No words can adequately describe the fear which fell upon good men all over the land when the real character and purpose of the riot became known. Considerable sympathy had been felt for the first day’s movement, which was rightly regarded as a protest against the stupid inefficiency of the courts, rather than an outbreak against the established order. But when the awful anarchy of the succeeding days came to be understood, and the true nature of the plot against society to be appreciated, there was something like a panic among men who had stakes in the prosperity of the nation, and whose wealth or homes depended upon the maintenance of order.

It was not a hopeful sign that, in the midst of this horror and dread which fell upon men of property and standing, the socialists everywhere openly expressed their sympathy with the “revolution,” and their belief that the Chicago riot was only the first gun in a battle which was to rage over the length and breadth of the land. Nor was the attitude taken by the Irish any the more reassuring. They had not engaged in the riots at Chicago, neither had they opposed the rioters. So far as could be learned, not a single member of any of the great Irish societies had been molested in person or property during the riots. In other parts of the country, too, the Irish leaders spoke with a new and strange tone. They expressed a strong condemnation, it is true, of the excesses into which the rioters had been “driven;” but in no case did they denounce the rioters themselves, or fail to express their sympathy with what they were pleased to term “an oppressed and struggling common people.”

Two days after the troops had taken possession of the city, the leading daily paper managed to collect enough material and men to issue a small four-page sheet. The leading article in this issue, in deliberately chosen but unmistakable language, charged that the Irish organizations of the city had not only sympathized with the rioters, but had in many instances actually given them material aid, furnishing them arms, acting as spies for them, and offering some of the leaders hiding-places when search was made for them after the restoration of order. No denial was made to this. But the Irish Press responded to the charge with a counter-accusation. It declared that the article was the result of partisan spite, inspired by the fact that the Irish usually acted with the political party to which their editorial assailant was opposed. With few exceptions, the Press of that party took up the cry, and charged his paper with having insulted “a vast and respectable body of citizens, in order to make contemptible political capital.”

The excitement gradually subsided,—as it was the misfortune (or the wickedness) of the American people that excitement over public wrongs always did. But good men everywhere continued to look to the future with a dread which they did not dare to put into words.

A considerable body of soldiery was retained in barracks close without the city till midsummer. The withdrawal of so many troops from the frontier encouraged several of the Indian tribes, who had been most cruelly cheated and robbed by the Government, to take the war-path. The Gros-Ventres, the Nez-PercÉs, the Utes, and the Apaches revolted at almost the same time, and began attacks on settlers and frontier posts. The troops were ordered once more to the West; and before the middle of July there was an even smaller proportion of the regular army east of the great plains than before the Chicago outbreak.

This situation of affairs roused the better citizens, irrespective of party, to the necessity for some action to protect other cities from any attempt on the part of their socialists to imitate Chicago. Congress was still in session. It had been debating a river and harbor bill for two months, and had taken up, as a relief, the momentous question whether a half-million-dollar post-office and sub-treasury should be built at Mandan. There was every prospect that two months more would be spent in orations and committee hearings and bargainings over this question. The members, as usual, appeared to have no conception of the needs of the country, and no regard for any dangers which might menace it. A few attempts had been made to secure some action which might avert the war with England, into which the continued plots and crimes of Irishmen in the United States were dragging the nation. But both parties were afraid of the Irish vote,—more afraid of it than of committing a great wrong on a friendly Government; and these attempts failed to secure any seconding from either side. After the riot at Chicago, several set speeches had been delivered,—that is to say, printed in the “Congressional Record,”—and a committee had been appointed to investigate the matter. But the committee was unable to decide whether the son of the senator from Arkansas, who was chairman on the part of the Senate, or the nephew of the member from Connecticut, who was chairman on the part of the House, should be their secretary; and so they had not yet undertaken to hear anything concerning the matter on which they were appointed. The majority in both Houses reposed in a sort of intellectual and moral torpor. When any member did partially awake, it was only to cast his eye far enough into the future to scan the chances of his own re-election.

At this juncture a convention of representative business men from all parts of the land was called at New York to consider the state of the country. The situation was discussed with freedom, and it was unanimously resolved that the dangers to which society was exposed demanded such an increase of the army as would allow the constant retention of a considerable force within calling distance of the larger cities, in readiness for another possible outbreak. A petition was drawn up to this effect, and numerously signed in all the cities. A committee, consisting of a leading and representative man from each one of fifty-eight cities, was deputed to present the petition to Congress and urge the passage of the law suggested.

Congress received the petition, and a member from New York introduced the bill proposed. Never was a stronger proof given of the truth of the old saying, “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” Instead of hastening the passage of the bill, which asked an increase of only twenty-five thousand men for the army,—making its total strength but fifty thousand,—Congress delayed any consideration of it for two weeks. When it finally secured a hearing in the “committee of the whole House,” it was met by the familiar outcry against the danger to the Republic of a great standing army. For three weeks more the “Congressional Record” was filled with high-sounding and attenuated repetitions of that outworn demagogism. One hundred and thirty-two speeches were delivered, during these three weeks, upon a measure the importance of which was manifest upon its face, and the necessity for which it had not taken a convention of business men as many days to agree upon. Before this eruption of cheap eloquence had ceased flowing, the time for useful action had passed. The blow had been struck.