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 34
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The specific work of this commission was to be chiefly for the moral and religious welfare of the soldiers and sailors, conducted by oral instruction, and the circulation of the Bible and other proper books, pamphlets, newspapers, etc. among the men in hospitals, camps. and ships. The commission worked on the same general plan of the Sani- tary Commission. Its labors were by no means confined to spiritual and intellectual ministrations, but also to the distribution of a vast amount of food, hospital stores, delicacies, and clothing. It, too, fol- lowed the great armies, and was like a twin angel of mercy with the Sanitary Commission. It co-operated most efficiently with the army and navy chaplains, and cast about the soldiers a salutary hedge of Christian influence. The money collected for the use of the commis- sion was chiefly gathered by the women of various Christian denomina- tions. It was a free-will offering, and amounted to about $1,000,000. The entire receipts of the commission in money and supplies were about . $6,000,000,
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Samuel Raynor
CHAPTER II.
T DIIE National Congress convened in extraordinary session on the 4th of July, 1861, and adopted measures for the vigorous prose- cution of the war. The raising of 400,000 men and $400,000.000 was authorized. Meanwhile the loyal people of New York City were put- ting forth vast efforts for the support of the government in its mighty and righteous task. Individuals and corporate bodies offered the most generous aid wherever needed. At a meeting of merchants at the Chamber of Commerce on the 19th of April, it was stated that there were regiments of volunteers needing assistance to enable them to go forward. In the space of ten minutes more than $21,000 were given for the purpose by those present.
At that time the vast stream of volunteers from the State and from New England had begun to flow through the city with ever-increasing volume, and the patriotism of the people was aroused to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. On Sunday, the 21st of April, piety and patriot- ism were contending for supremacy in the churches of the city. In several of them collections were taken up to give aid to the cause. Texts and sermons were appropriate. In Dr. Bellows's (Unitarian) Church " The Star-Spangled Banner" was sung. The rector of Grace (Episcopal) Church (Dr. Taylor) began his sermon with the words. " The star-spangled banner has been insulted." Dr. Wells (Presby- terian) took for his text, " He that hath no sword, let him buy one.'
On Monday, the 22d, the common council, on the recommendation of Mayor Wood, voted $1,000,000 in aid of the government. At a meet - ing of the whole bar of the city of New York the sum of 825,000 was contributed. In the course of a few days the Chamber of Commerce collected about $119,000, and this amount was continually swelled by the contributions of patriotic citizens. This was before the Union Defence Committee was organized and became the receiver and dis- burser of patriotic offerings. Before the meeting of Congress, or in the space of three months, New York City had contributed 40,000 men and $150,000,000 in gifts and loans and advances to the government for the support of the national authority. One regiment ( Ellsworth's
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
Zouaves) was composed of New York firemen, who did gallant service at Washington and its vicinity and at the battle of Bull Run. Several thousands of New York firemen served in the army during the war.
Colonel Ephraim E. Ellsworth was a native of Mechanicsville, N. Y., and was only twenty-four years old when he recruited the regiment of Fire Zouaves. He had organized a corps of Zouaves the previous year in Chicago, and visiting Eastern cities had created much interest be- cause of their picturesque costume and peculiar tactics. The response to his call in New York for recruits was immediate and ample. More than $30,000 were raised in a few days to equip them. The Union Defence Committee presented them with 1000 Sharpe's rifles. The common council gave them a stand of colors ; so also did Mrs. John J. Astor, who accompanied the gift with a complimentary and patriotic letter.
On the 20th of April the Fire Zouaves left New York for Washington, greeted on their way to the river by the loud huzzas of a vast multitude of citizens and the waving of hundreds of flags. In less than a month afterward the lifeless body of their young and beloved commander was brought back to the city. He had led his troops to Alexandria, Va., where, seeing a rebel flag flying from the cupola of a tavern in the city, he rushed in, ascended to the spot, and was coming down with the flag wrapped around his body when he was shot dead by the pro- prietor of the house. His death created great excitement throughout the North. At New York his coffin was borne to the City Hall, where his body lay in state. In the funeral procession to the Hudson River steamboat which bore him toward his home, the bearers were leading citizens of New York, headed by the Hon. Hamilton Fish. His fol- lowers vowed to avenge him. They fought desperately at the battle of Bull Run a few weeks afterward, in which 200 of them were slain.
