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.