TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEW YORK RIOTS.
READ coloured men for aristocrats, the State for the Commune, " Copperheads " for "Jacobins," and one might mistake New York for Paris, July 1863, for Sep- tember 1793. There is the same pretext of political pur- pose, the same surge of armed rascality to the top, the same inhuman ferocity, the same change of a political movement into a massacre of class by class, the same electric atmosphere of suspicion, the same assertions, denials, proofs, and rumours of endless and unintelligible plots. The Pitt and Coburg of Parisian cafés are the Jeff. Davis and Vallandigham of New York drinking saloons, and the stories of undermined houses, of English mixed with Septembrisers, of British sove- reigns paid to murderers, are matched or surpassed by the tales of concealed weapons, and Confederate notes, and the nine Southern agents who came north in the steamer which carried Mr. Stephens to the Potomac. The only dif- ference is, that while the Parisians sprung at the throats of a superior class, and sought blood rather than money, the New Yorkers murdered unresisting Helots, and sought plunder as much as blood. Amidst wild stories and half-proved suspicions, it is still possible to the careful reader to discern some meaning and sequence in these events. The riot was first of all organized for a political end. The friends of the South, aware that events were turn- ing against their cause, confident of the silent sympathy of the Governor, aware that the Mayor had neither military nor police authority, and well acquainted with the character of the classes who vote at their bidding, resolved to give the Government an alarm. If they could throw New York for the hour into confusion, and frighten Mr. Lincoln into with- drawing the draft, the cause of the South was won. For executive force they had the naturalized Irish, always -exces- sively numerous in New York, and for occasion the conscrip- tion, which in America, as in every other country on earth, is arranged so as not to disturb society by removing the class which cannot be replaced, or seizing the men whom a ten-mile march makes helpless invalids. The exemption intensely annoyed a population wild for apparent equality, and the instant the drafting commenced a riot also began. The crowd, number- ing at first, perhaps, two thousand, and with few arms,—the tales of concealed stores are romances, or the mob would not have wasted strength on the "armouries,"—attacked and tore down the recruiting office, the register of conscripts, and the wheel used for the lots, and then proceeded to threaten the men who had been the principal supporters of the draft. So far, we take it, the riot was honest, i.e., was an illegal resistance to an unpopular law, and meant no more than any sea-port riot against a pressgang ; but from this moment its character changed. The first attack passed unpunished, for New York, as usual, was without troops, the Police Commis- sioners disliked the conscription, the Mayor could not call out the marines, and the "Grey Regiment," the 7th Militia, in which every man is a man of property, and which the mob, taught by a terrible experience, dreads more keenly than soldiers, had volunteered for the war. The friends of the South, the Irish who hate the negroes as rivals in servitude, and the fierce rowdyism of a capital which, more than any city on earth, is a true clout-Ina gentium,—Bermondsey plus Wapping, plus Leicester square,— saw their opportunity. The attack on Government buildings was changed to an attack on every building owned by a man supposed, or known to be hostile to the war, and on the un- fortunate coloured race who were asserted to be its cause. Every building attacked was first plundered and then fired, and the firemen driven back. Every negro seen was merci- lessly hunted, then beaten, and then hung to the lamp post. The police, who from the strict discipline necessary in New York and the tyrannies of Superintendent Kennedy in pur- suit of Southern sympathizers, were bitterly hated, were attacked and mercilessly ill-used, till they at last, for the remainder of the struggle, employed their revolvers freely. As might have been expected, the authorities.displayed all the fear of responsibility which usually distinguishes under such circumstances British officials. For two days no one appears to have moved effectually except the colonel in command of the Provost-Marshal's guard—who fought and lost a regular battle in the streets, and was then caught separated from his men, and slowly tortured to death—and Lieutenant Wade, in com- mand of a few marines. This officer, though, like all men unused to mobs, he repeated the absurd blunder of first firing over the heads of the crowd, scattered the mob wherever be
appeared ; but his efforts seem to have been restrained by the necessity of garrisoning one or two points. The respectable citizens, with the true social cowardice of Americans, who will fight anything but a majority, seem to have doubted whether the riot was not a revolution, and did not at first obey the Mayor's summons to arms. For five days the mob had it all their own way, the blue sky of the island, clear as that of Italy, was heavy with the smoke of burning fires, houses and. shops were plundered with impunity, every negro seen was slain, the quarters of the coloured race were entered and their inmates murdered, one negro's body hung to a lamp-post was burnt to ashes, and at last, as if to place the origin of the outrages beyond all doubt, a crowd of Irish attacked the Coloured Orphan Asylum. This building- is strictly a charitable institution, and its managers had not even given any local offence to the insane pride of race. Even in the mob a few men were sane enough to endeavour to save it, but all that could be obtained was an hour's grace for the children to retire. They filed off through the mad crowd, but,. we are happy to record, for the honour of human nature, with no further suffering than their terror from angry menaces, and then the building was gutted and fired. At night New York was as a city pillaged. Small groups dispersed through. the streets robbing and murdering all abroad, hunting down stray policemen and torturing captured negroes ; every ruffian with a private enemy denounced him to a mob ; every garotter robbed his victim under protection of the "Union cause." The scum had got to the top; but the carnival was too dangerous to last long. Governor Seymour at last arrived from his watering-place, and made some weak speeches promising inquiry into the legality of the draft, and issued a strong proclamation threatening to enforce order by every means in his power. The respectable classes turned out at last armed with clubs and revolvers, the police, exasperated by their losses, fought without mercy,. and soldiers began to arrive. The Federal Government, we are bound to say, acted with nerve and decision. The Presi- dent peremptorily refused to withdraw the draft, superseded General Wool, a good but worn-out officer, by General Dix, accustomed to hold down Baltimore ; sent Kil- patrick, his ablest cavalry officer, with a body of horse ; and forwarded New York regiments to guard their own capital and property. These men are all on the side of the war, they know New York, they are most of them the sons of small proprietors, and they have an utter detestation of the- low Irish, whom the adroit friends of the South employed. They will show no mercy to murderers, and although, unlike the New York newspapers, we doubt the mob giving up their enjoyment without one determined street battle—on the last. day one crowd stood a discharge of grape without breaking— we believe that order must be restored.
