Part 2

So early as the winter of 1884–1885 it was estimated that in New York city alone eighty-five thousand would-be industrious workmen lay idle, in addition to other thousands never estimated, because outside the pale of any possible census-taking, who would not have worked had the opportunity been offered them. A little more than a year later it was freely asserted among the socialists of the country that twice this number were enrolled in their organizations within a radius of ten miles from the New York city hall. In the outbreaks which occurred at other places the officers to whom was committed the task of restoring order generally found themselves opposed most vindictively by men who, a few years before, would have been regarded as the “bone and sinew” of the land. It was noted, too, that these men were always the last to yield to force; that they were always the most sullen and revengeful when finally compelled to do so; and that, even when convicted and undergoing imprisonment, they never showed repentance or sorrow except for failure, constantly boasted of their determination to “try it over again,” and steadily adhered to the belief they would ultimately triumph.

IV.

THE RULE OF IRELAND IN AMERICA.

But neither in the importation of exotic socialistic germs nor in the fungus-like growth of indigenous disaffection and corruption lay the only dangers of the Republic. The heterogeneous elements which made up the population of the United States had suffered a great and wholly unfortunate race-change since the foundation of the Government. At the close of the Revolution which separated the colonies from England the country was populated with a sparse but homogeneous people, possessing in an eminent degree the sterling virtues and the robust common-sense which characterize the Anglo-Saxon race. The freedom which these men won and had no capacity for abusing they felt would be safe forever in the hands of descendants sprung from their loins. The government they formed was exactly fitted for themselves and for a succeeding nation possessing their sense of order and their intelligence. But they saw a vast unexplored continent opening its wealth before them. Their numbers were but few for its conquest and reclamation. They felt the need of more men. Relying upon the freedom of the institutions they bequeathed and upon the virtue and vigor with which they endowed their heirs, they invited immigration from Europe. They took it for granted that the immigrants would be few in comparison with the native population, and that they would be absorbed and assimilated by the majority as snow-flakes falling in the ocean are absorbed by the great waters and made a part of them.

At first the stream of immigration which flowed westward was no larger than they had anticipated, and gave cause for little fear, either by reason of its size or of the classes and races which composed it. But before the first fifty years of the Republic had passed, it became clear that the asylum which it offered was being taken advantage of chiefly by the Irish, and by the very worst portion of the Irish at that. They found their own little island too narrow for them, and flocked to the United States by the hundred thousand. Coming, the most of them, from the lowest ranks of a degraded and ignorant peasantry, they found themselves, in the United States as at home, in a position of inferiority in everything save citizenship. Clannish by race and religious prejudice, they brought with them all their insular and ethnic narrowness and exclusiveness, and remained up to the end of the chapter a class by themselves. Other nationalities sent immigrants who threw off their old allegiances upon touching American soil, became in fact as well as in name Americans, intermarried with Americans, and brought up their children to become wholly American in deed and aspiration. But the Irish seldom married outside their own race; they brought up their children to be first Catholic and then Irish as themselves; they remained, and their descendants after them to the third and fourth generation, as much Irishmen as their cousins who continued to inhabit Leinster and Munster.

But they seized with greater eagerness than was exhibited by any other immigrants every political privilege which was within their reach. In politics as in all other interests, their clannishness kept them mainly confined to one party; but even in that they stood as far as possible aloof from the real and patriotic Americans serving in the same organization. Coarse of feature and coarser of mind; servile in their devotion to religious forms, which were never any better than forms to them; superstitious to the last degree; blunted in moral sense so as to be amenable to fear alone as a restraining sentiment; utterly illogical and the slaves of ignorant prejudice,--it would be difficult to conceive of immigrants from any modern race less fitted than they for self-government or for exercising a share in the government of others. There were occasional brilliant and noble exceptions; but of the majority this picture is not over-colored. Wherever they touched the political garment they defiled it. In the cities, where their increase by steady immigration and by their own amazing procreative fertility gave them the majority, their power was invariably signalized by a corruption and local tyranny greater than that against which Adams and Jefferson and Washington revolted. As their numbers increased and they became more assured of their political power, their arrogance and reckless abuse of public trust became daily more and more exasperating.

