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 unknown. Governor Seymour, in a Message, said the "number of killed and wounded is estimated by the police to be at least one thousand." The rioters, as usual, suffered the most. Claims against the city for damages to property destroyed were presented, aggregating $2,500,000, and the city paid claimants about $1,500,000. This brief summary of the great New York riot is given to explain movements of troops soon to be mentioned. But in order to afford the reader a fuller conception of the opposition encountered by Federal officers in the enforcement of the conscript laws, it should be said in this connection that draft riots, on a small scale, took place in Boston, Mass.; Troy, N. Y.; Portsmouth, N. H., and in Holmes County, Ohio, and at other places.