USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress Vol. III > Part 22
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As early as 1793 he proposed experiments in steam navigation to Lord Stanhope, and seems never to have lost sight of the subject. In Paris he succeeded so well with his submarine torpedoes and torpedo-boats that no little anxiety was created in the English mind; for war then existed. In France he lived with Joel Barlow, and studied the French, German, and Italian languages, and the higher branches of mechanical science. When Chancellor Livingston arrived as minister to the French Court, Fulton called upon him, and together they discussed the project of con- structing a steamboat to be tried on the Seine. Fulton directed the work, and it was completed in 1803. But the hull of the little vessel was too weak for its heavy machinery, and it broke in two and sank to the bottom of the Seine. This was, however, reconstructed, and the little craft again steamed up the Seine in presence of an immense con- course of spectators, among whom was a committee from the National Academy, and the officers of Napoleon's staff. The trial was attended with apparent success, and yet Napoleon would not render Fulton any pecuniary aid. Livingston wrote home and procured an extension of the legislative act granted in 1798 by the State of New York, and thus secured the monopoly of the Hudson for a few years longer. He was more than ever convinced that a boat could be successfully moved by steam over the waters about New York. He had become an enthusiast on the subject, and his large wealth gave him confidence, and enabled him to accomplish what a mere inventor found impracticable. Fulton, under Livingston's pecuniary support, ordered an engine to be built by Boulton & Watt in England, from plans which he furnished. The
engine was completed and sent to New York in the latter part of 1806. The Chancellor had resigned his mission in 1805, traveled on the conti- nent for a few months, and reached New York about the same time, closely followed by Fulton. And the purse of the one and the genius of the other were applied lavishly to the production of results which were to mark an era in the science of navigation.
Fulton was a tall, slender, well-formed man, of quick perceptions, sound sense, graceful and pleasing manners, and voice of peculiar melody. His eyes were large, dark, and penetrating, and over his high forehead and about his neck were scattered curls of rich dark brown hair. His refined character rendered him a social favorite. At times his vivacity was singularly engaging, but usually he was reserved and serious, his features expressing deep thought. His portrait by Benjamin West seems to bring him before us in the flesh with all his lovable charac-
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teristics and grave disappointments. He was forty-two years of age when he demonstrated the utility of the steamboat. He was at the time very deeply in love with Miss Harriet Livingston, the niece of the Chancellor, and early in the spring of 1808 their nuptials were cele- brated with distin- guished ceremony. This was the season of Fulton's super- lative glory. His triumph in the ap- plication of steam to navigation had opened to him the prospect of vast riches, through the exclusive grant of the navigation of the Hudson. And he was caressed, ap- plauded, and hon- ored.
Portrait of Robert Fulton. [From a painting by Benjamin West.]
The Clermont left New York again for Albany in October, 1807, with ninety passengers. She was
repaired and enlarged during the following winter, and in the summer of 1808 advertised as a regular passenger boat between New York and Albany. Meanwhile Fulton built other steamboats ; each one larger than its predecessor, and abounding in improvements.
The reaction came swiftly. Prosperity is always exposed to some severe test. Fulton found that improvements in machinery, and the demands of travel, rapidly increasing, occasioned perpetual expense. He was, moreover, beset with legal difficulties touching the right of exclusive navigation of the Hudson. New Jersey claimed that it was too wide a privilege to be given by the legislature of a single State. And inventors were springing up in various quarters, as is usually the case after a fact is established, to deny his having originated a single mechanical idea. They said in England, where, prior to 1811, steam navigation had practi-
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COLONEL JOHN STEVENS.
cally no existence, that he had visited Symmington and made drawings of the machinery of the unfortunate Charlotte Dundas, which, built to tow vessels on the Forth and Clyde Canal, was abandoned because its paddles washed down the bank in an alarming manner. The friends of John Fitch quoted his unique steamboat on the Delaware twenty years before, which moved at the rate of four miles an hour - although its boiler burst before proceeding far, and no practical results followed. All the immature schemes and various experiments of ingenious mechanics, for a score of years, were used to invalidate Fulton's pretensions as an inventor of the steamboat. Claimants for the honor arose on every hand. It was said that Fulton employed men in building the Clermont, who had been brought from Germany and trained by Nicholas Roosevelt, and that he used the side-wheels invented by Roosevelt. Fulton and Roosevelt were subsequently associated in the introduction of steam-vessels on the Western waters, establishing a ship-yard at Pittsburg and building the New Orleans, the pioneer steamer of the Mississippi, in 1811.
