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 II > Part 25
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There was now a sudden revulsion in the public feeling. Some believed the evangelist had never lived-that it was a huge impostor. The popular idol was forsaken for the moment as a "false god " indeed. The telegraph cable remained in a state of suspended anima- tion for nearly seven years. In 1861 the great Civil War in America broke out and absorbed all thoughts. But Mr. Field was neither discouraged nor idle. While the Atlantic was traversed by incendiary pirate ships, he crossed and recrossed the ocean many times and preached to chambers of commerce, to public gatherings, and to capitalists in England and the United States, with so much earnestness that in 1864 his converts furnished sufficient capital to renew the attempt to lay the great cable. An improved one was coiled on board the leviathan of the merchant marine of England, the Great Eastern. She sailed in 1865, and when over 1200 miles of the cable were paid out, it snapped in twain, and the great enterprise was once more "in the deep bosom of the ocean buried."
The attempt was not renewed that year. But still Mr. Field was not disheartened. Returning to London, he rallied his associates, and with them organized the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, with a capital of 83,000,000, to provide means for manufacturing and laying another cable, and in the summer of 1566 was again on board the Great Eastern, when at last the attempt to connect the two worlds. which he had pursued for nearly thirteen years; was to be rewarded with victory. The gigantie coil was unrolled without a break across the ocean, and the Eastern and Western Hemispheres were at last firmly linked together. But one triumph did not satisfy the gallant project- ors : they remembered the cable of the year before lying with its broken end at the bottom of the sea. A few days after the new cable was landed, the Great Eastern returned to mid-ocean to search for the
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lost treasure, and after groping for a whole month at a depth of two miles, recovered it and carried it safely to the shores of Newfoundland. Thus two cables were laid in one year (1866) without a flaw. Perfect and permanent electrical communication between America and Great Britain was established on July 27, 1866."
Honors were showered upon the leaders in this marvellous achieve- ment in both countries. Several of the English participants were knighted. The Prime Minister of England, in conferring these honors, declared that it was only the fact that Mr. Field was a citizen of another country that prevented his receiving high honors from the British Government. He had honors in abundance at home. Con- gress voted him thanks and a gold medal, and he received numerous other testimonials for what was regarded as one of the most remark- able achievements of the age. At the French Exposition in 1867 ho received the Grand Medal, given only to those who were recognized as great publie benefactors. Mr. Field crossed the ocean more than fifty times in the prosecution of the great enterprise.+
* The capital stock of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company is $35,000,000. They have now (1883) in good working order four cables across the Atlantic, besides several other cables connecting Newfoundland with Nova Scotia.
+ Cyrus West Field is a native of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where his father, the Rev. David Dudley Field, D.D., was settled as a pastor at the time of his birth, November 30, 1819. His mother was Submit Dickinson, a daughter of Captain Noah Dickinson, who had served with Putnam in the French and Indian war. The parents were both of English Puritan stoek, the father tracing his ancestry back to the Norman Conquest, in 1066. (See biographical sketch of Benjamin H. Field.)
Cyrus W. Field is the eighth of ten children of his parents. He was of a delicate physical organization that seemed little fitted to bear the inevitable burdens of active life. As a boy he was noted for great activity -- a characteristic of his whole life. He was fleet of foot and a leader in out-door sports. Choosing a business life instead of a professional one, he did not receive a collegiate education, and at the age of fifteen years he became a clerk with A. T. Stewart in New York. He began business on his own account, as a wholesale paper merchant, when he was twenty-one years of age, and at abont the same time he married Miss Mary Bryan Stone, of Guilford, Connecticut. They have had seven children, three sons and four daughters.
Mr. Field's only capital with which he started in life as a merchant was great aptitude for business, quickness of perception, power of organization, and indefatigable perse- verance in whatever he undertook. These qualities have distinguished his whole career. In the course of a dozen years he was at the head of a large mercantile house, fully established and very prosperous ; and though only thirty-three years of age at that time, he contemplated withdrawing from active business. He had acquired what was then considered a handsome fortune, but he found it easier to enter upon business than to retire from it, especially for a man of his active temperament. He tried the experiment wisely by making a tour of six months in South America. Ho climbed the Andes to Bogota, crossed the mountains to Quito, and descended to Guayaquil in Ecuador. He returned to New York at the end of October, 1853. On this journey Mr.
