USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 42
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This was also the epoch of the anti-masonic excite- ment, arising from the abduction and supposed murder, in 1826, of William Morgan, a recreant Mason of Bata- via, who had threatened to expose the secrets of the fra- ternity. This charge was soon converted into a political weapon, a combination was formed against the Masons, at this time a large and flourishing society, the most extravagant rumors of diabolical practices in their secret conclaves were put in circulation, and at the elections of 1827, the people, forgetting the ancient party divisions, ranked themselves as Masons or anti-Masons at the polls. The persecution of the luckless society was fanatical in the extreme ; a number of prominent papers opened a crusade against it, public meetings were held at which seceders from its ranks denounced it as the sum and sub- stance of all wickedness, and a prejudice was excited throughout the community which paralyzed it for years, and seemed for a time to threaten its existence. Before the presidential election, the anti-Masonic colors were adopted by the enemies of Jackson, while the democrats ranged themselves on the side of the hunted Masons , but, though the latter succeeded in electing their candi- dates at the polls, their efforts could not save the fated society from the unpopularity which long checked its growth. The fate of Morgan was never positively known ; a body found in Lake Ontario was declared to be his by the anti-Masonic party-" a good enough Morgan till after the election," the friends of the Masons
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called it ; and much doubt there was indeed of its iden- tity. The society became almost a dead letter, and it is only within a few years that it has revived from the paralysis and regained its former position.
In the course of the year 1829, Walter Bowne, a mer- chant of New York, and a prominent politician of the democratic party, was appointed mayor in the place of William Paulding. Mr. Bowne was a lineal descendant of John Bowne, the leader of the Quakers at Flushing, who had been imprisoned for his faith by the order of Stuyvesant ; then released by the West India Company, who would sanction no religious persecution within their dominions.
On the 7th of April, 1830, an amended charter was granted to the city, which provided for separate meet- ings of the two boards, and excluded the mayor and recorder from the Common Council, giving the mayor, however, the power of approving or disapproving the acts of this body. In the course of the following year, the Fifteenth Ward was added to the city.
New political issues arose on the approach of the pre- sidential election of 1832, and with them new divisions of party. The workingmen's party, suddenly arising in the State election of 1830 to secure for mechanics a lien on the buildings which they had erected for the better security of their wages and electing Throop as gov- ernor, then as suddenly vanishing from existence, had not interfered with the charter elections of the city. The democrats still preserved their ascendency, electing a majority in both boards, though enough national repub- licans were found in the city to insure a warm contest
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at the polls. The first steps toward the organization of the whig party were taken by the latter in 1830, at a meeting held in the city of New York, at which Henry Clay was nominated to the Presidency.
The party lines were now distinctly drawn, and for more than twenty years the people continued to be divided into the two great sections of Whigs and Demo- crats. The former, first adopting their distinctive appel- · lation in the charter elections of 1833, rallied at first by the name of the Clay party under the banners of Henry Clay, in favor of a protective tariff together with the preservation of a national bank ; the latter supported the reelection of Jackson, who had lately doomed this . bank to dissolution by his veto of the bill passed by Con- gress to grant it a new charter in 1836, when the first would expire by its own limitation. The democrats were everywhere successful, electing Jackson as Presi- dent and William L. Marcy as governor of the State, and gaining large majorities in both boards of the Common Council. In the following year, Mayor Bowne was super- seded in the mayoralty by Gideon Lee, a New York mer- chant of eastern extraction, notable for having been one of the pioneers of the leather business in Ferry street.
In 1832, New York, now freed from the periodical ravages of yellow fever by the strict enforcement of quarantine regulations, was visited for the first time by the Asiatic cholera, which raged to a fearful extent, almost depopulating the city and creating a universal panic among the inhabitants. It returned two years after, modified in violence, then disappeared entirely . until 1849, when it broke out early in the summer, and
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raged fearfully until late in autumn. In 1855, it again appeared, nor has it since wholly abandoned the city, but remains lurking in its midst, striking down a few victims here and there every summer, yet reserving its force for some future devastation.
