O’Halloran and Wagner issued another proclamation. This time it was addressed directly to the “revolutionary army” and to the allied organizations in sympathy with the new order of things. It announced the flight of the Administration and the withdrawal of the national troops. Its signers declared, with audacious and impudent hypocrisy, that they deplored the disorder and destruction of property which had followed the revolution in many cities, and which they feared might be imitated in Washington unless immediate steps were taken to carry on the government. The various organizations engaged in the revolt were again invited to send delegates to an October “peace convention.” In the mean time O’Halloran and Wagner summoned Herr Van Liest, a prominent anarchistic agitator, to join them, and announced that the triumvirate so composed would administer the government till a permanent arrangement should be perfected.

In this disposition of authority, as in all the subsequent procedure of the revolutionists, the apparent disappearance from the scene of action of that mysterious leader calling himself the “Council of Seven,” whose edicts had been the controlling force in the riotous inauguration of the outbreak at Chicago, was one of the most perplexing features. It gave rise at first to the suspicion that his identity was concealed in the person of one of the three new rulers. This, however, was not so generally accepted as the theory that they were simply the instruments he had chosen through which to work out the schemes plotted in his secret councils,—the tools with which he, still unseen and undiscovered, did his work. Whatever the explanation, certain it is that from this time forward the apparent leadership of the revolution centred in the Washington triumvirate, from whom emanated the only orders which were obeyed by the allied hordes of sedition and anarchy.

The bells in the few churches which the socialists had left standing were rung, cannon fired, and bonfires made in several cities over the revolutionary success. Herr Liest hastened to Washington, accompanied by Julius Kopf, a beer-selling socialist, Petrovitch Metron, a dynamite “professor,” and many other equally malignant anarchists. The country was fast in the power of a triple combination representing fanatical hatred of law and order, foreign revengefulness, and native corruption,—all in their worst forms. But the leaders, fanatics and zealots though they were, had foresight enough to see that the alliance could not last unless its continuance were constrained by the pressure of outside danger. All of them had animosities to gratify against foreign Governments. Their desire of vengeance and the necessity of self-preservation united in urging them to foreign wars.