It is not to be supposed that those who were experimenting with steam as a propelling power, and drafting suggestions and recommenda- tions, were unacquainted with what had been done by their predecessors, or by their contemporaries on two continents ; and they undoubtedly profited, as far as it was possible, by the experience of all. But Ful- ton's fame was justly earned. He had done what his rivals had not, bridged the chasm between mere attempts and positive achievements. He had given the world the fruits of the inventive genius of the world, and mankind was reaping its benefits. At the time of the trial of the Clermont not another steamboat was in successful operation on the globe.
The laurels of Fulton were very closely contested by Colonel John Stevens of Hoboken, who had been experimenting with steam and ma- chinery ever since John Fitch, in 1796, tried his little boat with a screw propeller on the Collect, or Fresh Water Pond, in New York City. It is said that Stevens first became interested in the application of steam- power to the methods of travel through coming accidentally upon the imperfect steamboat with which John Fitch experimented on the Dela- ware in 1787. If so much could be done, why not more ? He studied the subject attentively, noting failures and their causes. His venture on the Passaic, in company with Livingston and Roosevelt, in 1798, increased his desire for ultimate success. In 1804, while Fulton was still in Europe, he built an open steamboat sixty-eight feet long, with a screw propeller, which possessed certain recognized elements of success. The next year he built another of similar style, with twin screws, a novel device which many years afterwards was brought forward and adopted as something
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new. He invented improvements to the boiler he had imported, which his eldest son, John Cox Stevens, patented while in England in 1805. He appears to have been one of the first to comprehend the importance of the principle involved in the construction of the sectional steanı-boiler. Finding the signs of promise as developed by his performances thus far sufficient to warrant the outlay, he built the Phoenix, a formidable rival of the Clermont, which was completed and launched in the autumn
1807.
of 1807, only a few weeks after Fulton's triumph had been assured.
The Phoenix being excluded from the waters of New York by the monopoly held by Fulton and Livingston, trips were made for a time between New York and New Brunswick. But Stevens and his sons de- cided to send their steamboat to Philadelphia to ply on the Delaware.
The passage was made by the sea in June, 1808, and although a severe storm of wind was encountered no accident occurred. The conductor of the expedition was Robert Livingston Stevens, son of Colonel John Stevens, then but twenty years of age. Inheriting his father's mechani- cal genius, he had already commenced a career of discovery and improve- ment which was to give him a very high rank among modern inventors. He introduced into the Phoenix the concave water-lines, the first applica- tion of the " wave line " to ship-building; also a feathering paddle-wheel, and the guard beam, now used. And he was the foremost man of any country to trust himself upon the ocean in a vessel relying entirely upon steam-power. Thus was inaugurated ocean steam navigation.
New York also is entitled to the honor of introducing steam navigation upon the great rivers of the West. Nicholas Roosevelt conducted the first steamboat from Pittsburg - where it was constructed under the auspices of Fulton and Livingston - to New Orleans in 1811. He embarked with his family, an engineer, a pilot, and six "deck hands " in October, and reached New Orleans in about fourteen days.
Colonel John Stevens, like Roosevelt, was a native of New York City, where he was born in 1749. He was the grandson, through his mother, of the great lawyer and mathematician, James Alexander, who figured so conspicuously in the reader's acquaintance prior to the Revolution ; and through his grandmother, Mrs. Alexander, he was descended from Johan- nes De Peyster, founder of the De Peyster family in America.1 He was
1 See Vol. I. 225, 503, 504. John Stevens, the grandfather of Colonel John Stevens, came from England to New York as one of the law officers of the Crown. John Stevens (2) mar- ried Elizabeth Alexander. Colonel John Stevens (3) married Rachel, daughter of John Cox. He bought the Bayard estate at Hoboken when it was sold under the Confiscation Act in 1784, upon which he founded the city of Hoboken. In 1804 he advertised a four days' sale of eight hundred lots. He was for several years Treasurer of the State of New Jersey. - His- tory of the County of Hudson, by Charles Winfield.