The National Government found itself embarrassed at this critical juncture by a want of funds to meet the enormous expenses. The efforts of the former traitorous Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, to ruin the national credit had been partially successful. Loans were obtained with difficulty, and at ruinous rates of interest. Capi- talists were timid ; but now the perils of the government, which involved that of every other interest in the land, opened the purse- strings of all classes, and, as we have observed, New York, the great money-centre of the country, contributed so liberally that the Treasury Department felt instant temporary relief. But there was as yet no fixed plan for raising money when needed. excepting through the ordi- mary channels of revenue, which were entirely inadequate. At this
732
FOURTH DECADE, 1860-1870.
juncture an able New York financier (John Thompson), in a letter to the President and the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Chase), written on June 17, 1561, proposed a system of national currency, which was finally adopted, but too late to be of service in avoiding much financial trouble. Mr. Thompson's proposed plan was as follows :
1. The appointment by Congress of a board of currency commissioners, to act with or independent of the Secretary of the Treasury, with the power to execute circulating notes in convenient denominations, made redeemable on demand in the city of New York, and receivable for all public dues. The board to receive from the treasury say twenty-five per cent specie and seventy-five per cent United States stock or bonds, and pass over to the treasury circulating notes to a corresponding amount, this currency to be the disbursing money for the government instead of gold.
2. The commissioners to execute an additional amount of circulating notes sufficient to be at all times prepared to give the public such notes in exchange for silver and gold ; for example : the commissioners would issne $4,000,000 of notes to be disbursed by the Secretary of the Treasury, and receive from him for their redemption $1,000,000 of specie and $3,000,000 of United States stocks, giving notes to the public for specie, dollar for dollar only.
3. In addition to the ordinary circulating notes, the commissioners to have power, by the advice and consent of the President, to issue, in exchange for specie, notes bearing interest and payable only at the expiration of thirty days' notice from the holder.
4. Should specie accumulate so that the proportion would be more than twenty-five per cent on all outstanding notes, then the government might furnish stock or bonds only in exchange for circulating notes, so that the percentage of specie to circulation should not be less than twenty-five per cent ; but should the specie diminish, to the peril of prompt specie resumption, then the Secretary of the Treasury to put a portion of the stock held by the commissioners on the market to replenish the specie reserve.
Mr. Thompson in his communication expressed his belief that such a measure would be of great benefit to the people and to the army, inas- much as it would furnish a currency free from discount, perfectly safe, convenient for remittance by mail, and much more desirable when travelling or marching. "Besides," said Mr. Thompson, "every well-wisher of our country's cause will feel that the holding of these notes, if for only a day, is contributing a mite in time of need."
These suggestions attracted very wide attention, and were favorably considered by President Lincoln and Secretary Chase, but action upon them was deferred. They were finally adopted piecemeal from time to time, and formed the basis for the national currency and banking system of the country, established in 1863, and based on public and private faith. Mr. Thompson encountered strong opposition from the old moneved institutions in his efforts to establish this system. and Mr. Chase, his warm personal friend, who often sought his counsel in financial nfatters in the dark days of the war. came in for a share of sharp criticism and censure. A circular letter addressed to the man-
,34
HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
agers of the banks of the New York Clearing-House Association. written in September, 1863, made most gloomy prophecies of the effects of the national banking system, saying :
" We shall have a thousand banks spread over the whole continent, instituted and managed, in the majority of cases, by inexperienced men, to say nothing of unprincipled adventurers who will flood the country with a currency essentially irredeemable-banks from which will radiate a feartul expansion in the shape of credits issued on deposits. themselves the birth of inflation, and, Proteus-like, from which elements still further inflations will emanate ; with frantic speculation and elevation of prices, until some political convention, or the mere hint to a return to specie payments [the banks had all suspended specie payments], pricking the bubble, the 'system' will collapse, spreading devastation and ruin broadcast over the land, producing such a scene of financial calanı- ities as shall make all our previous convulsions to compare with it as a child's rattle to a whirlwind."
