Part 5

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.

It is needless to say that the President did not endure with silence this ignoring of his rank and, in fact, of his very existence. He sent for O’Halloran, who appeared at the White House, accompanied by Wagner, Congressmen Hagarty, Tomlinson, and several other ardent and influential Irish “patriots.” This gathering of the clans warned the President that O’Halloran understood the purpose for which he had been summoned, and was prepared with a reply and a backing. Nevertheless, the President did not hesitate to rebuke him in sharp words for his imprudence and meddlesomeness.

O’Halloran’s response was an angry declaration that he had assumed office at the President’s request, and with the implied understanding that his policy was to be that of the Administration. If he was not wanted, if his policy was not to be accepted, he would decline to retain the secretaryship, and would leave the President to his own devices. So, he added, would the Secretary of War. Mr. Wagner truculently confirmed this remark of his colleague. O’Halloran’s friends joined uninvited in the debate, which soon became undignified and angry on both sides. It ended by O’Halloran flaming into a simulated but apparently uncontrollable rage and defying the President.

An Irish regiment, which had left New York for Washington in suspicious proximity to the departure of “Patsy” and the Irish members of Congress after their conference in that city, had that morning arrived at Washington and was encamped on the Mall. O’Halloran begged the President to take notice of this regiment’s presence, and of the fact, hitherto not mentioned, that twenty thousand more armed men of the same race and actuated by the same spirit were, under his orders, _en route_ for the capital. They were his followers. They would obey him. He would see if the Administration could safely deny its promises to him, and fail to sustain him in whatever course he saw fit to undertake. “When you send for me next on such an errand as this, I will bring them with me,” he shouted. Turning his back on the President, he strode out of the White House, followed by his friends, who had been at no pains to conceal their hearty approval of his defiance and his threat.

O’Halloran proceeded straight to the Irish camp on the Mall. The President, summoning a public carriage, whose movements would attract no attention, drove to the residence of the Ex-Secretary of State. A few other friends and prominent men were called in. While they were debating what steps should be pursued under the new circumstances which had arisen, information reached them that two more bodies of men had arrived at the Pennsylvania station, one, like the regiment then on the Mall, unquestionably Irish, the other as indubitably composed of German and Austrian socialists. They were marching in a certain order and discipline to join the body already in the city. Other messengers brought the news that O’Halloran was in close and secret conference with the officer commanding the regiment then in camp on the Mall.

It was clear that the President was in personal danger, and that a deliberate plot to overthrow his authority was in process of execution. With the few national troops at his command it would be impossible for him to protect the Government buildings and property, or even to defend any one of them against the attacks of the armed revolutionists already in the city, reinforced by the local socialists and Irish, and in constant receipt of additional forces from all directions, even then in motion towards Washington under orders from O’Halloran and Wagner.

Hastily and secretly preparations were made for leaving the capital. A few of the most important documents from the executive office and a few bundles of treasury notes were packed into trunks. Orders were sent to the general officer commanding the regulars in and about the city, directing him to evacuate it as early as possible that night and to set out for Richmond, destroying railroad tracks and bridges behind him. At nightfall the President, accompanied by the loyal members of his Cabinet and the heads of several bureaus, all in closed carriages, drove across Long Bridge and took the cars at a small Virginia station for Richmond.

Swift and secret as their movements had been, however, they were discovered by the revolutionists, who instantly threw off every disguise of loyalty with which they had thus far masked their treason. The regulars, marching to the river soon after ten o’clock, found the bridge torn up and a large force gathered to dispute their passage. It was only after severe skirmishing that they succeeded in re-laying enough of the scattered planks to enable them to cross. Arriving on the other side, they found that the engines and cars which had been sent across earlier in the evening to await them had been dismantled and the tracks torn up. Leaving all their _impedimenta_ behind them, the troops set out on foot across the country, the officers, in the absence of cavalry, acting as scouts and pushing ahead to endeavor to discover some means of transportation. This they were unable to do; and it was not till the fourth day after leaving Washington that the footsore and weary troops finally marched into Richmond. They found that city in ruins, the work of a revolutionary mob which had risen in obedience to orders from Washington the day after the President’s arrival. They also found that the President had escaped, but that the party which accompanied him had been compelled to separate and fly in different directions, no one could tell them whither.

