History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 131

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1354

USA > New York > Westchester County > History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I > Part 131

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march into Mount Vernon. They came down the White Plains road, where it runs into Fourth Avenue, Mount Vernon; threw stones at windows in First Street, at the corner of Fourth Avenue, and in Fourth Avenue itself ; shouted, flourished sticks and yelled ; but after marching a little way down First Street, turned back at the bridge over the New Haven track, known as "Scott's Bridge," and went away, dispersing to their homes.

Thus ended the last actual attempt at violence in the county of Westchester, of which any trace ex- ists. The Mount Vernon affair is mentioned in none of the journals accessible at the time of writing, and the facts have been collected with considerable diffi- culty.

Two of the ringleaders of the mob, who marched at their head in Mount Vernon, were recognized by one of the witnesses, but it is not necessary at this late date to mention their names. One is siuce dead ; the other was, for several years after the war, a town official and one of the best-natured of men at ordi- nary times. The whole history of the little fracas shows the state of excitement into which the more ig- norant people of the county were worked by the in- flammatory appeals of the papers opposed to the war, and how nearly the county was disgraced by blood- shed. Men, who at other times would not have harmed a kitten, were frenzied with imagiuary wrongs and ready for any violence, short of actual murder. That they were not ready for that, save under strong provocation, is shown by the fact that they spared the rash little drummer-boy, who actually rode into the midst of them in uniform.

His horse was struck by a few stones, but they could not have seriously intended to hurt the boy, or they could have done so when they had him in their power, through his own iguorance of the duty of a scout. His name was Joseph H. Porter, and he afterwards enlisted in the Thirteenth New York Cavalry, from New York City, and served to the close of the war. His statements are corroborated, as to the behavior of the rioters iu Mount Vernon itself, by Mr. Donald Ferguson, of Mount Vernon, Mr. A. B. Kitson, one of the Home Guard, now a resident of Boston, Mass., and others .1

1 The above account of the part taken by the draft rioters at Mount Vernon has been obtained with considerable difficulty, on ac- count of the lapse of time since the events occurred, and the indisposi- tion of most citizens of the place to speak of what they considered a disgrace to the village.

The main facts-that a mob was organized near Tuckahoe, with the object of riot and arson at Mount Vernon ; that the mob actually marched to the village ; passed through First (or Front) St., and retired without doing any damage of consequence ; and that their arrival was signaled by a rash little drummer boy -seem to be fully established.

The Home Guards, as I learn from one of the surviving members, first organized on Tuesday afternoon, and elected William H. H. Barker their captain. They expected an attack in the night, and threw out pick- ets towards Scott's Bridge, at the foot of Eleventh Avenue, in Mount Vernon, the main body remaining at Hoole's shop, in the village. The pickets remained out all night and came in at daylight on Wednesday morning, when the whole force was dismissed, the danger being judged

502

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

FROM THE RIOTS TO THE CLOSE OF THE WAR .- The suppression of the draft riots in New York City, the capture of Chattanooga, and the general advance of the Armies of the Potomac and the West, in the spring of 1864, had their influence in Westchester County to effect a change in the conduct of the lead- ing papers. In Yonkers, in particular, this change was judged so necessary that, on the 7th of May, the editor of the Herald, of that town, formally re- signed his place, and the Herald passed into the control of a stock company, known as the " Yonkers Democratic Publishing Association," under which the paper (which seems, from the farewell of the editor, to have been in a far from flourishing con- dition) was carried on to the close of the war. Its tone, under the new control, is no longer one of open hostility to the prosecution of the war, but deals chiefly in personal attacks on Mr. Lincoln, on account of his " frivolous nature " and " buffoonery." On the 21st of May, 1864, the celebrated forged proclama- tion of Joe Howard and the suppression of the copies of the World and Journal of Commerce, which contained them, are noticed, with much outcry for the " liberty of the press." The split in the Repub- lican party, threatened by the nomination of Fre- mont, under the inspiration of Gratz Brown (who afterwards ran with Horace Greeley, in 1872, on the Democratic ticket), is noticed, with unconcealed hopes of a favorable issue for the Democracy.