This prophet of evil did not disturb Mr. Thompson's faith in his project. He showed that faith by his works, for toward the close of 1863 he established the First National Bank in the city of New York -- the first in the metropolis under the new system-with only two direc- tors outside of his own family. The old banks finally acknowledged the wisdom of the scheme. And so New York City has the honor of the first suggestion of our admirable national currency and banking system."
* John Thompson is a native of Berkshire County, Mass., where he was born in 1803. His father was a well-to-do farmer, and with him young Thompson remained, working on the farm in summer and attending school in winter, until he was nineteen years of age. His studies were completed in the old Hadley Academy, and at the age of twenty he became a teacher, at a small salary, in Hampshire County, in that State. He afterward took charge of a select school in Albany, N. Y., in which occupation he continued until he was appointed agent of Yates & MeIntyre's lottery, at Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson, a scheme authorized by the Legislature for the benefit of Union College. In that capacity Mr. Thompson served until 1832, when, with a capital of $2000, he went to the city of New York and opened a broker's office in Wall Street. For more than fifty years he has been known in financial circles. Wall Street was then, as now, the money centre of our country. The strongest honses of the street then were Prime, Ward & King, Corning & Co., and Dykers & Alstyne, the members of all of which are now dead.
Prudent, cantions, and intelligent, Mr. Thompson in the course of a few years was possessed of a capital of $10,000. The currency of the country then consisted chiefly of the issues of State banks. Perceiving the necessity of a journal giving information on the currency of the nation, he founded the (soon) famous Thompson's Bank-Note Reporto. It was a pioneer in that line. Its fearless denunciation of bad banking and the fraudu- lent issues of currency involved Mr. Thompson in vexations lawsuits, but he came out victorious in every instance. His Reporter stood alone for years, and was a recognized authority everywhere. His sagacity concerning sound currency at the beginning of the Civil War has been illustrated in the text. Establishing the First National Bank in New York, he remained with it fourteen years, when, in 1877, he founded the Chase National Bank-so called in honor of his friend. the Secretary of the Treasury. It is one of the . most flourishing of the moneyed institutions in the country, doing an extensive busi -
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735
FOURTH DECADE, 1860-1870.
In the fall of 1861 our government deemed it important that some gentlemen of intelligence and thoroughly acquainted with our national affairs should be sent to Europe, especially to England and France, to explain to their respective governments the circumstances which pre -. veded and the causes which produced the rebellion, the object being to counteract the malign influence of Mason and Slidell, who had just evaded the blockade at Charleston and departed for England, the former as the accredited diplomatic agent of the " conspirators" for England, and the latter for France. For this mission Edward Everett, Archbishop Hughes, John P. Kennedy, and Bishop Mellvaine, of Ohio, were chosen. They all declined the service excepting Bishop MeIlvaine. The archbishop subsequently accepted the appointment on the condi- tion that Thurlow Weed, the well-known journalist, should be his colleague. Mr. Weed was appointed. He and Bishop Mcilvaine were the accredited (not official) agents of the United States Govern- ment sent to the British court for the performance of a specific duty, and the archbishop was accredited to the French Government for the same purpose. Mr. Weed sailed from New York for Havre in com- pany with General Scott, who was asked to join the mission ; the archbishop and Bishop Mellvaine departed on a Cunard steamer for Liverpool. Mr. Weed went immediately to England from France, and Archbishop Hughes to France from England.
The arrival of these able agents in Europe was timely and providen- tial. Two days after the arrival of Mr. Weed in England, early in December, news reached that country of the seizure of Mason and Slidell on a British steamer by the officers of a United States cruiser. Wild and angry excitement prevailed throughout the realm, and immense preparations for war with the United States were made by the British Government. Mr. Weed obtained an immediate interview with Lord John Russell and other high dignitaries of the government. and was successful in the highest degree in the execution of the mis- sion on which he had been sent. He also visited France, and had an interview with Prince Napoleon, who favored the United States Gor- ernment in opposition to the Emperor.
ness quietly at No. 104 Broadway. Mr. Thompson's son, Samuel Clarke, was appointed its president, and Isane White its cashier. This son was the president of the First National Bank until the founding of the Chase Bank.
