VIOLENCE FOR VIOLENCE.
It should have been mentioned that, on the sixteenth of August, James
Riles, of Shenandoah, was attacked by a crowd of Mollies, headed by
Charles McAllister, Ned Monaghan, and Tobin, while sitting on the steps
of his own dwelling. Mr. Glover was near him at the time. Riles was not
mortally wounded, though his life, for several weeks, hung as upon a
thread, and his health is still much broken because of the injuries he
received. A man named Delaney was another eye-witness of the outrage,
but could do nothing to stop its progress. It was about nine o’clock at
night when three men came suddenly up to Riles and put their pistols to
his back. Immediately the victim felt a stinging sensation running
through him and knew he was hit. Regaining his feet he ran up Delaney’s
steps, closely tracked by the Mollies. It seemed to him there was a
great mob pursuing, and he flew through his neighbor’s house as fast as
he could, jumped out of the window, not knowing what he was doing,
striking heavily against the hard street below, and received injuries
which, added to the effects of the bullet, made him faint and almost
unconscious. When Riles was lying in the road the crowd cried: “Shoot
him! shoot him!” But he managed to crawl into the residence of Wm.
Kendrick, who protected him, finally saving his life. Thence he had to
be taken by the members of the Coal and Iron Police. Before their
arrival, however, the Mollies surrounded Kendrick’s house and excitedly
demanded possession of Riles, saying: “Give him to us! Give him to us!”
One timid citizen who was present tried to persuade Kendrick to comply,
urging that the crowd would have him, in the end, and if troubled in
their fierce pursuit of blood might do violence to the family of his
brave preserver. Kendrick flatly refused to pursue any such course and
resolutely stood by the wounded and supposed-to-be dying man. For
several days Mr. Riles was supposed to be near death’s door, but
subsequently recovered sufficiently to escape to Philadelphia. There he
was forced to remain in the hospital until restored to partial health.
At the risk of his life, he then returned to Shenandoah, sold his
homestead and other property, and emigrated to Illinois. He had seen
enough of the Mollies. Among his late assailants he recognized Ned
Monaghan and others, but was unable to swear to the men who actually
fired upon him. Riles kept a saloon, and had incurred the displeasure of
the gang in some way unknown to himself.
The murder of Geo. K. Smith, already briefly alluded to, which occurred
at Audenried, Carbon County, the night of Thursday, November 5, 1863,
was totally unprovoked. Mr. G. W. Ulrich, now employed by Messrs.
Wanamaker and Brown, of Philadelphia, but then a clerk for Mr. Smith,
gives the following condensed statement of the incidents connected with
the atrocious crime:
“The night of the murder I had just returned from Mauch Chunk. I got
home about half-past six P.M. I boarded at Smith’s house. When I went
down to supper, I told Smith I thought something serious was going to
happen. He asked me why. I replied because of what George Allen had said
about having heard that the night of that day was to be the greatest
ever known in Audenried, and because, during the afternoon, several men
were noticed prowling around there, going about in different directions,
and, on the evening before, there were others in the store for powder.
Mr. Smith laughed and said: ‘Mr. Ulrich, they wont hurt you or me!’ I
stayed at Smith’s house that night, at the request of Mrs. Smith,
because her husband was unwell. About five minutes before eight o’clock,
hearing a rap at the door, I, upon opening it, found standing there a
man whom I thought to be a Welshman named Evan Jones. Asking him to stay
outside until I put the dog away, I shut the door, took the animal by
the collar and put him in the parlor, where Mrs. Smith was. Then I went
back, opened the door, and when I did so a tall man, with a soldier’s
overcoat on, stepped in, and the one I took to be Evan Jones followed.
As soon as I saw his face I found it was not Evan Jones. The taller
person asked if Mr. Smith was in. I at first said ‘no,’ but afterward
told him he was in, ‘and very sick at that.’ He professed to have a
letter for Smith, that a man had given him in Mauch Chunk the same
afternoon. I told him if he would give it to me I could hand it to Mr.