The cry of " corruption" was thus raised in the same issue of the paper,-

"The stench of official corruption in Washington at this moment is ranker than that even arising from the thousands of unburied bodies of horses and meu, that strew the soil of Virginia. There may have been

over for the time. When the mob really came, the few men who were at the cartridge factory and elsewhere were not regularly organ" ized.

The route of the mob to the village was down the extension of Fourth Avenue, and when they had made their short march they weut to Gould's Hotel, where they consumed a great deal of liquor. They were dissuaded from fighting by promineut citizens of the place, among whom the names of Judge Stevens, Judge Pemberton, George Gould and Darius Lyon are mentioned, as the meu who really saved Mount Veruon from a bloody riot.

As the rioters came along, they presscd into the service every man they met on the road.

On their return they passed by the houses of John G. Satterley and John F. Jarvis, who then resided at what was afterwards known as " The Corson Place." Part of them were on foot and part driving in all sorts of vehicles. Part had guns or pistols, a few old swords, but the majority had nothing but clubs made out of fence pickets. In frout of Mr. Sat- terley's house, and in plain sight of Mr. Jarvis's, they had a drunken fight, in which some shots were fired, of which more than one struck the porch pillars of Mr. Satterley's honse. A chib, in the course of this fight, was thrown over Mr. Satterley's fence into his garden, and was kept, for some years after, by the family, as a relic of the draft riots.

The wituesses examined by me, in investigating the affair, unitc iu their stories as to the above facts.

They are Mr. A. B. Kitson, of 37 Sonth St., Boston, Mass. (then a member of the Mount Vernon Home Guards) ; Mrs. Higgius, of Mount Vernon (at the time of riot Miss Eva Satterley) ; Mrs. John G. Satter- ley, her mother ; Mr. Johu F. Jarvis, of Mount Vernon ; aud Mr. Joseph H. Porter, the drummer-boy of the story, who afterwards entered the 13th N. Y. Cavalry and served to the close of the war.

Mr. John G. Satterley died a few years since.

corruption under previous administrations ; but under that of 'honest old Abe ' it is positively frightful."

On the 28th the Yonkers Herald wants General Dix punished " by damages in a civil action," since he " cannot be reached by the State courts, or court- martial," for having closed the World and Journal of Commerce, because there is "no hope in Congress "-it is "too thoroughly servile." "No Senate, in the cor- ruptest days of Rome, registered every decree of its military tyrant with more slavish alacrity than is dis- played by the administration majority iu fulfilling the will of Abraham Lincoln."

Noticing the nomination of Lincoln at the regular Republican Convention, the Yonkers Herald remarks : "Another four years of 'Honest old Abe' would leave nothing but the shadow of a Republic on the American continent." It thanks the Eastern State Journal and Highland Democrat for the welcome extended by them to the paper under its new management. On the 4th of June the name of the paper is changed to the Gazette (under which it still exists) and a great " boom " begins in the advertising columns, from the quantity of county advertising thrown in, as in the case of the Eastern State Journal, by the county officials. Ou the same day begins a series of controversies with the Yonkers Statesman, formerly the Examiner, the leading Republican news- paper of the county, with regard to accusations against the Gazette of "disloyalty." The extract is,-

" We confess to the smallest possible amount of respect for Republican professions of 'loyalty,' or Republican charges of 'disloyalty.' The word is not American, uor Republican even -here it originally expressed the treasonable attachment of the loyal Tories to George the Third, in his wanton war against American liberty ; and, as now used, it generally means partisan devotion to Abraham Lincoln, not in resistance to a Southern Rebelliou, but in a would-be second war ou the liberties of American citizens."

June 11th comes the notice of the Democratic Convention being called by August Belmont, on which the editor exhorts his readers that "Civil liberty cannot survive another term of Abrahanı Lincoln." Next week comes an article on "Recon- struction," from which we extract,-

"?What is the political relatiou of the rebellious States to the Union ? Ilave their own acts and ordinances taken them out of it, as they theni- selves claim ? If not, has the President, or Congress even, the right to expel States from the Union ? If these States are still members of the U'nion, can new States be carved out of them without their own consent, against the prohibition of the Constitution on that head ? On some of these points we entertain very decided opinions, which we refrain, how- ever, from expressing in this article."

