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 43
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. For months O'Brien unsuccessfully pressed his claim. At length he gave the document to the proprietor of the New York Times, and it was published in full detail in July, 1871. It produced intense excite- ment, amazement, and indignation throughout the city. Tweed. vainly believing his fortress of power was impregnable, sneeringly inquired. " What are you going to do about it ?" But public indig- nation was so fierce and so universally aroused that the conspirators were soon compelled to yield. Day after day the Times struck telling blows at the ring, with accumulating proofs of their crimes. Week after week the inimitable cartoons of Nast in Harper's Weekly struck equally telling blows, for pictures are the literature of the unlearned, and the most illiterate citizen could read and understand those car- toons. Very soon the conspirators in office were driven out and fled to Europe. Tweed was arrested, lodged in jail, indicted for forgery and grand larceny, and late in 1873 he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to a long imprisonment in the penitentiary on Blackwell's Island.
In the summer of 1875 Tweed's friends procured his release, on bail, when he was immediately arrested on a civil suit to recover over $6,000,000 which he had stolen from the city treasury. Bail to the amount of $3,000.000 was required. He could not furnish it, and was confined in Ludlow Street Jail. Allowed to visit his wife at twilight one evening in charge of the sheriff, he managed to escape, fled to Europe, was arrested in a Spanish seaport, was brought back to New York in failing health, and was again lodged in jail. In a suit tried in March, 1876, a jury returned a verdict against him for the sum of 86,537,000, which he could not pay. He lingered in prison until Jan- mary 12, ISTS, where he died, at the age of fifty-five years. It was estimated that the ring had robbed the city of over $20,000,000."
When the iniquities of the ring were exposed by the Times in the summer of 1871. thousands of indignant citizens were prepared to r.
* The reckless waste of city money and property at this period was not all done by the. ring, but by members of the dominant party in the city legislature, largely for politiet purposes. A report of the committee of political reform of the Union League Club. ? . in January, 1873, showed that during the previous three years no less than $1 .. . had been given in lands and money to one denomination of Christians in the city of X York, for the support of its religions, benevolent, and educational organizations.
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spond to a call for a public meeting at the Cooper Union on the even- ing of September 4th. James Brown, the eminent banker, called the meeting to order. Ex-Mavor Havemeyer was made chairman, and 227 of the most respectable citizens were named as vice-presidents. Stir- ring addresses were made. It was shown that the city debt was then $113,000,000, an increase of $63,000,000 in two years. Strong resolu- tions were adopted denouncing by name the chief conspirators, and recommending measures for a repeal of the iniquitous amendment of the charter procured by Tweed. An executive committee of seventy, composed of leading citizens, was appointed to take measures to obtain a full exhibition of all the accounts of the city and of the persons who, for the past two years and a half, had drawn money from the city treasury ; to enforce existing remedies to obtain this information, if refused ; to recover all moneys which had been fraudulently or feloni- ously abstracted from the treasury, and to assist, sustain, and direct a united effort by the citizens of New York, without reference to party, to obtain good government for the city, and honest officers to adminis- ter it. . The committee was organized by the appointment of Henry G. Stebbins chairman, William F. Havemeyer vice-chairman, Roswell D. Hatch secretary, and Emil Sauer treasurer. The committee sent forth an " Appeal to the People of the State of New York," written by Major J. M. Bundy, and then entered with vigor upon the discharge of its duties.