One of the most important events in the history of this era in its bearings upon the city as well as the whole country, was the establishment of the penny press ; an institution which opened the way for cheap literature, and, by placing the daily journals within reach of every citizen, disseminated general knowledge, and tended emphatically to make of our people what they are now acknowledged to be-the greatest reading nation of any on the globe.
At this time, there were about fifty daily, weekly, semi-weekly and monthly journals in New York. Fore- most among these were the Commercial Advertiser, the oldest of the city papers, at this time under the charge of Col. William L. Stone ; the Evening Post, edited by William Coleman ; the Morning Courier of James Wat- son Webb and the New York Enquirer of Mordecai M. Noah, blended in 1829 into the Courier and Enquirer ; the Journal of Commerce, commenced in 1827 under the editorship of David Hale ; the Standard, edited by John I. Mumford, and the Spirit of the Times, just issued by William T. Porter. The New York Mirror, edited by George P. Morris, in which N. P. Willis was first attract- ing public attention by a series of piquant European letters, and the Knickerbocker Magazine, commenced in 1833 under the auspices of Peabody and subsequently sold by him to Louis Gaylord Clark and Clement M.
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CITY OF NEW YORK.
Church of the Messiah in Broadway.
Edson, were the only literary papers of the city. In these, Irving, Cooper, Paulding, Bryant, Simms, Fay, and a host of others, now well-known veterans in the literary world, made their first essays as candidates for public favor, and won an earnest of their future laurels.
The dailies were sixpenny journals, and were distri- buted to regular subscribers. Newsboys were unknown, and though, upon the occurrence of some unusual event,
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a hundred extra copies were sometimes struck off in view of a possible outside demand, the chances for the sale of these were so hazardous, that few of the dis- tributors cared to take the trouble and responsibility of offering them for sale. On the 29th of October, 1832, the New York Globe, a two-cent paper, was issued by James Gordon Bennett, the present editor of the Herald, who had been for several years connected with the National Advocate and the Courier and Enquirer ; but the experiment proved unsuccessful, and the paper expired just one month after the date. of its birth.
The idea of the possibility of a penny paper first originated in the brain of Dr. Horatio David Sheppard, a young medical student, rich in hopes but lacking in money, who vainly endeavored to persuade his friends of the feasibility of the scheme. Convinced as he was that a spicy journal, offered everywhere by boys at the low price of one cent, would be bought up by the crowd with avidity, he found the idea scouted by all the jour- nalists of the city to whom he in turn applied, and when he finally succeeded in prevailing upon Horace Greeley and Francis Story, who were on the point of setting up a printing establishment, to print his paper and give him credit for a week, he could only secure their cooperation by fixing the price at two cents per copy. On the 1st of January, 1833, he issued the Morning Post, his pro- jected paper, in the midst of a violent snow-storm, which checked the sale and disheartened the few newsboys engaged in the enterprise. At the end of the first week, he met the promised payment, during the second, his receipts scarcely covered half his expenses, and at the
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CITY OF NEW YORK.
expiration of the third, the young printers, themselves almost destitute of capital, finding him wholly unable to meet his engagements, were compelled to refuse him further credit, and thus to stop the publication of the paper. Discouraged at his ill success, Dr. Sheppard abandoned the ranks of journalism and returned to his profession.
The idea fell into other hands. On the 3d of Septem- ber, 1833, Benjamin H. Day, who, in 1829, had com- menced the publication of the Daily Sentinel, which he afterward sold to George H. Evans, issued the Sun, the first penny paper ever published in New York. He soon discovered that he had struck a vein. Sneered at and despised by its more pretentious contemporaries, the cheapness of the little paper commended it to the mass, and in less than a year, its circulation increased to eight thousand copies.