From thence, through July and August, the Gazette is much exercised at the " progress of military des- potism" in regard to the suppression of the bogus proclamation, and especially when the New York grand jury, appealed to by Judge Russell to investi- gate in the matter, considers it "inexpedient to en- quire into the action of the general government as to certain newspapers in this city." The Gazette calls on the judge to summon another grand jury, and on Oakey Hall, the district attorney, to do his best to

503

THE CIVIL WAR, 1860-65.

secure a conflict between the State of New York and the United States on the subject, saying,-

" We sincerely trust the authorities of the state will not be intimidated by this declaration of war upon them by Mr. Lincolu. Let it be made known to him that he canuot play the dictator over the people and laws of the State of New York, or let us prepare for worse than Austrian slavery."

From this time to the middle of September the Gazette is occupied with definitions of principles, such as this : "He who avows that he is not for the Union, without conditions, is disunionist, let him be Abra- ham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis. . . . The only Union man is he who is for the Union, without condi- tions." There are also a number of stories about the " branding" of United States recruits, which are re- peated from week to week, with the obvious intention of discouraging ignorant men from enlisting.

As the election approaches, the Gazette becomes more and more pronounced in its appeals to the people in favor of slavery, such as this :

" THE DIFFERENCE .- The Democratic Platform is, the Union at all hazards; the Republican Platform is, Aholition at all hazards. The dif- ference between the candidates, Lincoln is for the U'niou, without slav- ery ; Mcclellan is for the Union, with or without slavery ; Lincoln is for the Union on certain conditions ; Mcclellan, at all hazards ; Lincoln has been tried and found wanting ; Mcclellan has always shown himself equal to the emergency. With this brief and intelligent view of the merits of the present contest, no thinking mau will hesitate regarding how or where his vote shall be cast."

From henceforth (October 1, 1864) to election the paper is full of reports of mass-meetings, political advertising and appeals to voters to "Register, regis- ter," till November 13th, when the conclusion is, "The grand old Democratic party of the State of New York yields the battle-field, covered with all the glory a nobly contested struggle can confer upon it." A touch of humor is conferred on this issue of the paper by a glance at the advertising column, exactly opposite to the editorial. The advertisement is as follows:

"The Re-election of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, and The election of ANDREW JOHNSON, and The UNIVERSAL UNION TRIUMPH will be cele-

brated in Yonkers, Tuesday evening, November 15th, by a TORCHILIGIIT PROCESSION and ILLUMINATION. AIl UNION men and LOYAL citizens are cordially invited to take a share in the celebration. Yon- kers, Nov. 9, 1864.

"N. P. OFIS, S.c.

JOHN V. PADDON, Chairman."

The Gazette subsides after this till December 3d, when a sermon is preached, from which we cull :

" CHARITY.

" The meddlesome notions of New England Puritanism ... found a congenial topic in the slavery question, and decreed, at an early day, that there should no longer be peace on earth or good will among men unless the negroes were emancipated. . . . The full fruits of such teach- ings are just now visible in the want of charity manifested by the sup- porters of Mr. Lincoln's administration towards their political opponents. Differences of opinion . . . are made the subject . . . of unjust charges of disloyalty and treason to the country. . .. This bitterness aud un- charity are a stain on the national character. They constitute a state of feeling discreditable to charitable people and which deserves the severest

condemnation. For the credit of our common humanity, we wish there were less of it prevalent among us."

December 24th the Gazette says :

"Any President, not wedded to a line of policy which he knows the South will never acquiesce in,-the abolition of slavery, -would see that it is just the time to extend the olive-branch of peace " : but announces, with great relief, that the " Yonkers quota is at last filled." Great troubleseems to have existed on this point of quotas during the year, for there are fie- queut appeals to the " rich men of Yonkers to come forward, especially those that have not been drafted, and help the rest to buy substitutes." This is especially the case in the issue of June 18th, when tho drafts were threatened.

February 4, 1865, records the passage of the constitutional amendment against slavery with a great lamentation as heing "irritating to the South." February 11th records the fact that "in the Legislature of this State the Democrats all voted against the adoption of the amend- ment."

February 18th, comes the following :

" If Mcclellan had been elected, the Albany Argus truthfully says, the people of the South, who long for peace, would have been looking as eagerly for the Fourth of March as the Democrats of the North. Gen- eral Mcclellan would have treated with the States of the Confederacy, separately, for a return to the Union ; would have appealed to the peo- ple ; would have concerted with the generals of the Confederacy to de- tach their armies from the dynasty at Richmond."