Smith. He would not do that, as he said he was instructed to deliver it
personally. I then left the room and told Mrs. Smith. She went up and
saw the sick man, and he replied if the person could not deliver the
letter to her, he must wait until the next day. Mrs. Smith and I
returned to the room where the two men were sitting. She told them what
Smith had said. The man answered: ‘If I can’t deliver it to him I must
deliver it to you!’ He quickly put his hand to his back, and the first
thing I saw was the butt-end of a Colt’s revolver. Before he got it out
altogether it went off, and his clothes caught fire, the ball
penetrating the floor on which we were standing. When the revolver was
discharged Mrs. Smith cried out: ‘Oh, my God!’ and ran precipitately
into the library. Then the tall man caught me around the neck and the
smaller man commenced beating me on my head and on the back of my
shoulders with a billy. The tall man got his revolver out and put it to
the side of my head. I threw up my left hand and the pistol went off,
and the powder flew into my eyes and blinded me so that I could not see
for some time. By this time some fifteen or twenty persons had walked
into the room where we were. The majority were disguised in soldiers’
overcoats and in miners’ clothes. They crowded over against the wall,
and the tall man tried to shoot me again in the head. Once more I threw
up my arm and the pistol ball passed over me. Another man stooped down
behind me, on his knees, and put his pistol to my person and shot me in
the leg while I was held by the other. I then broke away from the crowd,
with the intention of going upstairs. They followed me too closely,
however, and I could not get clear. As I reached the foot of the stairs,
Mr. Smith came down and walked into the room where the men were. I went
to the hall door and they knocked me down and fired two shots over me
with the intention of hitting my body. After this, I turned around to
find if I could see anything, and saw Mr. Smith standing by the crowd. A
man came up behind him, put a pistol to his head, and fired. He fell
dead upon the carpet. After finishing this, they fired three or four
shots, and I thought they were shooting Mr. Smith’s dead body, but they
fired them at Mrs. Smith’s sister, who was in the room adjoining. This
is all I know, excepting that the others escaped.”
[Illustration: “_A man came up behind him, put a pistol to his head, and
fired._”]
No present arrests were made. Nobody could tell who the murderers were,
excepting that they belonged to the Mollie Maguires, or had been set on
and were accompanied by those suspected of forming that clan. When, some
time after, suspected parties were captured, a mob released them from
Mauch Chunk prison.
The work performed by McKenna while in New York and Philadelphia was
very important and constituted a portion of the first really aggressive
acts of the Agency against the formidable foe. It consisted in the
preparation of classified and carefully arranged lists of all the
Mollies, or members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, in Luzerne,
Northumberland, Columbia, Carbon, and Schuylkill Counties, their
residence, occupation, standing in the society, and crimes they had been
connected with. When completed, the schedule was given very extensive
circulation throughout the United States, by publication in the
principal newspapers. It was but the prelude of the thunderbolt which
was soon to cast consternation into the hearts of the leaders of the
society. Our plans were formed for unrelenting and unending warfare upon
them. They had for years carried everything unresistingly before them,
but now a force, the secret emissaries of which for nearly three years
had been ferreting out and marking their weak places, meanwhile
sharpening and charging their own weapons for use, was to put its potent
machinery suddenly in motion. Fresh detectives were sent to the support
of those already on the ground, unknown to the others, and every
available adjunct that ingenuity could devise and money and influence
supply was set at work to accomplish the defeat of the thus far
unopposed and victorious Mollie Maguires.
Meanwhile the order was as active as a hive of bees, no longer forcibly
aggressive, but moving purely in self-defense. Their long day of murder
had set in crimson, and the day of their abnegation and shame was at the
dawn. Money was raised for the legal expenses of the prisoners. Evidence
was hunted up to falsify the truth and swear them clear. But on the
track of the brewers of this testimony was the stealthy tread of a man
they knew but suspected not, and to whose care they intrusted their most
secret transactions. Such a game must only end, after a time, in the
defeat of the society, however strong and large in numbers. Hurley,
Morris, Monaghan, Mulhall, Sweeney, Clark, Gavin, Butler, Campbell, and
Fisher, and many more, were absorbingly engaged, day and night, securing
funds with which to engage attorneys for the cases of Kelly, Doyle, and
Kerrigan. The members of Shenandoah Division were assessed two dollars
each, by McAndrew, which was promptly paid, and the result went to swell
the protection fund.
On the twenty-third of September, McAndrew gave a grand ball—which was
attended by McKenna—at his own house, for the especial benefit of the
prisoners. It was on this occasion that Morris proposed killing Mr.
Foster, the editor of the Shenandoah _Herald_, but was strongly opposed
by both McAndrew and McKenna, and the matter fell through. Mr. Fielders,
the city editor of the same sheet, was present at this entertainment and
listened to one or two songs which the detective sang, but he left the
room when he heard that the wild Irishman was threatening to kill him.
The hint was sent to Fielders purely in a spirit of mischief, by some of
the Mollies, who thought to frighten the reporter. They did not succeed,
but gave a permanently sharp point to his pencil, which, for several
years, he has used in puncturing the hearts of the Mollie leaders. It is
hardly necessary to say that McKenna never made a threat against any
one, in sober earnest. The ball was successful, and brought considerable
money to the treasury.
