Part 8

The close of the second day found the hordes of the revolution in panic and flight. They were more than defeated, they were annihilated. Their disorganization was as rapid and complete as had been their first successes, a year before. Not a brigade was left to guard a retreat. The whole array of survivors dissolved into mere bands and scattered over the country.

Many thousand prisoners were taken, among them a few who had become known as leaders in the different revolutionary organizations. Kopf was caught hiding in a farm-yard, near Harrisburg, several days after the battle; he was sent to Germany for trial. Herr Liest had been killed during the first day’s battle. Wagner escaped, and has never since been heard of. It is thought he perished of starvation, or was killed during one of the raids which were frequently made by small bands of outlaws on scouting parties of the allies during the summer and fall. O’Halloran was captured during the pursuit after the battle. He had thrown himself into a ditch, and tried to conceal himself by hiding in a pool of mud and water, with his head covered by the weeds which grew from the sides of the filthy drain. He was dragged out and almost immediately recognized by an English soldier who had once met him in Ireland. He was court-martialled on the spot, charged with responsibility for the order to his followers to give no quarter to their prisoners, and shot at sunrise the following morning. A few other prisoners, who were proved guilty of murdering wounded and helpless men, were similarly tried and executed. Several thousand, who had been known in Europe as professional plotters and agitators, were sent back to their respective Governments in irons for trial on account of old offences.

Zealous effort was made by the allies to discover and arrest the mysterious leader whose edicts, emanating from the “Council of Seven,” had been so powerful in the early days of the revolution. Nothing was ever found to furnish even a clew to his identity. There are those, even now, who believe that he is still living, hidden in obscurity and seclusion, and ready to seize the first opportunity which chance may afford him to resume his warfare on organized society. But this is not likely. Whether he still lives, or whether he perished in the bloody closing of the revolution, the mystery in which he purposely enshrouded himself at the beginning of the struggle still hangs over him, and there is no real ground for the expectation that it will be ever lifted.

The revolution was at an end. For two months there was skirmishing and occasionally a fierce contest that might almost be called a battle between detachments of the allies and disintegrating bands of socialists or dynamiters who had taken refuge in various fastnesses of the land. It was six months before the last of the privateers which they had fitted out to ravage commerce was captured, and the seas were once more pronounced safe to trading vessels. But so far as any organization or real strength was involved, the struggle at Gettysburg had been conclusive. One by one the cities and forts of the whole country were garrisoned by the allies. The land was put under martial law.

XVII.

FOREIGN OCCUPATION.

Then came the question to the conquerors, What shall we do with the fruits of our victory? The problem was debated at length and anxiously in Paris and London and Berlin. At first it was proposed to imprison all the socialists, anarchists, nihilists, and dynamiters remaining in the country; but it was speedily found that this was impracticable. To say nothing of the others, the Irish who had taken active part in the revolution or contributed to its support, and who sympathized with the dynamite warfare on civilization, were not less than eight millions. All the jails and prisons in the world would not have confined them. Their organizations were proscribed and their meetings prohibited; but it was clear from a thousand indications that their spirit of hatred and cruelty remained unchanged, and that they waited only the opportunity to renew their crimes. The same was true in even greater degree of the socialists and anarchists. They regarded themselves as the friends and martyrs of liberty. The allies were to them simply minions of tyranny who had combined to crush out human freedom. It was believed that the patriots of the country, loyal to the old republican idea, still outnumbered the anarchists, and would outvote them at the polls. But they were peaceable men, devoted to trade and industry, and had already been proved powerless to enforce with arms the decrees their majorities might render at the ballot-boxes. The summer and autumn passed away, and the problem remained unsolved. It was decided at last to hold another pan-European conference, this time at Washington, in which all the Powers which had taken part in the conference of January at Berlin should meet and reach some definite decision regarding the future.

This foreign congress met on the first Monday of December,--the very day on which, in happier times, the Congress of the United States had been accustomed to convene. It met in the Senate Chamber of the Capitol, over which the Stars and Stripes floated no longer. The national flag was replaced by the flags of the various Powers represented in the conference, that of each being displayed one day at a time in regular order.