Through the exertions of the Committee of Seventy the city was soon purged of the unsavory band of plunderers, who were driven into exile or were brought to the bar of justice." The fall election which
* A week after the appointment of the Committee of Seventy it was found that vonchers to the number of 3500 had been abstracted from the comptroller's office, many of which would be damaging to the ring. News of this act aroused the indignation of the citizens to the highest pitch. The mayor was compelled to demand the resignation of the comptroller, and to fill his place, on the recommendation of Mr. Havemeyer, who was a Democrat, by the appointment to the office of Deputy Comptroller Andrew H. Green. He investigated the " voucher robbery," and discovered that the vouchers had been burned, but the perpetrators were never brought to justice. The committee called upon the governor of the State and requested him to appoint Charles O'Conor to assist the attorney-general in prosecuting the foremost officers of the city government for malfeas- ance in office. The governor replied that he had not power to comply with the request, but would recommend that course to the attorney-general, whereupon the latter anthor- ized Mr. O'Conor to act for the State, and to employ such associates as he might deem proper. Mr. O'Conor chose William MI. Evarts, Wheeler H. Peckham, and Judge James Emott as his associates. On the strength of an affidavit of Samnel J. Tilden. Tweed was arrested and held to bail in the sum of $1,000,000, and in due time he was indicted for felony. The remainder of his career has been noticed in the text.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
soon followed was a very exciting one in the city. Respectable Repub- licans and Democrats united to crush the foul conspiracy and to fill the public offices with good men. The result was the utter defeat of nearly every Tammany candidate. Tweed was re-elected Senator by brute force and vulgar fraud, exercised by the worst classes of New York society.
An important result of the labors of the Committee of Seventy was the procurement of amendments of the charter for the city in 1873. which is now (1883) the fundamental law of the municipality. The amended charter, known as the " charter of 1873," vests the corpo- rate power in the mayor, aldermen, and commonalty of the city. The legislative powers are vested in a board of twenty-two aldermen, hold- ing office for one year from January 1st. The executive power is vested in the mayor and the heads of departments created by the charter and appointed by the mayor, by and with the consent of the board of aldermen, for the term of six years. The departments are the same as those created by the charter of 1846, already noticed. The salary of the mayor is $12,000 a year, and of aldermen $4000.
The law courts remain the same in title and functions as before. with slight modifications. These are the Supreme Court, Court of Common Pleas, Superior Court of the City of New York, Marine Court of the City of New York, district courts, Surrogate's Court, Court of Arbitration, criminal courts, Court of General Sessions of the Peace, Court of Special Sessions of the Peace, and police courts. There is also held in the city one of the nine United States Circuit Courts, and one of the United States District Courts.
The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is twofold-original and appellate-and embraces the entire State. The appellate branch is called the General Term, and for its purpose the State is divided into four judicial departments. of which the city of New York is the first. It is composed of a presiding judge and two associate justices. All the sessions of this court are held in the county Court-House.# The Supe- rior Court has jurisdiction similar to that of the Common Pleas.
* The present (1883) presiding judge or chief justice of this court is Noah Davis, one of the clearest-headed, most sagacious, upright, impartial, and fearless of judicial officers in the discharge of his duty. He is a native of Haverhill, New Hampshire, where he was born on September 10, 1818. He is of English descent, and his ancestors Were among the earliest settlers in Massachusetts. In 1825 his parents moved from Haverhill to a village in Orleans County, in Western New York, which was afterward named Albion, where the subject of this sketch received a good common-school education and a fe:x months' tuition in an academic institution.
Choosing the legal profession as his life vocation, young Davis studied law, first at
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The functions of the Court of Common Pleas, of which Charles P. Daly is chief justice, have been described in a former chapter. The Marine Court has no jurisdiction in equity. Its powers are chiefly devoted to the adjudication of cases connected with seamen. The district courts (so first named in 1852) are inferior tribunals for the trial of petty actions, and correspond to courts of justice of the peace in towns: The Surrogate's Court has jurisdiction in the cases of wills in every form of procedure. The Court of Arbitration, established in 1875, is a court of the Chamber of Commerce, and has already been described. The courts of Oyer and Terminer and of Sessions are branches of the Supreme Court set apart for the trial of criminals. The police courts are six in number.
One of the most important events in the city of New York in 1873 was the annexation to it of a portion of the adjoining county of West- chester, beyond the Harlem River, comprising the villages of Mor-
Lewiston, Niagara County, and afterward at Black Rock, now a part of the city of Buffalo. Admitted to the bar as an attorney, he began practice as an attorney, first at Gaines, Orleans County, and afterward at Buffalo a short time. At the age of twenty- five (1843) he formed a law partnership with the late Sanford E. Church, who at the time of his death was chief justice of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York. with whom he continued in the practice of law at Albion until he (Davis) was appointed by Governor King, in the spring of 1857, to the office of justice of the Supreme Court of the State, to fill a vacancy. In the fall of that year Judge Davis was elected to the same office for a full term of eight years. At the expiration of that term he was re-elected for another like term. On account of impaired health he resigned the office in the fall of 1869, and was immediately afterward elected to a seat in the Forty-first Congress as a representative of the district composed of the counties of Monroc and Orleans.
