USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, Vol. II > Part 23
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In all probability the secret history of this terrible affair and its real instigators still remains unwritten. The number that perished therein is unknown. The killed and wounded were estimated by the police at one thousand. The mob and the colored population suffered most severely, the loss of the military forces and the police being comparatively slight. The city subse- quently paid about $1,500,000 in indemnification for the losses sustained through the riot.
Had the militia been in New York, it is not probable that the riot would have lasted a single day. As it was, it is doubtful whether any outbreak of such magnitude was ever subdued in so short a time, with such slender
CITY OF NEW YORK. 833
forces and so little loss. The draft met with like oppo- sition everywhere ; in Boston a formidable riot broke out, which was suppressed by a strong military organi- zation, and similar disturbances occurred in several of the Eastern and Western States. The Common Coun- cil subsequently passed a relief bill to pay $300 com- mutation to every drafted man in indigent circum- stances. The draft was resumed in the autumn, and was peacefully concluded.
New auxiliaries soon strengthened the army and les- sened the necessity of conscription. On the 3d of De- cember the Committee on Volunteering of the Union League Club obtained permission from the war depart- ment to raise a colored regiment, to be known as the Twentieth Regiment of Colored Troops, to whom no bounties would be paid, and who would receive ten dollars per month. In spite of these hard conditions, in fourteen days the work was so far advanced that the committee felt justified in applying for leave to raise another regiment, which was granted on the 5th of January, 1864. On the 27th of January this regiment, the Twenty-sixth, was likewise full, and authority was asked and received to raise a third, the Thirty-first. On account of delay in obtaining arms, the Twentieth Regiment did not leave for New Orleans until the 5th of March, when, after a presentation of colors from the ladies of New York in front of the Club House, where they were addressed by Charles King, the president of Cohnabia College, they marched down Broadway a thousand strong, escorted by the Club, amidst a bril- lant ovation, which exhibited a striking contrast to the scene of a few months before when their race had been hunted through the streets. 53
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HISTORY OF THE
In December, 1863, C. Godfrey Gunther, a New York merchant, was elected mayor by the democratic party, who thus regained the ascendancy in the ex- ecutive department of the city goverment.
The spring of 1864 was rendered noticeable by a series of fairs, held in all the large cities through the North, for the benefit of the United States Sanitary Commission. Chief among these was the great Metro- politan Fair in New York City, which was opened on the 5th of April, and which netted $1,100,000, for the relief of the soldiers, a sum exceeding that produced by any other fair in the country. Two large buildings were erected for the purpose, one in Fourteenth street, near Sixth Avenue, and the other in Seventeenth street, on Union Square, both of which were filled with stalls loaded with articles for sale, and presided over by the most beautiful and fashionable women of the city. This fair was the ruling sensation of the day, and no pains were spared to render it attractive. The most striking feature in the Seventeenth street building was the Knickerbocker Kitchen, which was fitted up in the style of the old Dutch Colony times, with genuine relies furnished by the descendants of Stuyvesant and his contemporaries, who, arrayed in the fashion of those ancient times, served doughnuts and waffles to the curious spectators. The larger building in Fourteenth street contained several departments apart from the fair proper ; among others, a fine picture-gallery, rich in works of art, loaned or donated by the owners, a hall of arms and trophies, a curiosity-shop, which was a veritable bazaar of quaint relies, and a Sunny Side pavilion, wherein were assembled a choice collection
835
CITY OF NEW YORK.
of mementoes of Washington Irving, that kingly author to whom New York claims the honor of having given birth, and whose early home, now swept away by the tide of business, might long have been seen in William, between John and Fulton streets. The fair was in every respect a success, and remains one of the pleas- antest reminiscences of the times. A sanitary fair had been held in Brooklyn, in February, from which over five hundred thousand dollars were realized.
The opening of the campaign was gloomy. The Union forces met with reverse after reverse in Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina, and the bloody massacre at Fort Pillow filled the public mind with grief and indignation. Repeated calls were made for troops, and New York continued her inexhaustible supplies of men and money. According to the official report of the Committee on Volunteering, the total number of men furnished by New York City from the beginning of the war to the 1st of October, 1864, was one hundred and twenty-six thousand three hundred and ten.