Mr. Thompson is an advocate of a paper currency with a sound metallic basis. His idea is that neither gold or silver is desirable for enrreney. He would have the mint fix the coin value in bullion, and the treasury store the latter and issne treasury certifi- ates in denominations suitable for a circulating medium. This would give the people a metallic currency without the inconvenience of handling and carrying coin.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
Meanwhile Archbishop Hughes had proceeded to Paris, where he had an interview with the Emperor and Empress # and dignitaries of the Church, everywhere setting forth the righteousness of the cause of which he appeared as exponent. He wrote letters to Cardinal Barnabo. Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda. He visited Rome, and afterward Ireland. His mission was executed with success equal to that of Mr. Weed.+ The details of this mission belong to our national history ; the bare mention of it here must suffice.
* See an interesting account of that interview in Hassard's "Life of Archbishop Hughes," p. 465.
+ Thurlow Weed was a distinguished man. His career, as revealed in his autobiogra- phy, was a most remarkable one. He was born in Cairo, Greene County, N. Y., November 15, 1797. His early education was very meagre. Not more than a year altogether was spent by him in school. At eight years of age he was employed in blowing a black- smith's bellows, and before he was ten years old he was cabin-boy on a Hudson River sloop. When he was eleven years old his parents moved to Cortland County, where he labored on a farm with his father, and " worked 'round " at anything he could find to do.
Young. Weed became a printer's apprentice, but circumstances made him a wanderer from place to place, not only as an apprentice but as a journeyman printer. Before he was sixteen he had served three months in the army on the northern frontier in the war of 1812-15. The next year he was again in the army, where he was made a quarter- master-sergeant. Pursuing his trade in Utica, Albany, Herkimer, Cooperstown, and other places in the interior of the State for two or three years, he finally found employ- ment in the city of New York, working at one time with the late James Harper. Before he was quite twenty-one years of age he was married, at Cooperstown, to Miss Catharine Ostrander, to whom he had been engaged four years before. He had just money enough to take himself and his young wife to Albany, where, he said, " with good health, strong hands, and hopeful hearts, we both went earnestly at work to earn a living." It was a fortunate marriage. " She more than divided our labors, cares, and responsibilities," he added. " But for her industry, frugality, and good management I must have been ship- wrecked during the first fifteen years of trial. I am indebted to her largely for whatever of personal success and pecuniary prosperity I have since enjoyed." On the morning of the fortieth anniversary of their marriage, while he was watching at her bedside, she took the wedding-ring from her finger, which he had placed there twoscore years before, and put it on his, saying. " I shall not live through the day."
In the autumn of the year of his marriage Mr. Weed bought a printing-office on credit for $700 at Norwich, Chenango County, and started the Agriculturist, a weekly newspaper. It was not a success pecuniarily, and he returned to Albany in 1821. Soon afterward he started another paper at Manlius, Onondaga County, with no better success. He went to Rochester, then a straggling village, where he became the editor and finally proprietor of the Telegraph, a weekly newspaper. He took in a partner, and under the firm of Weed & Martin it became the Rochester Daily Telegraph. Mr. Weed conducted it with great ability. He soon became involved in the bitter controversy which led to the formation of the Anti-Masonic political party. The Anti-Masonic Inquirer, edited by hin, dealt heavy blows upon the opposing party, and Mr. Weed's fame as an expert and able journalist now budded and blossomed. He became widely known as a shrewd politician and a rare party manager.
Mr. Weed was an ardent politieal supporter of De Witt Clinton and his canal policy,
FOURTH DECADE, 1860-1870.
