USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 35
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usefulness. Several of the superintendents of schools deplored this situa- tion. In 1861 Superintendent Van Dyck noted that the libraries in the rural districts were "almost totally unused, and rapidly deteriorating in value."
Academy and workingmen's libraries provided facilities to many groups. The Regents made small grants to the academies for the purchase of books, but during the 1850's the average academy library had only five hundred volumes.
New York City became the center of American journalism, and news- papermen throughout the nation looked to its papers for ideas and sug- gestions for technical improvements. The journalistic opportunities in the metropolis attracted such able men as Horace Greeley and William Cul- len Bryant.
The most notable development was the penny press, which had orig- inated in London. Publishers could now sell a larger paper for less money primarily because circulation increased so enormously. Not only were there more people to buy papers but more of the urban masses could read and afford a couple of cents for a journal. Technological improvements such as the double-cylinder and rotary presses enabled printers to make thousands of impressions per hour.
The New York Sun, founded by Benjamin Day in 1833, was the first successful penny journal. Day built up circulation by interlarding the usual political and foreign items with sex scandals, animal stories, and even such hoaxes as the discovery of batlike people on the moon. James Gordon Bennett, a Scottish immigrant, soon applied a similar formula to the New York Herald. For over thirty years he skillfully mixed together the in- gredients of sensationalism, comprehensive coverage, and political con- servatism. Although his rivals accused him of degrading the public taste, they copied his techniques for gathering news rapidly and for using pic- torial devices.
The greatest editor of the period and possibly in American history was Horace Greeley, who made the New York Tribune a national newspaper. Greeley, a Vermont printer, attracted the attention of the Whigs with his brilliant editorials for Harrison in the campaign of 1840. The next year he founded the Tribune. Unlike Bennett, Greeley was extraordinarily sensitive to moral issues. In fact, he pursued reforms to the point of ec- centricity. At various times he crusaded for temperance, feminism, free homesteads, public education, abolition, and even vegetarianism. Con- servative Whigs detested his reformism but welcomed his ability to gain support for the Whig program among workmen and farmers. The Tribune offered comprehensive news, collected and edited by the ablest staff of the time. Among Greeley's gifted columnists were the literary interpreters Margaret Fuller and George Ripley; the world traveler Bayard Taylor;
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the agricultural expert Solon Robinson; and his managing editor, Charles A. Dana. Greeley's editorials were forceful and distinguished for their moral earnestness. The Tribune's editorial page was one of the most ef- fective and popular of that time, or perhaps of any time.
Henry Raymond and several newspapermen on the Tribune disliked Greeley's penchant for fads. In 1851 they founded the New York Times, which from the outset cultivated an austere and dispassionate tone and prided itself upon its coverage, especially of foreign news. Raymond offered articles of interest to all the family. By 1860 the circulation of the Times exceeded that of the Tribune.
William Cullen Bryant was the leading voice of liberalism. Taking charge of the editorial page of the Evening Post in 1826, Bryant preached the liberal cause for over fifty years. He attacked monopolies such as the Second United States Bank, defended the right of workingmen to form unions, and spearheaded the antislavery faction of the Democratic party. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 caused him to swing over to the new radical group, the Republicans.
In the upstate region Albany had the most distinguished papers, the Argus and the Evening Journal. The Argus was one of the leading Demo- cratic journals in the country and was the unofficial organ of the Albany Regency, the clique of powerful politicians who dominated the Demo- cratic machine in the 1820's and 1830's. Edwin Croswell, editor after 1824, leaned to the Hunker wing, which refused to take a strong stand against slavery. This conservative position caused the Barnburner Democrats to found a rival paper, the Albany Atlas.
Thurlow Weed, the outstanding figure in upstate journalism, grew up in central New York and worked on several newspapers before he made his reputation as a leader of the Anti-Masonic movement. In 1830 he founded the Albany Evening Journal, the chief spokesman for the Whig party. Weed was a tireless and captivating leader whose activities won him the title of "Wizard of the Lobby." His political friends granted him lucrative contracts for state printing. The Evening Journal was one of the first to urge the formation of the Republican party in New York.
