re
beginning to look each at his neighbor, and whisper with white lips,
"Perhaps, after all, this struggle is to be in vain."

Had it been attempted at this precise time, it would, without question,
have been, not a riot, but an insurrection,--would have been a portion
of the army of rebellion, organized and effective for the prosecution of
the war, and not a mob, hideous and devilish in its work of destruction,
yet still a mob; and as such to be beaten down and dispersed in a
comparatively short space of time.

On the morning of Monday, the thirteenth of July, began this outbreak,
unparalleled in atrocities by anything in American history, and
equalled only by the horrors of the worst days of the French Revolution.
Gangs of men and boys, composed of railroad _employees_, workers in
machine-shops, and a vast crowd of those who lived by preying upon
others, thieves, pimps, professional ruffians,--the scum of the
city,--jail-birds, or those who were running with swift feet to enter
the prison-doors, began to gather on the corners, and in streets and
alleys where they lived; from thence issuing forth they visited the
great establishments on the line of their advance, commanding their
instant close and the companionship of the workmen,--many of them
peaceful and orderly men,--on pain of the destruction of one and a
murderous assault upon the other, did not their orders meet with instant
compliance.

A body of these, five or six hundred strong, gathered about one of the
enrolling-offices in the upper part of the city, where the draft was
quietly proceeding, and opened the assault upon it by a shower of clubs,
bricks, and paving-stones torn from the streets, following it up by a
furious rush into the office. Lists, records, books, the drafting-wheel,
every article of furniture or work in the room was rent in pieces, and
strewn about the floor or flung into the street; while the law officers,
the newspaper reporters,--who are expected to be everywhere,--and the
few peaceable spectators, were compelled to make a hasty retreat through
an opportune rear exit, accelerated by the curses and blows of the
assailants.

A safe in the room, which contained some of the hated records, was
fallen upon by the men, who strove to wrench open its impregnable lock
with their naked hands, and, baffled, beat them on its iron doors and
sides till they were stained with blood, in a mad frenzy of senseless
hate and fury. And then, finding every