In desperation, they turned towards the mountains of West Virginia and Tennessee. The population there had always been loyal, and had healthfully resisted the revolutionary infection; the mountains themselves afforded opportunities for defence, and possibly for the gathering of an army which, with the regulars as a nucleus, might be able to make some successful stand against the revolutionists. After another toilsome march, about fifteen hundred of the soldiers succeeded in reaching the mountains, though closely pursued by greatly superior numbers of the rebels.

In the mean time the President had been stealthily conveyed to a farm-house, some twenty miles from Richmond, belonging to a loyal gentleman of that city, with the intention of sending him farther South by the earliest opportunity. During the night he was attacked by pneumonia. Enfeebled by physical weariness and mental strain, he rapidly sank. His identity was concealed to the last, and, excepting the gentleman in whose house he lay and the physician who attended him, not one of the inmates knew that under that roof the last President of the United States passed away. Even after his death the secret was kept, and his fate was never made known to the revolutionary leaders, who had themselves fallen before the story was told.

While one portion of the revolutionary forces at Washington had been disputing the passage of the regulars into Virginia at Long Bridge, another portion was scouring the city and arresting the members of Congress who remained and could be found. Few of them knew what had happened, and their capture was easy. When the next morning dawned, it found all the Congressmen, except those in secret sympathy with the revolution, herded in the District jail, and the building surrounded by armed detachments from the revolutionary forces.

XI.

A PRECIOUS TRIUMVIRATE.

O’Halloran and Wagner issued another proclamation. This time it was addressed directly to the “revolutionary army” and to the allied organizations in sympathy with the new order of things. It announced the flight of the Administration and the withdrawal of the national troops. Its signers declared, with audacious and impudent hypocrisy, that they deplored the disorder and destruction of property which had followed the revolution in many cities, and which they feared might be imitated in Washington unless immediate steps were taken to carry on the government. The various organizations engaged in the revolt were again invited to send delegates to an October “peace convention.” In the mean time O’Halloran and Wagner summoned Herr Van Liest, a prominent anarchistic agitator, to join them, and announced that the triumvirate so composed would administer the government till a permanent arrangement should be perfected.

In this disposition of authority, as in all the subsequent procedure of the revolutionists, the apparent disappearance from the scene of action of that mysterious leader calling himself the “Council of Seven,” whose edicts had been the controlling force in the riotous inauguration of the outbreak at Chicago, was one of the most perplexing features. It gave rise at first to the suspicion that his identity was concealed in the person of one of the three new rulers. This, however, was not so generally accepted as the theory that they were simply the instruments he had chosen through which to work out the schemes plotted in his secret councils,--the tools with which he, still unseen and undiscovered, did his work. Whatever the explanation, certain it is that from this time forward the apparent leadership of the revolution centred in the Washington triumvirate, from whom emanated the only orders which were obeyed by the allied hordes of sedition and anarchy.

The bells in the few churches which the socialists had left standing were rung, cannon fired, and bonfires made in several cities over the revolutionary success. Herr Liest hastened to Washington, accompanied by Julius Kopf, a beer-selling socialist, Petrovitch Metron, a dynamite “professor,” and many other equally malignant anarchists. The country was fast in the power of a triple combination representing fanatical hatred of law and order, foreign revengefulness, and native corruption,--all in their worst forms. But the leaders, fanatics and zealots though they were, had foresight enough to see that the alliance could not last unless its continuance were constrained by the pressure of outside danger. All of them had animosities to gratify against foreign Governments. Their desire of vengeance and the necessity of self-preservation united in urging them to foreign wars.

XII.

WAR WITH ENGLAND.