Other groups-religious, labor, reform-established journals and maga- zines to spread information among their followers and to attract more supporters.
In the literary realm, Cooper and Irving continued to write after 1825, but their best works were completed before 1830. After their eclipse, literary leadership passed for a time to writers in Concord and Boston.
New York, however, fathered two of the greatest authors in the "Ameri- can Renaissance" of the 1850's-Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. Neither was a writer limited to local subjects, although Whitman delighted
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in describing the turbulence of his beloved Manhattan. Whitman's message was national in scope, and Melville treated questions of universal sig- nificance.
Whitman's ancestry was a mixture of Dutch and Yankee, Quaker and Calvinist. Rural Long Island and the busy Manhattan streets provided the major stimulus of his poetry. He lived intensely, observing mankind on every side from his varied positions as carpenter, schoolteacher, editor, nurse, and "loafer." Whitman preached the basic goodness of human na- ture. He was confident of man's ability to express his goodness in individual feeling and collective action. He exulted in physical vigor, gloried in this nation of pioneers and honest workmen, delighted in the cosmopolitan character of Manhattan, and celebrated the political sagacity of the "divine average" man. Whitman developed a rough-hewn idiom more suited to his robust song than the traditional meters and rhymes. He tried to catch the cadences of popular speech and the rhythms of the breaking waves. His Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, is one of America's proudest literary accomplishments and possibly the greatest work of any New York author.
Herman Melville's works belong to the literary history of New York even though his deepest impressions came from the islands of the South Seas. He was reared in Albany, where his mother's family, the Gansevoorts, were prominent. As a youth Melville shipped to Liverpool as a common seaman and later served on two whaling ships in the South Pacific. His adventures among the Polynesians provided rich material for several novels and caused him to question the prevailing doctrines of mid-century America-the moral universe, progress, and the free individual. Melville became preoccupied with the quest for the secret of human woe. He felt that life is a clash between good and evil and that man's fate is to fight evil. His greatest novel, Moby Dick, published in 1851, describes the pur- suit of the white whale by Captain Ahab, who realizes that he can never conquer his nemesis. The public showed only a passing interest in Mel- ville's theories, and the author spent most of the remainder of his life working as a clerk in the customs service in New York City.
The art historian Oliver Larkin declares that art had come of age in America by the 1820's. Painters were moving from an objective re- production of topography and from mere likenesses of well-to-do mer- chants to a more lyrical and allegorical level. Moreover, American artists were beginning to display some independence from European themes. Samuel F. B. Morse in 1827 spoke to the National Academy of the Arts of Design on its first anniversary. He asserted, "Our own soil must warm into life the seeds of native talent."
Painting prior to 1825 was largely derivative. Portraitists of the early
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republic followed the precepts and techniques of Benjamin West, an ex- patriate who had become head of the Royal Academy in 1792. West had urged painters to infuse their canvases with elevating patriotic messages. John Trumbull, a Yankee and a pupil of West, was the first major painter to set up his studio in New York. He executed several official portraits and historical scenes for municipal and federal authorities. Perhaps his most famous picture is his "Declaration of Independence." Trumbull was presi- dent of the New York Academy of Fine Arts, an organization dominated by wealthy citizens.
New York City attracted a large number of the nation's painters. The rising men of trade and finance celebrated their success by ordering por- traits for their parlors. Artists from England and the Continent tended to settle in New York. Landscape painters discovered scores of arresting panoramas in the Hudson Valley and nearby Catskills.
Several English-trained artists settled in New York before 1825. During the 1790's Saint-Mémin, the Robertson brothers, and Francis Guy created topographical views of New York and environs. Guy's "Tontine Coffee House" is animated with the commercial activity of lower Manhattan. William G. Wall anticipated the Hudson River School with his Hudson River Portfolio. Wall had tramped up and down the valley with his sketch- book, capturing some of the grandeur as well as the softness of the topog- raphy. The plates in the portfolio document the Hudson River from the Adirondacks to the sea.
