An Original Belle

by Edward Payson Roe

The mob in the street had not ventured on anything more offensive than jeers and curses, but when Carpenter's command reached 32d Street it was assailed in a new and deadly manner. Rioters, well provided with stones and brick-bats, had stationed themselves on the roofs, and, deeming themselves secure, began to rain the missiles on the column below, which formed but too conspicuous a mark. This was a new and terrible danger which Merwyn had not anticipated, and he wondered how Carpenter would meet the emergency. Comrades were falling around him, and a stone grazed his shoulder which would have brained him had it struck his head.

Their leader never hesitated a moment. The command, "Halt, charge those houses, brain every devil that resists," rang down the line.

The crowd on the sidewalk gave way before the deeply incensed and resolute officers of the law. Merwyn, with a half-dozen others, seized a heavy pole which had been cut down in order to destroy telegraphic communication, and, using it as a ram, crashed in the door of a tall tenement-house on the roof of which were a score of rioters, meantime escaping their missiles as by a miracle. Rushing in, paying no heed to protests, and clubbing those who resisted, he kept pace with the foremost. In his left hand, however, he carried his trusty revolver, for he did not propose to be assassinated by skulkers in the dark passage-ways. Seeing a man levelling a gun from a dusky corner, he fired instantly, and man and gun dropped. As the guardians of the law approached the scuttle, having fought their way thither, the ruffians stood ready to hurl down bricks, torn from the chimneys; but two or three well-aimed shots cleared the way, and the policemen were on the roof, bringing down a man with every blow. One brawny fellow rushed upon Merwyn, but received such a stroke on his temple that he fell, rolled off the roof, and struck the pavement, a crushed and shapeless mass.

The assaults upon the other houses were equally successful, but the fight was a severe one, and was maintained for nearly an hour. The mob was appalled by the fate of their friends, and looked on in sullen, impotent anger.

Having cleared the houses, the police re-formed in the street, and marched away to other turbulent districts.

Only the military were left, and had formed about a block further to the north. Beyond the feeble demonstration of the invalid corps the rioters, as yet, had had no experience with the soldiery. That policemen would use their clubs was to them a matter of course, but they scarcely believed that cannon and musketry would be employed. Moreover, they were maddened and reckless that so many of their best and bravest had been put hors de combat. The brief paralysis caused by the remorseless clubs of the police passed, and like a sluggish monster, the mob, aroused to sudden fury, pressed upon the soldiery, hurling not only the vilest epithets but every missile on which they could lay their hands. Colonel O'Brien, in command for the moment, rode through the crowd, supposing he could overawe them by his fearless bearing; but they only scoffed at him, and the attack upon his men grew more bold and reckless.

The limit of patience was passed. "Fire!" he thundered, and the howitzers poured their deadly canister point-blank into the throng. At the same time the soldiers discharged their muskets. Not only men, but women fell on every side, one with a child in her arms.

A warfare in which women stand an equal chance for death and wounds is a terrible thing, and yet this is usually an inseparable feature of mob-fighting. However, setting aside the natural and instinctive horror at injuring a woman, the depraved creatures in the streets were deserving of no more sympathy than their male abettors in every species of outrage. They did their utmost to excite and keep alive the passions of the hour. Many were armed with knives, and did not hesitate to use them, and when stronger hands broke in the doors of shops and dwellings they swarmed after,—the most greedy and unscrupulous of plunderers. If a negro man, woman, or child fell into their hands, none were more brutal than the unsexed hags of the mob.

If on this, and other occasions, they had remained in their homes they would not have suffered, nor would the men have been so ferocious in their violence. They were the first to yield to panic, however, and now their shrieks were the loudest and their efforts to escape out of the deadly range of the guns the most frantic. In a few moments the avenue was cleared, and the military marched away, leaving the dead and wounded rioters where they had fallen, as the police had done before. Instantly the friends of the sufferers gathered them up and carried them into concealment.

This feature, from the first, was one of the most marked characteristics of the outbreak. The number of rioters killed and wounded could be only guessed at approximately, for every effort was made to bury the bodies secretly, and keep the injured in seclusion until they either died or recovered. Almost before a fight was over the prostrate rioters would be spirited away by friends or relatives on the watch.