Shooting party

“ The hostess and the ladies of the party invariably join the shooters at luncheon, and some of the ladies go out with the shooters in the morning to watch their prowess in the field; but this entails a great deal of walking where partridge shooting is concerned, which is quite another thing to covert shooting in November and December. ”

“ He declared that if the body had in future any shooting to do they would do it in the open. The Nationalist patriots are more advanced. They know a trick worth two of that. The Protestant party have no experience in premeditated murder, and must take a back seat as authorities in the matter. They have not yet discovered that shooting from behind a wall is comparatively safe, and safety is a paramount consideration. ”

“ Should a slave, when assaulted, but raise his hand in self defense, the white assaulting party is fully justified by southern, or Maryland, public opinion, in shooting the slave down. ”

“ Many of the organizers have lost children of their own and other loved ones to gunfire. This past week I met with some of them at the White House and heard their stories: a son shot while playing with neighbors in his own backyard in New York; a teenager shot at his front door by party crashers in Virginia; a daughter shot with four others by classmates at her Arkansas middle school; a young man shot by Illinois gang members who expected, just like on television, that he would get up and walk away. ”

“ By a lot of "Yankee shopkeepers," assisted by renegades like Keith, Talbot Ward, and others. The committee was a lot of stranglers; they ought to be punished as murderers; they ought to be shot down, egad, as revolutionaries! It was realized that street shooting had temporarily become unsafe; otherwise, there is no doubt that the hotheads would have gone forth deliberately abrawling. There were many threats made against individuals, many condign—and lawless—punishments promised them. ”

“ Guns were placed at every point of vantage. Men mounted their steeds with a careless laugh, while the rising sun shone on their burnished arms, so soon to be stained with blood. Battalions of men marched up and down the streets to the sound of martial music, and the low, flat-roofed housetops were quickly filled with sharpshooters.
The Government House and residence of the President was guarded in all directions by the 2nd Battalion of the Line, the firemen and a detachment of police, but on the river side were four gunboats of the revolutionary party. ”

“ But when in New York she adjured workingmen never to enter the United States Army, and informed us that all we needed for adequate defence were shooting-galleries "within reach of every family," so that we could all learn—like the old ladies in "Punch"—to fire a gun, there was something profoundly sad in words so ill-judged and so fatuous. It cannot be a matter of no moment that, in the hour of our danger and indecision, thousands of people stand ready to applaud the disloyal utterances which should affront every honourable man or woman who hears them. ”

“ We followed, and kept picking off men from their rear, while it seemed as if there was a minuteman behind every fence or tree by the road. We didn't march under any regular orders, but each man tried to do all he could with his musket. I and two or three other Lebanon men kept together, and managed to pick off some men at every by-road. At one time, we just escaped the attack of a flanking party who killed some of the militia a short distance from us. ”

“ Anybody could have a gun. Public safety lay in the released spirits of the Russian workmen who saw the vision of liberty before them. Tuesday was the most dangerous day, as the crowd was beginning to feel its power, and the amount of shooting going on everywhere must have been out of all proportion to the sniping on the part of cornered police. ”

“ While thus, on one side, went the agent, with his cumbrous accompaniments of law-officers and parchments, police constables and bailiffs, to effect a distress or an ejectment; the midnight party with arms patrolled the country, firing the haggards and the farmhouses, setting all law at defiance, and asserting in their own bloody vengeance the supremacy of massacre. ”

“ No one has yet explained who organised the expensively-armed sharpshooters who displayed such remarkable skill in firing from an elevation without being caught in the act. The people believe that they were members of the clerical party whose object was to exasperate the troops against the rioters who were supposed to be firing at them, and thus to bring about a fight in which the whole town should be involved. ”

“ One Dublin paper, called the 'Volunteer Journal,' urged assassination; and some men had been arrested, in the previous spring, on a charge of conspiring to murder seven unpopular members of Parliament. The supineness of magistrates and the absence of any regular police force opened great facilities for crime. Riots raged in the streets owing to trade strikes; men were 'tarred and feathered' and let loose before the infuriated mob; soldiers were houghed and left bleeding on the pavement. New corps of volunteers advertised for recruits, and men of the worst repute rushed into their ranks. ”

“ The main war-party seeing the desperate straits of their leader, who was liable to be shot down by a ball from the revolver, galloped forward to his assistance, and, almost at the same moment the dozen horsemen that had set out to head him off put in appearance, all coming from different directions, and converging toward the one point, where the veteran borderer was suddenly transformed from an aggressor into a deeply imperiled fugitive. ”

“ While the party who had landed, quite seventy strong, were raging and tearing round the building, battering at door and barricaded window, and every now and then making a vain thrust with their spears at the firing party quite beyond their reach at the upper windows, and frequently getting a bullet in return which laid a desperate aggressor low, some of the more cautious sheltered themselves on the outside of the wall of bales and chests to begin firing up at the defenders. ”

“ There are some who would not advocate the use of the bomb or the revolver, but who do not desire the total disappearance of the extremist party; and the occasional use of the bomb and the revolver gives a point to their organisation which they would not lose. Lacking the intelligent support of the masses in their propaganda, being too lazy to court it by legitimate means, or too self-centred to run the risk involved therein, they are heartily glad of the existence of a party in the country which has raised their importance in the eyes of the Government and the British public. ”

“ Having knives and pistols ever at hand, men of all classes too frequently used them. The reports of pistols were heard almost nightly, and in passing along the streets frequent stampedes from the gambling-houses were to be seen. As innocent parties were as likely to be killed as the persons engaged in the shooting, those who were not directly interested in a fight always withdrew when pistols were drawn in a saloon or gambling-house. ”