Portraiture overshadowed landscape painting largely because an artist could sell ten portraits to one landscape. The outstanding artist upstate was Ezra Ames, whose fine "George Clinton of 1812" made his reputa- tion. Ames settled in Albany, painting many portraits until his death in 1836. John Vanderlyn, a pupil of Gilbert Stuart, observed the artists in France and Italy and infused his pictures with a Gallic flavor. His nude "Ariadne" aroused criticism among the prudish-minded citizenry. Samuel F. B. Morse achieved an occasional brilliance in the 1820's and 1830's with such pictures as his portrait of Lafayette and his landscapes of Coopers- town. Telegraphy, however, absorbed his talents and hindered his full development as an artist. Henry Inman painted delicate miniatures and large official canvases and helped found the National Academy of De- sign.
The first important school of landscape painters found inspiration in the legend-haunted Hudson Valley and the Catskills. Washington Irving in his Sketch Book had invested the region with romance and folklore. Cooper, Bryant, and other writers had painted word pictures of its beauty, and foreign travelers waxed enthusiastic over the vistas along the "Ameri- can Rhine."
The Hudson River School enrolled several painters of considerable
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talent and imagination. The founder was Thomas Doughty of Philadel- phia, who settled in Newburgh. Doughty's pictures emphasized the tran- quil features of the Hudson. More talented was English-born Thomas Cole, who injected a dynamic note and later a touch of mysticism into his landscapes. Asher Durand turned his skill in engraving to a detailed rendering of the crags and trees of the Catskills. Like Cole, he exhibited a mastery of light and color. Most popular of all these painters was John F. Kensett, who skillfully harmonized colors in his poetic conceptions of the Hudson. Frederick Church in his early period constructed detailed compositions distinguished for draughtsmanship, but he deserted the Hudson Valley to seek grandiose themes in South America, Labrador, and the Holy Land. In the decade before the Civil War, George Inness painted river scenes in the tradition of Thomas Cole. Thereafter he tended to follow the French landscapists by introducing more subjectiv- ity into his work.
Some painters tried their hand at genre, seeking to interpret mankind by depicting men in their simple everyday activities. John Quider took the legends of Cooper and Irving for many of his themes. The most faith- ful chronicler of provincial life in New York was William S. Mount of Setauket, Long Island. Mount traveled over Long Island sketching Negro workingmen, tavern keepers, and field hands. His stated purpose was to "paint pictures that will take with the public."
Popular art developed rapidly with improvements in lithography and the rise of universally accessible journalism. Nathaniel Currier, the oper- ator of a lithograph print shop, formed his famous partnership with James Merritt Ives in 1857. Ives supervised the pictorial representation of thousands of commonplace subjects-"every tender domestic moment, every sign of national progress, every regional oddity, every private or public disaster from a cut finger to a forest fire."
Native sculpture developed slowly despite the requirements of public buildings and the increasing demand by businessmen for monuments in the cemetery and busts in the parlor. Erastus Dow Palmer of Albany mastered the art of cameo and wood carving before he turned his talents to sculpture. His "Indian Girl" and "White Captive" are graceful con- ceptions, less mannered than many statues fashioned by expatriates in Rome and Florence. John Quincy Adams Ward, a resident of New York, favored "simplified realism" in his marbles. "Indian Hunter" in Central Park is his best-known work.
Architecture in New York, in common with the rest of the nation, drew its inspiration from English and Continental examples. In the gen- eration after the Revolution the Georgian, or postcolonial style, was adopted for many public buildings and private mansions. Gradually the classical revival gained momentum until in the 1830's and 1840's its
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modes were widely adapted throughout the state. The Gothic revival, best expressed in Trinity Church, won many adherents during the 1840's. Other styles borrowing from the Egyptian, Byzantine, and Italian also made their appearance. Builders and architects mixed together the various fashions in architecture, drawing strange silhouettes of the city skylines.
The Georgian tradition continued for several decades after the Revo- lution. Philip Hooker of Albany almost singlehandedly designed the public buildings of that city-the capitol, the City Hall, the leading churches, banks, schools, and the theater-and his influence spread west- ward. A fine example of his work is preserved in the graceful steeple of the Hamilton College Chapel (1828).