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the nephew of Lord Stirling ; and his sister was the wife of Chancellor Livingston. His inventive talent and his philosophical far-sightedness were remarkable. In urging well-conceived plans for the application of the steam-engine to land transportation, he was so far ahead of the age that his advice and his offers were unaccepted. The appointment of commissioners in 1811, of whom Robert Fulton was one, to explore a canal route from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, induced him to issue a pamphlet, in 1812, to prove the superior advantages of steam- carriages over canal navigation. He unfolded a scheme - varying little from our present railway system - and offered to construct a roadway from Albany to Lake Erie, to be traversed by a steam-carriage, which he thought might be moved with the velocity of one hundred miles an hour, although in practice he presumed convenience would confine it to twenty or thirty miles an hour. This great project was broached by Stevens, with the political, financial, commercial, and military aspects of the question all apparently present to his mind, while there was but one locomotive in the world, that of Richard Trevithick at Merthyr-Tydvil - which was powerless except on a level surface - and nothing in the way of railroads except the old wooden tram-roads of the English collieries.
After Fulton and Stevens had P thus led the way in New York, steam navigation was introduced very rapidly on both sides of the P ocean. The unimaginative mind can hardly keep pace with the produc- tion of steam-vessels in this coun- try. While Fulton was multiplying 0 them upon the Hudson and Stevens was bringing out a fleet upon the Trevithick's Locomotive, 1804. Delaware, other mechanics were preparing to contest the field with them. Upon the breaking down of the Fulton monopoly by the courts, the Stevenses, father and son, built some of the finest steamboats on the Hudson. Both Fulton and Stevens were enthusiasts in trying to bridge by steam the rivers that separated New York from the opposite shores. Until 1810 barges with oars were the established ferry-boats, excepting some recently constructed horse-boats, with the wheel in the centre, pro- pelled by a sort of horizontal treadmill worked by horses. Stevens was the first to bring a steam-ferry into active operation. In October, 1811,
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he invited the corporation of New York City, and numerous celebrities, to attend him on a voyage from New York to Hoboken upon the first regular steam ferry-boat ever used in any part of the world.
The next year Fulton completed a small steam ferry-boat for the Paulus Hook ferry. Within another twelvemonth he had two steam ferry-boats connecting New York with Brooklyn.
The exigencies of the war by this time turned the thoughts of our inventors towards war-vessels propelled by steam. Fulton submitted plans to Decatur, Perry, John Paul Jones, Evans, and others, which met their approval ; he proposed to build a cannon-proof steam-frigate, capable of carrying a heavy battery and of steaning four miles an hour. The vessel was to be fitted with furnaces for red-hot shot, and some of her guns were to be discharged below the water-line. Congress authorized an expenditure of three hundred and twenty thousand dollars, in March, 1814, and the new steam-frigate, named in honor of its projector, The Fulton, was launched in the autumn of the same year. Its trial-trip to the ocean at Sandy Hook and back was an overwhelming success. Its pro- jector did not live to witness its completion, but fell as it were a martyr to the undertaking. Exposure in crossing the Hudson amidst the ice in an open boat produced illness, and before he was fully restored he superin- tended some work on the open deck of The Fulton. His death followed, and it was mourned as a national calamity. "I have observed him," wrote Dr. Francis, " on the docks, reckless of temperature and inclement weather, anxious to secure practical issues from his midnight reflections, or to add new improvements to works not yet completed. His floating dock cost him much personal labor of this sort. His hat might have fallen into the water, and his coat be lying upon a pile of lumber; but trifles were not calculated to impede him or dampen his perseverance." Not long before his death Fulton planned a vessel for service in the Baltic Sea ; but circumstances induced a change of plan, and it was subsequently placed on the line between New York and Newport.
The Fulton comprehended the first application of the steam-engine to naval purposes, and for the period was exceedingly creditable. The Savannah, built in New York, with side-wheels, and propelled by steam machinery and sails, made the voyage to St. Petersburg in 1819, which had been proposed for Fulton's ship. She was in charge of Captain Moses Rogers, a New-Yorker, who had previously commanded both the Clermont and the Phoenix. The trip from New York to Savannah, where the vessel had been purchased by Mr. Scarborough, occupied seven days. She proceeded to Liverpool, and thence, touching at Copenhagen and Stockholm, to St. Petersburg; Lord Lyndock was a passenger, and on
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TRIAL OF AARON BURR FOR TREASON.
taking leave of Captain Rogers at the Russian capital presented him with a silver teakettle inscribed with a legend commemorative of the impor- tant event. Thus virtually commenced Atlantic steam navigation.