The zeal, patriotism, and munificent generosity of the citizens of New York exhibited at the breaking out of the Civil War was con- tinued with unabated earnestness until its close. Such was the case especially under their patriotic mayor, the late George Opdyke.
and in 1824 he was elected to a seat in the New York Legislature. He was re-elected in 1829. The real purpose of his re-election was in connection with a project for estab- lishing at the State capital a daily newspaper that should oppose the powerful " Albany Regency," a junta of politicians led by Martin Van Buren, which managed the Demo- cratic party in the State. Mr. Weed had shown so much taet in the management of the campaign which again gave the office of governor to Clinton, in 1824, that he was consid- ered the most competent person to oppose the Regency. The Albany Erening Journal was established in 1830, with Mr. Weed as editor. It was an Anti-Masonic organ. At that time, of the 211 newspapers published in the State, 33 were Anti-Masonic.
This was, really the beginning of Mr. Weed's extraordinary political career and the personal and political friendship between Mr. Seward and himself. The former was then a State Senator. Mr. Weed never held any public office after that, excepting that of State printer. He and Mr. Seward always workel in harmony in political life, one before and the other behind the scenes.
From 1830 to 1862 Mr. Weed was the editor and a greater part of the time the pro- prietor of the Evening Journal, which wielded a mighty political influence. He was justly called the " Warwick of the press." He severed his connection with the Journal in 1862, on his return from his semi-diplomatic mission to Europe. For a while he was editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser.
Mr. Weed visited Europe several times, and always with his daughter. His first visit was in 1843, his last in 1871. In 1844 he visited the West Indies, and in 1866 a book was published without Mr. Weed's knowledge containing a series of communications which he had made to the Evening Journal, with the title of " Letters from Europe and the West Indies." For several years be had been virtually a resident of New York City, for he kept a room for his exclusive use the year round at the Astor House, where he spent much of his time. In 1865 he took up his permanent abode in the city, with his family, and soon afterward abandoned public life, and lived in quiet in the great metropolis, but taking the liveliest interest in all the prominent social and political movements of the day.
Mr. Weed died at his home in New York City on November 22, 1882, when he had just passed his eighty-fifth birthday. Before the burial a very large number of the most dis- tinguished citizens called to view his remains. The funeral ceremonies were held in the First Presbyterian Church, on Fifth Avenue. The body was taken to Albany and laid in the beautiful Rural Cemetery there. *
Mr. Weed had lived in the time of all the Presidents of the United States, and of twenty five governors of his native State. He had been a power in the land for more than half a century, the intimate friend or valued correspondent of statesmen at home and abroad. As a journalist he exerted a wide influence upon the aspects of his time ; as an editor he had few rivals in intelligence and sagacity, and as a citizen his life was blameless. His abilities were very great ; in morals he was pure, in integrity he was very rich, and in patriotism he was unsurpassed. His sympathies for the suffering were ever actively alive, and his practical benevolence was unstinted.
* The pall bearers were ex-Governors Edwin D. Morgan and Hamilton Fish, General James Watson Webb. Frederick W. Seward. I-aac B.H, General James Bowen. J. H. Van Antwerp, John M. Kcon. Alfred Van Santvoord, George Dawson. of Albany. H. R. R.ddle, of Niigara, and Julius J. Wood, of Columbus, O.
738
HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
Into the harbor of New York was brought the first captured Con- federate privateer (so called), the Savannah, carrying eighteen men and an 18-pounder cannon. The men were tried for piracy and sentenced to death, but by the wise counsel of Chief-Justice C. P. Daly the govern- ment was saved from committing a serious blunder, and they were exchanged as prisoners of war. Out of that harbor went vessels and thousands of men on patriotic expeditions somewhere. In March, 1862, the little Monitor, a vessel of " strange device," went bokelly to sea from New York under the brave Lieutenant (now Rear-Admiral) Worden, entered Hampton Roads, spread dismay among the insurgents there, and saved millions' worth of property, and possibly Northern seaport cities from pillage and devastation. Captain Ericsson, under whose supervision the Monitor was built, is yet among the active workers with the brain in New York, at the age of eighty years. Out of that harbor also sailed the George Griswold, freighted with contribu- tions from New York merchants for the relief of thousands of starving mill-operatives of England. She was convoyed, by a vessel of war to guard her from destruction by the pirate ship Alabama, which had been built, fitted out, and manned in England for the insurgents, and was then burning New York merchant-ships here and there on the Atlantic Ocean. England was compelled to pay $15,500,000 in gold for these outrages.
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