Early in the century, however, the architectural triumphs of Rome and Greece began to intrigue Americans, notably Charles Bullfinch of Boston and Thomas Jefferson. The latter was greatly impressed by the Roman ruins in southern France and persuaded his native state of Vir- ginia to erect a capitol in the form of a Roman temple. Later he applied the classic principles of regularity and simplicity to the grounds of the University of Virginia. Less well known but equally interesting to New Yorkers is the ground plan of Union College, drawn up in 1813 by James Ramée, a refugee architect from Revolutionary France. The college buildings surround a broad mall dominated by a classical rotunda.
The classical style, commonly known as "Greek Revival," enjoyed widespread popularity, especially in the period between 1830 and 1850, for several reasons. Jefferson and his followers favored this style as best suited to republican simplicity. The Greek struggle for independence against the Turks during the 1820's aroused much interest in the Greek heritage. Nationalists, eager to escape from dependence upon English models, hailed the Greek Revival. College-trained men were well ac- quainted with the cultural achievements of Greece and Rome. Builders and carpenters found the Greek architecture readily translatable into wood. It looked impressive and did not add very much to costs. By 1830 such guides as Benjamin's Practical Home Carpenter were describing the technique of making mantelpieces, windows, doors, and corners in the Attic tradition.
Public buildings were often modeled after the Parthenon. The New York Custom House and the Rensselaer County Courthouse, both of 1827, had Doric columns for their porticoes. The most magnificent re- production of a Greek Temple was the Utica State Hospital, which was fronted by a four-story Doric portico.
The mansions of the wealthy and the homes of substantial citizens in villages and countryside often adopted the Greek style. The General Spinner House (1840) in Mohawk had a Doric colonnaded porch and
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a square cupola. Those unable to afford a projecting portico sought to gain the same effect by placing pilasters in the gable end of the house. Some built cornices which projected outward to make a pseudo pedi- ment. Sometimes Greek features were added to earlier structures.
Pointed architecture, typical of the Gothic revival, found expression in New York before the Civil War. The popularity of Scott's novels re- vived interest in the medieval period, which evangelical Christianity and the Enlightenment had long equated with "barbarism." The growing Catholic population naturally approved of the Gothic for St. Patrick's Cathedral, which was begun in 1853. The High Church movement in the Episcopal church also turned to medieval architecture for its models. The vestry of Trinity Church commissioned Richard Upjohn to construct the third Trinity Church in 1841 in the Gothic style. Ten years later St. Paul's of Buffalo, another Gothic church by Upjohn, opened its doors.
The Gothic Revival spread more slowly to residential and commercial buildings. Several merchants followed the example of James Fenimore Cooper and added battlements, towers, turrets, pinnacled roofs, and other medieval ornaments to their houses.
Perhaps the most fantastic development in architecture was the rage for octagonal houses advanced by Orson S. Fowler, the eminent phrenol- ogist. Fowler built a huge octagonal house near Fishkill and insisted that the almost cylindrical shape was the most attractive, made the most efficient use of space, and eased the work of the housewife.
Andrew Jackson Downing, a Newburgh nurseryman turned landscape gardener, was a leading theorist of house design, especially for the wealthy. Downing urged that the house should harmonize with its sur- roundings and that each home should express the individuality of its owner. His advice, though sound, may have contributed to the chaotic eclecticism which dominated New York architecture in the period be- fore the Civil War.
Few citizens of New York engaged in or appreciated the more serious expressions of music, although some gentlemen of wealth and culture such as George Templeton Strong (who in June 1851 attended the opera at Castle Garden three times in one week) enjoyed instrumental and operatic music. Practically all the directors and performers of classical music were Germans or Italians. Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's librettist, made a strenuous effort to attract the public to his Italian Opera House. Although this venture failed, opera companies visited New York fre- quently. In 1842 the New York Philharmonic Society was organized and gave the first of its annual concerts. Strong noted on November 18, 1843, "Great crowd: all the aristocracy and 'gig respectability' and wealth and
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beauty and fashion of the city there on the spot an hour beforehand." The Academy of Music, established in 1854, sponsored concerts by for- eign and native performers and offered some training to aspiring musi- cians. The singer Jenny Lind and the violinist Ole Bull were the most famous of the scores of artists who toured the major cities of the state.