March 11th the paper rejoices over the rejection by New Jersey, Dela- warennd Kentucky of the Constitutional Amendment, and hopes that one more State will follow their example, so as to make the adoption in- possible.

The quota continues to be a subject of grave anxiety, aud the fact is noticed that Yonkers has spent $195,000 in town bonds, with $144,000 in county bonds, in filling the different quotas.

April 8th, " Richmond is ours at last." The paper wants a " magnan- imious peace and amnesty." Notes the fact that "three hundred millions have been paid out in four months to bounty jumpers," and that "only two hundred thousand of the half million called out in July, 1864, have reached the field."

April 15th, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." "Stop the draft." Very bitter flings at Jefferson Davis, in a burlesque proclama- tion.

April 22d comes a sudden change. "The National Bereavement." The assassination of MIr. Lincoln is referred to thus: "The darkest crime that ever occurred in the history of this nation has been commit- ted, and forever after will leave a foul blot on its pages . . . Party lines are obliterated in the presence of the nation's dead. . . . He has been removed when we least could afford to lose him . . . Our beloved Presi- dent . . . His well-knowu kindness of heart.

The editor, iu commenting on the assassination, admits that it "might have been a wise move at the beginning of the war or during the darker days of the struggle ;" but regrets it as being so " foolish and useless" at the moment when it occurred. Ile pleads for mercy to the South, and so closes the connection of the Yonkers Gazette with the history of the war in Westchester County.

There was quite a little excitement after the close of hostilities, when every one wns hastening, like the editor of the Gazette, to addthis kick to the fallen Davis, as to a plot to blow up the Croton Dam, which was alleged to have been seriously considered in Canada under the orders of the notorious Jake Thompson.

A man who claimed to be a government spy, and who passed hy the aliases of James Watson Wallace and Sanford Conover, in his testimony in Washington, swore to having had conversations with the aforesaid Jake in January, 1865, concerning this and other plots.

Later in the year (July, 1865), in the Toronto Globe, appeared a letter from this same Wallace or Conover, in which he, on 20th March of that year, makes to Thompson the proposition to have the dam destroyed, ou the ground that "one of my aunts, a Virginia lady, an enemy of every- thing Yankee, owns the land on which the dam is built, and her resi- dence and out-buildings are only a few rods from the abutments of the work. This will afford you some idea of the facilities we have at command to accomplish our object. The necessary men for the business are engaged."

This letter appears to be genuine and shows on its face that it was a mere decoy to get Thompsou to answer explicity that he approved such a scheme. Instead of this, the man who took him the letter swears that he said : " Is the mnan mad ? Is he a fool ?" and tabooed the whole proposition.

504

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

The scheme, as hatched by the United States detective, was an in- genious one, to make Thompson think the project of blowing up the Croton Dam a feasible one, but, as a serious measure, it never had any existence, outside of the brain of the detective.

THE AID SOCIETIES .- We have noticed, under the head of the "Two Years' Volunteers," the patriotic manner in which all parties joined, in Port Chester, in the effort to avert suffering from the families of the first company that went from the county. Other towns were by no means idle in the good work ; but it is much to be regretted that the records of these societies have, for the most part, perished, and that particulars of names and of the work done are not accessible.

The local papers from which they might be gleaned have for the most part perished, the editors keeping no regular files; and the ·references to Westchester County in the city papers are few and far between. From the New York Herald of August 17, 1861, we learn, by an item, that the town of Bedford held a fair on the 16th, under the auspices of the ladies of Kato- nah, in which Judge Robertson auctioned off the goods, and read a letter from Mrs. Lincoln, stating that she had presented the "Havelocks " sent from Katonah to the Second, Ninth, Twenty-seventh and Tammany Regiments, and that they had been received " thankfully and with cheers."