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Such, in brief, is the story of the origin in the city of New York of the wonderful system of submarine telegraphy, by which the deeds and the thoughts of men are conveyed from continent to continent. and from island to island, through the throbbing bosom of the sea. day and night."
Early in 1834 a powerful anti-slavery movement was begun in New York City by the Hon. John Jay and others, in consequence of a viola- tion of the pledge given by President Pierce in his inaugural address in 1853, that during his administration the quiet of the country on the subject of slavery which had succeeded the compromise of Mr. Clay in 1850, should not be disturbed. This violation was in the form of a proposal by Senator Dixon, of Kentucky, to repeal the Missouri Com- promise, and a bill to that offeet offered in January, 1854, by Senator Douglas, chairman of the Committee on Territories. That act, known as the Kansas-Nebraska bill, was passed in May following.
Mr. Jay, who inherited a reverence for human rights from his father, Judge Jay, and his grandfather, Chief-Justice Jay, had been keenly watching the tendency of events at the National capital, and as soon
Field was accompanied by the artist, Frederick E. Church, who brought home with him the studies from which he painted his famous picture, " The Heart of the Andes."
On his return Mr. Field attempted to settle down as a retired merchant. "But it was the hardest task he had ever undertaken," wrote his brother, the Rev. H. M. Field, in 1880. " I never saw him so mueasy as when trying to keep still. What would have been the consequence is hard to say, if just at this moment there had not presented itself an enterprise which was to engage his interest, and to furnish full scope for his activity, and to prove in its issues the greatest achievement of his life."
The enterprise alluded to was the connecting of the two hemispheres by an electro- magnetic telegraph, which has been fully set forth in the text. In that enterprise he had an ardnous struggle of thirteen years before he attained to success. Since that enterprise was successfully carried out he has been largely interested in submarine telegraphy and rapid transit in the city of New York. In 1864 he went to Egypt, as the dele gate of the New York Chamber of Commerce, to be present at the preliminary or experimental opening of the Suez Canal. In 1874 he made a voyage to Iceland, to participate in the commemorative proceedings of the one thousandth anniversary of the European settle- ment of that island. In 1880 he left New York with his wife for San Francisco, whenco they made a voyage to Japan and thence to India, and cireumnavigated the world. An ever-present dream of his life is the laying of a telegraphic cable across the Pacific Ocean by way of the Sandwich Islands, which would complete the cirenit of the globe. By this last link he would indeed " put a girdle round the earth in forty miantes."
* The directors of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company in 1882 were : The Rt. Hon. Viscount Monck, chairman ; Sir James Anderson, William Barber, and Francis 1. Bevan, of England ; Charles Crapelet, of Paris ; Cyrus W. Field, of New York : Sir Daniel Gooch, M.P., the Hon. Robert Grimston, L. M. Rate; and the Most Hon, the Marquis of Tweeddale, of England. The managing director is H. Weaver : Jo itta Drah and Francis Glas, are the auditors, azt T. f. Wells is the secretary.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
as he observed this violation of plighted faith, with all the promises of fearful consequences, he drew up a call, which was signed by himself and others, for a meeting of conservative men of both parties, at the Broadway Tabernacle, to declare their determination to resist all inter- ference with the old landmark, the Missouri Compromise. The call was headed, " No Violation of Plighted Faith ! No Repeal of the Missouri Compromise :"
The meeting was presided over by Shepherd Knapp, one of the best- known merchants and financiers of New York, and at one time city chamberlain. It was earnestly addressed by the late James W. Gerard and others. Decided resolutions drafted by Mr. Jay were adopted by unanimous acclamation. An association had been previously formed called the Democratic Free Club, of which Mr. Jay was president."