In March, Ulysses S. Grant was appointed Lieuten- ant-General, and placed in command of the armies of the United States. He immediately made preparations for an advance upon Richmond, and early in May the final struggle commenced, and with it the most sangui- nary season of the war. This bloody May will long be remembered ; the battles of the Wilderness and Spott- sylvania Court House, favorable as was their result, appalled the public by the terrible loss of life which they involved. The whole sumner was one of combat ; but the era of decided success began with Farragut's victory in Mobile Bay; the fall of Atlanta followed ;
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HISTORY OF THE
then came Sheridan's famous ride through the Shenan- doah Valley, Stoneman's raid and Sherman's triumphal march along the seaboard ; and the year ended with the capture of Savannah and the fall of Fort Fisher:
The presidential election was the great event of the autumn. A recurrence of the riots was apprehended in New York, and vigilant measures were taken by the authorities to provide against this emergency. A report having been spread that rebel agents in Canada designed to send large bodies of men into the United States, with a view to vote at the approaching election, General Dix, who was then in command of the Depart- ment of the East, issued an order requiring all persons from the insurrectionary States to report themselves for registry. In pursuance with this order, several hundred Southerners appeared at the head-quarters of General Peck, No. 37 Bleecker street, and were duly registered.
On the 2d of November the mayor received a tele- gram from the secretary of war, informing him that there was a conspiracy on foot to fire the principal Northern cities on the day of the election. The mayor answered, expressing his disbelief in such an attempt, but promising to take precautions against it, and to invoke the Federal assistance if necessary. The gov- ernment deemed it advisable, however, without inter- fering with the election, to procure ample means of protection, and for this purpose, despatched General Butler from Fortress Monroe to New York, to take command of the troops in the city, where he arrived on the 4th of November. On the ensuing Monday seven thousand troops landed at Fort Hamilton and Gov- ernor's Island. The next morning these troops were
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CITY OF NEW YORK.
embarked on steamers and stationed off the Battery, and in the North and East Rivers, where they remained for the next three days, within call in case of need. The day passed off' quietly, and Abraham Lincoln was the second time elected President of the United States.
The alarm had not been groundless ; scarcely were the troops removed from the city, when on the night of the 25th of November the St. James, St. Nicholas and Metropolitan Hotels, Lafarge House, Barnum's Museum, United States Hotel, Astor House, Love- joy's Hotel, Tammany Hotel, New England House, Howard House, Belmont House, Fifth Avenue Hotel, Hartford Hotel, and some shipping and a lumber yard on the North River, were one after the other discovered to be in flames. The incendiaries, fur- nished with small travelling bags containing the ma- terials for destruction, had taken rooms at the divers hotels like ordinary lodgers, and closing the shut- ters of their apartments, had torn up the bedding, saturated it and the furniture with phosphorus and turpentine, and, after lighting a slow match, locked the doors and left the houses to burn with their inmates. The precautions which they had taken to avert a pre- mature discovery foiled the attempt; the flames were smothered in the tightly closed rooms, and were speedily extinguished. One of the participators in this horrible crime, Robert Kennedy, was subsequently arrested and hung, having first confessed that he had formed one of a party of eight, organized for the purpose of firing the principal buildings in New York City, in retaliation for Sheridan's raid in the Shenandoah Valley.
In the autumn of 1861 Professor Goldwin Smith
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HISTORY OF THE
visited the United States to witness the presidential election, and was received with enthusiasm, as the rep- resentative of the band that had nobly upheld the cause of the Union in Europe from the beginning of the struggle. Prominent among these were Cobden, Bright, Mill, Cairnes and Smith, in England ; and De Gasparin, Laboulaye, Cochin and Martin in France. Count De Gasparin was the earliest champion of the North in Europe ; his book, The Uprising of a Great People, which was published in Paris almost simultaneously with the breaking out of the conflict, appeared in New York about the time of the disaster of Bull Run, and flashed like inspiration from Maine to California, re- viving the drooping spirits of the nation. Augustin Cochin's great work on the abolition of slavery ap- peared just before the emancipation proclamation, and equalled a whole phalanx in support of that beneficent measure ; Edouard Laboulaye, by his brilliant lectures before the College of France and his successful extrava- ganza, Paris in America, did more than almost any other man to mould French public opinion in favor of the Union ; and Henri Martin, the celebrated historian, never failed in all his writings to express his cordial sympathy with the American Republic. Across the Channel, John Bright, Richard Cobden, John Stuart Mill and Professors Cairnes and Smith, labored with equal zeal to defend the North against the bias of their govern- ment, which so nearly involved us in foreign war. This brilliant galaxy of names will rank side by side with that of Lafayette and Beammarchais in the eyes of posterity. Goldwin Smith met a cordial welcome in New York. On the 12th of November a public recep-
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CITY OF NEW YORK.
tion was given him by the Union League Club, at their rooms in Union Square, where a magnificent banquet was served, presided over by Charles Butler, of New York, at which a large number of the most distin- guished men of the country were present, together with Auguste Laugel, the able advocate of the Union in the columns of Revue des Duex Mondes.
