USA > New York > New York City > History of New York City : embracing an outline sketch of events from 1609 to 1830, and a full account of its development from 1830 to 1884, Volume I > Part 40
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The poor suffered much. The demagogues of the political factions improved the occasion to inflame the popular mind, one party trying to increase their following by impressing the sufferers with the idea that the rich were oppressing the poor ; that the high price of food was owing to the greed of wealthy monopolists. At a meeting held in the Broadway Tabernacle to consider and act upon the causes of the high and increasing prices, such views were set forth by some of the speakers, though these harangues were not absolutely incendiary in substance. Nothing of importance was done. Resolutions were adopted, but nothing practical was offered.
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There was another class of men at that time who attempted to make capital for the cause in which they were laboring. These were the radical temperance advocates. With profound ignorance, apparently. of the fact that there had been a failure of the cereal crops, they endeavored to impress the public mind with a belief that the distiller; were making grain scarce by converting the rye crop into whiskey !
The popular discontent reached a crisis in February, 1837. On the 10th of that month a notice was published in some of the city news- papers, and in placards of large letters and conspicuously posted throughout the city, of a meeting to be held in the Park on the after- noon of February 13th. The following is a copy of the notice :
"BREAD, MEAT, RENT, FUEL ! ! "THEIR PRICES MUST COME DOWN ! 66 The voice of the People will be heard, and must prevail.
> The People will meet in the Park, rain or shine, at 4 o'clock Monday afternoon,
" To inquire into the cause of the present unexampled distress, and to devise a suitable remedy. All friends of humanity, determined to resist monopolists and extortionists, are invited to attend.
" MOSES JACQUES, DANIEL GORHAM,
PAULUS HEDDLE, JOHN WINDT,
DANIEL A. ROBERTSON, ALEXANDER MING, JR.,
WARDEN HAYWARD, ELIJAH F. CRANE.
" New York, Feb. 10, 1837."
Obedient to this significant call, fully six thousand persons assembled in front of the City Hall at the appointed hour. It was a cold and bleak winter day. The great mass of human beings presented repre- sentatives of almost every class and nationality in the city-very largely of the classes which are readily converted into a mob when their passions are excited. Moses Jacques was chosen chairman. They did not lack appeals to their passions on this occasion. for the multitude were soon gathered in different groups listening to numerous speakers, the most distinguished of whom was Alexander Ming, Jr .. a well-known and active politician of the Loco-Foco school in New York City for several years.
The burden of each orator's discourse consisted chiefly of denuncia- tion of the rich, especially of landlords and the holders of large quanti- ties of provisions, particularly of flour.
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FIRST DECADE, 1830-1840.
The popular indignation was chiefly directed against the firm of Eli Hart & Co., extensive commission merchants, whose store was a large brick building on Washington Street, between Dey and Cortlandt streets. It had three wide and strong iron doors upon the street. This store was full of flour and wheat, and knots of men were seen to stop opposite and gaze at it with furtive glances, and sometimes utter- ing angry words. Sometimes men would be heard muttering curses as they passed. The friends of Mr. Hart tried to persuade him to take precautionary measures for protection, but he could not listen to them with patience. He saw these signs of a gathering storm, but believed, or professed to believe, they indicated nothing very serious, and he and his partners remained tranquil while their friends were alarmed.
One day an anonymous letter addressed to a well-known citizen was picked up in the Park, in which the writer said a conspiracy was matured for sacking the store of Hart & Co. on some dark night. The plan, he said, was to start two alarms of fire simultaneously, one at the Battery and the other in Bleecker Street, and while the watchmen and firemen would be attracted to these distant points, a large body of men with sledges and crowbars would rush upon the store, break in the doors, and rifle it before the guardians of the peace could arrive. This letter was handed to the famous high constable, Jacob Hays, who showed it to Hart & Co .; but they regarded it as an attempt to frighten them.