“ Yells and shrieks rent the air, and in a moment the whole of the new band were scampering away in full flight, leaving behind them some five-and-twenty of their party killed and disabled by the discharge of the piece, loaded, as has been seen, with musket bullets.
Profiting by the consternation into which this murderous fire had thrown the whole body of Pottowatomies, the men pealed forth another cheer even louder than the first, hurled forward their grenades, not yet ready for explosion, as far as they could throw them, and seizing the drag-ropes, ran fleetly with it towards the hill. ”

“ Such fires not being made by hunters so late in the season, it was supposed they were caused by some wandering war parties. These often take the precaution to set the prairies on fire behind them to conceal their traces from their enemies. This is chiefly done when the party has been unsuccessful, and is on the retreat and apprehensive of pursuit. At such time it is not safe even for friends to fall in with them, as they are apt to be in savage humor, and disposed to vent their spleen in capricious outrage. ”

“ Men died with their boots on. Loaded shotguns lay in ambush behind front and back doors. The atmosphere smelt of blood and possible killing. Saloon plate-glass mirrors showed the track of pistol bullets. Mass meetings were assemblages of men from town and country, secretly armed. People spent most of their time hating each other. ”

“ I have known fights, night after night, to be going on in the street below, at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut, between Republicans and Democrats, with revolver shots and flashes at the rate of fifty to a second, when I was literally so occupied with pressing telegrams that I could not look out to see the fun. One night, however, when there were death-shots falling thick and fast, I saw a young man make a most incredible leap. ”

“ A cool deadly shot can keep a big mob at bay. It is when police shoot and miss that the crowd begin to jeer and lose all fear of the police.
It is a great mistake to fire over the head of a man to stop him, it only makes him think you are a bad shot. ”

“ On Wednesday, I traveled to Las Vegas to visit with the victims of the horrific shooting, speak with their families, and thank the brave citizens, first responders and medical personnel who saved so many lives.
We struggle to grasp the evil that occurred on Sunday evening when a murderer shot into a crowd of more than 20,000 people. Men, women, and children were gathered to enjoy a concert. They never imagined it would become the worst day of their lives. ”

“ May God bless you all and those families who are mourning today because of gun violence in Colorado and Georgia and all across the country. We have to act so there’s not more of you — there’s fewer of you, as time goes on. ”

“ The draft riots had spread terror which had never died, and strong men shuddered when they remembered the bloody assizes of the democratic party. They had seen men and women, blind with party hate, dizzy and drunk with party madness, stab and burn and revel in murder and in mutilating the dead. ”

“ Do they know what the next day has in store for them, what troubles await them, what disasters lie in ambush for them? Once in a while the report of a pistol shot creates a void in the ranks of this gang! ”

“ Never before in the history of governments has the sound of a pistol shot so startled, terrorized, and horrified the self-satisfied, indifferent, contented, and indolent public, as has the one fired by Leon Czolgosz when he struck down William McKinley, president of the money kings and trust magnates of this country. ”

“ Cimarron Bill, a six-shooter in each faithful hand, was in the midst of the hubbub, blazing like a piece of fireworks, whooping like a Comanche.
The night breeze carried the stirring story of riot and uproar to the waiting multitude in the Dance Hall. Those waiting ones looked first their amazement, then their delight. As by one impulse they tore through the door and made, hotfoot, for the Long Branch. By conservative estimates, founded upon the whole number of shots, there should be at least five dead and fifteen wounded. ”

“ Each went forth, like a general to battle, surrounded by a numerous and well-chosen staff,—one party of friends, acting as commissariat, attended to the victualling of the voters, that they obtained a due, or rather undue allowance of liquor, and came properly drunk to the poll; others, again, broke into skirmishing parties, and scattered over the country, cut off the enemy’s supplies, breaking down their post-chaises, upsetting their jaunting-cars, stealing their poll-books, and kidnapping their agents. Then there were secret-service people, bribing the enemy and enticing them to desert ”

“ It spreads itself out in a line across the stage, and grins. When the signal is given for the rush, each man—still grinning—walks up to the soldier nearest to him, and lays hold of that warrior’s gun. The two men then proceed to heave the murderous weapon slowly up and down, as if it were a pump handle. This they continue to do with steady perseverance, until the soldier, apparently from a fit of apoplexy—for there is no outward and visible cause whatever to account for it—suddenly collapses, when the conquering rioter takes the gun away from him, and entangles himself in it. ”

“ They got one of the fellows in our party with a bullet in the arm, then we all dropped on our stomachs and wriggled our way back into our own lines without any further damage. But we did some rapid wriggling, you can bet. ”

“ At last, when there was here nothing more to accomplish, the mob, swollen to a frightful size, including myriads of wretched, drunken women, and the half-grown, vagabond boys of the pavements, rushed through the intervening streets, stopping cars and insulting peaceable citizens on their way, to an armory where were manufactured and stored carbines and guns for the government. In anticipation of the attack, this, earlier in the day, had been fortified by a police squad capable of coping with an ordinary crowd of ruffians, but as chaff before fire in the presence of these murderous thousands. ”

“ Several shots are exchanged, generally without execution, as they, by fair activity, avoid them, and so the affair ends. A deadly feud is conducted in a different way. The injured party devotes himself to revenge, steals on his enemy at night, or unawares, and kills him. ”

“ That shot had come from his window. Within ten minutes the terrified governor had ringed every State building with bayonets and had telegraphed for more militia. Nobody, not even the sheriff, could enter to search for the assassin: what else could this mean but that there was a conspiracy—that the governor himself knew of the plot to kill and was protecting the slayer? About the State-house, even after the soldiers had taken possession, stood rough-looking men, a wing of the army of intimidation. ”