e law and the constituted
authorities. He read a letter to show that he was trying to have
the draft suspended, and announced that he had information that it
was postponed in the city of New York. This announcement did
something to allay the excitement and to prevent a spread of the
riot.

Colonel O'Brien, with a detachment of troops, was ordered to disperse
a mob in Third Avenue. He was successful in turning it back, but
sprained his ankle during the excitement, and stopped in a drug
store on 32d Street, while his command passed on. A body of rioters
discovering him, surrounded the store and threatened its destruction.
He stepped out, and was at once struck senseless, and the crowd
fell upon his prostrate form, beating, stamping, and mutilating
it. For hours his body was dragged up and down the pavement in
the most inhuman manner, after which it was carried to the front
of his residence, where, with shouts and jeers, the same treatment
was repeated.

The absent militia were hurried home from Pennsylvania, and by the
15th the riot had so far spent itself that many of its leaders had
fallen or were taken prisoners, and the mob was broken into fragments
and more easily coped with. Mayor Opdyke, in announcing that the
riot was substantially at an end, advised voluntary associations
to be maintained to assure good order, and thereafter business was
cautiously resumed.

Archbishop John Hughes caused to be posted about the city, on the
16th, a card inviting men "called in many of the papers rioters"
to assemble the next day to hear a speech from him. At the appointed
hour about 5000 persons met in front of his residence, when the
Archbishop, clad in his purple robes and other insignia of his high
sacerdotal function, spoke to them from his balcony. He appealed
to their patriotism, and counselled obedience to the law as a tenet
of their Catholic faith. He told them "no government can stand or
protect itself unless it protects its citizens." He appealed to
them to go to their homes and thereafter do no unlawful act of
violence. This assembly dispersed peaceably, and the great riot
was ended.

But the draft had been suspended for the time, and Governor Seymour
had given some assurance it would not again be resumed in the city.
The municipal authorities had passed a bill to pay the $300
commutation, or substitute money, to drafted men of the poorer
classes.

The total killed and wounded during the riots is unk