We passed the afternoon in a fever of expectancy, hoping against hope that the rumor would prove true. How anxiously we watched headquarters, where there did seem to be an unwonted stir. Soon our suspense was relieved; we received the order to strike camp and have our outfits packed, ready to board a train for Truckee at six that evening. We received the order with cheers, and set to work with a will, rolling blankets, packing knapsacks, lowering tents, and carrying our baggage and rations to the track. It is safe to say that A and B were most heartily envied by the members of the less fortunate companies, and many were the hopes expressed by the members of other companies that theirs, too, might be sent. But no such good fortune was in store for them; A and B alone had been ordered to prepare, and there was little chance of a change. Never did National Guardsmen work more willingly or respond more promptly to the order, “Fall in!” as when, under the command of Major Burdick, our little battalion was formed in front of regimental headquarters.
Here Colonel Sullivan spoke to us feelingly, wishing us godspeed and exhorting us to do our full duty as patriotic soldiers and citizens under every trying circumstance which the future might have in store for us.
Giving three rousing cheers for our colonel, we were marched to the tracks in the rear of our camp, there to await the arrival of the train which was to bear us some two hundred and fifty miles away over the high Sierras to the scene of our future operations.
Shortly after six the train arrived, and, with a rush, we boarded our sleepers, threw down our knapsacks, and turned for a last look and wave of the hand at the camp and comrades we were leaving, for none could tell how long.
As here in Sacramento, so in the other parts of the state and in Chicago the great strike was on the decline. Since the train wreck and murder of the eleventh the chance of success had vanished, and public sympathy, to a great extent, had turned from the strikers. Worden, since sentenced to hang, was arrested for this crime on the fourteenth, and Harry Knox, the leader of the A. R. U. in California, was arrested on the day following as an accomplice.
Through the middle and southern part of the state, San Jose, Stockton, Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Diego, business remained at a standstill. The portion of the First Infantry, U. S. A., ordered to Los Angeles on July 2d still had charge of the depot and saw that no disturbances occurred. Affairs had quieted so in San Jose, that Company D of the Fifth Infantry, N. G. C, Captain Elliott, was recalled and ordered to report to Colonel Fairbanks at Alameda. The work of the National Guard under General Muller had been thoroughly done from the start, in the San Joaquin valley, and now their work of guarding trains and bridges went quietly on.
In Sacramento and Oakland the deadlock was now thoroughly broken. On the fourteenth the first train in two weeks arrived in Sacramento from Oakland by way of Benicia and Davisville. Four trains, including an overland, left Sacramento, the overland being the first train to pull out with a Pullman car attached.
On the fifteenth and seventeenth, detachments from A and B of the Sixth Infantry, N. G. C, were sent to Dunsmuir from Sacramento under Colonel Nunan. Here they remained until the twenty-fifth guarding trains and bridges when they were relieved by Companies A and F of the Second.
In Chicago, President Debs of the A. R. U. now seemed to despair. Arrested for conspiracy and thrown into jail, his followers from one end of the land to the other seemed to desert him. In vain did he send out telegrams beseeching them to stand firm. Vain were his announcements that business in Chicago was paralyzed. He realized the strike was lost, and knew the loss could be ascribed to no other cause than the strikers’ violence.
Throughout California the strike was admittedly lost. On the twenty-third General Dimond issued orders for the Fifth Infantry at Oakland to withdraw from camp, for Sheehan’s command to be dismissed, and at San Jose for the men to return home. At a conference held in the governor’s office, it was decided to withdraw the different regiments of the National Guard as soon as practicable. The San Francisco regiments, the First and Third, would be soon ordered home, and their work taken up by Colonel Park Henshaw and the Eighth Infantry.