es with slavery untouched, skilfully incited, while seeming
to discourage, the now rum-maddened and blood-drunken fiends; the idle,
the vicious, the curious joined the throng, and the motives of the mob
became as varied and diverse as its elements. Some hoped to stop the
draft and remain unmolested at home. Others hoped to stop the draft, in
order to stop the war, and enable them to say to the South, We have
prevented your subjugation: give us our political reward. Some hoped to
overthrow all law and order, that they might revel in the wealth they
could then sequester. The great mass probably neither knew nor cared to
what end they tended--their worst passions were aroused and controlled
them; they luxuriated in violence and bloodshed, and their brutal
instincts were satisfied.

That the riot had any significant religious characteristics is not
probable. Catholics were in it and of it, and so were Protestants. The
mob was composed principally of those who scout all pretence of religion
of any kind, and who are as little influenced by the priest as the
negligent Protestant is by the preacher. Had it been otherwise, the
priest who endeavored to get the body of Colonel O'Brien would have
easily prevailed; for no church-going Catholics would refuse, in their
wildest frenzy, the request of a priest for the possession of a dying
man. That there are honest bigots in the Catholic Church who believe
that within her pale only is safety for the human race, who believe,
furthermore, that republican institutions are incompatible with her full
supremacy, and rejoice, therefore, with holy zeal, at anything which
seems to indicate their instability, is doubtless true. Some such
individuals may have been among the rioters, urging them on in their
frenzied work. But the manly, sincere, and indignant castigation given
by the Catholic priesthood to the wretched miscreants on the Sunday
following the disturbances, precludes any possibility of suspicion that
the Church was either aware of the intended uprising, or that it
approved the purposes or actions of the mob.

In deciding, then, as to the real character and purpose of the rioters,
two distinct classes of persons must be taken into account: those
actively engaged in insurgent proceedings, and those who, not appearing
on the scene of action, incited and sustained the former in their
demonstrations.

That the motives and purposes of the one class were different from those
of the other