At the risk of some repetition, we recur to the Union League Club, in order to give in this place a brief sketch of its rise and progress, without which a chronicle of the times would be signally incomplete, and which must remain a matter of historic interest in the annals of New York.
The part borne through the war by the club, which the Hon. Schuyler Colfax, speaker of the House of Representatives, fitly characterized as that " noble or- ganization on which the government leaned in the darkest hours of trial and peril," forms so illustrious a feature in the recent history of New York, that some sketch of its organization, progress and results becomes a necessary appendage to a complete history of the national metropolis. The proposition of Mayor Fer- nando Wood in January, 1861, that the City of New York should withdraw, not simply from the Union, but from the State, and become a free city, afforded a strik- ing proof of the absence of national American sentiment in the democratic masses, to whose sympathies the mayor appealed ; and the subsequent efforts of leading democrats to secure, through Lord Lyons, British inter- vention in our domestic affairs, indicated the strength of their feeling in behalf of the rebellion, and the grounds upon which its leaders had confidently counted
840
HISTORY OF THE
upon the effective sympathy of New York. Subsequent exhibitions of that same un-American sentiment were afforded by Mayor Gunther's attempt to arrest the foreign emigration, which flowed in as life-blood to invigorate the republic in the struggle, and to check the joy of our citizens at the victories of our soldiers and the triumph of the American flag.
In January, 1863, the Union League Club was formed by gentlemen who had already, for some two years, been associated in the effort to encourage and sustain the government in the struggle with the rebellion, and who now found it essential to present an united front in behalf of the true spirit of the nation against the in- sidious treason which lurked all around them, and against " the dwarfed and pinched ideas of a nationality which, unable to embrace the expanse of a continent, or the dignity and welfare of a nation, was restricted to the interest of a faction, the confines of a state, even the suburbs of a city." They felt that the purifying of the social circles of the national metropolis would tend more than anything else to brighten everywhere the national atmosphere.
The call issued was for the formation of a club, to be known as "The National Club," the object of which should be to cultivate a profound national devotion, as distinguished from state or sectional feeling, to strength- en a love and respect for the Union and discourage whatever tended to give undue prominence to purely local interests, to discuss and urge upon public attention large and noble schemes of national advancement, to elevate and uphold the popular faith in republican government, to dignify politics as a pursuit and a study,
841
CITY OF NEW YORK.
to awaken a practical interest in public affairs in those who had become discouraged, to enforce a sense of the sacred obligations inherent in citizenship, and finally to bring to bear upon the national life all that a body of earnest and. patriotie men could accomplish by united effort.
The call was promptly responded to by the influen- tial gentlemen to whom it was addressed, and on the 6th of February the articles of association were adopted under the name of "The Union League Club."
The articles were brief and simple, and appealed to loyal citizens of all parties. They read as follows :
"1. The condition of membership shall be absolute "and unqualified loyalty to the government of the "United States, and unwavering support of its efforts "for the suppression of the rebellion.
"2. The primary object of the association shall be to " discountenance and rebuke by moral and social influ- "ences all disloyalty to the Federal Government, and " to that end the members will use every proper means "in public and private.
"3. We pledge ourselves by every means in our "power, collectively and individually, to resist to the " uttermost every attempt against the territorial integ- "rity of the nation."
The five hundred members who were presently en- rolled largely represented the olden respectability and the substantial worth of New York. Among the great commercial names were those of Astor, Bininger, Benk- ard, Brooks, Brown, Chittenden, Constable, Delane, Drew, Forbes, Grinnell, Greene, Griswold, Haggerty, Hall, Jones, Lorillard, Le Roy, Marshall, Minturn, Nye,
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HISTORY OF THE
Parish, Pell, Prime, Roosevelt, Sherman, Schultz, Spof- ford, Stewart, Schieffelin, Sturges, Vermilye and Wolfe. Descendants of the Dutch, English and Hugue- nots prominent in our colonial and revolutionary history, appear in the names of Beekman, De Forest, De Peys- ter, Fish, Gerry, Hamilton, Jay, King, Murray, Putnam, Stuyvesant, Suydam, Van Duzen, Van Nostrand, Van Rensselaer, Van Wart, Van Winkle and Winthrop. Names of note in American literature, law, science and art : Bancroft, Bristed, Bryant, Butler, Irving, Sedg- wick, Webster, Tuckerman ; Bonney, Evarts, Bowne, Cutting, Emmet, Murray, Hoffman, Noyes, Stoughton, Strong and Swan ; LeGrand Cannon, Cyrus Field, Cisco, Bacon, Delafield, Doremus and Joy ; Blodgett, Cropsey, Hunt, Johnston, Kensett ; with such repre- sentation of modern Europe as Iselin from France, Det- mold and Lieber from Germany, and Botta from Italy.
