RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
and resentment everything might have been carried out quite calmly had not the match been applied to the powder. Just as the meeting was breaking up somebody shouted:
“Let's go down to the jail and take Berner out!”
It was an appeal to the mob spirit which responds so readily in an angry crowd; they went; and of course the worst clements immediately came to the top. They attacked the jail, which was in the rear of the court house, but were held back until the militia, which had been instantly summoned, arrived. Then they went around to the front and set fire to the court house. With the streets packed with raging humanity it was not possible to fight the fire and the building was completely destroyed.
The militia charged the mob and this inspired somebody with the idea of raiding a gun store and seizing arms and ammunition with which to make a resistance. The idea caught on and spread rapidly. One place attacked was Powell’s gun shop near Fourth and Main. But Powell, either forewarned or foreseeing some such development, had quietly made preparations to meet it. He lighted up the front of the store as brightly as he could, then, with two or three other men who were expert shots, he put himself behind a barricade in the rear. The mob came on and as the ringleaders broke into the shop they were picked off by the men behind the barricade and killed in their tracks. Four or five of them went down in a heap and the crowd behind them, not expecting such a reception, instantly was brought to its senses. This was in April, 1884.
Such an outbreak was a disgrace to the city of Cincinnati, but it had the effect of bringing the Campbell controversy to a head. A bar committee of ten men, of which both my father and Mr. Taft were members, was formed to see what could be done to rid the community of the evil reputation it had acquired. This committee made a thorough investigation
of Campbell’s character and record, prepared charges
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