Entering the lists of competition with its powerful rivals without subscribers, and the acknowledged organ of no party, the proprietor of the new journal struck upon the method for insuring its circulation first projected by Sheppard, and, advertising for boys to work for him at two dollars per week, dispatched them with a hundred and twenty-five copies each to different parts of the city to cry the papers for sale to the passers-by, with a promise of more at a reduced rate as soon as these should be disposed of. In the course of two or three hours, the papers were sold, and the boys came back for a fresh supply, which was given them at the rate of nine cents per dozen ; and from this period may be dated the origin of the race of newsboys, now
47
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naturalized in almost every city in the Union. The experiment soon proved successful ; and the boys made the business profitable both to themselves and their employer. Ere long, the other publishers, taking the cue from this success, published an extra edition of their papers for the newsboys, while, by way of exchange, several of the regular distributors of these, finding that the profits of the boys amounted to more than their small weekly salaries, set to work to procure subscribers to the Sun, and to establish newspaper routes as private speculations.
The most curious fact in the history of this first penny journal, was the publication of the celebrated " Moon Hoax," or Discoveries in the Moon, written by Richard Adams Locke, at that time editor of the Sun and subse- quently one of the proprietors of the New Era. This paper, which purported to be an account of Sir John F. W. Herschel's discoveries at the Cape of Good Hope, taken from the Supplement of the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, was written with every appearance of con- sistency. After disarming suspicion by a scientific description of an ingeniously-invented telescope by which these discoveries had been made, the author pro- ceeded to delineate the geographical features and the inhabitants of the moon with such graphic power and show of probability, that the gravest journals swallowed the bait, and took the account as a historical fact, piqued as they were at the lucky chance which had thrown the earliest intelligence of so important a discovery into the hands of the despised penny paper. One journal, indeed, gravely assured its readers on the day after the
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publication in the Sun of the lunar discoveries, that it had also received the account by the same mail, and was only prevented from publishing it by want of sufficient space. The papers throughout the country copied and commented on the article, keeping its much despised origin as far as possible out of sight, and, in many cases, leaving it to be supposed that they themselves had copied it from the Edinburgh " Supplement." Sir John Herschel was everywhere extolled as the greatest dis- coverer of the age, and enthusiasts even began to speculate on the possibility of opening a telegraphic communication with their newly-descried neighbors. The discovery of the hoax excited universal merriment ; but the offence was not soon forgotten or forgiven by the cheated contemporaries of the paper which had issued the canard. In 1838, Mr. Day disposed of the Sun establishment to Moses Y. Beach for thirty-eight thousand dollars, in whose possession it now remains.
Stimulated by the success of this enterprise, in 1834, William J. Stanley, Willoughby Lynde, and Billings Hayward, commenced the publication of a second penny paper called the Transcript. This proved tolerably suc- cessful, and was continued until 1839. Soon after its publication, the Moon was issued by George H. Evans, the printer and publisher of the Working Men's Advocate. This, which was also a penny paper, survived but two or three years. The fourth penny paper, the Morning Star, was published soon after by Lincoln & Simmons ; but this proved a failure, as did also the Morning Dis- patch, published in 1839, by Day, the former proprietor of the Sun, and edited by H. Hastings Weld.
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At this time, some of the best known journalists of the present day made their début in the ranks of their profession, On the 22d of March, 1834, Horace Gree- ley, Jonas Winchester, and E. Sibbett, commenced the publication of the New Yorker, printed at first on a large folio sheet, and afterward in two forms, folio and quarto, the former at two and the latter at three dollars a year. This paper, though literary in its general character, leaned strongly to the side of the whig party. Park Benjamin was an occasional contributor to its columns, and in 1840 Henry J. Raymond, the present editor of the New York Times, then a recent graduate of Burling- ton College, Vermont, began his editorial career upon a salary of eight dollars per week. On the 6th of May, 1835, the New York Herald made its appearance as a two-cent paper, under the auspices of James Gordon Bennett and Anderson & Smith, a printing firm in Ann street. A few months after, the office of the paper, together with the whole printing establishment, was destroyed by fire ; upon which Anderson and Smith withdrew from the firm, leaving the paper in the charge of Bennett, who has ever since retained absolute control of its columns. In June of the same year, the New York Express was first issued by James and Erastus Brooks, and on the 10th of April, 1841, the Tribune appeared as the avowed organ of the whig party, edited by Horace Greeley with the assistance of Henry J. Ray- mond. This was a daily penny paper, about one-third the size of the present Tribune. In the ensuing July, Greeley formed a partnership with Thomas McElrath, and soon after merged the New Yorker, together with
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CITY OF NEW YORK.
the Log Cabin, a small paper which he had issued during the Harrison campaign, into the Weekly Tribune. Ray- mond quitted the paper two years after to form a connection with the Courier and Enquirer, which he maintained for several years ; then, on the 18th of Sep- tember, 1851, issued the first number of the N. Y. Daily Times, at first a penny sheet, which, the following year, was doubled in price and size, and thus placed on a par with the most prominent of the rival dailies.
