Riots

“ Hence a riot of three days costs one hundred and twenty millions; that is to say, if we only regard the financial result, is equivalent to a disaster, shipwreck, or lost action, which might annihilate a fleet of sixty vessels of the line. Indubitably, riots, historically regarded, had their beauty; the war of the paving-stones is no less grand or pathetic than the war of thickets; in the one there is the soul of forests, in the other the heart of cities ”

“ For calling our peaceable meetings riots, which in the legal notion of the word riot is a contradiction in terms, they indicted our friends as rioters for only sitting in a meeting, though nothing was there either said or done by them, and then set fines on them at pleasure. ”

“ We must believe that in the nature of riots there is something which serves the interests of the government, for I have invariably heard the police accused of inciting them. My resistance, that which I spoke of, will ever be a legal resistance, pursued by legal means, by the press, by the tribune, and with patience,—that great force granted to the oppressed and to the vanquished. ”

“ I hate party riots as much as you do; but when a riot breaks out I wish with all my heart that the Catholic may have the best of it; for the Orangeman or his sympathisers will never listen to the claims of justice till we prove strong enough to be dangerous. ”

“ If a fire breaks 215out, it is the city of fires. If there is an Irish fight in Moyamensing, it is the city of perpetual riots. By-the-bye, after that summer when we really had several successive riots up-town, and down-town, we saw an English caricature of the City of Brotherly Love, where the spirit of William Penn, in hat and wig, was looking down sadly from the clouds at the rioters, who were all represented as Quakers, in strait, plain clothes, and broad brims, knocking each other about with sticks and stones, firing pistols, and slashing with bowie-knives. ”

“ In the late riots, which even yet are hardly quite subsided, and which are still the general topic of conversation, more people have been found dead near empty brandy-casks in the streets, than were killed by the musket- balls of regiments that were called in. ”

“ These excite riots, but take good care to keep out of them; they erect barricades and leave others to get killed behind them; they compromise their friends and hide themselves thoroughly as though they themselves were the compromised. ”

“ THE riots which took place at the end of the year 1839, in the manufacturing districts of England and Wales, will long be remembered as among the most serious and violent popular commotions which have occurred in this country in the course of the current century. The Chartists, whose proceedings we have already alluded to, are alone answerable for the mischievous “risings” to which the country was made the prey, and many of them have paid the forfeit of their offences by the infliction of the punishments of transportation, fine, and imprisonment. ”

“ In the riots, as we have seen, the only man who had been killed was a rioter, killed according to the reports of the time by a yeomanry soldier, according to local tradition by a farmer, and for that offence he had been refused Christian [308] burial. On the other side, not a single person had been killed or seriously wounded. For these riots, apart from the cases of arson, for which six men or boys were hung, aristocratic justice exacted three lives, and the transportation of four hundred and fifty-seven men and boys, [482] in addition to the imprisonment of about four hundred at home. ”

“ Severe measures being found absolutely necessary to preserve the metropolis from destruction, the suppression of these riots was a painful service to the troops, and the violence of the misguided people was so great, that about 300 rioters fell victims to their own folly, before order was restored. ”

“ The curling smoke soon hid their dusky forms from view, while their shrieks and cries for mercy grew fainter and fainter, as the fierce fire shrivelled up their forms, till at last nothing but the crackling of the flames was heard, and the shouting, savage crowd grew still. ”

“ I know that part of the kingdom well. The people are all living on alms, or ruined by paying alms. The soldier helps himself, sword in hand, to what he wants. There have been serious riots already; and still more serious riots are to be apprehended. ”

“ Full of resources, they must also be cool, collected, and fearless. During the riots they were kept at work day and night, obtaining knowledge of facts that no others could get, and thus supplying the different precincts and head-quarters with invaluable information. Their duty was a most perilous one, for it called them to go into the very heart of the turbulent districts; nay, into the very midst of the mob, where detection would have been followed by death, and that of the most horrible kind. ”

“ These prearranged, noisy riots are rare and as a rule they occur only in cases when bad food or a series of persecutions have goaded the prisoners to the only real expression of protest which can be effective. ”

“ Since the people have become convinced that contemporary Governments cannot be overthrown by riots like those of July 14 and August 10, they have ceased to look upon the events of these days as epical. ”

“ It is to the everlasting disgrace of these Northern cities as it has been of certain Southern cities, that these riots have been started by whites, and that white policemen who should be the first to uphold the law have, in nearly every instance assisted the mobs. Now is the time for all of us to keep our wits: to do nothing wrong, which may be any excuse for riot. Let men and women go about [Pg 294] their work quietly, attending to their business. Keep away from saloons and places where there is gambling. More trouble starts in these places than anywhere else. ”

“ Those "quiet riots" that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths. They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. ”

“ No man can tell. It is probably much easier to tell what ought to have been done after it is all over, and I am very confident now what I would do in the future. I have learned a great deal from these riots that I never knew before, and the experience has been quite valuable to the officers of the National Guard, and everybody. ”

“ To enter into any detail of the riots would be superfluous: the House is already aware that every outrage short of actual bloodshed has been perpetrated, and that the proprietors of the Frames obnoxious to the rioters, and all persons supposed to be connected with them, have been liable to insult and violence. ”

“ These editors outraged common sense, truth, and decency, by speaking of the riots as an "uprising of the people to defend their liberties,"—"an opposition on the part of the workingmen to an unjust and oppressive law, enacted in favor of the men of wealth and standing." ”

“ But now the revolt had come to a head, and nothing but the complete defeat of one party could check the riots, unless, indeed, a military force should arrive sufficiently strong to compel peace—an event that was far from likely. ”