Through all the political changes to which other voters were subject, they remained in practical effect an organization by themselves. As has been said, they grasped with insatiate greed every political right and privilege which the laws afforded them, but refused to become any the less Irishmen. They stubbornly persisted in putting loyalty to the land they had abandoned above loyalty to the land they had adopted and which had opened its hospitality to them. Instead of becoming in reality as well as name American citizens, they remained Irish citizens, an _imperium in imperio_, and spoke of their life in the United States, even while they were exercising the franchise or sharing in the emoluments of office there, as an “exile.” They boldly proclaimed themselves “patriots,” because, having fled to the United States and accepted its protection and its asylum, they still professed greater devotion and a heartier loyalty to the fatherland they had forsworn than to the country to which they had solemnly pledged, by becoming citizens of it, their voluntary and complete allegiance.

In immense numbers these “exiles” united in more or less secret and criminal associations for the “freeing of Ireland.” At first their schemes were comparatively peaceful and their meetings open; but as time passed on, and little visible progress was made in the task of abrogating English supremacy in Ireland, the plots of the wilder zealots grew in acceptance, and the machinations of the plotters took on deadlier aspects. Not only did nine tenths of the later immigrants hasten into these various societies, but fully as great a proportion of the American-born sons of Irish refugees went with them. Whatever may have been their original intentions, such societies as the “Ancient Order of Hibernians,” the “Clan-na-Gael,” the “Emmet Clubs,” the “National Leagues,” and the like became in the end a series of widely ramifying conspiracies. In their meetings the wildest schemes of vengeance against England were planned, and bloody plots deliberately woven, not only for the commission of the most fiendish and inhuman crimes against English men and English women and children, but also aiming at the embroilment of the United States in actual war with the other great Anglo-Saxon Power. A large proportion of the most brutal crimes committed in England and Ireland during the long agitation were planned in the United States by these organizations. By far the larger part of the money with which the agitation was fomented and the crimes paid for came from contributions made in the United States, openly and without any attempt to conceal the purposes for which they were made.

At the head of one of the worst of these Irish organizations was an agitator who had been driven out of Ireland on account of his persistent attempts against the Government, named Patrick O’Halloran, but more commonly known as “Patsy.” It was by this assumed addition to his name that he was best known. The gang of which he was the acknowledged leader conceived the idea of using dynamite, either in its crude form or made up into “infernal machines,” for the destruction of property and life in England. It was the natural weapon of cowards, who fancied they saw in it a means to inflict serious injury on their enemy without his being able to strike back. It was eagerly adopted by numerous Irish “patriots,” and a school of murderers and destroyers arose, calling themselves “dynamiters.” These American societies collected the necessary funds and sent emissaries to England to purchase or carry with them dynamite for use in blowing up public buildings.

During 1884 two explosions, thus planned, took place in London railway-stations. They were so calculated as to render probable the greatest loss of life among the travelling public; but by lucky chances failed to do anything more than cause much destruction of property and a few slight wounds. In the winter of 1884–1885 explosions of a similar nature occurred in the Tower and the Parliament buildings. By these several innocent sight-seers, including a number of little children, were shockingly mutilated. Shortly afterwards the police discovered and frustrated a plot to blow up the entire auditorium of the Princess’s Theatre during an expected visit of the Prince of Wales to that place of amusement. The details were kept secret, however, in the hope of finding some clew to the perpetrators of the villany. Beyond the discovery that an unknown Irishman had brought the explosive with him from America in a crowded steamship, thus endangering the lives of several hundred passengers, nothing was definitely found out.

It was inevitable that these events should have the effect of hardening the English heart towards Ireland and increasing the unwillingness of the English Government to grant anything like home rule to a people which showed itself capable of such crimes, and which almost unanimously applauded them. Nor, considering the Irish character and the utter inability of the Irish mind to reason where its prejudices are involved, could it be thought strange that the English severity which these outrages compelled was accepted by the entire Irish populace as a sufficient excuse to throw aside every figment of humanity to which they had thus far laid claim, and to join themselves, heart and soul, to the most barbarous schemes of the vilest wretches who professed affection for “Poor Ireland.”

In the early winter of 1886–1887 a state dinner had been prepared at Windsor Castle. A large number of titled and prominent guests had been bidden, and it was announced that the Queen would honor the banquet by her presence. Owing to a detention of a few minutes in the arrival of the train from London, bringing several members of the Cabinet, the hour originally set for the dinner was, at the last moment, changed, and a short postponement of the dinner ordered. In this interval, and not ten minutes after the time at which, had the original arrangements been carried out, the guests would have entered the dining-hall, there occurred under it a terrible explosion, by which it was utterly wrecked. As it happened, no one was in the room except a servant, who was engaged in arranging the flowers upon the table. His death was instantaneous; and it was hours before the mangled remains of his body were exhumed from the smoking ruins.

