CHANCES FOR CHICAGO.
The Tidal Wave Reaches the Illinois Metropolis—The Bad Elements
Restive—The Tramps Marching in by Hundreds—Chances for Plunder—The
Commune Commences—Boastful Manifestos—Absurd Demand—The Social
Atmosphere Grows Misty—Precautionary Measures by Civil and Military
authorities—Noisy Demonstrations of the Internationalists—Citizens
Philip Van Patten and George Schilling.
While the whole country was in an uproar, from the Wabash to the
Delaware, and from the Chemung to the Kanawha, and the indications
pointed to a greater uprising, and the development of passions of deeper
intensity, as the movement among the working classes expanded, the eyes
of the people of the entire West were turned with anxiety toward
Chicago, the metropolis of the lakes. There was a feeling abroad, that
Chicago occupied a peculiarly critical position in relation to the great
uprising which was shaking the social and political structures of our
country to their deepest foundations. Chicago is great in point of
population, great in its commercial enterprise, great in the stores of
wealth collected by her energetic merchants and bankers, great in the
number and the magnificence of her public and private buildings; and
above all, Chicago is great in the number and character of the daily
newspapers issued from her printing offices. Furthermore, Chicago is
great in the history of the country, on account of having been the scene
of the greatest conflagration known in the annals of time; and Chicago
is great as being the seat of more startling and sensational
developments than any or all other American cities. Probably the reason
for the general belief in the truth of the last statement is to be
sought, in the fact that Chicago newspapers are confessedly in advance
of all other newspapers in the world, as chroniclers of occurrences.
They are emphatically daily records of all events in which any human
being can possibly have any interest.
But with all its greatness, Chicago has its vileness also. Its great
population is, perhaps, as much of a conglomerated mass, of as many
races, kindreds and tongues, as the inhabitants in any other city in the
world can be. There are English, Welsh, Irish, French, Polish, Bohemian,
Italian, Russian, Danish and Swedish people among its hundreds of
thousands of inhabitants. Chicago was long ago noted as having an
unusually large number of Socialists, Internationalists, Spiritualists,
and other peculiar people, among its inhabitants. It was the first city
in this country, in which communism had the boldness to come out and
avow itself openly. It was known generally, that the so-called
“dangerous classes” were disproportionately numerous in Chicago, and
hence the shudder of dread, with which men contemplated the bare
possibility that these chronic lawbreakers might become the masters of
the city, and compel obedience to any decree they might conclude to
issue. If such crimes as theft, arson, and murder, could be committed by
the wholesale in Pittsburgh, a much smaller city, what might not the
proportionately larger class of roughs in Chicago do, when once they
triumphed over all lawful authority, as they did in Pittsburgh? Men
asked themselves this question as the advancing wave of discontent and
passion rolled from the East, in resistless might toward the West, and
wondered what answer time would give. Chicago was regarded as a place
where the most serious consequences of the Great Strikes should be
expected. And the sympathies of millions of people were evoked in its
behalf. The city of the Great Conflagration might also become the scene
of the greatest riots recorded in the history of the world. All hoped
that it might escape, but all feared that it would not escape a
visitation of the excitement, and many doubted the ability of the civil
authorities to meet with a general uprising of “the dangerous classes”
in that city.
The first intimation of the outbreak of the discontented in that city
were received with a feeling of profound concern. The whole population
of the great Northwest was interested. The great city, it was feared,
was destined to undergo an ordeal, such as it had not before endured,
overwhelming as had been the disasters which had swept over it. The
torch alone, might light the fires of a greater conflagration than that
which consumed temples, palaces, marts, and dwellings, during that
memorable October night in 1871, and yet more awful things than that
might happen, for with the devastation of the flames, death might revel
in a horrible carnival. And men trembled at the suggestion of such a
possibility.
The concessions made by numbers of the railway companies running into
Chicago, prevented any strike among their employes, and thus withdrew
from the movement a very large number of men, who became at once the
friends of order, and the stern upholders of the law, instead of being
doubtful friends, if not positive foes, of the law and order party.