Colonel John Stevens designed a circular or saucer-shaped iron-clad steamer, like those built sixty years later for the Russian navy, in 1812. It was to be plated with iron of ample thickness to resist shot fired from the heaviest ordnance then known. A set of screw propellers beneath the vessel, driven by steam-engines, were to be so arranged as to permit the vessel to revolve rapidly about its centre. Thus each gun after its dis- charge could be reloaded before coming round again into the line of fire. The vessel did not obtain an existence beyond paper at that period, but the genius of its inventor was reflected through his son, Robert L. Stevens, who at a later date originated the first well-planned iron-clad ever con- structed. Indeed, the younger Stevens became one of the greatest of naval architects, and for twenty years after the trial trips of the Clermont and the Phoenix was constantly lavishing time and money upon changes and improvements in steam navigation, the variety, extent, and importance of which it would be impossible to describe in common language. He adopted a new method of bracing and fastening steamboats ; discov- ered the utility of employing steam expansively; was the first on record to use the new, unmanageable, anthracite coal for steam fuel; he designed the now universally used " skeleton beam"; he first placed the boilers on the guards; he introduced the artificial blast for forcing the fires ; and he invented the inelegantly styled "hog-frame," one of the peculiar features of every American river-steamer of any considerable size to prevent its bending in the centre. Another of his productions, in 1814, was an elongated bomb-shell of marvelous destructive power, for which he received a large annuity from the government.1
While New York was taking the lead so nobly in the advancement of steam navigation, Aaron Burr was arraigned and tried for treason in Richmond, Virginia. He had crossed the mountains, traveled 1807. through the western country, conceived his famous Mexican scheme, been thwarted in its execution, and captured while trying to escape through the woods on the Tombigbee River. Two judges sat upon the bench,
! Robert Livingston Stevens was born at Hoboken in 1788, and died in 1856. He was the projector, engineer, and president of the Camden and Amboy Railroad, in process of construction at the time of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad in 1830. He invented the new standard T-rail, known in this country as the Stevens rail, and in Europe, where it was afterwards introduced, as the " vignolles " rail, which was first tested upon this road. Colonel John Stevens built in 1825 a small locomotive which he placed on a circular railway before his dwelling-house at Hoboken to prove that his early speculations had a basis of fact. - Thurston.
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Chief Justice John Marshall and Cyrus Griffin, judge of the District of Virginia. The array of legal talent on both sides was imposing. Burr was himself the real leader of the defense, as not a step was taken or a point conceded without his concurrence. His policy was to overthrow the testimony. The trial was tediously long. Richmond, then a city of six thousand inhabitants, was thronged with magnates from all parts of the country. New York was well represented. So many distinguished persons claimed seats within the bar, that lawyers of twenty years' stand- ing were excluded from their accustomed places and thankful to obtain admission even to the hall. Theodosia, who had fondly hoped to see her father the glorious and powerful head of a nation created by his own genius, came to share his prison life, accompanied by her devoted husband.
Through the scorching days of that memorable summer of 1807 the excited eyes of the nation rested upon one reposeful figure -that of the well-dressed man with hair powdered and tied in a cue, who, polite and confident, seemed above all others at peace with the entire world. Could he have had in view the destruction of the Union ? Who could trace in his placid countenance the determination to assassinate Jefferson, corrupt the navy, and overthrow Congress, with which he was charged ? The President wrote of the mad enterprise: "It is the most extraordinary since the days of Don Quixote. It is so extravagant that those who know Burr's understanding would not believe it if the proofs admitted doubt. He has meant to place himself on the throne of Montezuma, and extend his empire to the Alleghany, seizing New Orleans as the instru- ment of compulsion for our Western States."
The acquittal of Burr by the jury was the result of the difficulty found by the prosecution in proving overt acts ; but it had very little effect upon public sentiment, which had already pronounced his condemna- tion. He went forth a free man, while his conduct was singularly like that of a criminal fleeing from justice. He lay concealed in the houses of his friends in New York until an opportunity offered for securing a passage, under an assumed name, and with passage-money borrowed from Dr. Hosack, for Europe.
At this moment Napoleon was nearing the pinnacle of his greatness.