* John Jay was born in New York City June 23, 1817. He is a son of the Hon. William Jay. He lived in the family of his grandfather, Chief-Justice Jay, until the death of the latter in 1829. He was graduated at Colminbia College, second in his class, in 1836 : studied law with Daniel Lord, having William M. Evarts as a fellow-student. In 1837 Mr. Jay married Eleanor, daughter of Hickson W. Field, an eminent New York merchant. He practised his profession until 1858, when on the death of his father he made his bode at Bedford, Westchester County, the family country-seat.
Mr. Jay began an anti-slavery career while in college in 1834, when he became a man- ager of the New York Young Men's Anti-slavery Society, and was an ardent worker in the cause so long as slavery existed. He was an actor in the scenes attendant upon the anti-slavery riot in New York in 1834, and as we have observed in the text, was an effi- cient promoter of a victorious anti-slavery movement in New York and throughout the country twenty years afterward. He was ever a bold, conspicuous, and outspoken abolitionist, and suffered a portion of the odium these philanthropists bore. He was ever busy with tongue and pen, in addresses, newspaper communication, and otherwise, in . the cause of human freedom, and was always foremost in public meetings and other demonstrations in favor of the freedom of the slaves.
Like his father, Mr. Jay is a prominent member of the Episcopal Church, and active in its charities and administration. In 1848 he visited Europe with his wife, where he made the acquaintance of many distinguished statesmen, authors, scientists, artists, and others. In 1860 he earnestly endeavored to have the Episcopal Diocesan Convention express some decided sentiments on the subject near his heart, and then agitating the nation, but failed to overcome the conservatism of that body. During the Civil War that ensued, he labored incessantly for the salvation of the Republic from destruction by dis- loyal men everywhere, and was one of the most vigilant detectors of seeret machination :: by Northern sympathizers with the insurgents. He was one of the founders of the Union League Club in New York, of which he was elected president while absent in Europe in 1865. In 1867 Governor Fenton appointed Mr. Jay a commissioner on the establishment of a national cemetery on the battle-field of Antietam. In 1869 he was appointed United States minister to Austria by President Grant, and held that position until 1875, filling it with honer to his country by his social and political life at Vienna. He was specially helpful to Americans during the Vienna Exposition in 1973. At home Nr. Jay's services have ever been in demand on commissions, in investigations, anla
لخدمة مسـ
J. J. Jeche
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THIRD DECADE, 1850-1860.
The potent voice of this meeting resounded over the land, and it was responded to in unison in multitudes of cities and villages in the free. labor States of the North and West. In February Mr. Jay organized another meeting at the Tabernacle, composed chiefly of mechanics. It was addressed by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, the Hon. John P. Hale, and Joseph Blunt. A third meeting, on the 14th of March, was presided over by the venerable Abraham Van Ness, on the nomination of Moses II. Grinnell. It was opened with prayer by the Rev. Dr. Vermilye and addressed by the late William Curtis Noves. Still another meeting was held in the City Hall Park, on May 14th, presided over by the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, President Jackson's Attorney-General. At that meeting a general committee.composed of 125 leading citizens, embracing all the officers of the various meetings which had been held, was appointed, with power. Under their authority a resolution, drawn by Mr. Jay, was adopted, inviting the citizens of the State of New York, without distinction of party, who were " disposed to maintain the rights and principles of the North, to stay the extension of slavery to the Territories, to rescue from its control the Federal Government, and, so far as it can properly be done. to kindly aid the citizens of the South in peacefully hastening its end. as a system unjust in itself and unworthy of our Republic, and to assemble in convention to determine what course patriotism and duty require us to take." The citizens of the free-labor States and of the border States, holding such views, were invited to hold conventions.
This invitation was responded to favorably by the people of several States, and this anti-slavery movement, originating in the city of New York, speedily led to the formation of the great Republican party." which has been dominant in the Republic for nearly a quarter of a
variety of other public duties. State and national. From its inception he has been an earnest advocate of a system of civil service reform, and in 1883 he was appoint: 1 4 member of the Civil Service Commission. He has been for many years an active me fr ber of the New York Historical Society and the American Geographical Society. I. addresses, essays, reports, and controversial papers are very numerous, and form im- portant contributions to our literature.