About the same date Linden was approached by Mike Lawler with a request
to find him a place on the Coal and Iron Police, which was easy enough
to promise but more difficult of fulfillment. Muff invited his friend
into Cleary’s saloon, where they soon found themselves in the enjoyment
of the usual refreshments. McKenna, seeing the two in company,
determined upon a little police business. He searched out Tom Hurley,
John Morris, and Ned Monaghan, and with them visited the same
drinking-place. While there he adroitly mentioned each man by name, and
Linden, knowing that something important was up, made himself familiarly
acquainted with the features and other peculiar points of all the
Mollies spoken of. But Linden and McParlan were not apparently as
friendly as usual. In fact, the former took occasion to roundly abuse
the latter for the part he had taken at the time of the riot, and later,
in fomenting discord in the coal region. The Secretary replied sharply
that he thought he knew his business pretty well, and would thank Linden
to give particular attention to his own affairs and leave those of other
people alone.
Lawler was astonished, and, by words and winks, warned McKenna not to
treat the officer so roughly, hinting that Linden was the best friend he
had in the State, and more than once had aided him when he was in
imminent danger from angry citizens of Tamaqua and Shenandoah. McKenna
put on an air of indifference, coarsely expressing himself that it “made
no difference to him. He could take care of Number One!”
Time passed, from the last of September, through November, until the
tenth of December, 1875, and still my work was never relinquished or
relaxed.
Between two and three o’clock, the morning of the day mentioned,
occurred an outrage of which it was supposed citizens of the
neighborhood were perpetrators, the Mollies taking, for the very first
time, the place of victims. It was at Wiggan’s Patch, a colliery
village, not far from Mahanoy City, that a band of masked men forced an
entrance to the house of the O’Donnell’s, where lived Friday O’Donnell,
his mother, and brother—all related by marriage to Jack Kehoe—and in the
mêlée that ensued shot and killed Mrs. McAllister, a daughter of Mrs.
O’Donnell, a sister-in-law of Mrs. John Kehoe, and then took Charles
O’Donnell into the street, and riddled him with bullets, leaving him
dead where he fell.
This was fighting fire with fire, and the Mollie Maguires experienced a
new feeling of dread. The people, stung to madness by the rapidly
succeeding murders of the summer and fall, were, it appeared, taking the
law in their own hands and giving payment for assassination in similar
coin. It looked natural that this should be so. There was a breach of
the law, it is true, but it was in the interests of humanity and the
law, and, coupled with the arrests of the murderers of John P. Jones,
had a wonderfully tranquillizing effect upon the society, which, during
the preceding months, had disported itself riotously in human blood and
caused a dozen families to mourn in despair the taking off of some of
their members. Now all was outwardly quiet. Inwardly human passion
surged and boiled, and the hearts of the Mollies were filled with hate
and bitterness. Jack Kehoe, the King of the Mollies in Schuylkill, was
open and loud in his denunciation of the cowardly murderers of his
wife’s kinsman. He was averse to receiving the sauce he served to his
neighbors, and vowed dire vengeance upon the vigilance committee.
Pretending to believe that the killing of Mrs. McAllister had been
wholly intentional, when some of the O’Donnell family believed it purely
accidental, he deeply cursed all murderers of women. Forgetting, for the
moment, the several attempts the Mollies had made in the same direction,
he endeavored to create sympathy for Kelly and Doyle—wasting no breath
on Kerrigan—in which he made a mistake—seeking to make their expected
acquittal the easier by arousing the prejudices of the people against
the men supposed to have formed a part of the committee of safety. How
he prospered in this, the succeeding pages will exhibit.
The Mollies were now confronted with an adversary as mysterious and as
dangerous as themselves, and were forced into at least an appearance of
submission. That they truly intended to give over their misdeeds is
doubtful. On the contrary, should they succeed in evading punishment, it
was more than probable their deeds of the past would be eclipsed in
inhumanity by those they hoped were to follow. They could not be allowed
to escape the just reward of their many misdeeds. While seemingly giving
expression only to great indignation, the society was secretly
discussing the propriety of forming military companies and buying
improved firearms. Some went so far in their divisions as to pass orders
requiring each man to pay into the treasury a sum of money sufficient
for the purchase of a rifle or carbine. In the face of the fear produced
by the late arrest, and the midnight work of the vigilants, progress in
the business of arming was tediously slow. It was the subject of comment
at a county convention, held at Tamaqua in January, 1876. Men were to be
sent to New York to obtain the guns, with three hundred rounds of
cartridges, and each Mollie was expected to hold himself in readiness to
march to the front at a moment’s notice. But the movement failed. The
guns were not even bargained for. All the bluster ended only in bluster.
Hugh McGehan, at this time, gave out that he had been fired upon, at
night, while going from his saloon to the spring for a pail of water,
and made a very narrow escape from death, the bullet striking him in the
fleshy part of the shoulder. There were several in the attacking party,
one of whom McGehan said he knew, but was wise enough not to name.