Every human interest was subordinate to his gigantic wars. All 1807. Europe was in arms. On the 14th of June the battle of Fried- land was fought, and on the 25th the French and Russian emperors met on a raft in the middle of the river and vowed eternal friendship, two armies looking on. On the 7th of July a treaty of peace was concluded at Tilsit. Months prior to these events the British and French govern-
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ments had issued retaliatory proclamations which interfered with the neutral commerce of America upon the ocean. Great Britain declared the whole coast between the Elbe and the Brest to be in a state of blockade. This subjected American vessels attempting to enter the continental ports to capture and condemnation -- a manifest violation of the law of nations. The plundered merchants appealed to Congress for defense and indemnity. Napoleon in turn issued the famous Berlin decree which declared the British Isles to be in a state of blockade, and which rendered American vessels liable to seizure and condemnation when carrying on what had heretofore been a lawful trade with Great Britain. The American government remonstrated, but without effect.
While matters were thus situated the frigate Chesapeake was attacked by the British and disabled, as she was leaving her post for a distant service ; several of her crew were killed, and four of them taken away by the assaulters. About the same time the British government published an order, holding all their absent seamen to their allegiance, recalling them from foreign service, and pronouncing heavy penalties upon such as dis- obeyed. This principle of the law of allegiance was diametrically opposed to that recognized by the American government, as it denied the right of expatriation. Every naturalized citizen of the United States who had been in the marine service of Great Britain was commanded to disregard his oath of allegiance to the United States, and return to Great Britain. An order was passed declaring the sale of ships by belligerents illegal. This was eclipsed by Napoleon's decree of Milan, enforcing the decree of Berlin, which, if carried out, would have doomed to confiscation every vessel of the United States that had been boarded or even spoken by the British. The order of Napoleon was approved by Spain, and in some instances enforced. Vessels were also burned by the French cruisers. Under the impression that neither England nor France could dispense with our productions, as the demand for breadstuffs occasioned by the war had raised the price of produce in this country to an amount before unequaled, President Jefferson recommended an embargo on all American shipping until the two hostile powers should acknowledge our neutral rights by a repeal of their obnoxious orders and decrees.
Congress passed a bill in accordance with the President's recommenda- tion, at eleven o'clock at night, December 22; American vessels
were thenceforward prohibited from sailing for foreign ports, all Dec. 22. foreign vessels were forbidden to take out cargoes, and all coasting vessels were required to give bonds to land their cargoes in the United States. Thus terminated the year 1807.
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CHAPTER XLIV.
1808-1812.
THE RISING STORM.
EFFECTS OF THE EMBARGO IN NEW YORK. -- POLITICAL ANIMOSITIES. - ELECTION OF GOVERNOR TOMPKINS. - THE FIRST WOOLEN MILLS IN NEW YORK. - LIVINGSTON HOMES ON THE HUDSON. - OPPOSITION TO THE EMBARGO. - FASHIONS OF THE PERIOD. - MADISON'S ELECTION. - PARTY STRIFES IN NEW YORK. - THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DISCOVERY OF MANHATTAN ISLAND. - THE BANQUET. - THE NEW CITY HALL. - CITY HALL PARK. - GEORGE FREDERICK COOKE. - CHURCH EDI- FICES OF THE CITY IN 1812. - CANAL STREET. - THE GRADING AND EXTENSION OF STREETS. - LAYING OUT OF THE WHOLE ISLAND INTO STREETS AND AVENUES. -- THE ALDERMEN. -- COLONEL NICHOLAS FISH. - THE ERIE CANAL IN CONTEMPLATION. - SURVEYS. - WAR PROSPECTS. - CELEBRATED CHARACTERS.
N EW YORK suffered severely from the embargo. Her kings of com- merce were doomed to see their immense business suspended, for no vessels could sail to the East and West Indies, or to the vast colonial regions of North and South America, any more than to England and France, without being subject to capture and condemnation. The trade of the whole world, in fact, was interdicted, and could not be carried on without risk of forfeiture. Ships in which a vast amount of capital was invested rocked idly at anchor and went to decay in New York harbor. The merchant discharged his clerks, and warehouses were in many in- stances closed and deserted. The farmer had either no market for his produce or must sell at a great reduction of price. Prosperity was ar- rested, and actual, palpable, pecuniary loss stared every merchant and farmer in the face.
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