England and France were disposed to restore the republic to the people, and trust to them to defend themselves against domestic convulsions; but they stood alone in this. They were unable to reply to the objections raised by the other Powers, that this would inevitably result in another revolution, and the necessity upon Europe, as the guardian of civilization, once more to conquer the country. Was it expedient to accept the risk of such another war? Moreover, who was to bear the expense of the struggle just completed? For herself, Germany protested that she was unwilling to forego her right to demand indemnity from the United States. England also took this view. There was no possibility that such an indemnity--amounting to fully three thousand millions of dollars--could be obtained if the autonomy of the nation were restored. The following recommendations were finally drafted by the conference:--

That the signatory Powers should continue in occupation of the United States at least until another conference should agree as to the safety of establishing some sort of local government; that the supreme authority should be vested in a board of European administrators, to be appointed, one by each Power, and to choose a president from their own number; that this board should levy taxes and customs, from which they should repay to Germany, England, and France such sums as those Governments had respectively expended in the war; that the cost of maintaining the army of occupation should also be defrayed from the local taxes; and that a sufficient direct tax should be imposed to result, within three years, in the payment of three hundred and fifty millions of dollars to each of the three Governments at London, Berlin, and Paris, to be applied towards pensions required for the sufferers by the war.

The recommendations of the conference were accepted and adopted by the Governments concerned. Their armies still garrison the land; their agents sit in the Capitol at Washington. Cities and towns are allowed to elect local councils, but they administer only such local affairs as do not involve the power of taxation or of expending money. The purse-strings are held in the hands of the European administrators and their subordinates. Not even a road tax can be levied except on their warrants; not even a school-district meeting held without their permission and the presence of their guards to preserve order and repress possible sedition.

Nevertheless there are many who find the subject position of the country quite as endurable as its condition before the revolution. To be sure, taxation is heavy, but its burdens fall equitably upon all. Business men find themselves much better protected in their pecuniary dealings than ever before. Bank cashiers who steal funds committed to their care are punished with such severity that the crime has almost ceased to be known. Not a single defalcation has been reported during the two years of 1894 and 1895.

The courts are presided over by foreign judges, it is true, and they are not generally favorites with the lawyers. But the people are not wholly dissatisfied. A New York attorney who was suspected in the fall of 1893 of trying to clear a murderer by the introduction of false testimony, was actually tried, convicted, disbarred, fined to the last cent of his ill-gotten wealth, and sentenced to prison for ten years. Those who depend upon the courts for justice are not entirely displeased by such things. The newspapers are held in strict accountability. There is no longer such an issue as “politics” for them to discuss and play the demagogue over. They are confined to the publication of news and the discussion of such topics as cannot be twisted into a seditious turn. Under the influence of the prevailing tendency toward honesty and fairness, they are actually coming to aim at the truth in their news.

In brief, throughout the whole land the moral atmosphere is purer and healthier than it ever was before. Socialists and anarchists and dynamiters still lurk beneath the surface, but they have little opportunity for organization, and a single overt act on their part is the signal for an instant exercise of such severity as men use towards a nest of poisonous reptiles which show a tendency to attack innocent passers-by.

There is no longer private liberty within the land, but there is public order. Individual rights are respected, protected, and enforced; the law is justly administered; crime is punished as surely and as severely when committed by men of rank and station as when committed by less intelligent, and therefore less responsible, men. There are signs that the popular mind is beginning to feel aspirations after honesty and fairness for their own sakes, and to regard successful dishonesty and corruption with less respect than were common during the existence of the Republic. If these signs continue and increase, there is the possibility that the Great Republic of the past may at some future time arise once more from the ashes in which its memory now sleeps, and on a purer, nobler, more enduring foundation than that on which the men of 1776–1888 builded. But it will hardly come in our time. The mills of the gods grind slowly when their task is to grind into perfect flour the grist of a corrupt and ignorant humanity.

APPENDIX.

I.

THE SOCIALISTIC SPIRIT IN 1885.

“Working-men! Throw aside your tools; take to guns; destroy your oppressors; tear down the barriers which close the way to happiness, to true manhood and freedom; secure for yourselves such conditions as shall enable every one who is willing to work to enjoy to the utmost the fruits of his labor! And you tramps, who, hungry, cold, and homeless, wander through the country, a moving picture of our splendid civilization, while a lazy, paltry crowd in their well-warmed palaces treat themselves to the products of your labor,--you may yet hope soon to have a reckoning, and take what belongs to you. You, too, will yet be able to enjoy life if you will resolve to use the power which Nature has given you, and which makes it possible for you to produce riches. Band together, then, and arm yourselves! To the fight, working-men! up, proletariat!... Among the friends of freedom, socialists, and other revolutionists, the fixed idea is still met with, that the good must in the nature of things certainly prevail sooner or later. This, too, is a remnant of religious superstition. For the idea can only be maintained on the assumption of a certain conformity to a purpose in the course of history; and this in turn pre-supposes the existence of a higher conscious being. That this idea must enfeeble and narcotize the energy is evident. It is the most dangerous opiate that there is for revolutionists. Religion, authority, and State are all of a piece. To the devil with theory! The savior of the present world must be one who will free us from the savior of the old world.... His common name is ‘Reason.’ ... His proper name is ‘Atheism,’ or ‘Disbelief.’”--_The Anzeiger, New Haven, Conn., February, 1885._

II.

