A small military force was brought to the aid of the police, and whenever an outbreak was reported, a strong body was sent at once to the spot. The locust clubs, when wielded in earnest, proved a terrible weapon, descending upon the heads of rioters with blows that generally cracked the skull. A surgeon who attended twenty-one men reported that they were all wounded in the head, and all past recovery. One of the most fearful scenes was in Second Avenue, where the police and the soldiers were assailed with stones and pistol-shots from the windows and the roofs. Dividing into squads, they entered the houses, which, amid the cries and curses of the women, they searched from bottom to top. They seized their cowering assailants in the halls, in the dark bedrooms, wherever they were hiding, felled them, bayoneted them, hurled them over the balusters and through the windows, pursued them to the roof, shot them as they dodged behind chimneys, refusing all mercy, and threw the quivering corpses into the street as a warning to the mob. It was like a realization of the imaginary taking of Torquilstone.
One of the saddest incidents of the riot was the murder of Col. Henry J. O'Brien, of the Eleventh New York Volunteers, whose men had dispersed one mob with a deadly volley. An hour or two later the Colonel returned to the spot alone, when he was set upon and beaten and mangled and tortured horribly for several hours, being at last killed by some frenzied women. Page after page might be filled with such incidents. At one time Broadway was strewn with dead men from Bond Street to Union Square. A very young man, dressed in the working-clothes of a mechanic, was observed to be active and daring in leading a crowd of rioters. A blow from a club at length brought him down, and as he fell he was impaled on the picket of an iron fence, which caught him under the chin and killed him. On examination, it was found that under the greasy overalls he wore a costly and fashionable suit, and there were other indications of wealth and refinement, but the body was never identified.
Three days of this vigorous work by the police and the soldiers brought the disturbance to an end. About fifty policemen had been injured, three of whom died; and the whole number of lives destroyed by the rioters was eighteen. The exact number of rioters killed is unknown, but it was more than twelve hundred. The mobs burned about fifty buildings, destroying altogether between two million and three million dollars' worth of property. Governor Seymour incurred odium by a speech to the rioters, in which he addressed them as his friends, and promised to have the draft stopped, and by his communications to the President, in which he complained of the draft, and asked to have it suspended till the question of its constitutionality could be tested in the courts. His opponents interpreted this as a subterfuge to favor the rebellion by preventing the reinforcement of the National armies. The President answered, in substance, that he had no objection to a testing of the question, but he would not imperil the country by suspending operations till a case could be dragged through the courts.
Fourteen of the Northern States had enacted laws enabling the soldiers to vote without going home. In some of the States it was provided that commissioners should go to the camps and take the votes; in others the soldier was authorized to seal up his ballot and send it home to his next friend, who was to present it at the polls and make oath that it was the identical one sent to him. The enactment of such laws had been strenuously opposed by the Democrats, on several grounds, the most plausible of which was, that men under military discipline were not practically free to vote as they pleased. The most curious argument was to this effect: a soldier that sends home his ballot may be killed in battle before that ballot reaches its destination and is counted. Do you want dead men to decide your elections?
These were the darkest days of the war; but the riots reacted upon the party that was supposed to favor them, the people gradually learned the full significance of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and at the autumn election the State of New York, which a year before had elected Governor Seymour, gave a handsome majority in favor of the Administration. In Ohio, where the Democrats had nominated Vallandigham for Governor, and made a noisy and apparently vigorous canvass, the Republicans nominated John Brough. When the votes were counted, it was found that Mr. Brough had a majority of one hundred thousand, the largest that had ever been given for any candidate in any State where there was a contest. Politically speaking, this buried Mr. Vallandigham out of sight forever, and delivered a heavy blow at the obstructive policy of his party.
| OFFICERS OF THE FORTY-FOURTH NEW YORK INFANTRY. |
| THE ATTACK ON CHARLESTON. |