President Cleveland replied
briefly that the troops were not sent to interfere with state authority
but to enforce the laws of the United States, upon the demand of the
Post Office Department that obstruction to the mails be removed, and
upon the representations of judicial officers of the United States that
processes of federal courts could not be executed through the ordinary
means. In the face of what was regarded as federal interference, riot
for the moment blazed out more fiercely than ever, but the firm stand
taken by the President soon had its effect. On the 6th of July, Governor
Altgeld ordered out the state militia which soon engaged in some sharp
encounters with the strikers. On the next day, a force of regular troops
dispersed a mob at Hammond, Indiana, with some loss of life. On the
8th of July, President Cleveland issued a proclamation to the people of
Illinois and of Chicago in particular, notifying them that those "taking
part with a riotous mob in forcibly resisting and obstructing the
execution of the laws of the United States... cannot be regarded
otherwise than as public enemies," and that "while there will be no
hesitation or vacillation in the decisive treatment of the guilty, this
warning is especially intended to protect and save the innocent."
The next day, he issued as energetic a proclamation against "unlawful
obstructions, combinations and assemblages of persons" in North Dakota,
Montana, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, Colorado, California, Utah, and New
Mexico.

At the request of the American Railway Union, delegates from twenty-five
unions connected with the American Federation of Labor met in Chicago
on the 12th of July, and Debs made an ardent appeal to them to call a
general strike of all labor organizations. But the conference decided
that "it would be unwise and disastrous to the interests of labor to
extend the strike any further than it had already gone" and advised the
strikers to return to work. Thereafter, the strike rapidly collapsed,
although martial law had to be proclaimed and, before quiet was
restored, some sharp conflicts still took place between federal troops
and mobs at Sacramento and other points in California. On the 3rd of
August, the American Railway Union acknowledged its defeat and called
off the strike. Meanwhile, Debs and other leaders had been under
arrest for disobedience to injunctions issued by the federal courts.
Eventually, Debs was sentenced to jail for six m