“ Ludlow's House entered.—Mob at Five Points.—Destruction of Houses.—The City Military called out.—Mob overawed, and Peace restored.—Five Points Riot.—Stone-cutters' Riot.
Most of the riots of New York have grown out of causes more or less local, and wholly transient in their nature. ”

“ Martin, a little old infirm man, dragging a hand-truck surmounted by a tricolor rag, and carrying bottles full of some fluid, came and went from the barricade to the troops, and from the troops to the barricade, impartially offering glasses of cocoa, first to the Government and then to anarchy. Nothing can be stranger; and this is the peculiar character of Parisian riots, which is not found in any other capital, as two things are required for it,—the grandeur of Paris and its gayety, the city of Voltaire and of Napoleon. ”

“ Desperate riots often arose on such occasions, especially when the Templars, or other youths connected with the aristocracy, were insulted, or conceived themselves to be so. Upon such occasions, bare steel was frequently opposed to the clubs of the citizens, and death sometimes ensued on both sides. ”

“ I have considerable influence also with the Highlanders in College, and expect to get a good deal of help from them, when I pass the word round tomorrow.
May I venture to hint my belief that the real cause of the riots is the way some of the professors run you down in their lectures. They never lose a chance of stirring up hatred against you. For all I know they may have more knowledge of the riotous conspiracy than most people fancy. However, as I tell you, you and your friends need not fear, as far as Monday is concerned. You will be taken good care of. ”

“ The same old story, only worse and more of it. The State-house beleaguered; the metropolitan police armed with Winchesters and manning a battery; the citizens holding indignation meetings and organizing for defence against usurping State government; two riots on Canal Street, and a member of one legislature shot down by the sergeant-at-arms of the other; a great mob organizing to attack the governor and the State-house, etc., etc. ”

“ The socialist leaders took to heart and profited by the lesson which the Cincinnati riots of 1884 had taught. Those disturbances began in the indignation of an outraged public, angered beyond endurance by the shameful, repeated, and demoralizing defeats to which justice had been subjected in the local courts of law. But they soon took on a different cast. What had at first been the protest of good citizenship was transformed into a saturnalia of crime and ruffianism. ”

“ I. Whereas of late many rebellious riots and tumults have been in divers parts of this kingdom, to the disturbance of the publick peace, and the endangering of his Majesty's person and government, and the same are yet continued and fomented by persons disaffected to his Majesty, presuming so to do, for that the punishments provided by the laws now in being are not adequate to such heinous offences ”

“ The very few European causes which are in analogy with United States mobbing, are those riots for opinion, which bear only a subordinate relation to politics; such as the Birmingham riots, and the attempt of the Liverpool merchants to push Clarkson into the dock. The cases are very similar. The mobs of America are composed of high churchmen, (of whatever denomination,) merchants and planters, and lawyers. ”

“ A crowd of people assembled for the purpose of accomplishing, however worthy, a purpose in a questionable manner, is very easily converted into a riot, and when a crowd proposed to carry out an unlawful object by violence it soon becomes an uncontrollable mob, if encouraged in its purposes by the sympathy, either expressed or passive, of the community and the civil authorities. ”

“ Many who would readily have pointed out the foremost rioters and given evidence against them, felt that escape by that means was hopeless, when their every act had been observed by scores of people who had taken no part in the disturbances; who had suffered in their persons, peace, or property, by the outrages of the mob ”

“ Riots.—In times past the Brums had a bad name for rioting, and when the list is looked over many may think it not undeserved.—In July, 1715, the Old Meeting House was destroyed in a riot.—In 1737 the naiimakers from Worcestershire marched into this town and forced the ironmongers to sign a paper allowing an advance in prices.—Some bigoted brutes got up an anti-Methodist movement in 1751, which culminated in a general riot on Oct. ”

“ During the Gordon riots at the beginning of June, his house in Leicester Fields was burnt and plundered by the rioters, to whom he was especially obnoxious as the author of the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1778. ”

“ This seemed a weak inducement to draw a crowd so far, when more distinguished victims were all around them. It is more probable that some personal enemy of parties in the vicinity, finding the mob ready to follow any cry, led them thither; for one man seemed to be the leader, who, mounted on a fine cavalry horse, and brandishing a sword, galloped backwards and forwards through the crowd, giving his orders like a field officer. ”

“ In the No Popery riots of 1780, with which Lord George Gordon was so intimately connected, Ken Wood House was on the brink of being destroyed by the rioters, who had, already, wrecked his lordship's house in Bloomsbury Square, and destroyed his most valuable library. ”

“ London is the mother-city of the English-speaking races, all of which have modelled their police forces on the metropolitan pattern; and the Gordon riots, which were the most violent ever experienced in this country, have therefore served as a lesson to cities as distant from us and from each other as Sydney and New York, forewarning those responsible for the maintenance of the peace in those places of the extent of the danger that threatens when proper precautions are neglected. ”

“ The materials for the history of the Draft Riots were obtained in part from the Daily Press, and in part from the City and Military Authorities, especially Commissioner Acton, Seth Hawley, General Brown, and Colonel Frothingham, who succeeded in putting them down.
Mr. David Barnes, who published, some ten years ago, a pamphlet entitled "The Metropolitan Police," kindly furnished me facts relating to the Police Department of great value, and which saved me much labor and time. ”

“ Even if the military under General Brown and the police had not shown the mob that they were its masters, the arrival of so many regiments, occupying all the infected districts, was overwhelming evidence that the day of lawless triumph was over, and that of retribution had come. ”

“ But old men and women, and poor families, were compelled to stay behind, and meet the fury of the mob, and to-day it became a regular hunt for them. A sight of one in the streets would call forth a halloo, as when, a fox breaks cover, and away would dash a half a dozen men in pursuit. ”