Most of the foreign representatives had fled from Washington during the stormy scenes which followed the departure of the President. But the English, German, and French ministers remained, confiding in the protection of their national flags, and actuated by a sense of duty towards their fellow-countrymen in the United States, who were more numerous than those of other nationalities. They were speedily shown that revenge was a stronger motive in the breasts of the new rulers than prudence.

Even before the arrival of Herr Liest in Washington, O’Halloran, smarting under the memory of British prisons and the wound an English enemy had inflicted on him, had cabled to London a long message, signed by his own name alone, and addressed to “The British Government,” demanding the instant release of certain specified criminals and prisoners waiting trial in British jails, on the ground that they were American citizens. Of course no notice was taken of the message in London; but without twenty-four hours’ delay for the receipt of an answer, if one should be made, O’Halloran ordered the arrest of the British minister then at Washington. The astounded diplomat was informed of the message which had been sent to London, and told that he would be confined until a satisfactory answer was received. If the demand was not granted in full within sixty days, he was threatened with trial by court-martial on the charge of complicity in the Englishman’s assault upon the Irish agitator. He was informed that he might send his Government such account of his imprisonment as he saw fit; and he was also at liberty to add that, in the event of the British Government’s refusal to accede to the Irish-American terms, not only would he (the minister) assuredly forfeit his life, but ships and men enough would be sent to Ireland from American ports to effect the release of the prisoners specified, by whatever force might be necessary. The minister availed himself of the privilege offered him, and sent a long despatch from his cell to the British Foreign Office.

The English Government and the English people had been enraged already to the utmost limit of endurance by the unfriendly indifference of the Washington authorities to the dynamite outrages in England, which had been planned in American cities by American citizens, paid for by American contributions, and carried out by American agents. This affront to England’s accredited representative and its flag was more than could be endured for a moment. The Cabinet was in consultation when the minister’s despatch arrived in Downing Street. It was supplemented within a couple of hours by another from the secretary of the legation, corroborating the arrest of the minister and giving the additional particulars that the embassy had been forcibly entered by a band of armed men acting under O’Halloran’s instructions, and all its papers and records removed.

Parliament was in session. That night the news from America was announced to both Houses, and the Government stated that it would be prepared at the next evening’s sitting to ask for a vote of credit. This declaration was received with loud applause. In the Commons, an Opposition member was instantly on his feet with the notice that he would on the next day move that the outrage committed on England’s representative demanded swift and summary vengeance. A member of the Cabinet dryly remarked that perhaps the Government would by that time have something to propose rather more to the point. The retort was greeted with louder cheers than ever; and before Parliament adjourned for the night it was clear that a declaration of war was the matter of but a few hours in the future.

The minister’s arrest took place on the second of September. When Parliament met on the third, the Government announced that war existed between Great Britain and the United States by the act of the latter Power, and asked a credit of twenty millions sterling to maintain British prestige and avenge British wrongs. The few Irish members who retained seats in Parliament attempted to use their customary dilatory tactics. For once they were cowed by the roar of indignant derision which greeted them from floor and galleries. In actual fear of personal peril, they gave over their “filibustering,” and shortly slunk out of the House. There was no division. Without a single dissentient voice the credit asked for by the Government was voted. When the Speaker declared it carried, the Secretary of War rose and stated that the utmost exertions of the Government had been set in motion, even before the vote was taken, to put every war vessel in its possession in readiness for service, and that over three thousand active seamen had volunteered that day to serve on the expedition which would shortly be sent across the Atlantic. The news flew to every hamlet in the United Kingdom, and the next day saw an outburst of loyal zeal such as was never witnessed in England before. Within four days more than two thousand steam ocean-going vessels had been offered to the Government for use as troop-ships in conveying soldiers across the Atlantic. The same spirit which actuated the ship-owners moved every other class, and the Government found all the wealth of the nation and all its men freely dedicated to the war.