The gathering in the Park on the 10th of February was not an anonymous warning. It was an ominous notice of danger, not only to Hart & Co., but to the peace of the city. Mr. Hart attended the meeting. The utterances of the several speakers on that occasion were inflammatory in the extreme, excepting that of Ming, who was then a candidate for the office of city register. He seemed to think it was a rare chance to win votes, and he devoted his soul and body on that occasion to the subject of the currency. He was a radical hard-money Democrat-Loco-Foco pure and spotless. Ile harangued the illiterate and half-brutish mob before him on the evils produced by paper cur- rency. Indeed it was recognized as the chief cause of all the distress that was prevailing among his hearers. With grim satire he advised the shivering sans culottes to refuse any paper dollar that might be offered them, and to receive nothing but gold and silver, well knowing the hopelessness of a large part of his audience receiving the offer of a dollar of any kind. The motley multitude were so charmed with his disquisition on the currency that they seemed to forget all about " Bread, meat, rent, and fuel," which they had been called together to
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consider, and when he offered a resolution proposing a memorial to t !: Legislature to forbid any bank issuing a note for any sum under $100. it was carried by a wild shout of affirmation that shook the windows of the City Hall. To show their appreciation of Ming's logic, the " sov- ereign people" whom he had eulogized seized the orator, hoisted him upon their shoulders, and bore him in triumph across the wide way to Tammany Hall, where they were undoubtedly rewarded with the enjoyment of spirituous blessings poured out in abundance.
The speeches of others were more to the point at issue. One of them, who had worked up the feelings of his hearers to the highest pitch, exclaimed :
" Fellow-citizens, Eli Hart & Co. have now fifty-three thousand barrels of flour in their store ; let us go and offer them $8 a barrel for it, and if they do not accept it-"
Here some more judicious or more cautious person, seeing the mayor and many policemen near, touched the speaker on the shoulder, and whispered in his ear. He at once concluded his harangue, saying, in a lower tone of voice, " If they will not accept it-we will depart in peace."
The hint he had given produced the desired effect. The great crowd at once began to dissolve, when those who had heard the speech alluded to started off in a body in the direction of the store of Eli Hart & Co. They rushed down Broadway to Dey Street, increasing in number and excitement every moment, so that when they reached Washington Street they had become a roaring mob.
Hearing the tumult of the on-coming multitude, the clerks in the store hastened to close and bar the doors and windows. But the van of the mob was upon them before they could sufficiently secure one of the heavy iron front doors, and the mob rushed in and began roll- ing barrels of flour into the street and staving in the heads. When they had thus destroyed about thirty barrels, some police officers arrived and drove out the plunderers.
Mr. Hart, who was at the meeting, as has been observed, when he saw the crowd rushing in the direction of his store, hastily gathered some policemen and started for his menaced castle. In Dey Street the mob fiercely attacked the guardians of the law and disarmed them of their clubs. The policemen, however, made their way into Washing- ton Street before the great mass of the rioters had arrived there, and entered the besieged store and drove out the marauders.
Mayor Lawrence, informed of the mob at Hart & Co.'s store. hastened to the scene. Ile mounted a flight of steps opposite and
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FIRST DECADE, 1830-1840.
began to remonstrate with the rioters on the crime and folly and the consequences of their acts. His words were in vain. Every moment the numbers of the mob increased by accessions from the dissolving crowd in the Park, and the mayor was answered by a shower of mis- siles-bricks, stones, sticks, and pieces of ice-so copious that he was compelled to retire to a place of safety. The mob was now unre- strained by law or reason. They made a rash for one of the ponderous iron doors, which was speedily wrenched from its hinges. Using it as a battering power, they soon beat down the other doors, when the rioters rushed in in great numbers. The clerks fled, and violence reigned supreme. The doors in the upper lofts were torn down, the windows were broken in, and when hundreds of barrels of flour had been rolled into the street from the lower floor and destroyed, they were hoisted upon the window-sills above and dashed to pieces on the ground. Sack after sack of wheat was also destroyed. At one of the windows a half-grown boy was seen, exclaiming, as each barrel was tumbled into the street. " Here goes flour at eight dollars a barrel !" For this crime he suffered several years' hard labor in the State Prison at Sing Sing.