At the time of the establishment of the N. Y. Tribune, a hundred periodicals and twelve daily papers were published in the city of New York. Of these, the Commercial Advertiser, Courier and Enquirer, New York American, Express, and Tribune, supported the whigs ; the Evening Post, Journal of Commerce, Sun, and Herald, inclined to the democratic party, and the Signal, Star, and Tatler were neutral. The Commercial Advertiser, was then, as now, the oldest journal in the city, having been first issued on the 9th of December, 1793. Next was the Evening Post, which, commenced as a federal paper in 1800, had, in 1830, espoused the cause of the democratic party.
The year 1835 will long be remembered as the era of the most fearful conflagration that ever devastated the city of New York. The fire broke out on the night of the 16th of December, in the lower part of the city. The night was intensely cold-colder than any that had been known for more than half a century ; the little water that could be obtained froze in the fire-hose before it could be used, the buildings were mostly old and wooden ; in short, everything favored the work of destruction.
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The flames raged fiercely for three days, completely lay- ing waste the business part of the city, and consuming 648 houses and stores with $18,000,000 worth of pro- perty ; among which were the marble Exchange in Wall street, hitherto deemed fire-proof, and the South Dutch Church in Garden street. Some buildings were finally blown up by gunpowder by order of the mayor, and the work of ruin was thus arrested. But the destruction had been fearful, and not less terrible were the consequences. Unable to meet the heavy demands of the sufferers, the insurance companies unanimously suspended payment, and the city seemed almost beggared at a blow.
Close upon this calamity followed the commercial distress of the winter of 1837, which succeeded the sus-
LIFEINS
Wall street looking toward Broadway.
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CITY OF NEW YORK.
pension of the United States Bank. For a time, the business world seemed utterly paralyzed, bankruptcy followed bankruptcy in quick succession, and ere long the banks of the State unanimously suspended payment for one year, having been authorized to do so by the State legislature. But the elasticity of the city was not long depressed by these misfortunes, a reaction took place before many months had passed, and business revived more briskly than before.
Cornelius W. Lawrence was at this time mayor of the city, for the first time elected to the office by the votes of the people in April, 1834, in conformity with a recent amendment to the State Constitution. Mr. Lawrence was the candidate of the democratic party, which still retained its ascendency in the politics of the city. Two new parties had recently arisen ; the native American, whose policy it was to exclude all foreigners from a voice in political affairs ; and the equal rights or agrarian. party, which, crystallizing in 1829 through the influence of the lectures of Frances Wright, then on her second visit to the country, had grown into a powerful faction, and now aspired to the leadership of the democratic party, from whose ranks it had first sprung. This name was also claimed by the Tammany party. The two fac- tions assembled together at the primary meetings at Tammany Hall, the acknowledged democratic head- quarters, each assuming precedence in the councils of the party, and scenes of violence often ensued. A curious accident fastened the name of " loco foco" on the friends of equal rights, a name which afterward came to be " applied to the whole democratic party.
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Loco foco matches-an outgrowth from the phospho- rized splinters with their accompanying vial of acid and cotton which, in 1825, had superseded the ancient tinder- box, with its flint and steel-had recently come into use with the penny newspapers, and were still regarded as a novelty by the community at large. At a ratification meeting held in Tammany Hall in 1835, at which the Tammany men, finding themselves in the minority, suddenly turned off the gas and left the assembly in darkness, a box of the newly invented matches was opportunely produced by the opposite party, which was henceforth derisively styled "loco foco" by its oppo- nents. The faction, however, accepted the name, and, idealizing it into an emblem of promptitude, proudly wore it as a badge of honor, and it was not long before the once despised nickname was adopted and acknow- ledged by the whole democratic party. It is a curious fact that most if not all of the party appellations which have served at various times to distinguish the politics of the country first originated in this city-republican, federalist, whig, democrat, loco foco, and many more.