* That the conception of the Republican party was in the city of New York cannot 1. successfully disputed, but the place of its birth, like that of Homer, is claimed by several communities. It is simply a matter of date in question. Michigan claims that it was at a State convention assembled at Jackson, July 6, 1854, a call for which way sided by more than 10,000 persons. In its platform the extension of slavery was opposed, and its abolition in the District of Columbia was agitated. The name Republican was adopted by the convention as that of the opposition party. Conventions that t ka similar course were held in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Vermont, on July 13, and in Mos +- chusetts on July 19, 1854.
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century. It was composed essentially of the anti-slavery men of all parties. The success of this party in electing its candidate for the Presidency of the United States (Abraham Lincoln) in 1860 caused the desperate disunionists of the nation to plunge the country into one of the most dreadful civil wars on record, the fires of which utterly consumed the system of slavery and purged the Republic of a deathly disease. *
* " The platform of the Republican party adopted at Chicago in May, 1860, caused the politicians of the slave-labor States to prepare for the immediate secession of these States and a disruption of the Union. After affirming that the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence, and embodied in the National Consti- tution, is essential to the preservation of our republican institutions ; congratulating the country that no Republican member of Congress had uttered or countenanced any threats of disunion, ' so often made by Democratic members without rebuke, and with applause from their political associates,' and denouncing such threats as ' an avowal of contem- plated treason,' the resolutions made explicit declarations upon the topic of slavery, so largely occupying public attention. In a few paragraphs they declared that each State had the absolute right of control in the management of its own domestic concerns ; that the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the Territories of the United States, was a dangerous political heresy, revolutionary in its tendency, and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country ; that the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom, and that neither Congress, nor a Territorial legislature, nor any individuals, have authority to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States ; and that the reopening of the African slave-trade, then recently commenced in the Southern States, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, was a crime against humanity, ande barning shame to our country and age."-Lossing's Pictorial Field-Book of the Civil War.
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CHAPTER V.
M R. CLAY'S compromise, alluded to, consisted of a series of sup- posed conciliatory measures proposed by him in Congress, in- tended to soothe the irritated feelings of disputants on both sides of the slavery question, for so violent were the threats of disunion on the part of politicians in the slave-labor States that the integrity of the Republic seemed to be in peril. These measures were presented in what was termed the Omnibus bill, but instead of allaying they soon intensified the mutual irritation.
One of the measures of the Omnibus bill was the iniquitous Fugitive Slave law, framed by the late Senator Mason. of Virginia, for the avowed purpose of creating the intense opposition (as it did) at the North which would provide a pretext for rebellion and disunion .* It provided that the master (or his agent) of any alleged runaway slave might follow him into any State or Territory unmolested, arrest him or her, and by the fiat of a commissioner or judge, who was allowed no discretion in the matter. take the fugitive back into bondage. It also provided that any citizen- might be compelled to assist in the cap- ture and rendition of the alleged fugitive.
This infamous act became a law. Every humane heart rebelled against it. Every free citizen loathed the position of slave-catcher in which the law placed him, and there was an intense desire felt every- where to aid the poor bondman on his way to Canada and liberty. As this might not be done openly for fear of the terrors of the law, it was done secretly. The " Underground Railway, " as the secret aid given to the fugitives was called, was established, and the city of New York became one of the most important stations on that road. The anti- slavery men and women in New York City became its most ardent operators, and it was a " city of refuge" to many a poor fugitive flying from bondage to liberty.
Because of this active sympathy for the slave, Southern dealers
* This fact was communicated to me by a friend of Mason, while standing among the ruins of the Senator's home at Winchester, Va., in the fall of 1566.
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became suspicious of New York merchants, and began to withdraw their trade. The consequence was that many merchants engaged in the Southern trade became obedient slaves to mammon and the slaveocracy, though at the sacrifice of self-respect. "I am ashamed to own," said one of these merchants to the writer, " that when our Southern customers were in town, I felt compelled to order my clerks not to let the Tribune be seen in the store, for it would not do to let such customers know that I gave any countenance to that abolition sheet. From the bottom of my heart I despised myself." *
And so a portion of the merchants of New York-high-minded, hon- orable men-were enslaved until the breaking out of the Civil War in 1861, when that city became the foremost in the land in the support of the National Government in its efforts to crush the slaveholders' rebel- lion, as we shall perceive hereafter.
