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 7
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From time to time the people were excited by menaces of attacks by the British forces. They were notably so in the summer of 1814. There was a powerful British force in Chesapeake Bay, and a block- ading squadron appeared on the New England coasts. Mayor Clinton issued a stirring address to the people on the immediate danger of an attack, recommending the militia to be in readiness, and calling upon the citizens to aid in completing the defences of the city. A mass- meeting of citizens was held in the City Hall Park on August 9th, when a committee of the common council was chosen, to whom was given ample power to direct the inhabitants in efforts to secure the safety of the city. To this end men of every class in society worked daily in squads. under chosen leaders, on fortifications near Harlem and at Brooklyn. Members of churches led by their pastors, and those of
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OUTLINE HISTORY, 1609-1830.
benevolent societies and the various trades with chosen leaders, went out in groups to the patriotic task, under appropriate banners. These workers were designated as follows by the poet Woodworth, who was a participant in their labors :
" Plumbers, founders, dyers, tinners, tanners, shavers, Sweeps, clerks and criers, jewellers, engravers, Clothiers, drapers, players, cartmen, hatters, tailors, Gaugers, sealers, weighers, carpenters, and sailors."
The zeal of the people was intense, and very soon New York was well defended by fortifications superintended in their construction by Joseph G. Swift, the first graduate of West Point Military Academy, and by militia, who flocked thither from the river counties.
Although a large proportion of the citizens of New York were opposed to the war at the beginning, once begun their patriotism flamed out conspicuously by public acts. At a meeting held in the Park five days after the declaration of war, they pledged their " lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor " in support of their " beloved country." They made their words good. Men and money were freely contributed to the cause, and four months after the declaration of war twenty-six privateers, carrying 212 guns, all fully manned, were fitted out in the port of New York. Throughout the entire war the patriotism of the citizens was conspicuously displayed. And when, on Saturday evening, February 11, 1815, the British sloop-of-war Favorite arrived at New York with the treaty of peace ratified by the British Government, the unexpected glad tidings created intense joyfulness in the city. The streets were soon thronged with the happy people, and as a placard headed " PEACE" was printed at the office of the Mercan- file Advertiser and was thrown out of a window into the street, it was eagerly caught up and read to the crowd, who received the news with shouts of joy. The immediate effect upon business was wonderful. Coin, which was ten per cent premium, fell to two per cent in forty- right hours. Sugars fell from $26 a hundredweight to $12.50 ; tea from 82.25 to $1 a pound.
In 1811 a system of laying out the city above Houston Street was adopted, and surveys were begun. The work was somewhat inter- rupted by the war. It was completed in 1821. The streets were laid out in. rectangles above Houston Street. Beginning at one, they were numbered upward to the northern extremity of the island. These were intersected by avenues. numbering westward from the eastern side of the island to the Hudson River. First Avenue was a continuation of
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
Allen Street. Between it and the East River were Avenues A, B, and C. .
The war created utter confusion among politicians. The men of each party, for various reasons, had abandoned old creeds and adopted new ones. The most prominent result was the almost entire dissolution of the Federal party and the breaking up of the Republican party into factions. From the election of Madison to the presidency in 1809 the Republicans in New York were called Madisonians. To this party the Tammany Society adhered, and their hall, built in 1811, was the ren- dezvous of the Madisonians. At the close of the war the Republican party was split into two great divisions, called respectively Madisoni- ans and Clintonians, the latter being adherents of De Witt Clinton, who in 1818 was elected governor of the State of New York. He had personally urged upon the attention of the people the great scheme for the construction of the Eric Canal ; now he brought his official influence to bear upon it, and it was completed in 1825.
The first regular line of packet ships between New York and Liverpool was established in 1817 by Isaac Wright & Son, Francis Thompson, Benjamin Marshall, Jeremiah Thompson, and James Cropper. It was called the " Black Ball Line, " and consisted of four ships. A packet sailed the first day of every month. Soon afterward Byrnes, Trimble & Co. established the " Red Star Line," of four ships, one sailing on the 24th of each month. These were soon followed by the establish- ment of the " Swallow Tail Line," by Fish, Grinnell & Co., of four ships, which sailed on the Sth of each month. Meanwhile four ships had been added to the "Black Ball Line," but in 1818 there was a fleet of sixteen packet-ships sailing from New York, with a weekly departure.
