There was no pause in the ruthless work until the last spark of resistance had been stamped out.
By one of the strange ironies of fate the fiercest of the futile rebellions broke out on the East Side of New York, where the attempt was made completely to disarm our half-baked foreign population. The men who sulked in the tenement districts below the Bowery had been accustomed to fight constituted authority in the Old World from habit. The first squad of soldiers sent into this quarter to disarm them had never returned. Not one of their bodies were found.
When a regiment with machine guns rushed in they found the side streets below Fourteenth barricaded with piles of trucks and lumber. From every window they received a hail of bullets.
A battery of artillery cleared the barricades and the slaughter began. After four hours of butchery in the streets, the commander discovered that the old Tenth Regiment Armory was crowded. More than a thousand women and children accustomed to attend Vassar’s school of patriotism had sought refuge there.
The children had found the flags and their mothers in foolish superstition had pinned them on their breasts for protection—the flag they had been taught to love!
The Imperial Guard turned their artillery on the armory and tore the flimsy front wall into fragments. When the screaming children and frantic women rushed through the breach, a withering fire from the pompoms piled their writhing bodies on the blood-soaked pavements.
Benda had been killed in the second intrenchments on Long Island. Angela faced the storm of lead at the door, holding her boy behind her back to shield him from the bullets.
A shell exploded inside and a fragment buried itself in the child’s breast. The mother felt the stinging shock and heard the thud of the iron crash into the soft flesh.
The boy made no cry. The iron had torn through his heart. The little hand was lifted feebly and clutched the tiny flag that covered his breast.
With a cry of anguish she clasped the bleeding bundle of flesh in her arms, ran through the building and found her way into the darkened basement.