already 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 which 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 announced 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. From top to
bottom, and from end to end, they glowed with huge red posters, bearing
in white letters in the centre these words:--
NOW!
_By Command of the Council of Seven._
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 sensational
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 alarms 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. 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.