Again, the acts of pillage, arson, and murder, committed by roughs who
had attached themselves to the cause of the laborers, at Baltimore and
Pittsburgh, had put the striking workingmen on their guard against
affiliations with such characters. The honest workingmen of the land
turned away in disgust from the Socialists, and other agitators, who had
in the very beginning of the movement come forward and assumed the
control to promote their own visionary, not to say vicious, schemes. The
American workingmen are not thieves, incendiaries, and murderers, but
honest, true men, as a class, who were engaged in an effort to redress
certain wrongs, of which they believed themselves to be victims. At
first they were glad to welcome to their ranks, and thank for their
assistance, all who came, professing sympathy. But when they saw the
deeds of the Communists and roughs in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, which
they did long before the waves of the labor-movement had reached Chicago
and St. Louis, they were disgusted, felt themselves outraged, and
dishonored by the association, and were ready to assist anybody
representing the ideas of social order and political stability, to put
down the howling mobs wherever they might appear.
These two causes—the action of the railway companies conceding the
demands of the employes, and the conduct of the mobs of roughs, who had
at first joined the workingmen in their movement, had prepared the way
for the maintenance of law and order in Chicago. There could be no very
serious infractions of the peace of the community, except by the
class—already under the ban of the law—known as roughs. The workingmen
neither had occasion, nor desire to become thieves, incendiaries, and
murderers, nor to have association with persons of that character. They
were not only, as a class, withdrawn from a position of active enmity
against the good order of society, but had been transferred to the side
which favored the preservation of order. Therefore the chances for
Chicago to escape pillage and destruction were good, notwithstanding the
immense number of visionary men, professional thieves, and idle and
vicious characters to be found there, who were interested, or thought
they were, in destroying all order and inaugurating a reign of terror.
Nevertheless Chicago was destined to be shaken as if by a mighty
tempest. The Communists and the vicious of all classes and trades were
sufficiently numerous to create no little trouble. It was well to be
prepared to act with promptness and celerity, and make quick, sharp work
with public offenders. And the Chicago officials had made ample
preparations, so that when the announcement was made that the strikes
had been inaugurated in Chicago, the municipal authorities were ready.
The announcement did not cause any smiting together of knees, as in some
other cities.
The strike of railroadmen in Chicago was commenced Monday night, July
23rd. The first announcement of trouble came from the men employed by
the Michigan Central Railroad as switchmen. These were joined the
following morning, by the entire force of firemen and brakemen employed
by that Company. They claimed that they were forced to take the step by
the arrogance, penuriousness, and unkindness of the managers of the
road. Having abandoned their places, the strikers gathered in force on
Tuesday morning, the 24th, and, in a body, visited the other railroad
employes in the city, and induced them all, with the exception of
employes of the Chicago and Northwestern, to quit work. Before noon on
the 24th, only one railroad which was running trains out of Chicago had
any freight trains moving on their tracks.
As soon as the announcement of the strike among railroadmen had spread
through the city, a mob, among whom were few or no strikers, but
composed largely of disreputable characters, was speedily assembled, to
the number of about five hundred men, and started out on a career of
lawlessness on the West Side. These ruffians visited manufactories, and
all other places where men were employed, and compelled the workmen to
desist from their labors.
Before sundown of the 24th, the railroad offices in the city, and the
depots and yards of all the railroads wore a quiet and desolate
appearance. The great traffic of a mighty city had suddenly ceased. The
wheels of commerce stood still, and silence fell upon the lately
bustling marts. The railroad companies had anticipated the strikes, and
had sent away as many cars from the city yards as possible.
The mob, which commenced its march in the morning, and paid attention
first to the railroad shops, continued all day performing its evil
mission. The closing of the workshops of the railroad companies, which
had been accomplished without difficulty, emboldened the
self-constituted guardians of the rights of workingmen, and they
proceeded next to the shops, founderies, mills and lumber yards, to
command the laborers employed in them to cease from their toil.
Meanwhile the band, which started out in the morning with five hundred
men, had grown to a multitude of two thousand men, and had been divided
into sections. This mob was largely composed of boys, ranging in age
from sixteen to twenty years. The mob did not respect the wishes of the
laborers in the shops of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, who had
not struck, but compelled them to quit.
Mayor Heath was not idle during this eventful day. Determined to
preserve the public peace, and maintain good order in the city, he was
taking such steps as would give him control of an available force of
picked men, sufficient in numbers and appointments to enforce his orders
when the time should arrive for decisive action. All the afternoon, the
Chief Magistrate of the city was engaged in selecting and swearing in a
select body of citizens to act as special police during the continuance
of the crisis. Nor was he content with these precautionary measures
alone. In view of the threatened danger, he had conferred with the
military commanders stationed in Chicago, and through them had induced
the Federal Administration to order to that city the Twenty-second
United States Infantry, then doing duty in Dakota. This regiment was to
have gone further East, but the threatening aspect of affairs at
Chicago, was sufficient reason for a halt there.