The news of this direct attempt on the Queen’s life filled England with a perfect fury of revenge. Popular sentiment demanded the adoption of stringent measures for the suppression of “dynamitism” and the punishment of criminals engaged in it. A flood of bills was let loose upon Parliament, the enactment of the mildest of which would have resulted in the depopulation of Ireland and its transformation into an English colony. Meetings were held in every part of England and Scotland to express detestation of this attempt to murder the Queen. The newspapers were filled with the most sensational appeals and the most scorching invective aimed at Irishmen.

In the midst of this turmoil the police arrested Timothy Gallivan, an American, born in Massachusetts and educated in its common schools, but the son of an Irish immigrant, full of half-crazy ideas about his “duty” to Ireland, and fevered with anxiety in some way to “revenge” her upon her “oppressors.” Secreted in one of the hiding-places to which Gallivan was tracked were found papers constituting an extensive correspondence. They proved that Gallivan was an American; that he was a member of an Irish society in New York; that he held office in that society; that he had been sent to London as its accredited agent and representative and at its expense; that his instructions had been to cause the death, by dynamite explosion, of some member or members of the royal family, “the nearer the top the better;” and that he had associated with him, either before or after his arrival in London from New York, some twenty kindred spirits. The names of his fellow-conspirators were obtained, either from Gallivan’s papers or from the confessions of those whose identity had been therein disclosed. When once any Irish conspiracy began to be unravelled, there never failed to appear at least half as many “informers” as conspirators, eager to betray their associates for reward or safety. This was no exception. In less than two weeks from the date of the explosion in Windsor Castle, every detail of the plot was in the possession of the public, and twenty of the “dynamiters,” including their leader and chief, were in custody, with amply sufficient evidence in the way of documents, confessions, and corroborating circumstance to send them all to the gallows. By far the most important and significant feature, however, in the whole murderous affair was the amount of proof it put into the hands of the police that the crime was exclusively Irish-American in its inception, its details, its payment, and even the _personnel_ of the criminals.

Armed with this proof, the British Government peremptorily demanded of the United States that the Irish societies within its jurisdiction which were engaged in this crime be put down, and that action be taken to prevent further attacks on England by their associate organizations. The Secretary of State unquestionably appreciated the justice of the British demand. Unfortunately, however, for both parties, the British note was couched in a dictatorial and offensive style. Even this a man of the Secretary of State’s common sense would doubtless have excused as the natural outcome of a justifiable indignation, had not an incautious employé in his department allowed a copy of the note to fall into the possession of a New York daily newspaper. In twenty-four hours it had been read by every dynamiter in the country capable of spelling out words. Congress and the executive departments were promptly made to feel that upon the tone of the answer to England’s demand depended the political support of more than a million voters, whose withdrawal would insure the crushing defeat of the party then in power.

It was the same position in which the men who ruled in Congress and in the administration had been placed many a time before, confronting the question whether to do that which was clearly right and trust to a future public sentiment to justify them, or to throw conscience and judgment overboard, trim sails to the political squall of the moment, and hope for the chance at some indefinite future of using the power thus retained to undo the wrong committed in holding it. Popular sentiment had often enough shown that the man who did right to his own detriment was regarded as an impractical fellow, a theorist, a “doctrinaire.” It was the man who succeeded, who attained power the soonest and retained it the longest, no matter by what tricks or sacrifices of conscience, who was looked upon as “smart” and admired for his “ability.” So, when this time again the question came home to the men in place and station whether they could afford to do right and lose the support of the only element which gave their party hope of success in the North and West, or bow to the blast and continue in possession of the Government for four or eight years more, they yielded as they had become accustomed to yield in all similar dilemmas.

A curt and sarcastic reply was despatched from Washington to the English note, and care was taken that it should be published as widely in the United States as that document had been. It was received with a roar of Irish triumph. A few journals criticised it; but they soon found that there was so much resentment at the offensive tone of the British letter even among men who sympathized least with the Irish plot that the Secretary’s snub caused fully as much quiet enjoyment as annoyance. Other correspondence followed between the two foreign offices in constantly angrier spirit, and the spring of 1887 found both nations standing on the very verge of war, waiting only for some overt _casus belli_ to draw the sword against each other.

Such was the domestic condition of the country, such the elements of convulsion and upheaval fermenting beneath the thin crust of its social order, such its relations with the greatest naval Power of the world, in the month of April, 1887. From that time the march of events was rapid to the final disaster.