Among the grand institutions founded in the city of New York during the third decade, the YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION holds a front rank in salutary social influences and benevolent work. It was formed in the year 1852. Among its charter members are found the names of many who have since become distinguished in various forms of religious and philanthropic work in public life or in the business community.+
The parent Young Men's Christian Association was formed in London. In the course of a few years it was imitated in New York. At a meeting called for organizing such an association the
* The Friends or Quakers have been known from the beginning as the champions of the slave everywhere, but so completely had the slave-power, through the instrumentality ef mammon, acquired control over the consciences of Quaker merchants in New York. largely engaged in the Southern trade, that so early as 1842 the Hicksite or Unitarian branch of that society, worshipping in Rose Street, actually " disowned " or excommuni- cated one of their foremost and most devoted members, Isaac T. Hopper, because he persisted in his benevolent efforts in behalf of the bondmen.
+ Among these may be mentioned Austin Abbott, Hon. Henry Arnoux, Charles A. Davidson, George H. Petrie, Ralph Wells, Dr. Howard Crosby, Edward Austen, Theophilus A. Brown, Samuel W. Stebbins, A. S. Barnes, Cephas Brainerd, James B. Colgate, Samuel Colgate. Professor Elie Charlier, William E. Dodge, Theodore Dwight, Peter Donald. Francis P. Freeman, L. Hastings Grant, John W. Dayton, James C. Holden, Rev. Isaac S. Harkey, Henry B. Hyde, Lewis E. Jackson, Morris K. Jesup, D .. Willis James, Robert Jaffray. Bryan Lord. Richard C. MeCormick, Jr., George D. Morgan, John H. Osborne, Rev. Arthur Potts. John H. Parsons, Rev. Arthur I. Pearson, A. D. F. Randolph, Gamaliel G. Smith, Samnel A. Strang, John Sloane, Rev. Abel Stevens, LL.D., J. B. Trevor. A. V. W. Van Vechten, and others to the number of about 1200 of the leading young men in the city. These joined the association during the first year of its existence, and are the pioneers of all the Young Men's Christian Associations in the country.
THIRD DECADE, 1850-1860.
Rev. G. T. Bedell, then rector of the Church of the 1.ven. and now bishop of the Diocese of Ohio, presided. The Rey. I ..... Ferris. D. D .. L.L. D., then pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church u. Market Street. afterward Chancellor of the University of the City New York. delivered an address. Great interest in it was felt from the beginning. as attested by the large membership the first year.
Until isog the association had no permanent home of its own, hat occupied hired rooms. Then a fine structure for its use was created on the south-west corner of Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue. which the association first occupied in December, 1869. The cost of the. building, including the ground, was nearly $500,000, for which the association is largely indebted to the zeal, personal labors, and generous gifts of the late William E. Dodge, who was its president for eight years : also to the enthusiasm and munificence of Morris K. Jesup. John Crosby Brown, Pierpont Morgan, and others, who served as its early directors. The building is constructed of freestone, five stories in height. Its style of architecture is the French Renaissance. It is entirely free from debt. It furnishes to young men who avail them- selves of its privileges a reception-room, a reading-room, parlors. lecture-room and concert-hall with a seating capacity of 1400, class- rooms, a library with over 25,000 volumes, a gymnasium, bowling- alley, and baths. The reading-room is supplied with 460 newspapers. from all parts of the Republic and from the principal cities of Europe.
The association also furnishes instruction to evening classes in writing. bookkeeping, German, French, Spanish, and vocal music. and in these over 1500 young men were pursuing studies in 1882. The educational advantages of the association have proved a great boon to young men who may not have possessed or who have neglected means for acquiring education in early life. Many such have secured promo- tion in business by the knowledge they have acquired in the rooms of the association in the evening.
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