The war had left the country in an impoverished condition, but its recuperation was wonderful. Commerce had rapidly revived. The growth of the city and its trade was abnormal. and a commercial revulsion occurred in 1818-19, in which New York merchants suffered severely.
The yellow fever appeared in 1819. It soon disappeared, but its visit in 1822, and especially in 1823, was very fatal, and produced a great panic. Hitherto it had appeared at first in the vicinity of the East River ; now it began in Rector Street, on the Hudson River side, which had always been regarded as a particularly healthy locality. The disease was now regarded with peculiar consternation. All per- sons who were able fled from the city. The town south of the Park was fenced off and nearly deserted, and all intercourse with the "in-
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OUTLINE HISTORY, 1609-1830.
freted district," as all within this temporary wall was called, was strictly forbidden. The residents within it who were unwilling to leave their homes were forcibly removed from them by the Board of Health. The city became an almost absolute solitude, broken only by the noise of moving hearses and sad funeral processions of a few near relatives of the dead. The city government fled to Greenwich Village (now the Ninth Ward), and there performed their official duties. The fields and woods beyond Canal Street and at the upper part of Broadway were filled with fugitives, and this panic materially stimulated the improve- ment of property in that vicinity. The city then contained about 125,000 inhabitants.
In 1824 Lafayette came to the United States as the guest of the nation. He arrived at New York in the ship Cadmus, at the middle of August. His visit was a great event in the social history of New York. He first landed on Staten Island on Sunday, and remained there, the guest of ex-Governor Daniel D. Tompkins. until Monday, when he was escorted over the bay by a large naval procession and landed at Castle Garden, while peals of bells and booming of cannon gave him a noisy but hearty welcome. From the Battery he was escorted to the City Hall. where he was received by the corporation and welcomed by Mayor Paulding. During his sojourn in New York he had daily receptions at the City Hall, where thousands of citizens waited upon him. On the evening of the Sth of September there was a grand performance at the Park Theatre in his honor. Some of the playbills were printed on white satin.
The next year New York and its surrounding waters became the theatre of one of the most momentous events in the history of the city and State. The great Erie Canal, dimly dreamed of by prescient minds at the beginning of the century, was completed that year, and the event was celebrated with most imposing ceremonies at New York. It was the consummation of a scheme to connect the waters of the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean by means of an artificial river three hundred and sixty miles in length, and the grand stream of the Hudson. The United States Government had been asked to construct it. It refused ; when the State of New York, prompted by the energy and foresight of some of its leading citizens. resolved to do the work unaided. The Legislature was induced to appoint a board of C'anal Commissioners in 1811, with full power to act. The war of 1812 caused a suspension of the scheme. At the beginning of 1816 it was revived by a few citizens of New York, among the most prominent of whom was De Witt Clinton, who had taken great interest in the
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
project from the beginning. They called a public meeting ; William Bayard was its chairman, and John Pintard its secretary. A memorial to the Legislature was adopted, and in April a new board of Canal Commissioners was appointed, with Clinton as president. A law was passed authorizing the construction of the canal, and providing funds for the same. It was vehemently opposed. It was ridiculed, during almost the seven years of its progress to completion, as " Clinton's ditch." The ground was first broken on the 4th of July, 1817, near Rome, N. Y. The middle section was completed in the fall of 1819. and the first boat floated upon it between Utica and Rome, with Gor- ernor Clinton and others as passengers. When the great work was completed the city of New York was selected as the place for celebrat- ing the triumph. An account of that celebration may be found in a future chapter.