In the meantime, as the day wore away, the city exhibited evidence of
the general uneasiness which pervaded the public mind. Late in the
evening the Blue Island avenue cars were stopped for about an hour, by
one of the gangs, into which the mob had been divided. The rumor spread
with great rapidity, that the mob proposed to stop all travel on the
horse-car lines, and this served to increase the excitement on the
streets. But there was really no occasion for the intensity of interest
manifested. The leaders of the gang which had stopped the cars, were
promptly arrested and locked up by the police, and the cars continued to
run as usual.
The wildest reports of the action of the mob were in circulation by
nightfall. It was a field day for the Press reporters, who seemed
ubiquitous, narrowly watching every movement, seizing upon the most
trifling incident, and elaborating from it whole columns of matter. In
former days, chroniclers of great events would not have occupied so much
space in detailing the circumstances attending the shock of mighty
armies in battle, as was used by the press reporters in Chicago in
reporting the movements of a parcel of discontented men, and a multitude
of street boys. The parade of the mob was the most formidable part of
the trouble of the day. In truth, there had been no attempt at
incendiarism, few altercations, and scarcely a single breach of the
peace. The lawlessness of the gangs were manifested in no other way than
interfering with peaceable citizens, to prevent them from pursuing their
usual avocations. Upon the whole, it was a very good natured sort of
mob, indulging in pleasantries while engaged in violating the law, by
trenching on the rights of others. But the conduct of the mob on the
24th, was only a prelude to more dangerous demonstrations, and more
decisive actions. Collisions had been expected, but, as the evening
advanced, far into the night, no intelligence of conflicts had been
received, and gradually the streets were deserted by the crowds which
had thronged them, and the great city sank into a profound repose soon
after midnight. The eventful day had passed, and no stirring or
startling occurrence had taken place.
Wednesday, July 25th, dawned mistily upon the city. Clouds of vapor hung
suspended over Lake Michigan, and shadowed the streets, and palaces of
Chicago. There was gloom on the faces of men as well as on the face of
nature. The apprehension of conflicts, of incendiary torches, of
disaster and death, had a strong hold on the public mind.
Early in the day, it was announced that the Union Stock and Rolling
Mills, and Malleable Iron Works on the North Side, had closed, thus
transferring three hundred industrious men to the ranks of the idlers.
It was this rapid increase in the number of idle men, that served to
increase the general uneasiness. There is mischief in idleness, and this
was a time when men dreaded any enlargement of the possible elements of
mischief-making.
The first conflict between the mob and the representatives of lawful
authority took place on the morning of the 25th. A section of the mob
was moving on Twenty-second street, when it was met by a squad of police
officers. The mob was largely composed of a class of persons, to be
found in all cities, who regard police officers as their natural foes.
Being now in a large body together, it occurred to them that an
excellent opportunity was afforded to have revenge on their enemies,
hence they proceeded to treat the officers to a shower of stones, and
then advanced upon them with sticks. The police officers were prepared
for them, and drawing their pistols, they advanced upon the crowd, fired
their pistols, charged with blank cartridges, then advanced briskly,
club in hand, to the assault. The officers of the law were quickly among
the rioters, applying their clubs in a way exceedingly unpleasant to the
lawbreakers, who speedily scattered, some of them with bleeding heads.
Two of the officers were struck, but received slight injuries.
Another section of the rowdies, seized the Phœnix Distillery, compelled
the employes to quit work, drove the proprietors from the place, and
closed the establishment. The proprietors applied to the United States
army officers for protection, and re-instatement.
On the North Side, the rabble who were assuming to regulate other
people’s affairs, showed themselves particularly incompetent to govern
their own actions in a proper manner. They were very noisy, and made
themselves particularly obnoxious by lawless deeds. This crowd showed a
decidedly bellicose disposition, and amused themselves by smashing
windows and defacing buildings in all cases where objection was made to
their proceedings. At the North Side Rolling Mills, a large company of
strikers defied the police, and compelled them to retire discomfited
from the field. The police returned to their station-houses, and the
strikers marched on.
The excitement in the city was growing hour by hour. Men were uncertain,
apprehensive, fearful. What would come of all this? What did the mighty
movement that now extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific mean? What
would become of government, society, institutions, the hopes of mankind,
if the element which had suddenly exhibited so much zeal, vigor, and
organization, should succeed in their purposes? These were questions
presented to the minds of all, but answered satisfactorily by no one.
