Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-08-18

the secrets of the order. As he had q
turn at writing. his task was filled. In due
course the manuscript was handed to q
country printer.
''The affair came to the ears of the local
lodge The Free Masons broke into the
printing Office, smashed the presses, stole
the manuscripts, and finally burned down
the building. Morgan was brought to trial
and finally discharged. After that he dis
appeared from the sight of men. The result
was that other mobs rose and denounced
Free Masonry all over the union. Morgan's
book was q feeble effort after all.
"As result of the Morgan excitement,
the Phi Beta Kappa Secret Society was
expelled from Harvard in 1881. Free
Masonry became q political issue.
\ Great Year for Riots.
"The year 1884 is notorious for its riots.
Political excitement was reused by Presi-
dent Jackson's refusal to recharter the
United States Bank. A worthless paper
currency soon menaced thousands with ruin.
The April elections in New York City
witnessed some severe rioting For four
days troops were quartered in Washington
Square trying to quell the violence of the
mobs.:
SIN October of the same year the City OF
Brotterly Love was shocked by terrible
riots. The mob destroyed 80 buildings,
among them two churchek An old negro
was made to leap out of an upper story
of high building. The ringleaders were
convicts and miscreants of the worst kind.
"But this riot was less disgraceful than
the attack on the Ursuline Convent at
Charleston Heights, near Boston, which oc-
Cured in the same year. Somehow story
spread that q young girl who had taken the
veil had been SO abused that she had escaped
to save her life, but had been recaptured
and now was Injured in dungeon under the
convent The story was utterly absurd. As
q matter of fact, girl, delirious from fever,
had wandered away and had returned volun-
tarily, under the care of her brother. A
band of fanatics, dressed as tor a mas
querade, surrounded the convent one night
and ordered all the inmates to leave in halt
an hour, under the penalty of death. Then
the building was burned. The work of de-
struction was continued for hours All the
sacred vestments, the affairs, the hymn
books, the religious libraries, the personal
effects of the inmates, were dragged to the
lawn, heaped up and destroyed by fire.
"But the outrage did not end there. A
year after tbs burning of the convent the
anniversary was celebrated bv the populace
of Bunker Hill, who gave a grand picnic,
with shooting match, an effigy of the Lady
Superior of the convent being used as tar
get
Ths Bread Riots of 1887.
"In the year 1887, owing to commercial
distress, mobs fought for bread in the
streets of New York. A year before, on
in the vicinity of Wall and Pearl streets.
Over 700 stores were destroyed, valued at
$40, 900, 900. Large quantities of merchan-
disc on the docks ready for shipment were
licked up by the flames. The season follow
ing was one of great suffering. That winter
there were mass meetings and denun-
citation of the high rents Af-
fairs came to . climax when it was
limited that certain dealers had cor
nered the -four market, in the hope of
squeezing the last penny out Of the people
already on the verge of starvation. A huge
mob formed near the New York City Hall.
1t descended on the warehouse of -four
dealer. The doors were broken in; the
windows were smashed; the famishing peo-
pie broke through the walls. Then they
knocked in the heads of the barrels and
rolled them into the gutter. old crones
darted forward like birds of prey says a
historian of the hour, and filling baskets
and aprons with the soft drift, which lay
knee deep on the pavement, whittier than
snowfakes, made of to their homes
A Gallows for Early Abolition Editors.
'sThe methods of that earliest of Aboli-
lion editors, William Lloyd Garrison, con-
duced to mob violence. One of Garrison's
schemes was to print the picture of . slave
on handkerchief, roll it in q wrapper and
send it, along with inasmmatory tracts, to
slave owners in the South. On one occa-
sion a mob of 5000 tore open the United
States mail bags in Charleston, seeking Gar
rison's tracts. Not long after that he i'm
ported a hot-headed Englishman, named
Thompson, to stir up matters by pub
lie addresses. Thompson spoke so well
that one, night Garrison found set
up before his door gollows in
the streets of Boston, an ominous warning
of his fate. The next day furious mob Of
over 5000 people chased the editor through
the streets. He was caught and rope put
around his neck. There were loud cries
that he should be hanged. The Mayor in
tercedeG and Garrison was arrested as
feint to get him out of the hands of the
mob. He passed the night in jail The
streets were thirsting for his gore. But he
was spirited away and lived to see many
another mob.
''There have been other mobs within the
memory of persons who are now only mid
dle-aged, including the draft rioters"