The year 1825 was remarkable for other notable events in the city of New York-namely, the introduction of illuminating gas. the begin- ning of the erection of the Merchants' Exchange, the first appearance of the Italian opera and the Sunday newspaper, and the first move- ment toward founding the National Academy of Design. The city then contained 166,000 inhabitants. was divided into twelve wards. and had two hundred and forty avenues, streets, and lanes designated by names. It then began to grow at the rate of 1000 or 1500 houses a vear. It contained ninety churches (including a Hebrew synagogue), of which seventy-one belonged to five denominations. The Presby- terians had twenty-one, Episcopalians seventeen, Baptists fourteen. Reformed Duteli twelve, and Methodists seven. There were three public libraries, one college (Columbia), two medical colleges, eight (almost) free schools, two high schools, two medical colleges, one eye infirinary and a city dispensary, two hospitals and one lunatic asylum, one medical society, about twenty-five charitable and bener- olent societies, and about twenty societies for the dissemination of the Christian religion. There were ten daily, seven semi-weekly, and eighteen weekly newspapers ; four magazines (two of them religious and one medical), and seven principal book-publishers in the city. In 1825 the first Sunday newspaper published in New York was issued. It was the Sunday Courier, published by Joseph C. Melcher at the Tontine Coffee-House, on the corner of Wall and Water streets.
There was, at that time, an Academy of Fine Arts, a Lyceum of Natural History, an Atheneum, a Historical Society (founded in 1804). and a Horticultural Society. There were eleven publie markets, five publie prisons, a State prison, a House of Refuge, and an almshouse.
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OUTLINE HISTORY, 1609-1830.
There were nineteen banks, and ten marine and thirty-two fire insur- www companies, with a well-organized volunteer fire department.
The chief public buildings were the elegant City Hall in the Park, built of marble ; the Masonic Hall, on Broadway, nearly opposite the hopital, and the Merchants' Exchange, then just begun, on Wall Street !Jow William Street. For public amusement the citizens had the American Academy of Fine Arts on Barclay Street, the Rotunda in the Park, where panoramic paintings were exhibited, three museums, three public gardens, two circuses, and four theatres. The commerce and manufactures of the city were now extensive. The value of the total foreign commerce (imports and exports) of the district from 1821 to 1 30 averaged about 858,000,000, or 37 per cent of that of the whole I'nited States. The district embraced the greater portion of Long I-land, Brooklyn, Staten Island, the New Jersey shore above Staten Island, including Jersey City and the shores of the Hudson River. The avessed valuation of property in the city of New York in 1825 was „hove $100,000,000, on which a little less than $39,000 taxes were paid annually.
Such was New York City at the end of the first quarter of the pres- ent century -- the dawn of its new era of growth and prosperity. And here the narrative sketched in brief outline, of its progress from an ubseure Dutch trading-post among barbarians, planted early in the seventeenth century, to a great commercial metropolis, with a popula- tion of almost 170,000, is ended. Henceforth the story of that growth, until New York has become one of the most populous cities in the world, and destined to become the metropolis of the nations, will be told in much greater detail. That story is divided into decades of sorry, beginning with 1880, the time when the forces back of the great prosperity of the city had gathered potency and were actively at work.
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FIRST DECADE, 1830-1840,
CHAPTER I.
I FIRST saw the city of New York in the year 1832. It was then a marvellous sight for the eyes of a rustic lad whose home was in a quiet village on the Hudson River about half way between New York and Albany.
The city limits were then (as now) commensurate with the County of New York, and comprehended the whole of Manhattan Island, which is about fourteen miles in length and from one fourth of a mile to two and a quarter miles in breadth. The city proper-the more thickly inhabited portions of it-extended from the Battery along the Hudson River about a mile and a half, and from the same point along the East River about two miles. The city included the several islands in the harbor north of Staten Island, and those in the East River.
Along Houston Street on the east and Hamersley Street on the west, the inhabitants were essentially suburban. There were about two hundred and fifty streets, alleys, and avenues south of those which are designated by numerals. Many of these streets above Canal Street were very thinly populated. The avenues were then mere prophecies of future population and business. Only the Third and Eighth Ave- nues were opened to the Harlem River ; the Fourth, Seventh, and Eleventh were not opened at all.
Northward of the inhabited portions of the city limits were several villages and hamlets, the most important of which were Greenwich, Bloomingdale, and Manhattanville on the Hudson River ; Yorkville in the centre of the island ; and on the Harlem River was Harlem, the senior of them all, for it was planted by Dutch emigrants from New Amsterdam (New York below Wall Street) more than two centuries ago. They settled there for the purpose of cultivating cabbages and other " garden truck" for the villagers at the southern end of the island.