A larger portion of the mob were of foreign birth, yet there were hundreds of spectators who were native-born citizens that gave the rioters encouragement and aid. When the disturbance was at its height, at twilight. there was observed a strange feature in the scene. Scores of women were perceived, many of them bareheaded and in tattered garments, rushing here and there with eager zeal, like camp- followers after a battle, to secure a share of the plunder so prodigally presented to them. They appeared with boxes, pails, sacks, baskets, and everything that would carry flour, and with their aprons full of the same bore away large quantities to their squalid homes. It was the only bright picture in the terrible scene -- these mothers gathering food for their starving children, notwithstanding it had been furnished them by the hand of violence.
When night had fairly set in, the rioters, who were yet in full force. were suddenly alarmed and scattered by the appearance of the National Guard, under Colonel Morgan L. Smith, and other military forces which the mayor had summoned to the aid of the police. Their services, however, were needed only as a restraining power. The mob quickly dispersed on their appearance, after having destroyed all the books and papers in Hart & Co.'s counting-room. The police, so sus- tained, arrested a number of the rioters and took them to the Bridewell. in the Park. but were assailed on the way by some of the mob. The
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
chief of police had his coat torn off by the mob, who rescued several of the prisoners. The store was closed, and order again reigned in that neighborhood.
As the cowardly mob at Hart & Co. 's store were about to fly, some one cried out " Meech's !" when a body of the rioters rushed across the town to assail the large flour establishment of Meech & Co .. at Coenties Slip. On the way they began an attack upon the flour store of S. H. Herrick & Co. They had broken in the windows with mis- siles, forced open the doors, and had rolled about thirty barrels of flour into the street and destroyed it, when a body of police and a large number of citizens who had volunteered their services dispersed the rioters and arrested some of the mob. The ringleaders, as usual. taking precious care of their own persons, escaped.
About one thousand bushels of wheat and six hundred barrels of flour were wantonly destroyed by this senseless mob. The scarcity of flour was, of course, made scarcer by this destruction, and the distress of the poor was thus aggravated. The stock of flour being thus reduced, the price naturally advanced, and fifty cents a barrel more was asked than before the riot. Hart & Co. estimated the value of their property destroyed by the mob at $10,000, which, of course, the city was compelled to pay them.
About forty of the rioters were captured, afterward indicted, and sent to the State Prison at Sing Sing, but not one of the ringleaders was punished. It is said that so strong was the influence of politicians brought to bear upon the ministers of the law that not one of the persons who signed the significant call for the meeting in the Park, or of the several orators who incited the mob, was arrested !
Another meeting of citizens was held in the Park on the 6th of March following. Apprehending a repetition of the disturbances in February, the city authorities directed some of the city military to be in readiness to suppress any outbreak. The National Guard were under arms during the afternoon, but the meeting in the Park passing off quietly their services were not needed.
. This was the last exciting scene in the way of real and anticipated disturbances of the public peace which had made the administration of Mayor Lawrence a troublous one, beginning with the Abolition Riot in July, 1835, and ending with the Flour Riot in 1837. A few weeks after the latter event he was succeeded in office by Aaron Clarke.
In May following the National Guard was again called out for the suppression of a possible riot. On the 9th of that month the banks of the city resolved to suspend specie payments. For some weeks the air
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FIRST DECADE, 1830-1840.
had been filled with flying rumors of a conspiracy brewing for a con- certed attack upon the banks for the purpose of robbing them. How far the incendiary harangues of political demagogues at meetings had incited hostility to the moneyed institutions of the city nobody knew. Precautionary measures were thought necessary, for the public an- nouncement of the suspension of specie payments by the banks m the newspapers the next morning might produce an exasperation among the ignorant classes which might lead to deeds of violence. So the National Guard were requested to assemble in the Park at seven o'clock on the morning of the 10th.
The announcement of the action of the banks did produce much excitement. Ignorant or timid depositors rushed to these institutions to withdraw their funds. At ten o'clock Wall Street was thronged with an excited multitude. but there were no symptoms of any violent or riotous spirit on the part of the populace. The National Guard had paraded in the Park at the appointed hour. The day wore away with- out any signs of impending disturbance. The crowds in Wall Street gradually dispersed, and the military retired to their homes.