Beside the real injury inflicted on McGehan, several bullets passed
through and cut holes in his coat, showing that however hurried the aim
of the attacking party had been, it was tolerably well taken, despite
the surrounding darkness.
The publication of the list of Mollies raised a feeling in the society
that they held a traitor in their midst. Each man fell to suspecting his
neighbor. No one, excepting a member, they correctly argued, could ever
have given the newspapers such full and accurate information. The
question uppermost in all minds was, “Who is the apostate?” That he was
well posted, controlled sources of intelligence not available by or open
to ordinary communicants of the body, was evident to all. After a season
of serious discussion, during which every point was covered, it was
settled that the journals had been supplied with the names by some
person residing in Schuylkill County. Soon suspicion began to be
directed to Muff Lawler, who was known to be so particularly kind to
Linden, in whose society, for his own purposes, he had very frequently
placed himself. Jack McClain, of the same division, was charged with
having assisted Muff in collating the facts. McKenna, the actual
culprit, without saying a word to give direction to the idea, was freely
acquitted. Had he not quarreled with Linden months before? Had he not
separated himself from Lawler? Was he not the same wicked Mollie Maguire
that he always had been since his initiation? These queries were
promptly answered in the affirmative. The agent was even the recipient
of praise that he no longer found pleasure in the society of Lawler or
Linden. There were some who charged the damaging publication on Barney
Dolan, but he gave the lie to it. As Barney, with his brother, “Bear”
Dolan, was in prison, at Pottsville, where they had been sent for thirty
days, convicted of breaking a Mrs. Sweeney’s windows, he thought such an
accusation uncommonly hard upon him, and was very vehement in his
denials.
McKenna was now succeeded in the Secretaryship of Shenandoah Division by
Ned Monaghan, and new members were being gradually received, until the
Shenandoah branch was one of the most important and flourishing in that
part of Pennsylvania. But fear pervaded the division hall.
Nor was it much better at Summit Hill, where McKenna found it convenient
to go on the sixteenth of January, 1876. While visiting Alex. Campbell
at his residence, the landlord took Carroll and himself beyond ear-shot
of their companions, and, with a very solemn face, assured them that
traitors were fast multiplying in the camp. His pet, Hugh McGehan, was
just in receipt of another intimation that he would be called for. In
fact, he had been “noticed.” The missive bearing the startling
intelligence had upon it the Mauch Chunk postmark, and informed Hugh
that, as he had not given policeman Yost, of Tamaqua, much of a chance
for his life, he and Boyle, accomplices in that cruel assassination,
with Campbell, Roarty, Carroll, and Mulhall, who were all known, would
have about an equal chance for theirs. Their fate was sealed. This
document frightened the Summit Hill Mollies. Campbell hardly knew what
to do about it. Were some of the boys in jail too open-mouthed, or was
the dastardly work of the first spying miscreant yet going on? The men
who had so long murdered with a stab in the dark, under cover of a mask,
hated this baleful mystery. The weapon aimed full upon them, it made
their faces pale with fear. They finally decided that the warning paper
must have been sent by some one who knew nothing whatever of their
crimes, but had suspected something and sought to disturb them with
silly menaces.
Soon afterward a crowd of men walked up to McGehan’s house in the night
and fired seven or eight bullets through its siding, but none touched
the murderer of Yost. Muff Lawler, of Shenandoah, was similarly treated.
That there was a spy among the Mollies all were now agreed, but thus far
no thought had gone abroad that McKenna was the man. If Linden had
something to do with the matter no one would be disappointed.
At Mauch Chunk, on his return, McParlan met one Teague McGinly, who drew
him aside and informed him that he had very important news to
communicate.
“What is it?”
“Shortly after last court I met Major Klutz, an’ he took me out, and
inquired if John McGinly wor a Mollie? I told him the right down truth,
that he wor not! Then Klutz said that a man named Pinkerton sent one of
his detectives to Mauch Chunk, and he had reported McGinly as a member
of the order!”
“Who the divil is this man, Pinkerton?” innocently asked McParlan, “an’
where do he howld out!”
“He is a great one at catching rogues, an’ lives in Philadelphia! He has
over a hundred men employed! I wonder you have never heard of him!”
“It’s all owin’ to me ignorance, I suppose! An’ that’s because I don’t
rade all of the papers. Beside, I have a very poor recollection of names
ony how! I may hev heard sometime about Pinkerton. If so, I must hev
forgotten it!”
If the informer was not Muff Lawler, then who was it? Time would
probably solve the riddle. McParlan was fearful that not much time would
elapse, as matters were shaping themselves, before he would stand
revealed as the person. Still he did not falter, and continued his
labors as before.
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