The human population of New York City in 1830 was a little more than two hundred thousand in number. Over these citizens and aliens presided, as their chief magistrate, Mayor Walter Bowne, a thrifty hardware merchant in Pearl Street, a gray-haired man of sixty, and
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
a scion of the Quaker family at Flushing, Long Island, who entertained George Fox, the founder of the sect of Friends or Quakers, late in the seventeenth century.
The half decade of years immediately preceding the year 1830 pre- sented in New York City a most exciting drama to the eye of the social philosopher. These years embraced the great transition period in the life of that city. They were the closing years of the long-reign- ing dynasty of the " Knickerbockers," as the Dutch element of the population of New York was called, and the successful enthronement of an energetic cosmopolitan spirit, which speedily transformed the hitherto quiet, restful, satisfied, and conservative inhabitants of the staid Dutch town into a wide-awake, bustling, elbowing, and ever-rest- less and aspiring multitude of men and women, scrambling for the headship of every class in the great school of human activity. This change had been largely wrought by the infusion of a new social ele- ment from neighboring communities.
The slumbering city of New York had been surprised and invaded by " Green Mountain Boys," as aggressive as Allen's band, and others from the granite hills of New England, with some congenial spirits from the West. They were all panoplied in the armor of indomitable will and abiding faith, with a determination to conquer every difficulty in their way, and win fortunes by their industry, thrift, wit, and skill. They infused their own spirit into the life of the conservative dwellers in the city, and very soon society became a vast kaleidoscope, present- ing at every turn new and startling aspects in the wondrous combina- tions produced by energetic and well-balanced enterprise. The invad- ers with rare prescience had interpreted the grand prophecies of the future business possibilities of that island city seated where the Hudson pours its flood into the sea-that beautiful river just wedded, as we have seen, to the Great Lakes, with their magnificent dowry of thou- sands of square miles of fertile territory.
This was the period of the awakening to new and prosperous life of the whole country. Business of every kind had been readjusted after . the great disruption caused by the second war for independence : the national debt had been reduced to less than 860,000,000 before 1828 ; the political atmosphere was more serene than it had been since the creation of the Republic, and solid and permanent prosperity seemed to be assured.
The celebration of the most important and propitious event in the history of the city of New York-the completion of the great Erie Canal-deserves more than a passing notice. It occurred in the month
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FIRST DECADE, 1830-1810.
of November, 1825. The day fixed for the celebration in the city of New York was the 4th day of that month.
At ten o'clock on a balmy morning (the 26th of October) the waters of Lake Erie at Buffalo flowed into the " Big Ditch" (as it was con- temptuously called by doubters and its opponents) for the first time. The event was hailed with loud huzzas, the swinging of hats, and the waving of handkerchiefs by a multitude assembled on the occasion.
The news of this first inflowing was communicated from Buffalo to New York in the space of one hour and thirty minutes. This was done long before the electro-magnetic telegraph began its marvellous career. The creator of its intelligence was then a portrait painter in the city of New York. That message was conveyed on the wings of sound from booming cannon placed at intervals along the line of the canal and the Hudson River, and a response was returned by the same voices and in the same space of time.
A flotilla of canal-boats, all beautifully decorated, led by a large one named the Seneca Chief, left Buffalo on a journey eastward at the moment of the first cannon peal. The Chief was drawn by four richly caparisoned gray horses. It bore, as passengers. Governor De Witt ('linton, Lieutenant-Governor General James Tallmadge, General Stephen Van Rensselaer, the Albany patroon ; General Solomon Van Rensselaer, Colonel William L. Stone,# a delegation from New York ('ity, and numerous invited guests and ladies.
One of the canal-boats named Noah's Ark bore a bear, two fawns, two eagles, and a variety of birds and " four-footed beasts," with two Seneca Indian youths in the costume of their dusky nation.