The town of Cortlandt, thanks to the care of Mr. Coffin S. Brown, who was supervisor at the time, has preserved the names of the members of the first soci- ety raised in that town, April 27, 1861. The officers of this, which was denominated the "Soldiers' Relief Association," were : President, Mrs. Daniel Jones ; Secretary, Miss Amelia B. Mills ; Treasurer, Miss Sarah Taylor. The committee to raise funds was ;- Mrs. John B. Mills, Mrs. Conrad Quin, Mrs. Edward Mills, Mrs. Joseph Mason, Misses Amanda Wright and Augusta Taylor. This association held weekly meet- ings throughout the war, sent out large supplies of lint, bandages, clothing and supplies for the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, and otherwise did noble work, being one of those bands of noble women in the Northern States who, together, managed to raise the sum of seventeen millions of dollars, by strictly vol- untary contributions, for those great charitable so- cieties.

No record is accessible of the work done by this Cortlandt committee ; but in this, as in all else, Port Chester sets a good example, by the careful way in which her papers were preserved by Mr. Marshall, the treasurer.

These records, already referred to, under the topic of the two years' volunteers, show that the first fervor of patriotism required much stimulation to keep it at a comfortable point. The first week's work in Port Chester left the treasurer with a balance of over two hundred dollars to distribute; but the next, in spite of new contributions, the fund sunk to eighty dollars, and the Tituses, father and son, seem to have had to stir themselves to get subscriptions. By the

4th of June the balance rose to a hundred and eighty dollars; on the 8th, Mr. S. K. Satterlee ap- pears to have taken up the business of collecting, for he brought in two hundred and six dollars in a lump, all of which was paid out the same day, for the families of soldiers, or to the military commit- tee for expenses of recruiting. The balance sunk, by the 7th of July, to seventeen dollars and ninety cents, the payments made being in small sums to wives or parents of soldiers, on a weekly allowance, scaled according to the number of mouths to feed. The low state of the fund seems to have started the committee to work again raising subscriptions, for, on the 8th, the balance rose to two hundred dollars, brought in by members of the committee. During the rest of the month the debit side of the treasurer's cash account is empty, while the drafts for families are unceasing till the 20th of July, from which time to the 23d there was a stream of subscriptions, attest- ing the way in which the news of the disaster at Bull Run (July 21st) had waked up Port Chester. The end of the month left the balance, in spite of the same drafts as usual, $333.63, which was increased, on the 11th of August, by fifty dollars from George Cornell and five dollars from William P. Abendroth. John Palmer is credited, August 20th, with fifty dollars ; September 12th, John A. Merritt gave a hundred dol- lars; but these are the only items worthy of particu- lar notice, and the aspect of the account was by no means encouraging-the givers being few, while the wives of soldiers, on the other side of the page, in- creased in number, as the weeks went on and the war progressed. By the 25th of September the balance sunk to sixty-six dollars. All the efforts of the com- mittee to increase the subscriptions seem to have been useless, for the debit side of " cash " continued to grow smaller and smaller, till, by the 5th of October, 1861, it sunk to its lowest point during the war, seven dol- lars and eighty-nine cents. This state of things excited the committee to redoubled exertions, and they raised one hundred and fifty dollars next day ; but by the end of the month, in spite of this and two hundred more, the balance on hand was only twenty dollars and forty-nine cents.

The committee was reaching the limits when such work was a proper measure for the relief of the fami- lies of volunteers. By the end of the year the fact is revealed that the members had raised, by voluntary subscription, in the village of Port Chester, the sum of $3289.25, and had expended, for relief, $3215.57, almost of all which was given in sums of from three to six or seven dollars per week. During the early months of 1862 the amounts contributed for the re- lief increased notably, and especially do the names of the donors increase in number, every member of the committee seeming to have been hard at work, while other people were inspired by them to "go and do likewise," so that the balance never fell below a hun- dred dollars, and was generally nearer two hundred,

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THE CIVIL WAR, 1860-65.

in spite of increasing appeals for help. At the close of the " volnntary period," as it may be ealled, which the system of helping the families of volunteers gave way to the jnster and more practical method of relief by town and county bonds, the record shows that there had been raised, in Port Chester, $4403.75, of which the balance remaining on hand, when the first bonds were received, was $218.53-a result that shows, even at the present day, when the paper is yellow with age, the ink faded and brown, that the hearts of the people of Port Chester, in the persons of their relief committee, were in the right place during the war.

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History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 131

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co. Number of Pages: 1354

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1354