The following proclamation of Mayor Opdyke will show the true state of things on this morning, and what the people had most to fear:
"The riotous assemblages have been dispersed. Business is running in its usual channels. The various lines of omnibuses, railway, and telegraph have resumed their ordinary operations. Few symptoms of disorder remain, except in a small district in the eastern part of the city, comprising a part of the Eighteenth and Twenty-first Wards. The police is everywhere alert. A sufficient military force is now here to suppress any illegal movement, however formidable.
"Let me exhort you, therefore, to pursue your ordinary business. Avoid especially all crowds. Remain quietly at your homes, except when engaged in business, or assisting the authorities in some organized force. When the military appear in the street, do not gather about it, being sure that it is doing its duty in obedience to orders from superior authority. Your homes and your places of business you have a right to defend, and it is your duty to defend them, at all hazards. Yield to no intimidation, and to no demand for money as the price of your safety. If any person warns you to desist from your accustomed business, give no heed to the warning, but arrest him and bring him to the nearest station-house as a conspirator.
"Be assured that the public authorities have the ability and the will to protect you from those who have conspired alike against your peace, against the government of your choice, and against the laws which your representatives have enacted.
"GEORGE OPDYKE, Mayor."
Down-town there was scarcely anything to show that New York had for nearly a week been swept by one of the most frightful storms that ever desolated a city. Even in the disaffected districts, no crowds were assembled. In the corner groggeries, small groups of men might be seen, discussing the past, and uttering curses and threats; and ruined houses and battered walls and hanging blinds here and there arrested the eye, showing what wild work had been wrought; but it was evident that the struggle was over. The mob was thoroughly subdued, and the law-breakers now thought more of escaping future punishment than of further acts of violence. Bruised heads and battered forms were scattered through the low tenement-houses in every direction, which friends were anxious to keep concealed from the notice of the authorities. In dirty cellars and squalid apartments were piled away the richest stuffs—brocaded silks, cashmere shawls, elegant chairs, vases, bronzes, and articles of virtu, huddled promiscuously together, damning evidences of guilt, which were sure not to escape, in the end, the searching eye of the police, who had already begun to gather up the plunder. Thus the objects mostly coveted but a few hours ago now awakened the greatest solicitude and fear.
Even if the military under General Brown and the police had not shown the mob that they were its masters, the arrival of so many regiments, occupying all the infected districts, was overwhelming evidence that the day of lawless triumph was over, and that of retribution had come. Some acts of individual hostility were witnessed, but nothing more.
Archbishop Hughes had his meeting, and some five thousand assembled to hear him. They were on the whole a peaceable-looking crowd, and it was evidently composed chiefly, if not wholly, of those who had taken no part in the riot. None of the bloody heads and gashed faces, of which there were so many at that moment in the city, appeared. The address was well enough, but it came too late to be of any service. It might have saved many lives and much destruction, had it been delivered two days before, but now it was like the bombardment of a fortress after it had surrendered—a mere waste of ammunition. The fight was over, and to use his own not very refined illustration, he "spak' too late." The reports that came in to Acton from all the precincts convinced him of this, and he began to think of rest.
The strain was off, and overtasked nature made her demand, and he was compelled to yield to it. The tremendous work that had been laid upon him had been right nobly accomplished. Had he been a weak and vacillating man, the rioters would have acquired a headway that could not have been stopped, without a more terrible sacrifice of life and property—perhaps even of half the city. Comprehending intuitively the gravity of the situation, and the danger of procrastination or temporizing, he sprang at once for the enemy's throat, and never ceased his hold until he had strangled him to death. If he had waited to consult authorities about the legality of his action, or listened to the voice of pity, or yielded to the clamors of leading politicians or threats of enemies, both he and the city, in all human probability, would have been swept away in the hurricane of popular fury.
On this day a most remarkable announcement was published: that a sudden change had been made in the military command of the troops of the city and harbor. General Dix superseded General Wool, and Canby, General Brown. That Wool should have been removed at any time, might have been expected; not from incapacity, but on account of his age, and because any one could perform the mere nominal duties that devolved on him. But why General Brown should have been removed at this critical moment, when he and the Police Commissioners were performing their herculean task so faithfully and well, is not so plain; unless it was the result of one of those freaks of passion or despotic impulse, for which the Secretary of War was so ignobly distinguished. But unlike many other blunders which the War Department committed at this time, it did not result in any evil consequences, for the fight was over. But of this fact the Secretary of War was ignorant when he made out the order.