V.

THE FIRST ERUPTION.

The 19th of April was a fateful day in the history of the Republic. On the 19th of April, 1775, was fought the battle of Lexington, from which the nation dated its birth as an independent Power. On the 19th of April, 1861, the Massachusetts Volunteers, hurrying to Washington to protect the national capital from the threatened attacks of Southern rebels, were fired upon in the streets of Baltimore by a mob of rebel sympathizers. On the 19th of April, 1887, began in bloody earnest the revolution which was fated to end in the utter extinction of the Republic and the erasure of its once proud name from the list of nations.

The socialist leaders took to heart and profited by the lesson which the Cincinnati riots of 1884 had taught. Those disturbances began in the indignation of an outraged public, angered beyond endurance by the shameful, repeated, and demoralizing defeats to which justice had been subjected in the local courts of law. But they soon took on a different cast. What had at first been the protest of good citizenship was transformed into a saturnalia of crime and ruffianism. Yet the very fact that good citizens had been concerned in the first day’s imprudences made the task of putting down the outlaws and criminals who continued the riots on the second and third days so much the more difficult. The suggestion contained in this was not to lie fallow in the secret councils where anarchy was plotted. Long after the conspirators were ready to strike, they delayed the blow, till an occasion should arise in which they might seem, for a time at least, to be the allies of good and patriotic citizens. Had a leader with a purpose been behind the Cincinnati riots, they saw that the work of suppressing them, after their initial success, would have taxed the resources of the country as well as the State. They waited for an opportunity.

Composed of men whose grievance was against all law and order, and whose dream was of untrammelled personal liberty and license, the socialistic organizations had yet been gathered together, at this time, into a certain union. They aspired after anarchy, but had reason enough left to see that if they would destroy an organized government, they must themselves organize. They had a head, a mysterious centre known among outsiders and to the most of the socialists themselves as “The Council of Seven,” but whom the few fully initiated knew to be a single individual.

Even to this day the name of this person is unrevealed. Like “The Man in the Iron Mask,” his identity promises to become one of the mysteries of the ages. Those who were permitted to share his counsels were few in number, and bound to him and to each other by terrible oaths requiring them to preserve eternal silence. Among themselves his name was never uttered or written. He was referred to sometimes as “Number One,” sometimes as “Ben Hassan,” sometimes, with an approach to familiarity, as “The Old Man.” Whoever he was, it is certain that he must have been a man of vast executive ability, of iron will, of amazingly fertile resources, and of a hatred of civilization and of the amenities of humanity which would have done credit to the prime minister of hell. He received the advice of his “cabinet” of confidential associates; he was in constant correspondence with socialistic societies all over the Union and in Europe: but it is the testimony of all the correspondence of this period so far unearthed that his rule was autocratic, and that even those who protested most fiercely against all distinction of rank and position yielded him for the time being a slavish obedience, holding in complete abeyance their dearest theories until such time as their schemes of disorganization and anarchy should have become successful. His headquarters were never mentioned, and his orders emanated from widely separated parts of the Union; but it was commonly believed that his principal abiding place was in Chicago.

For years Chicago had been noted for the inefficiency and corruption of its courts, which were so manifest as to call down censure even from men who saw nothing serious in the decadence of courts elsewhere. Frequent miscarriages of justice had made the people of the city angry beyond measure; and the prophecy had been in many mouths that a repetition there of the Cincinnati riots, starting from a similar cause, was only a question of time.

On the morning of the 19th of April, 1887, the jury which had been sitting in the case of Alfred McKenna, a young man charged with the murder of John P. Quillinan, returned a verdict finding McKenna guilty of assault and recommending him to mercy. The murder had been a peculiarly atrocious one. Quillinan and McKenna had been rivals for some minor local office, and had quarrelled. McKenna had followed Quillinan to his home and shot him in the presence of his wife and daughter, seriously wounding the little girl, who endeavored to protect her father’s life. There was no denial of these facts by the defence. But McKenna was a man of some social position, of considerable wealth, of handsome person and winning address. Moreover, he and his friends wielded a powerful political influence. The case had required three trials. Twice the jury had disagreed. The third trial lasted nearly a month, and the jury took five days to agree upon their scandalous verdict. It was handed to the clerk of the court in writing during a temporary adjournment, and the jury separated, first allowing it to be known that they had originally stood seven for acquittal to five for murder in the first degree, and that the seven had refused to accept any compromise more severe upon the prisoner than the one finally adopted.