Soon after his election to Congress Judge Davis formed a partnership in the practice of law in the city of New York, with the late Hon. Henry E. Davies, then lately chief justice of the Court of Appeals. Having been appointed by President Grant to the office of United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, he resigned his seat in Congress at the close of the long session, and entered upon the duties of his new office in July, 1870. He took an active part in the warfare against the ring of publie plunderers, and in 1872 he was nominated by the Committee of Seventy and also by the Republican convention for the office of justice of the Supreme Court of New York, in the First Judi- cial District, was elected, and took his seat on the bench on the first of Jannary, 1873. On the retirement from the bench of the Inte presiding Justice Ingraham, of that court, Judge Davis was assigned by Governor Dix to the position of presiding justice of the First Judicial Department, comprising the city of New York, for the remainder of the term, which important position he now fills.
Judge Davis has ever been a vigilant guardian of the public morals, whether in munici- pal or social affairs. He is a " terror to evil-doers" of whatever kind. His latest effort in the cause of public morals was his charge to the Grand Jury of the Court of Over and Terminer on November 12, 1883, directing them to make a thorough investigation of the gravest rumors against departments of the city government, especially of the comp- troller's, public works, and excise departments.
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risania, West Farms, and Kingsbridge, increasing its area about thirteen thousand acres, and so nearly doubling its former area of about four- teen thousand acres. The new territory forms the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth wards of the city .*
The same year (1873) was marked by financial disaster in the city and all over the country, and was the period of the beginning of a panic and years of great depression in business until the resumption of specie payments by the government and the banks in 1879. These disasters were mainly due to the reckless operations of speculators in the New York Stock Exchange for several years previously. That Exchange is the market-place for the purchase and sale of public stocks, bonds, and other securities. It is located in Broad, near Wall Street. The market value of a seat at the Stock Board is from $25,000 to $30,000. About three hundred thousand or four hundred thousand shares of stock change hands daily, and the value of railroad and miscellaneous bonds dealt in is from $2,000,000 to $3,000,000. In government bonds the transactions now (1883) average each day $400,000, while private operations by members amount to several millions.
The Stock Exchange building is in the style of the French Renais- sance. It is five stories in height, and has an L running through to Wall Street. Its frontage is 70 feet on Broad Street and 162 on New Street. The Board room is 141 feet by 53 feet in size. The remainder of the building is divided into offices. The vaults in the basement for the security of valuables are said to be the most extensive in the United States.
The scene upon the floor of the Stock Exchange during business hours is one of indescribable noise and confusion, especially during times of financial disturbance. Then it presents a most striking phase to the student of human nature. The business methods of the Exchange are also peculiar. It is estimated that $9,000,000,000 or $10,000,000,000 are nominally transferred from hand to hand for spec- ulative purposes in the course of a year. An expert broker asserts that 10,000 shares a day out of 300,000 shares sold would cover all sold on legitimate investment.+
* The city is now bounded on the north by the city of Yonkers, on the east by the Bronx and East rivers, on the south by the Bay of New York, including its islands (Gov- ernor's, Bedloe's, and Ellis's), and west by the Hudson River. Its extreme length is now a little more than sixteen miles, and its greatest width (from the Hudson to the Bronx) about four and a half miles.
+ Among the most eminent members of the Stock Exchange a short time before the
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In the summer of the opening year of this decade (1870) New York was disturbed by another riot (the precursor of a more serious one the next year) between two religious factions of the Irish population, known respectively as Orangemen and Ribbonmen. The former were Protestants, the latter were Roman Catholics. The Orangemen were in the habit of celebrating the battle of the Boyne (July 12, N.S. 1690) in Ireland, when William III. of England, the Protestant Prince of Orange, won a victory over the Roman Catholic troops, who were adherents of James II. These celebrations always produced ill-feeling among the Irish population.