The Twenty-seventh Regiment (National Guard) now felt that they were entitled to some special consideration at the hands of the city authorities on account of their frequently rendered services at the call of the mayor as conservators of the peace and order and for the security of property in the city. The Second Company, the feeblest in numbers, first moved in the matter. They thought the city ought to furnish the National Guard with drill-rooms, and so relieve the latter of considerable expense. Accordingly at a meeting of the company in August, 1837, a committee were appointed to petition the common council on the subject. They asked for a suitable hall. The petition was favorably received, and the apartments in the second story of Centre Market were assigned as drill-rooms. This furnished a pre- cedent for the future, and to this movement of the Second Company is due the honor of providing for the use of the militia of New York City such elegant accommodations as they now enjoy. It was the initial step toward securing for the Seventh Regiment National Guard (the old Twenty-seventh) the magnificent armory situated on Fifth Avenue, the most expensive, luxurious, and elegant military quarters in the world.
The express business, now so extensive, profitable, and useful, had its origin in the city of New York in 1837. In that year James W. Hale, yet (1853) living, one of the most active men of his day, was conducting an admirable news-room -- a sort of Lloyds for the shipping
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interest of New York-in the old Tontine Coffee-House, at the corner of Wall and Water streets. Hale was a genial, talkative, sensible .. and kind-hearted man, ready to help those who needed help, and was popular with everybody, especially all business men, who were attracted to his news-room in great numbers for general information about commerce, trade, stocks, etc. That was before the telegraph was known, and before railways were much used in conveying letters and newspapers.
Up to nearly that time the newspapers had to rely chiefly upon the old stages or post-riders for transportation, and the transmission of news from point to point was tardily performed in comparison with the swift passages made by them now. So late as 1834, when trains were run by steam on a railway between Charleston and Hamburg, on the Savannah River, the directors of the road advertised that the com- pany then sent one train daily between these two points, one hundred and thirty-six miles, in twelve hours, and " that in the daytime." They added : "The daily papers of this city [Charleston] are sent by this conveyance, but merchants' letters, of the utmost importance to them! in business, are not less than two days going ; under contract." The government was slow in recognizing the importance of rapid transit in those days ; and, though quite rapid communication between New York and Boston by steamboat and railway had been opened in 1835-36, business men lacked public facilities in transmitting letters and packages between the two cities. This want was soon supplied.
One pleasant morning early in the summer of 1837, a young man about twenty-five years of age entered the office of Mr. Ilale in rather a dejected mood. He was a native of Massachusetts, was seeking em- ployment, and had called on Mr. Hale for advice how to obtain work. It was a season of great depression in all kinds of business. The young man was rather delicate, even fragile in physical composition, vet he seemed to possess ambition and an energy of character that interested Mr. Hale. Ile inquired his name and his antecedents. His name was William F. Harnden, and his antecedents were satisfactory.
In the course of a few days, when young Harnden made his usual morning call and anxious inquiries, Hale suggested to him a new busi- ness, fitted, he supposed, to his physical strength. Nearly every day HIale was asked by bankers, brokers, and merchants if he knew of any one going to Boston from New York in whose hands they might in- trust. small packages. This want of a messenger was continually grow- ing. The postage on letters was then very heavy, and packages, even small ones, could only be sent as freight - a slow process. Hale
James Renwick Hotelulidt
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FIRST DECADE, 1830-1840.
thought the matter over carefully, and one morning when young Harnden came in with anxious looks, he said to the youth in his pleas- ant manner :
" Harnden, I think I can put you in the way of employing yourself in business. If you will travel between New York and Boston on the steamboat, and do errands for business men in both places, charging a fair remuneration for your services, it will pay."
" I will try it," said Harnden cheerily. " How shall I get the busi- ness to do ?"
" I'll help you," said Hale.
And so he did, most effectually. To all inquirers about carriers, he directed merchants, bankers, and brokers to young Harnden, who hung up a slate in Hale's news-room for orders. In the course of a week he started on his new business, which, at the suggestion of his good friend and adviser, he called " The Express," the term used for the fastest railway trains, and which had been in use scores of years to designate the character of a special messenger.