In March a committee of five were appointed to confer with similar committees of the Union League Clubs in Philadelphia and Baltimore, with reference to the establishment of a common basis of action, and in April a committee of one hundred gentlemen from the Philadelphia Club, embracing names equally eminent in law, literature, science, and commerce, came to New York, were welcomed by the Union League in their new Club House, entertained at Delmonico's, and assisted at the grand Sumter celebration in Union Square.
On the Fourth of July the Clubs had arranged for a joint celebration of the day, and a further conference at Philadelphia ; but the rebel invasion of Pennsylvania gave to the national anniversary new memories on the
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HISTORY OF THE
Parish, Pell, Prime, Roosevelt, Sherman, Schultz, Spof- ford, Stewart, Schieffelin, Sturges, Vermilye and Wolfe. Descendants of the Dutch, English and Hugue- nots prominent in our colonial and revolutionary history, appear in the names of Beekman, De Forest, De Peys- ter, Fish, Gerry, Hamilton, Jay, King, Murray, Putnam, Stuyvesant, Suydam, Van Duzen, Van Nostrand, Van Rensselaer, Van Wart, Van Winkle and Winthrop. Names of note in American literature, law, science and art : Bancroft, Bristed, Bryant, Butler, Irving, Sedg- wick, Webster, Tuckerman ; Bonney, Evarts, Bowne, Cutting, Emmet, Murray, Hoffinan, Noyes, Stoughton, Strong and Swan ; LeGrand Cannon, Cyrus Field, Cisco, Bacon, Delafield, Doremus and Joy ; Blodgett, Cropsey, Hunt, Johnston, Kensett ; with such repre- sentation of modern Europe as Iselin from France, Det- mold and Lieber from Germany, and Botta from Italy.
In March a committee of five were appointed to confer with similar committees of the Union League Clubs in Philadelphia and Baltimore, with reference to the establishment of a common basis of action, and in April a committee of one hundred gentlemen from the Philadelphia Club, embracing names equally eminent in law, literature, science, and commerce, came to New York, were welcomed by the Union League in their new Club House, entertained at Dehnonico's, and assisted at the grand Sumter celebration in Union Square.
On the Fourth of July the Clubs had arranged for a joint celebration of the day, and a further conference at Philadelphia ; but the rebel invasion of Pennsylvania gave to the national anniversary new memories on the
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CITY OF NEW YORK.
field of Gettysburg, and soon afterwards in New York, where the leaders of the rebellion were prepared in case Lee had been victorious to inangurate " the Fourth " by a revolutionary coup d' etat, the rebel element, dis- appointed by the great victory of Meade, broke out in riots, robbery, arson, and murder, in which a brutality that might have shocked the Jacobins of Paris, was inaugurated against the negroes, until the military and metropolitan police, with a slender force, but a most gallant spirit, met and checked the rioters with so firm a hand that with their dispersion and defeat perished the last hope of the rebels of inaugurating a successful North- ern insurrection against nationality, liberty and law.
The Club resolved to exert its already large influence in the approaching presidential election for the success of the Union cause, and on the evening of the 8th of November, 1863, they had the satisfaction of knowing that the State of New York was again arrayed on the side of nationality and freedom, and that the re-election of Mr. Lincoln ensured the life of the republic.
The same month the Committee on Volunteering, con- sisting of Messrs. Van Rensselaer, Carman, Roosevelt, Cowdin, Kirkland, Bacon, Bliss, Schultz and Cromwell, after a vain effort to procure any authority or sanction from Governor Seymour, was authorized by the War Department to raise the Twentieth United States Regiment of colored troops, and the work proceeded so rapidly under the direction of Mr. Vincent Collyer, that, as we have already mentioned, in fourteen days the committee applied for authority to raise a second regi- ment, the Twenty-sixth United States colored troops, and this again was sheceeded by a third.
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HISTORY OF THE
The Twentieth Regiment, as before described, on the 5th of March, was reviewed in front of the Club House in Union Square, where it was presented with a banner prepared by the mothers, wives and sisters of the mem- bers of the Club, accompanied by an address written by the poet, Henry J. Tuckerman, and signed by the do- nors .* The regiment, after an address by Mr. Charles King, and a response by the commanding officer, Colonel Bartram, marched down Broadway escorted by the Club, and from that day, when in our streets, colored men were welcomed with an ovation instead of a massacre, it was clear that thenceforth in New York black men had rights which white men were bound to respect.