The larger cities had community choruses presenting serious, usually religious, music. The New York Sacred Music Society in 1831 was the first organization in the United States to perform Handel's Messiah in its entirety. In Albany, Professor Ferdinand Ilsely put on a performance of The Creation in 1839 and a decade later Haydn's The Seasons.
Music as folk art and light diversion also had its place. Most upper class and many middle class homes had pianos made by Steinway, Knabe, or Chickering, on which their daughters played. Men preferred to master the fiddle so indispensable in country frolics. Group singing delighted young and old, native and foreign born, farmer and city dweller. The German immigrants were noted for their choruses and Sängerfest.
The theatrical capital of the United States was New York, and Park Theatre, opposite City Hall, was the foremost stage. Several other play- houses, especially the Bowery, vied with the Park, but the leading stars usually took engagements at the latter house. Upstate, each of the larger cities from Albany to Buffalo enjoyed dramatic performances. The reper- toire included a generous amount of Shakespeare and the English dramatists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Plays by Ameri- can authors, however, were gradually introduced, partly through the encouragement of Edwin Forrest, the outstanding native actor. Rip Van Winkle and Uncle Tom's Cabin were the two most popular native dramas.
The theater faced a multitude of problems. Fire was a constant threat and riots were not infrequent. The censure of clergymen hampered managers, especially in the upstate cities. The peccadillos of some actors and the raffish hangers-on of the theater provided the clergymen with some ammunition for the charges of immorality. Financial troubles beset every manager and forced many ventures into bankruptcy. The most successful managers were Stephen Price and his partner, Edmund Simp- son, who operated the Park Theatre between 1808 and 1840. Price adopted the practice of importing celebrities from England in order to attract audiences. Unfortunately, the huge fees demanded by the "stars" made it difficult to pay others in the cast decent salaries. During the 1850's two directors infused the theater with fresh interpretations. Wil- liam Burton, a comedian in his own right, cleverly adapted Dickens to the stage and presented English comedies and burlesques. His great rival
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was James W. Wallack, who formed a strong organization in 1852. Wal- lack insisted upon polished well-balanced performances even at the cost of subordinating or abandoning the starring system.
Edwin Forrest, our first native actor of top rank, delighted the pit with his passionate posturing and robust gestures. Fanny Kemble in the 1830's won the hearts of New Yorkers with her grace and animation. After Fanny's marriage, Ellen Tree was the favorite actress. Of course, the young blades gave a warm welcome to Fanny Elssler, the toe dancer, who caused a sensation in New York in 1840. Edwin Booth, son of the eminent actor, Junius Brutus Booth, began his distinguished career in New York in 1850.
By 1865 New York was taking the lead in most aspects of our native cultural expression. The metropolis on the Hudson attracted and shel- tered the ablest and largest group of musicians and actors, painters and architects, journalists and publishers in the country. Even in belles lettres New York was edging ahead of Boston. In education New York was trying to make up for its laggard beginnings. The main features of the educational pattern were the establishment of free public education on the elementary level; the rise of the public high school; the private con- trol of higher education, supplemented by normal schools and the agri- cultural college at Cornell; and the wide variety of professional and vocational schools.
The citizens of both metropolitan and upstate New York were con- scious of their leading position in the economic and cultural life of the nation. Gradually the citizens of Manhattan began to regard their city as more than a purely state or regional capital. Charles Briggs, the edi- tor of the Broadway Journal, noted in 1845 that "New York is fast be- coming, if she be not already, America, in spite of South Carolina and Boston."
Chapter 26
New York and the Civil War
The fury of the low Irish women in that region was note- worthy. Stalwart young vixen and withered old hags were swarming everywhere, all cursing the "bloody draft" and egg- ing on their men to mischief. . . . If a quarter one hears be true, this is an organized insurrection in the interest of the re- bellion and Jefferson Davis rules New York today.
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