Early in the morning of Wednesday, a gang of some twenty or thirty
rowdies boarded a passenger train on the Illinois Central Railroad, just
before it left the depot. When it had gone a short distance, they
compelled the engineer to back up, and return to the depot-yard. Another
gang attempted to stop the dummy, which runs from the Union Stock Yards.
In this purpose they were thwarted by the coolness and daring of the
conductor, who, with drawn revolver in hand, defied the roughs, and
proceeded on his way.
One of the sections which visited a large white lead and oil
manufactory, not meeting with the cordial reception they believed
themselves entitled to receive, expressed their disgust by attacking the
building with a perfect shower of stones. They succeeded in destroying a
considerable amount of glass, which was in the windows. A few sailors
joined in the general sentiment of workingmen on a strike, and struck
for an advance of wages. But the masses of the jolly tars did not take
kindly to the fashion of the land-lubbers, and as a consequence the
sailors’ strike was a failure.
There was a collision between a band of rioters and policemen at the
corner of Twelfth and Canal streets. The police were successful in
vanquishing the roughs, struck a goodly number with clubs, severely
bruising a few, and arresting quite a number of them.
All saloons were closed on the West Side at an early hour in the day.
Later orders were issued by the Mayor to close all saloons in the city.
The penalty for refusing to comply with the order was the revocation of
their licenses. No one had been killed in all the encounters between
police officers and the mob, though a number of the former had received
ugly cuts and bruises, and many of the latter had suffered from severe
beatings inflicted by the strong arms of the officers wielding their
clubs.
The arrival of a portion of the Twenty-Second Regiment of United States
infantry, from Dakota, was an event which cheered the hearts of the
law-abiding citizens, if it did not have the effect of striking terror
into the souls of the riotous mob.
All the afternoon the strikers—or rather the mob, for there were very
few railroadmen or strikers from shops and factories, among the crowds
which marched around to order the stopping of work—continued their
parade begun the day before. Many shops were visited, many honest men
were intimidated from earning bread for their families.
The City Council had a session in the afternoon, and adopted a series of
resolutions, supporting the measures taken by the Mayor, for the
preservation of peace, and authorizing him to make whatever expenditures
might be deemed necessary, in order to protect the lives and property of
the citizens. In addition, a measure was introduced and referred to the
Committee on Finance, authorizing the Mayor to borrow the sum of half a
million of dollars, to be expended on public improvements, in order that
those idle might be furnished employment. This action of the City
Council fairly illustrates the condition of the public mind, as it was
manifested in Chicago on the 25th of July, 1877. The Mayor issued
another proclamation reiterating his requests, that patrols be formed,
and that idlers and curious people, and especially women and children,
keep off the streets, and ordering police and citizens to arrest
disorderly persons. The authorities would not be responsible for
consequences of the collection of people in a crowd.
The merchants held a meeting, and made arrangements for an organized
body of special police, composed of merchants and employes, who should
not disband until peace was restored.
As yet, no real difficulty had been encountered. The citizens were
excited; the discontented and dangerous elements were fully aroused, and
the aspect of affairs were certainly threatening. There was not wanting
evidence that a large number of people in that city would hail with keen
satisfaction the inauguration of a reign of terror, such as had been
experienced at Pittsburgh, only more terrible because of the greater
number of people involved.
Meanwhile, the various sections of the “Workingmen’s Party of the United
States”—the Internationalists were suddenly galvanized into energetic
life by the events which had been taking place everywhere—were holding
meetings daily and nightly, in many different parts of the city,
enrolling new members and doing a remarkable amount of talking about
their purposes, and their readiness to assert their “rights,” and make
war on society to the extent of subverting the established political and
social institutions of the country. The Communists were in their
element. The citizens, Philip Van Patten, and George Schilling, leaders
of the Internationalists were unusually alert. They were taking counsel
with their followers continually.
On the night of the 25th, a mass meeting, under the auspices of the
Workingmen’s Party of the United States, was held at Madison and Market
streets. This meeting was attended by perhaps one thousand eight
hundred, or two thousand persons. The same evening a meeting of the
Labor League was held at Maskell’s Hall, on Desplaines street. All day
the sections of the mob had been going about the streets, interfering
with the men in various manufactories, compelling men to close up, and
doing many unlawful and malicious acts. But they were not wearied at
night. The various halls where the members of the trades’ unions met,
were well filled. And yet the throngs in the street were not less
numerous. Even the workingmen, and the Internationalists seemed to have
been surprised by the suddenness and evident momentum of the popular
movement in Chicago.