A REVOLUTION NEAR AT HAND.--“IT MUST COME.”

“The anarchist leaders met yesterday in secret session in a saloon on Pennsylvania Avenue. There were delegates present from nearly all the manufacturing towns in this section of the country. The meeting was called by J. W. Gorsuch and Samuel Fielden, who were sent here by the anarchists from Chicago to present a plan whereby the work of the cause could be carried on among the working-men unknown to the employers.

“Fielden before he came here spoke at all the manufacturing towns. He found, he said, that many laborers were socialists at heart, but were afraid to attend the meetings. They came to the conclusion, therefore, that the work must be carried on secretly until the time when the final blow is to be struck. He argued that it was time to revolt. There was no use denying the condition of the working-men, as the producers had grown steadily worse, while the non-producers increased their wealth to enormous degrees. This system was criminal to workmen, who must strike for their freedom.

“Gorsuch said Americans were not free men now, and that the only way they could demonstrate their right to the title was by destroying the system which perpetuates the galling contrast of princely wealth and degrading poverty. Fielden was asked, ‘Do you believe in dynamite as a means of warfare?’

“‘We will not hesitate to use anything when the time arrives. A revolution is near at hand. It must come. We want to abolish the present system of government. Some one must suffer in every reform, and lives must be sacrificed. I am in favor of the quickest means for the accomplishment of our purpose.’”--_Despatch from Pittsburg, Pa., to the New York World, Feb. 22, 1885._

III.

A FEMALE SOCIALIST’S ADVICE.

“Mrs. Parsons, who is a colored woman, made an unusually fiery speech. She began by berating her hearers as cowards, and unworthy of the name of manhood, because they allowed the aggressions of capital to continue and their daughters to barter their virtue for bread. If they were men, as they claimed to be, she said, they would blow up every house on the adjoining avenues before they would submit to it. They would demolish the police-stations, court-house, and jails, and fling dynamite in the faces of the army and navy. If they were afraid to do this, however, they need not look for a captain, for she would fill her apron with dynamite and lead them along the avenues of the city where the rich reside, destroying as they went.

“Her husband advised his hearers to study chemistry and take lessons from those expert in the manufacture of deadly explosives.”--_Extract from a newspaper report of a meeting of “the dynamite section” of the Chicago socialists, Feb. 22, 1885._

IV.

ATHEISM, COMMUNISM, AND ANARCHY.

The “New England Anzeiger” of March 14, 1885, appeared with a first page framed in gory red, and containing lurid accounts of the revolutions of March 14, 1848, in Vienna; of March 18, 1848, in Berlin; of March 18, 1871, in Paris; and of the assassination of the Czar of Russia, March 13, 1881. The following extract shows the tone of the article:--

“The dead of the 14th of March were buried, and with them the revolution; for everything that then happened in Berlin--yes, in all Germany--proved the political immaturity of the people; and the friend of humanity looks on in sadness to think how much good might have been accomplished in the year 1848 if the people had known what they know to-day,--to-day, when all the countries of Europe have behind them the powerful and deep-seated labor movement of more than twenty years, and when the principles of atheism, communism, and anarchy are daily and hourly, in the hut and in the palace (in the former with enthusiasm, in the latter with anxiety), considered and pondered over.”

V.

THE FORCES ARRAYED AGAINST CIVILIZATION.

“There are worse things than dynamite. The godless and law-defying forces back of it constitute the real danger. These forces are arrayed against civilization. All over the world the masses are in a state of agitation. New ideas and false theories are being presented and expounded by fanatics, charlatans, and demagogues. In an age of free speech and free print new doctrines spread rapidly. The poor, unsuccessful, dissatisfied, and lawless elements of society are boiling over with the maddening thought that somebody is doing them a great wrong. The restlessness of these people has been intensified by the teachings of earnest and well-meaning but misguided men. Henry George’s opinions have spread like wildfire, and taught millions to believe that private property in land is against the laws of nature and of God. Hyndman, in England, and other writers are spreading the notion that capital is the enemy of labor, eating up all the profits and keeping the working-man on starvation-wages. Others follow Prudhon, and declare that ‘all property is robbery.’ Others argue that religion, morality, government are all tricks of the oppressor, designed to keep the people down and out of their rights.”--_Editorial in The Atlanta, Ga., Constitution, March, 1885._

VI.

THE PROSPECTS OF AN ALLIANCE BETWEEN DYNAMITERS AND COMMUNISTS.

