X.
THE LAST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES.
It is needless to say that the President did not endure with silence this ignoring of his rank and, in fact, of his very existence. He sent for O’Halloran, who appeared at the White House, accompanied by Wagner, Congressmen Hagarty, Tomlinson, and several other ardent and influential Irish “patriots.” This gathering of the clans warned the President that O’Halloran understood the purpose for which he had been summoned, and was prepared with a reply and a backing. Nevertheless, the President did not hesitate to rebuke him in sharp words for his imprudence and meddlesomeness.
O’Halloran’s response was an angry declaration that he had assumed office at the President’s request, and with the implied understanding that his policy was to be that of the Administration. If he was not wanted, if his policy was not to be accepted, he would decline to retain the secretaryship, and would leave the President to his own devices. So, he added, would the Secretary of War. Mr. Wagner truculently confirmed this remark of his colleague. O’Halloran’s friends joined uninvited in the debate, which soon became undignified and angry on both sides. It ended by O’Halloran flaming into a simulated but apparently uncontrollable rage and defying the President.
An Irish regiment, which had left New York for Washington in suspicious proximity to the departure of “Patsy” and the Irish members of Congress after their conference in that city, had that morning arrived at Washington and was encamped on the Mall. O’Halloran begged the President to take notice of this regiment’s presence, and of the fact, hitherto not mentioned, that twenty thousand more armed men of the same race and actuated by the same spirit were, under his orders, en route for the capital. They were his followers. They would obey him. He would see if the Administration could safely deny its promises to him, and fail to sustain him in whatever course he saw fit to undertake. “When you send for me next on such an errand as this, I will bring them with me,” he shouted. Turning his back on the President, he strode out of the White House, followed by his friends, who had been at no pains to conceal their hearty approval of his defiance and his threat.
O’Halloran proceeded straight to the Irish camp on the Mall. The President, summoning a public carriage, whose movements would attract no attention, drove to the residence of the Ex-Secretary of State. A few other friends and prominent men were called in. While they were debating what steps should be pursued under the new circumstances which had arisen, information reached them that two more bodies of men had arrived at the Pennsylvania station, one, like the regiment then on the Mall, unquestionably Irish, the other as indubitably composed of German and Austrian socialists. They were marching in a certain order and discipline to join the body already in the city. Other messengers brought the news that O’Halloran was in close and secret conference with the officer commanding the regiment then in camp on the Mall.
It was clear that the President was in personal danger, and that a deliberate plot to overthrow his authority was in process of execution. With the few national troops at his command it would be impossible for him to protect the Government buildings and property, or even to defend any one of them against the attacks of the armed revolutionists already in the city, reinforced by the local socialists and Irish, and in constant receipt of additional forces from all directions, even then in motion towards Washington under orders from O’Halloran and Wagner.
Hastily and secretly preparations were made for leaving the capital. A few of the most important documents from the executive office and a few bundles of treasury notes were packed into trunks. Orders were sent to the general officer commanding the regulars in and about the city, directing him to evacuate it as early as possible that night and to set out for Richmond, destroying railroad tracks and bridges behind him. At nightfall the President, accompanied by the loyal members of his Cabinet and the heads of several bureaus, all in closed carriages, drove across Long Bridge and took the cars at a small Virginia station for Richmond.
Swift and secret as their movements had been, however, they were discovered by the revolutionists, who instantly threw off every disguise of loyalty with which they had thus far masked their treason. The regulars, marching to the river soon after ten o’clock, found the bridge torn up and a large force gathered to dispute their passage. It was only after severe skirmishing that they succeeded in re-laying enough of the scattered planks to enable them to cross. Arriving on the other side, they found that the engines and cars which had been sent across earlier in the evening to await them had been dismantled and the tracks torn up. Leaving all their impedimenta behind them, the troops set out on foot across the country, the officers, in the absence of cavalry, acting as scouts and pushing ahead to endeavor to discover some means of transportation. This they were unable to do; and it was not till the fourth day after leaving Washington that the footsore and weary troops finally marched into Richmond. They found that city in ruins, the work of a revolutionary mob which had risen in obedience to orders from Washington the day after the President’s arrival. They also found that the President had escaped, but that the party which accompanied him had been compelled to separate and fly in different directions, no one could tell them whither.
In desperation, they turned towards the mountains of West Virginia and Tennessee. The population there had always been loyal, and had healthfully resisted the revolutionary infection; the mountains themselves afforded opportunities for defence, and possibly for the gathering of an army which, with the regulars as a nucleus, might be able to make some successful stand against the revolutionists. After another toilsome march, about fifteen hundred of the soldiers succeeded in reaching the mountains, though closely pursued by greatly superior numbers of the rebels.
In the mean time the President had been stealthily conveyed to a farm-house, some twenty miles from Richmond, belonging to a loyal gentleman of that city, with the intention of sending him farther South by the earliest opportunity. During the night he was attacked by pneumonia. Enfeebled by physical weariness and mental strain, he rapidly sank. His identity was concealed to the last, and, excepting the gentleman in whose house he lay and the physician who attended him, not one of the inmates knew that under that roof the last President of the United States passed away. Even after his death the secret was kept, and his fate was never made known to the revolutionary leaders, who had themselves fallen before the story was told.
While one portion of the revolutionary forces at Washington had been disputing the passage of the regulars into Virginia at Long Bridge, another portion was scouring the city and arresting the members of Congress who remained and could be found. Few of them knew what had happened, and their capture was easy. When the next morning dawned, it found all the Congressmen, except those in secret sympathy with the revolution, herded in the District jail, and the building surrounded by armed detachments from the revolutionary forces.