Messrs. Van Patten, Schilling, Parsons, and other members of “The
Workingmen’s Party of the United States,” do not seem to have fully
comprehended the nature of the movement in progress around them. During
the early part of the day these men, who composed “The Executive
Committee,” issued an address to workingmen, in which they advised them,
under any circumstances, to keep quiet until they should have given the
crisis due consideration. An Executive Committee, they announced, had
been appointed to receive delegates from every shop, mill, and trades’
union wherever there were one hundred united, to lay out a plan how to
work and better their situation. They were invited to appoint delegates
and send them at any time after eight o’clock that night.
[Illustration: CARRYING OF THE DEAD.]
It was announced that The Executive Committee would sit all night at No.
113 Milwaukee avenue.
The place selected for the meeting that night was not deemed suitable,
and it had been the purpose of the leaders to change the place of
meeting to Milwaukee avenue. It was too late. By seven o’clock a large
crowd had gathered, and there was all the material for a first-class
communistic meeting, and very soon a regular mass meeting was organized
on the west side of Market street. Some one arose and commenced making a
speech, but the tenor of his remarks was not satisfactory to his
audience, and a clamor was raised which compelled him to desist. Then
another man, whose name was not announced, arose, and in fervid tones,
and florid rhetoric, commenced to animadvert upon the conduct and
purposes of the capitalists, and to paint in horrid colors the terrible
slavery of the workingmen. He dwelt with telling emphasis upon the
wickedness of Thomas A. Scott, John W. Garrett, and men like them, and
declared that the press was owned and controlled by men who were in
alliance with these arch-enemies of the laboring masses. This orator of
“The Workingman’s Party of the United States,” soon concluded his
remarks, as the crowd seemed to be altogether too merry in mood to
attend to the long-drawn sentences of any man for any considerable
length of time.
A Mr. Malton followed, and opened up a plan to heal all the wounds. His
proposition was to send a delegation to Washington, demand that the
President should convene Congress at once, that Congress should be
instructed by the people to authorize the issue of Treasury notes, to
the workingmen, worth dollar for dollar in Government bonds, to be
redeemable within sixty days, in order that the laboring masses might be
saved from starvation. The ideas of Mr. Malton, were hailed with delight
by the mass of men before him.
An ex-soldier of the Union army, next mounted the stage. He showed a
crippled and distorted hand, which, he said, was the result of wounds
received “while fighting for this glorious country.” Five other scars of
bullet wounds, he declared, adorned his body. He said when he entered
the army, he was promised a life of honor and emolument in case he
should be wounded in his country’s service. “How had these promises been
carried out?” Here he was a cripple, and receiving the beggarly pittance
of six dollars a month. The promises made him were infamous lies. What
cared the men who had reaped benefits from his services, for him now in
his distress? He was in favor of making the bondholders, and social
thieves, and political knaves feel the weight of an indignant people’s
wrath. “The veteran,” continued at some length. Some one else took the
stand and harangued the crowd for awhile in much the same strain.
The crowd was a very orderly one. It was composed of all classes of
citizens. Many had gone from mere curiosity. There was no breach of the
peace or other disorderly manifestations. Notwithstanding this fact,
about this time a squad of police officers made their appearance,
marching briskly down Market street, and immediately charged the crowd
congregated there, and very quickly dispersed them. It has not yet been
made apparent by what right a peaceable assemblage of men were thus
assailed by the representatives of lawful authority. But it was not a
favorable time for a strict observance of the inhibitions of the supreme
law of the land—the Constitution of the United States—by the police
authorities of Chicago. It was assumed, that such meetings were about
to, or might possibly lead to, a breach of the peace, then or at some
other time. So the people were driven away.
At Maskell’s Hall, on Desplaines street, another meeting was held. This
one was under the auspices of the Labor League of Chicago. But the views
advanced by the speakers were not much less impracticable than those
entertained by the speakers at the meeting of the Internationalists. The
speech of the evening was delivered by Mr. John McGiloray. A brief
synopsis of his remarks will serve to show the spirit of the laboring
men, in the great movement in progress.