. In 1870 the Orangemen celebrated the event by a parade and a picnic at Eln Park, on Ninth Avenue (the old Bloomingdale Road), where they were attacked by a gang of Irish laborers on the Boule- vard, near by. Missiles of every kind and firearms were used, and three persons were killed and several wounded. The riot was quelled by the police. This affair created great excitement among the respec- tive factions, and when the next anniversary approached the Ribbon- men opeuly threatened to attack the Orangemen if they dared to parade on July 12 (1871) ; whereupon Mayor Hall issued an order, through the chief of police, forbidding the parade. Great was the public indignation because of this cowardly surrender of the right of free assemblage to the dictation of a religious and political faction, and Governor Hoffman immediately revoked the mayor's order.
Most of the Orangemen had arranged to celebrate the day in New Jersey, but Gideon Lodge. of 160 men, taking advantage of the per- mission given, paraded in the city. They were escorted by numerous policemen and four regiments of militia. one of them (the Ninth) mounted. The streets were lined with spectators. When the proces- sion reached Eighth Avenue, between Twenty-fourth and Twenty- fifth streets, a shot fired from a tenement-house was the signal for a
panic of 1873 was Le Grand Lockwood, a short, stout man, whose almost youthful appearance showed that nearly thirty years' wear and tear in Wall Street had not touched heavily his mental or physical constitution. He was a remarkable man. The house of Lockwood & Co., which he founded. for many years had a controlling influence in the Stock Exchange. He had been in Wall Street since he was a boy sixteen years of age. In 1869 he had accumulated a vast fortune. His credit was unlimited. He built near Nor- walk, where he was born in 1821, the costliest mansion in Connecticut. He had engaged in great railway enterprises, and was regarded as a model man in every respect in Wall Street. A financial storm came and swept away his millions, and in February, 1872, Mr. Lockwood died, a comparatively poor man, for he gave up everything to his creditors. His pastor said at his funeral : " I have never known a man who endeavored to be more true to his country, his family, and his God, than Mr. Lockwood."
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general onslaught by a mob gathered there, composed of Ribbonmen and many of the dangerous class. Pavements were torn up and chim- neys were pulled down for materials for assault. These were rained on the procession without a sign of retaliation until private Page of the Ninth was shot from his horse. His assailant was immediately shot down, and a volley of bullets was fired on the rioters. The con- test was sharp and decisive. The inob was dispersed, and the proces- sion, having vindicated the right to free assemblage, soon afterward disbanded. The city was excited by a fearful panic, and business was suspended, but order was soon restored .*
In the summer of 1875 one of the most important works for facilitat- ing the operations of the immense railway freight and passenger traffic centring in the city, known as the Fourth (or Park) Avenue Improve- ment, was completed. The Grand Central Depot, between Forty- second and Forty-fifth streets and Fourth and Vanderbilt avenues, afforded a joint terminus for three trunk railways -- the New York Central and Hudson River, the Harlem, and the New Haven-but the approaches to it from the Harlem River were dangerous to human life on account of the continual passing of surface trains. To obviate this four tracks were sunk into an immense tunnel extending from Forty- second Street to One Hundredth Street, and thence by a viaduct and open cut to Harlem River. This immense engineering work cost about $6,000,000, one half of which was paid by the city and one half by the roads. +
The next year (1876)-the " centennial year"-a great public work. having a bearing on the commerce of the city of New York, was partially effected. At the lower end of Long Island Sound, at the entrance of the East River, is Hell Gate, a strait, so called because of
* In this conflict two soldiers, Samuel Wyatt and Henry C. Page, and one policeman. Henry Ford, were killed, and twenty-six policemen and soldiers were wounded .. Of the rioters, thirty-four men, one woman, a girl, and a boy were killed, and sixty-seven were wounded. Archbishop MeCloskey and others of the Roman Catholic clergy had, on the previous Sunday, earnestly requested their flocks not to interfere with the Orange pro- cession. They afterward excommunicated the leaders of the rioters.
t The distance from the Grand Central Depot to the Harlem River is four miles and a half, and this is the extent of the engineering work. Iron bridges on brick arches over the sunken tracks are at all the street crossings, while iron railings fence in the tracks on both sides. A part of the way the roads run through a partly brick-built and partly rock-cut tunnel, and over the Harlem Flats the roads are on a stone viaduct, the cross streets passing underneath through arches. The space for trains in the Grand Central Depot is covered by a glass and iron roof having a single arch of a span of 200 feet and an altitude at the crown of 110 feet. The entire length of the building is 695 feet, an ! its width 240 feet. AAbout 125 trains now (1883) arrive and depart daily.