The very day that witnessed the British Government’s acceptance of the war saw another complication added to affairs at Washington. The two ministers of France and Germany visited the White House, where the triumvirate, O’Halloran, Wagner, and Herr Liest, had taken up their quarters, to urge upon them the folly of their course in arresting the English minister, and to plead for his release and dismissal from the country. It happened that Liest and Kopf were angrily reproaching O’Halloran, at the very moment of their arrival, for his action in involving the revolutionists in a war with Great Britain while the cause of their brethren in Germany was utterly neglected.

When the German minister entered and began his plea for his English colleague, Herr Liest took the answer out of O’Halloran’s mouth, and began a fiery tirade against Germany and the German Government. The diplomat listened in amazement for a few minutes; then, without deigning a word of reply, turned his back on the party and stalked haughtily out of the room, followed by his French colleague. The moment they had gone, Herr Liest, with his voice rising to a shriek, in a frenzy of anger demanded that they both be treated as the English minister had been. Kopf seconded the demand with a vehemence as great as Liest’s. O’Halloran attempted to calm their passion and point out to them the impolicy of angering at the same moment three of the strongest Powers of the world. They would not listen to him. Instead, they taunted him with showing weakness in the common cause. Wagner sided with them, though less violently. O’Halloran saw that it would not be safe for him to give them the chance to accuse him of lack of energy or zeal. A guard was hastily sent after the diplomats, and they were incarcerated in the same jail which held the British minister.

The moment this was done, the revolutionists saw that they must hasten, if they were to strike the first blow against their old-time European “oppressors,” before attack should be made on them from abroad. Acting under orders sent out by the three self-appointed dictators, detachments from various revolutionary organizations at the different seaports seized possession of all foreign vessels lying at their wharves. The officers were put in confinement and the crews sent ashore, except such as chose to enlist in the revolutionary service. Cannon of every sort were dragged aboard them, and they set out in fleets from every Atlantic port to prey on whatever commerce might fall in their path.

The moment he had assumed the duties of secretary of war, Mr. Wagner had set about the organization of an army. He passed over the usual authorities. Not a message was sent to the governor of a single State. Nowhere was the militia ordered out, nor volunteers asked for, nor a draft ordered. The various Irish and socialistic societies were notified that men were wanted, and their answers were prompt. Camps were formed near New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and other cities. In them rapidly gathered motley armies of Irish dynamiters, German socialists, French and Italian communists, with here and there Russian nihilists, Swiss anarchists, and outlaws of every nationality. With these mingled a larger proportion than two years before would have been regarded as possible, of native-born workmen who had been inveigled into the revolutionary ranks by the plausible pleadings of agitators, or driven into them by their own sufferings and wrongs. Among the Irish were a few who had served in the armies of 1861–1865; but in the main these camps were noticeable for the absence of men who had seen service in the cause of their country during the civil war. Still their numbers were formidable. Altogether, they mustered something over five hundred thousand men, armed with such weapons as the arsenals which they had looted could furnish, and obedient enough to the orders sent out from Washington, so long as those orders did not conflict with those of “the Old Man.” And it was no longer a secret that such conflict was impossible, inasmuch as the triumvirate there were known to be but puppets in the hand of that mysterious central authority.

Meanwhile, in several quarters attempts to organize bodies from the population opposed to the revolutionists had been crushed with terrible cruelty. Except such weapons as chanced to be in their possession before the outbreak, it was impossible for the really patriotic people of the land to find arms and ammunition, or even to organize. Every attempt on their part to meet in large numbers was prevented. Guerilla bands lurked among the mountains in States which afforded them such shelter. Thence they maintained a desultory warfare on such small bodies of revolutionists as they could safely attack. No quarter was shown them; they showed none in return. Civil war raged in every congressional district,--it might almost be said in every town. But all the great centres of communication were in the undisputed possession of the revolutionists. The depots of supplies were in their hands; they held all the arsenals; they had confiscated the public treasure. It is probable that the patriots really outnumbered the revolutionists; but they were without arms, they lacked money, they lacked supplies, they lacked organization. The revolutionists spared no pains, hesitated at no tyranny, forbore no cruelty which promised to keep them deprived of arms and to prevent combinations among them.

XIII.

CAPTURE OF BOSTON.