Everywhere along the route from Buffalo to Albany the people gathered in crowds at villages and hamlets, at all hours of the day and night, to see and greet the novel procession. At Rochester, where the canal crossed the Genesee River by an aqueduct supported by stone arches, a little drama was performed. A man in a small boat on the
* William L. Stone was for many years an eminent journalist in New York City. He was born at Esopus, N. Y., April 20, 1792 ; removed to Cooperstown in 1809, where he assisted his father in the care of a farm, and became a printer. In 1813 he entered upon his career of a newspaper editor, and pursued it in several places, and finally became one of the proprietors and editors of the New York Commercial Advertiser in 183%, which he conducted until the time of his death at Saratoga Springs, in August, 1844. Colonel Stone was a genial writer. He published volumes of Tales and Essays, Memoirs of Brant atıl Rel Jacket, and had gathered and prepared materials for a life of Sir William John- won. which was afterward completed by his son. He published other careful books from Miran jan. For several years Colonel Stone was superintendent of common schools in the city of New York, and was an efficient worker in the cause of education.
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Genesee, stationed ostensibly as a sentinel, called out to the Seneca Chief as the flotilla entered the aqueduct :
" Who comes there ?"
" Your brothers from the West, on the waters of the Great Lakes." responded a voice from the Chief.
" By what means have they been diverted so far from their natural course ?" inquired the sentinel.
" Through the channel of the grand Erie Canal," answered the Chief.
" By whose authority and by whom was a work of such magnitude accomplished ?" asked the sentinel.
" By the authority and by the enterprise of the people of New York," cried many voices as one from the deck of the Chief.
At Rochester another canal-boat, The Young Lion of the West, joined the flotilla. It had on board, among other products of the West, two living wolves, a fawn, a fox, four raccoons, and two eagles.
The flotilla rested over the Sabbath at Utica, where it arrived late on Sunday morning. The governor and his company were escorted to a place of public worship in the afternoon by a deputation of citizens, and early on Monday morning the grand procession moved on down the beautiful and magnificent Mohawk Valley, the natural and the artificial river running parallel to each other for scores of miles.
At Albany, the State capital and the eastern terminus of the canal, the voyagers were met by a large civic and military procession, which escorted the governor and other projectors and friends of the enterprise to the Capitol, where interesting services were held. People had gath- ered in Albany from all parts of eastern and northern New York, from Vermont, and even from Canada, to witness the imposing spectacle. A grand public dinner was given by the corporation of Albany, at which the Hon. Philip Hone, the mayor of the city of New York, made a stirring congratulatory speech, and in behalf of the corporation of his city invited that of Albany to accompany the voyagers down the Hud- son River and accept the hospitalities of the commercial metropolis. The celebration at Albany ended with a general illumination of the little city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, and an appropriate perform- ance at the theatre, in which was exhibited a picturesque and truthful canal scene, with many boats and horses, locks and other accessories.
From Albany to New York the flotilla of canal-boats was towed by Hudson River steamers. The Chancellor Livingston was the " flag- ship" of the fleet, having in tow the Senere Chief, whose distinguished passengers were transferred to her escort, and were joined by many
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FIRST DECADE, 1830-1840.
others. They moved at an early hour in the morning. Groups or crowds of men, women, and children were seen on the shores of the Hudson at many points, and here and there the great aquatic procession was hailed with huzzas, the flinging out of banners, and the thunder of cannon. It was a sort of gala time in the valley of the lower Hudson, that clear, crisp, November day in 1825.
Ample preparations had been made in the city of New York for the celebration of this great event. So early as September 7th the mer- chants and citizens of New York had held a great meeting in the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce, in the Tontine Coffee-House, to make arrangements for the celebration. John Pintard was secretary of the meeting, and appropriate resolutions concerning arrangements, embody- ing a programme, were adopted. They were prepared beforehand by Pintard.
Before the dawn of the morning of November 4th the great fleet, under the command of Charles Rhind as admiral, was anchored off Greenwich Village, then a sort of suburb of New York City. The sky was cloudless, and at sun-rising the day was welcomed by the ringing of the city bells and the roar of cannon. At a signal from the Chan- cellor Livingston flags were run up and unfurled all over the city, and at the naval and military posts in the vicinity.
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