Year: 1871

and the first incidents occurred on the north
ern part of the islands, where nearly nine
hundred laborers, chiefly Irish, were engaged
upon the Boulevards. The mutineers, in
bodies of from twenty to one hundred, ap-
preached these gangs, and by persuasion and
threatening means obliged them to quit work,
while large portion of the easy-minded and
those ready for lark fell in with their meters.
Similar movements probably took place fur
ther down in the city, particularly in Second
avenue, on Ninth avenue and upon avenues
A, B and c, which lie in the dense slaughter
house and tenement quarters near Houston
street ferry. Here, around the liquor stores,
small groups of men were keeping lookout
upon the streets, while the enterprising propri-
etor was dispensing beverages, and parcels of
customers were looking at the printing of their
blunderbusses and making abstruse chemical
remarks upon the composition of their car
tridges.


Finally detached gangs of drunken or sur
ly fellows-many of whom had received some
experience in the draft riots of 1853 and en-
Joyed the rare delight of kicking Colonel
OBrien to death-moved insolently upon the
Police Headquarters, and began to hoot the
Governor, General Shaler and the troops.
After listening to them for some time the
police and military finally chased them down
Houston street to the Bowery and bagged





The rioters then crowded around the Fenian
headquarters on avenue A and the armory of
the 69th Regiment, at the corner of Essex and
Grand streets, and threatened to sack both
buildings unless provided with arms immedi-
ately. The officers also pouncea upon these
noisy villains, and arrested great number.
The lowest and most mendacious crowd was
at Hibernia Hall, however, and after good
deal of chafing and cursing several Of these,
armed with knives and pistols, marched upon
a neighboring Fenian hall and demanded arms.
Unable to obtain these they executed some st.
Adams tactics in the street-undertook to
march to the Orange rendezvous in order,
but were charged by police and they rain like
pack of cravens. These and similar move
ments occupied the whole forenoon. The
great action however, was to be fought on the
west side of the city, near the Irish Protestant
Hall, where the few Orangemen of fortitude
were preparing to face the storm of bigotry
and wrath.


Everybody knows that our uptown cross
blocks are very near together, SO that there
are ten of them within half mile. The
whole theatre of the scene and slaughter now
about to occur was therefore little above a
quarter of mile in length. and could in
every part and feature be seen by the naked
eye of a single observer posted upon the pave
ment, while to anybody situated in an elevat-
ed station-as cart, an upper window or
housetop-the theatre of events would lie be-
low him, minute and plain in every attribute.


The houses are generally brick, of
four stories, with fiat root, and the first story
is almost invariably retail shop or saloon or
restaurant. The corners are generally liquor
stores or lager beer saloons. The street has
a dingy. bricky look, and conspicuous by
height and whiteness is the great Opera House
and Erie headquarters, at the corner of Twen-
ty-third street. This fine edifice lowered
above the whole vista, and nobody was visible
in it except some half dozen railway employees
and clerks in the second story.


The avenue was remarkably clear of ladies
and even of men. Up and down the crossing
streets some hundreds of spectators were
mounted on the stoops of dwellings unwilling
| to venture as far as the direct route of the
parade, but at the corners of the crossing
streets, huddled together in sinister and NUT
tering groups were the creatures who were to
turn this pleasant scene of show and music
into an occasion of terror and of blood.


They were generally half grown men and
boys OF the basest class, tenants of dense and
distant quarters, who had come to the spot
with the intention of violence and even mur-
der. All of them, it is needless to say, were
of that nationality whose geographical and
religious division had rendered all this display
of military necessary. They were attired in
greasy and often ragged clothes, slouchy as
to hats, dirty as to boots, often freckled and
unhealthy in complexion, and their coarse
jaws, high cheek bones and brows; lowering
brutal and uneasy mode of conversation;
strong GENITAL dialects and mode of swearing
and gesturing, indicated natures utterly un-
cultured, or cultured only in the forms of
vice; bred in the densest purileus of cities,
social castaways from the cradle up, and used
| opl fo tha nf and ,.olt
A few looked positively idiotic, as if born to
browse rather than to walk upright, and so
| far from possessing religious zeal in the mat
| ter in hand they seemed to have come to the
congenial delight of riot, regardless of the
issues to be settled in it.


| There were several, however, by the fact
of their access to the roofs of houses near at
hand, must have been familiar with the neigh
borhood, if they did not absolutely live in it,
few were tolerably dressed, and these by
their remarks, appeared to indulge the belief
that the Orange parade was not merely the
aversion of their particular school and creed,
but that it was in some manner public insult
which every man was bound to resent. Spew-
ed out of the lanes and garrets of dense city
these men had all the belligerency with none
of the idealism of the Paris Communists.


A little before three O'Clock, and while the
sound OF drum and fling filled the air, and
the multitude, out of its timidity, had volun-
tarily made vacant nearly whole square on
the avenue in advance of the troops, there
was a sound of a new tune upon another band
of music heard approaching, and suddenly
round the corner of Twenty ninth street,
coming from the North River side, was seen
a standard of American colors and large
blue regalia banner, held well aloft so that it
could be seen perhaps for mile down the
city. Behind this blue banner small oblong
transparency of white muslin was exposed,
on which could be read distance of two
blocks, in plain black letters, the words,
AMERICAN FREEMEN, FALL IN"
Nothing else was apparent above the serried
| line of bayonets and uniforms, not even the
heads of the few bold paraders who had made


it matter of private organization to stand
the hazard of procession at any event, Ia
asmuch as the law had given them permission.


No sooner had the blue banner been seen
by the groups upon the corners of Twenty
sixth, Twenty fifth, Twenty-fourth and
Twenty-third streets when loud, wild howl
went up from every group, which was re-
cd hn