“By all the powers! if he is not coolly shooting the leaders, and picking out his man every time!” ejaculated the astonished officer.

The police made a clean sweep of the street, and only prostrate forms were left in their rear.  Therefore Mr. Vosburgh could almost keep pace with Merwyn.

The rioters soon became appalled at their punishment.  Like a dark blue wave, with bloody clubs forming a crimson crest, that unfaltering rank of men steadily advanced and ingulfed them.  All within reach went down.  Those of the police who were wounded still fought on, or, if disabled, the ranks closed up, and there was no cessation in the fatal hail of blows.  The rioters in front would have given way, had not the thousands in their rear pressed them forward to their fate.

The judicious Carpenter had provided for this feature of the strife, for now his detachments were smiting both flanks of the human monster with the same terrific vengeance dealt upon its head.  The undisciplined herd fought desperately for a time, then gave way to panic and the wild effort to escape.  Long since a policeman had seized the national flag, and bore it triumphantly with his left hand while he fought with his right.  The confusion and uproar were beyond description.  The rioters were yelling their conflicting views as to what ought to be done, while others were shouting to those in their rear to cease crowding forward.  The pressure down Broadway now came from a desire to escape the police.  In brief, a large section of the mob was hemmed in, and it surged backwards and forwards and up against the stores, while hundreds, availing themselves of the side-streets, ran for their lives.  In a very short time what had been a compact, threatening mass was flying in fragments, as if disrupted by dynamite, but the pursuing clubs of Carpenter’s men never ceased their levelling blows while a rioter’s head was in reach.  Far northward the direful tidings of defeat spread through the ragged hosts as yet unharmed, and they melted away, to come together again and again during the lurid days and nights which followed.

The Gettysburg of the conflict had been fought and won.  Unspeakable outrages and heavy battles were yet to come; but this decisive victory gave the authorities advantage which they never lost, and time to organize more effective resistance with the aid of the military.  The police saved the city.

Broadway looked like a battle-field, prostrate forms strewing its crimsoned pavement throughout the area of the conflict.  The majority were left where they fell, and were carried off by their friends.