Harnden started in his new business with a single carpet-bag. The older business men were at first slow to perceive the advantages they might derive from his services, and discouragement met him at the outset. His steamboat expenses for passage and meals were consider- able, and at the end of two months his little store of money was ex- hausted, for his expenses had exceeded his receipts. He was about to abandon the enterprise when some friends procured for him free pas- sage on the steamboat.
This "subsidy" was the important point on which his fortune turned. Ilis business became more and more popular and profitable. and it was not long before his single carpet-bag became too small for his rapidly increasing business. Two, three, and four bags were added to his means of transportation, and finally he bought and used a large hair-covered trunk, which bore on each end, in strong brass-headed nails, the words, " ILARNDEN'S EXPRESS."
As the labor of the business increased, Harnden disposed of a part of his business to an assistant in Boston, and a small office was opened in both cities. Very soon they were enabled to employ a man as espress inessenger on both the morning and evening steamboats, to take charge of articles sent in hand-crates.
When poor overworked Harnden saw twenty dollars saved in one day, bright visions of a speedily won fortune stimulated his ambition to do more. He began to consider the advantages and profits of land routes, and very soon he established a line between Boston and Albany,
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and met with success. The Cunard steamships gave him much busi- ness between Boston and New York, and he conceived a project for organizing a system of emigration. There was no established means to enable emigrants who had settled in the United States to remit money to their brood " at home;" or prepay the passage of those who wished to come to America. Harnden attempted to supply this want. In the year 1841 he established a system of communication which he called " The English and Continental Express," with offices in Liver- pool, London, and Paris, and branches in other parts of the continent and Great Britain. IIe also made arrangements for the cheap convey- ance of emigrants from Liverpool in sailing vessels, and chartered a considerable fleet of Erie canal-boats to carry them and their effects to " the West," which then meant Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
At the end of about three years from the establishment of this emi- gration system, this small, fragile, energetic man had been instrumental in bringing to the United States more than one hundred thousand laborers, and so adding many millions of dollars to the national wealth. But he had impoverished himself, and was dying with consumption. In 1845 he died, comparatively a poor man, only thirty-three years of age. But his name is immortal as the founder of the great express business, in which his successors have accumulated immense fortunes.
When it was perceived that Harnden's express business was success- ful, Alvin Adams, a native of Windsor, Vermont, then a man between thirty-five and forty years of age. entered into the business. He had been engaged in business in Boston and St. Louis, and finally in 1840 he began an opposition to Harnden's Express between New York and Boston. For a long time he struggled against great discouragements. His pockets would almost hold the packages daily intrusted to his care, and a dollar carpet-bag was his chief vehicle for transportation for a long time. Harnden became so engrossed in his emigration scheme that he lost much of his express business, which Adams, with great sagacity, found and profited by. Prosperity followed. Hle first asso- cjated with himself in the business E. Farnsworth, and afterward William B. Dinsmore, who took charge of the New York office. In ten years the business had so increased that Adams & Co. paid $1700 a month for a small space in a car of a fast railway train running be- tween New York and New Haven, for the conveyance of money and small packages. Mr. Adams died in 1877, when Mr. Dinsmore became president of the company, and now (1883) occupies that position.
The Adams Express Company is a very wealthy corporation, and is
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a leader in the express business in this country. In 1849 Mr. Adams established an overland express to California, to meet the wants of the great army of gold-seekers who had flocked into that region in search of the newly discovered precious metals there. In time he opened a banking-house in connection with the express business at all the princi- pal points in that State, thus enabling miers and others to send home to the East their gold and letters. After that he started an express for Australia. It was unprofitable, and was soon abandoned.
The company rendered great assistance to the government during the late Civil War, quickly transporting war munitions to different exposed points. Their agents often received money from the soldiers when paid off in the field and on the eve of battle, and delivered it to their families or friends at home. These agents were always furnished with a competent escort. with three safes, to points of general distribu- tion of their contents. As the national armies closed in upon the terri- tories wherein insurrection and rebellion existed, these agents followed closely, and reopened their express offices in the Southern States."
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