Mr. McGiloray asserted, that “the workingman was the power of the world;
labor had arisen in all its power, and demanded better times. What was
the cause of the bad times was a question. If a man deposited his vote
in the ballot box wisely, there would be no trouble in the country.” He
would not attempt to make them believe that it was necessary for the
Government to own the railroads nor the telegraph. Years ago there were
two parties in the country; they fought, and the weaker was brought
under, and slavery was abolished. They were merely machines, not valued
as even slaves would be, but used eight or ten hours and thrown aside.
They had the right to choose their employers, and these employers had
the liberty to discharge their men. The dollar of the fathers was good
during the war; debts were paid with greenbacks, and justly. The
European capitalists did not like greenbacks. Like Shylock, they wanted
flesh, but not only flesh, but blood, and so the British corporations
secured, with the use of a good deal of money, the act demonetizing the
silver, which from time immemorial had been a good currency. The speaker
said he had seen a newspaper which begged and cried for the demonetizing
of silver, now crying for the remonetizing of silver, and the repeal of
the Resumption Act. It showed on the whole that the logic of
circumstances was stronger than the arguments of any petty paper.
Specimen bricks were used to show their wares by the owners of silver
mines out West, that they who saw might buy. Such a specimen, although
an unworthy one, was President Garrett, of the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad, who said he had a surplus of thirty-three million dollars.
This gentleman said that hard times existed, and on this account the
wages of his men must be reduced. Again, Henry Ward Beecher, the
reverend gentleman, said that men could live on bread and water
(hisses); he had physical ability which had been tested in various ways.
Mr. McGiloray then read an extract from the _Times_ giving Henry Ward
Beecher’s opinion on the strike. He advised his hearers if they struck,
to strike quietly and decently, and not to go into incendiarism, and
then the authorities would have no right to interfere. They could not
hurt the railroad companies nor the insurance companies by setting fire
to their property. All the property damaged must be paid by the
workingmen, for the city, county, and State would have to pay, and with
the present County Commissioners who were inclined in a fair way to
extras, they would get the full value of the property. He was glad that
the railroads were partly acceding to the demands of the men. The cause
of the trouble was the laws, not made by workingmen, but by lawyers, who
knew little or nothing of the wants of the people. There were not enough
workingmen in the halls of Congress. The railroads had speculative men
to push them; they were too many, consequently they went into the hands
of the Receiver. Congress, instead of giving to railroads subsidies,
should colonize the farmer on the Government lands, and should loan to
him in place of the capitalists. The city was overloaded with men. There
had been hard times, and men had felt pinched. There had been no over
production but an under-consuming.
Alderman Frank Lawler and others addressed the meeting, and advocated
the workingman’s cause.
So the day passed, the night came, and the crowds of men, women, and
children thronged the streets by thousands. There had been no very
serious conflicts during the day, and no lives had been lost. The police
had been active and vigilant, the mob had been noisy, but not very
combative. A hundred different places had been closed by striking
workingmen and mobs of vicious idlers, throwing out of employment ten or
fifteen thousand persons. The railroads had ceased to move freight
trains. All commercial business had been suspended, and the situation of
the city had become exceedingly critical.
The appearance of Chicago during the night of the 25th, reminded one of
the situation in New York during the great draft riots of 1864. There
was an uncounted number of tramps, thieves, pimps and vicious idlers of
every grade, intermixed with the workingmen, encouraging them in their
strike against their employers, and counseling them to proceed to
extreme and lawless measures. In the neighborhood of Lake street, half
intoxicated, slatternly, frail women of the lowest type, joined the
throngs of roughs who frequent that locality, and made night hideous
with their obscene exclamations, and horrible profanity. Of such as
these were the petroleuses of the Parisian Commune of 1871. In certain
parts of the city, unusual quiet prevailed during the afternoon and
evening. All the saloons had been closed, the Mayor had sworn into
service two thousand special policemen, General Torrence had called out
two militia regiments, who were in their armories awaiting orders;
several companies of the Twenty-Second United States Infantry were
quartered in the Tabernacle, so as to be accessible to any possible
scene of conflict in the city, and the Committee of Safety felt assured,
that the law-abiding citizens would triumph over any possible mob of
rioters. Including police, militia, United States regulars, and
independent military companies, acting as a _posse_, it was estimated
that there were no less than fifteen thousand men under arms, and ready
for action on call, in Chicago, on the night of the 25th of July, 1877.
The sentiment in favor of the maintenance of the law was strong and
decisive.