“The communists were in high feather last night at the Germania Assembly Rooms. They met to commemorate all operations of rebellious societies against governments in general and the Paris revolution of 1871 in particular.... When the speaker referred to the barricades, and prophesied an early recognition of the ‘establishment of human liberty’ and the destruction of all crowned heads by an agent more powerful than the dreaded guillotine, the sons of Clavis sent up a roar of applause and bravos, intermingled with an occasional ‘hear, hear!’ from a dozen nitro-dynamiteurs who came to explore the prospects of an alliance, offensive and defensive, with their fiery Continental brothers on behalf of the ‘rights of man.’”--_New York Tribune report, March 23, 1885._

VII.

TWO CONTEMPORARY CRITICISMS.

“The existence of passion, favoritism, nepotism, and subjection to the behests of party, instead of love of country, thoughtfulness, and systematic business principles in the administration of government, with too much esotericism in its conduct, gives posts of honor to servants that impede, and retains officials that resist reform and accuracy in the civil service of the country. They forget that they are chosen to be about their country’s business, in which every citizen has an interest. Thus the want of business capacity and fidelity to the people’s trust furnishes many causes for the law’s delay, and some for its death.”--_Chief-Justice Thomas F. Hargis in the North American Review for April, 1885._

“The predominant vices of America, especially as represented by its great cities, are its irreverence, its recklessness, its impatience,--in one word, its materialism. A nation in which the artistic sense is almost dead; which is practically without a literature; which is impatient of all sanctions and indifferent to all religions; which is corrupt from the highest pinnacle of its public life down to the lowest depth of its primalism; which is at once thin-skinned under criticism and aggressive to criticise; which worships material forces in every shape and form; which despises conventional conditions, yet is slavish to ignoble fashions; which, too hasty to think for itself, takes recklessly at second-hand any old or new clothes philosophy that may be imported from Europe, yet, while wearing the raiment openly, mocks and ridicules the civilization that wove the fabric,” etc.--_Robert Buchanan in the same number of the same Review._

VIII.

THE COURTS.--ONE JOURNALISTIC WARNING OUT OF MANY.

“One of the main reliances of the criminal element of our city for escaping from the clutches of the law is the subornation of perjury. A class of professional false swearers has grown up, and their aid is invoked without hesitation in the criminal courts. This startling and shameful fact was fully revealed to the public on the Ford trial. Society can find no protection under the ægis of the courts until this iniquity shall have been uprooted and cast out. The ermine sits under a upas-tree as long as men and women in droves dare commit the crime of perjury. No jury can justly decide any case if a terrible blow be not first struck at false testimony. And there are back of these perjurers the suborners. The master should be reached as well as the hireling.”--_Editorial in the New Orleans Picayune, March 2, 1885._

IX.

THE UNPROTECTED ATLANTIC COAST.

Early in February, 1885, the New York Produce Exchange presented a Memorial to the Congress of the United States, setting forth, among other things, that the city of New York and the adjacent cities of Brooklyn and Jersey City “represent an interest in house ownership and real estate amounting to over $3,000,000,000; that all this realty is entirely unprotected from an attack by hostile fleets, which could bombard the city and the neighboring populated districts without even entering the Narrows.

“It is known abroad as well as at home,” the memorialists say, “that the shores of this country are entirely unprotected; and it would be only an act of reasonable precaution that New York, the chief city of the nation, should be defended by such permanent forts, floating batteries, gunboats, and torpedo service as will give us a guaranty against sudden invasion until the country shall have time to build an adequate fleet for defensive purposes.”

X.

A SINGLE ILLUSTRATION OF THE IRISH-AMERICAN SPIRIT.

The hundred and seventh anniversary of Robert Emmet’s birth was celebrated in Faneuil Hall by the Irish citizens of Boston in February, 1885. The chief address of the evening was delivered by the Rev. P. A. McKenna. In the course of it he said, as reported by a Boston daily paper:--

“It seems almost advisable that since the Prince of Wales goes to Ireland as an invader, he should be treated as such. There is one principle which justifies the taking of human life, and that is the principle of self-defence of the person or the nation. It would not be becoming to advocate extreme measures; but let Irishmen contemptuously ignore the presence of the Prince of Wales.” [Applause.]

Mrs. Marguerite Moore was introduced as a woman recently from Ireland who had suffered incarceration for the cause. She spoke of love for Ireland, of hate for England, and pictured the misery of her native land in the past and in the present. “The Irishmen of America demand vengeance. The opportunity has come in England’s present difficulty, and advantage will be taken of that fact. The sappers and miners, who blow the people up, are as necessary to the Irish army as are dashing cavalry or steady infantry. [Applause.] Every man to his like in this respect,” said she. [And voices cried out “Dynamite!”]