The Sixteenth Ward was created in 1835, as was also the Seventeeth during the following year. At the spring election of 1837, Aaron Clark was elected mayor by the whigs, who also succeeded in gaining majorities in both boards of the Common Council. The election of the fol- lowing year was attended with the same result, but in the spring of 1839, Mr. Clark, who had been for the third time nominated by his party to the mayoralty, was defeated by Isaac L. Varian, the candidate of the demo- crats, who carried twelve wards out of the seventeen by
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small majorities. Mr. Varian retained his office until 1841, when he was succeeded by Robert H. Morris, who was elected by the still triumphant democratic party.
On the 23d of April, 1837, the attention of the citizens was aroused by a new event, which was fraught with interest to the mercantile portion of the community- the arrival from England of the steamships " Sirius " and "Great Western," the first ocean steamers ever as yet seen in the harbor of New York. This new bond of union between the Old World and the New was hailed with an enthusiasm scarcely equalled by that displayed on the late announcement of the success of the Atlantic cable, and schemes were at once projected by the busy speculators for the establishment of a line of steamers between the continents, which were realized a few years after by the Cunard and the Collins lines.
The spring election of 1835 decided another important event in the annals of the city. The Manhattan Works had long since been voted a failure, but though various schemes had been from time to time devised for bringing water into the city from the Bronx and various other rivers in the suburbs, nothing had been accomplished, and the people had been forced to return to the wells and pumps of olden times. But the growth of the city had now rendered it impossible to be longer delayed, and after much consideration, a plan for constructing an aqueduct from the Croton River was approved by the corporation, and the question of "Water" or "No Water" submitted to the people at the following election, and decided in the affirmative by a large majority, though those were not wanting who bewailed
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High Bridge-Croton Aqueduct.
the extravagance of the measure, and thought that the water which had served their ancestors would answer very well for the present generation. The popular ver- dict rendered, the Croton Aqueduct was at once com- menced at a distance of forty miles from the City Hall and about five miles from the Hudson River, where a dam was thrown across the Croton River, creating a pond five miles in length, covering an area of four hun- dred acres and containing 500,000,000 gallons of water. From this dam, the aqueduct proceeded, now tunnelling through solid rocks, then crossing valleys by embank- ments and brooks by culverts until it reached the Harlem
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River, which it crossed by the magnificent High Bridge, built of stone, 1,450 feet long, with fourteen piers, eight of eighty feet and six of fifty feet span, one hundred and fourteen feet above tide water to the top, at a cost of $900,000. From this bridge, at the foot of One Hun- dred and Seventy-fourth street, the aqueduct proceeded to the Receiving Reservoir at the corner of Eighty-sixth street and Sixth Avenue, covering thirty-five acres, and · containing 150,000,000 gallons, whence the water was conveyed to the Distributing Reservoir on Murray Hill,
Croton Reservoir, on Fifth Avenue, between Fortieth and Forty-second Streets.
of a capacity of 21,000,000 gallons, and thence distri -. buted by means of iron pipes through the city. The work progressed rapidly.' On the 4th of July, 1842, the water was let into the reservoir, and the event was cele- brated by an imposing procession. But these immense
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reservoirs have since grown too small for the increasing wants of the city ; and a mammoth reservoir is now in progress of construction in the new Central Park of a capacity exceeding any other in existence.
Next came the Magnetic Telegraph, first opened to the New Yorkers through the New York, Philadelphia and Washington line, constructed in 1845-the second in the United States, the first having been constructed in 1844 between Washington and Baltimore. In the following year, a line was opened between Boston and New York, and another the year after, between New York and Albany. Others followed in quick succession, and New York was soon placed within speaking distance of the chief cities of the Union.
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