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a dangerous whirlpool in it at certain times of the tide, caused by sunken ledges of rocks. In 1870 the National Goverment directed the removal of these obstructions to navigation. The engineering work was confided to General Newton. The drilling and charging of the rocks with nitro-glycerine occupied about six years, and in the summer of 1876 the whole mass was exploded, and mainly effected the desired result. The channel is now perfectly safe, but preparations for another explosion are in progress.
In 1876 the Emperor and Empress of Brazil visited the city, the first of reigning sovereigns who ever set foot on the soil of the Republic excepting the King of the Sandwich Islands, who came the year be- fore. The royal Brazilian visitors were informally received, and enter- tained as unostentatiously as if they had been private tourists of dis- tinction. Dom Pedro was earnestly interested in the study of our institutions, industries, and national resources. In July, after visiting the great exhibition of the world's industries at Philadelphia, he read his parting address to the people of the United States at a meeting of the Geographical Society at Chickering Hall, New York, and then departed for his broad dominions in South America.
In the same year (1876) the French residents of the city presented to it a bronze statue of Lafayette, executed by the eminent sculptor Bar- tholdi, in token of gratitude for the substantial sympathy of its citizens shown for France during the Franco-German war. This statue was unveiled on September 6th. It stands at the southern border of Union Square, between the bronze statues of Washington and Lincoln .*
* The bronze statue of Washington, at the south-east corner of Union Square, is eques- trian, of heroic size. The bronze statue of Lincoln, a simple standing figure, is at the south-west corner of Union Square. Both were executed by Henry Kirke Brown, who for many years has been a resident of Newburgh. The statue of Washington was erected many years ago, and was the first public work of art of the kind ever set up out of doors in the city of New York. The money to pay for it was collected chiefly through the exertions of James Lee, Benjamin H. Field, and other enterprising merchants and citi- zens. The statue of Lincoln was erected by popular subscriptions shortly after his assassination. Besides these and the statues in the Central Park, already mentioned, there is the bronze statue of Franklin in Printing.House Square, erected in 1867, at the expense of Captain De Groot, formerly a steamboat captain on the Hudson River. after a design by Plassman ; the bronze statue of William H. Seward, by Randolph Rogers, at the south-east corner of Madison Square, erected in 1976 ; and the statue of Washington, by J. Q. A. Ward, erected in front of the United States Sub-treasury building, standing on the site of the old Federal Hall, where Washington was inaugurated the first President of the United States. It was erected by the Chamber of Commerce, and was unveiled on the centennial anniversary of the evacuation of the city by the British, which took place on November 25, 1783. At the unveiling George William Curtis, LL. D., pronounced an
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY.
It was during this decade that the elevated-railway system was in- troduced into the city of New York, the question of rapid transit in the city practically solved, and its vast usefulness to every class of citi- zens demonstrated beyond question.
For many years the necessity for means of more rapid transit in the city, on account of its peculiar shape, than the surface railways and omnibus lines afforded, had been seriously felt by all classes of citizens. Various projects to accomplish this result were proposed and aban- doned. At length an elevated railway seemed to be the most feasible, and the "Gilbert" road was begun in Greenwich Street in 1866. In due time two companies procured charters-the Gilbert and New York Elevated. The Gilbert was at first an object of ridicule, and after a sickly existence of about five years it was "sold out by the sheriff." The company was reorganized in 1871, but the enterprise was so ham- pered by the strong opposition of the surface railway companies, and by injunctions and other obstacles in the courts and the Legislature, that it seemed at one time as if the work must be abandoned. But the roads had continually gained friends and extended their lines. A few courageous spirits had kept up the good fight. They had carried the legal question to the Court of Appeals for adjudication.
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