On the morning of Easter Sunday, the 27th of March, the Twenty-sixth Regiment embarked for Annapolis, attended by a few ladies and gentlemen on board the steamer, where the colors prepared for them were pre-
* These names are worthy of record as indicating to future generations the part borne, in one of the most significant events of the war-for the action of New York in the case influenced the sentiment of the whole country-by the women who so prominently represented the national sentiment as well as the culture and refine- ment of the republic.
Mrs. J. J. Astor, G. W. Blunt,
Mrs. J. W. Bigclow, M. O. Roberts,
Mrs. J. MeKaye, W. L. Felt,
4 J. W. Beekman,
Il. K. Bogart,
2. Haskell,
S. Wetmore,
.6 E. C. Hall,
Isane Ames,
S. B. Chittenden,
J. Le Roy,
J. Brown,
A. G. Phelps, ..
N. Chandler,
R. B. Minturn,
Charles King,
J. G. King, Jr., 66 P. S. Van Renselaer,
S. W. Bridgham,
=
11. Van Rensselaer.
Walter,
= W. E. Dodge,
= J. A. King, Jr.,
II. Baldwin,
66 R. Stebbins,
J. C. Cassegue,
=
F. C. Pendexter,
Miss King,
66 F. Primo Barnwell.
C. Baueroft,
Mrs. J. B. Jolmson, N. D. Smith,
T. M. Cheesinan,
= £ Collins,
J. C. B. Davis,
.. Bradish,
W. Il. Schienelin,
H. A. C'oit, A. P. Mann,
Brice,
C C. Dodge,
= S. B. Schielfelin,
J. 1. Kemely;
.: 11. C. Chapman,
M. K. Jessup,
= Wheelwright,
11. G. Thomson,
G. Bliss, Jr., S. J. Bacon, M. Clarkson, J. O. Stone, 66 11. Potter,
L. F. Warner,
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CITY OF NEW YORK.
sented by Mr. John Jay, whose address was earnestly responded to by Colonel Silliman, who soon after fell in defence of the flag to which he touchingly declared the devotion of his soldiers and himself. These two regi- ments and the Thirty-first, which was next filled up by the Club, exhibited in their career during the war, combined with an admirable drill and discipline, a spirit of earnest patriotism and fearless bravery. A second Committee on Volunteering, consisting of Messrs. Bliss, Roosevelt, Handy, Hyatt, Hoyt, Swift, Schultz, Wil- liams, Fogg, Murdock, Fellows, Fuller, Halstead, Sat- terlee, Churchill and Grinnell, was appointed at the request of General Hancock to recruit for the Second Corps. They raised some $230,000 and upwards of three thousand men, making the total of troops placed in the field by the Club within the year six thousand men.
Mrs. J. J. Phelps,
G. B. De Forest,
Shaw,
E. M. Young,
Le G. B. Cannon
Williams,
= J. T. Schultz,
" W. A. Butler,
U. A. Murdock,
A. Dunlap,
Weeks ,
.. R. M. Hunt,
=
T. E. Howe,
.4 Jaques,
.. Joues,
W. II. Lee,
. . A. Brooks,
Miss J. Schieffelin.
David Hoadly,
=
J. W. Goddard,
=
Jay,
= C. Luddington,
F. G. Shaw,
11 Anna Jay.
=
E. C. Cowdin,
G. W. Curtis,
Schultz,
= J. A. Roosevelt,
66 R. C. Lovell,
Russel,
J. Sampson,
C. M. Kirkland,
J. M. King,
= Alfred Pell, Jr.,
Boerum,
Mrs. Vincent Colyer,
= W. Hutchins,
Hamilton Fish,
C. C. Hunt,
Geo. Opdyke,
= Alfred Pell. Kennedy,
J. Johnston.
66 S. W. Roosevelt,
T. L. Beekman,
W. C. Bryant,
66 E. D. Smith,
J. F. Gray,
= F. B. Goodwin,
S. Gaudy,
J. Tuckerman,
Emily Boerum,
R. I .. Stuart,
1. A. Whittaker,
Miss Norsworthy.
E. W. Stoughton,
J. H. Macy,
F. 11. Macy,
P. Richards, R. Winthrop,
J. K. Brenly,
16 II. Chauney,
W. E. Dodge, Jr.,
= W. Felt,
Fish,
G. Lemist,
R. G. Shaw,
Young,
R. B. Minturn, Jr.,
B. De Forest,
16 Cochrane,
C. Williams,
G. C. Ward,
E. II. Chauncey,
.. E. W. Cruger,
= C. G. Judson,
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