 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. The 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 against 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 overwhelming 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.

VI.

ANXIOUS FOREBODINGS.

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 term “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 up 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 before 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 war 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. 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 convention 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.

VII.

THE REVOLUTIONISTS’ MASTER-STROKE.

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 pushed 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, 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 neighboring 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 deadlier 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 was 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 whatever 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 preparing 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 prosperous 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.

VIII.

THE REIGN OF ANARCHY.

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 they 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 communication 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 officials 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 treatment 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 were 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 to 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.

IX.

ATTEMPTS TO SAVE THE GOVERNMENT.

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 and 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, and 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 those 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 of 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 anxiously 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 Government 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 to 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. He 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 nominations 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 peace 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.

X.

THE LAST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

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 the 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, 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 debating 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 by 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 the 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. They 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 of 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.

XI.

A PRECIOUS TRIUMVIRATE.

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 to 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 schemes 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 they 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.

XII.

WAR WITH ENGLAND.