The first reflection excited by all these narratives is the incomprehensible weakness of all American official arrange- ments. The constitution of New York broke down in the hour of trial like the constitution of the United States, and from an identical cause. Power had been frittered away by Democratic jealousy till no ultimate authority remained. The- Mayor had no authority over anybody, and even the power of the State was exceedingly limited. The "Boards" who form the council of the city contented themselves with voting an enormous slim (500,000/.) to pay for exemptions for the poor, and the police were under some inaccessible, or, at least, irresponsible board. There was nobody to give orders "in the Queen's name," i.e., in the name of the general interests of society, and till the citizens turned out in incipient com- mittees of vigilance there was no general force on the side of order whatever, except that of the Superintendent of Police. Nobody whose business it was to fight, turned tail, or "fraternized" with the mob, or in any way grievously neglected his duty. The police fought with a gallantry even the Democrats admit, the marines fired at the mob with merciless discipline, the Provost's guard lost one battle fairly,. and individual officials displayed the most determined courage—Marshal Murray, for example, and his wife, scatter- ing one body of assailants with their revolvers. But there was no organization covering the whole city, none of that. coherence which in Europe results from the sense that the authorities are appointed from above, and may be relied on so far as "the Queen's peace" is concerned, so long as they are alive. Even the force at hand was wasted. Americans have not a notion of the effect of cavalry in a street row, nor of the use of concentrating their forces. Had the Mayor only assumed a quasi-dictatorship, thrown police, marines, and guard into one body, called on the sailors of the port, with ten dollars for every twelve hours' work, and dis-
persed every crowd with the bayonet, order would have been restored in a night. As it was, whole districts were for fire days given up to felons, and the city for forty-eight hours was in danger of being destroyed by fire. Had any mad boy of fourteen quitted the attraction of burning negroes to pour a little turpentine over a rope, the loss to the world might have been counted in millions. The moment disorder was over, the citizens, with characteristic activity, set about organizing a future defence, and a Home Guard of twenty thousand householders, armed with rifles and revolvers, will for the future garrison New York; but that guard should have been improvised. Mayor Opdyke could have armed it from his own stores alone.
The second reflection is the tremendous blow sustained by the Democrat party. We are not disposed to affirm, with our correspondent, that the whole riot was due to Irishmen, or that it was in its commencement a riot
without an excuse. Men seized by a pressgang have resisted in our own streets, before now, without anybody's morals being excessively shocked. But from that first attack the mass of the rioters were undoubtedly composed .either of the classes who live by crime or the classes whose theory of ethics is to hate the negro and love the South. "Killing a nigger" was no step towards arresting the draft, !tor -was it the coloured children who inserted the clauses exempt- ing the rich. As massacre does not pay by itself, the massacre was certainly carried out by men who detested the negro ; and those who detest the neg,ro are the Democrat's rank and file. Moreover, the Democrat Governor did not act, and the Republican President did, and it was the latter, and not the former, whose measures finally saved the city. The result will be,Jo ifach the wealthy, the backbone of the party of peace, that their only chance of safety lies in Republican domination, to give the Federal authority a prestige over that of the State, and to increase enormously the influence of the army, which craves for victory instead of for peace. Then the abortive resistance settles the question of the draft. If the President will not yield to the dread of seeing New York in flames, he certainly will net shrink before any feebler opposition. If New York, with its million of people, its heavy majority of Democrats, its peace Democrat Governor, its merchants thirsting for Southern trade, its streets without troops, and its mob in possession of arms, could not resist successfully, what is the chance of the little capital of New Jersey ? The draft will be. carried out, and, whatever our opinion of the merits of that device, its success is fatal to the hopes of the South, for it is this time a nation which is called, in detach- ments into the field. Above all, the Federal Government is relieved of a secret fear. It was the dread of revolt in New -York which arrested many an energetic plan ; and now the revolt has come, and New York is still an orderly city of the Union. The moral-force of the central Power is indefinitely increased, and it is the central Power which, if any, must dictate terms of peace to the South. With the Con- federacy cloven in two by the fall of Port Hudson, Lee in retreat on Richmond, Mr. Davis calling for a levee en masse, and a conscription supplying endless armies, that ex-
tension of the area of slavery for which the South have striven will be an undertaking beyond their leader's able brains or their own determined valour. They may still pre- serve their independence—a result we by no means intend to deprecate—but slavery is tied with withes which must sooner or later be fatal. The Cause for the hundredth time has been stronger than the men.
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