USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress Vol. III > Part 38
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1 John Ferguson was appointed mayor of New York in 1815, but resigned, and Jacob Rad- cliff succeeded to the office. Richard Riker was appointed recorder in 1815, succeeding Josiah Oden Hoffman, and filled the office until the appointment of Peter Augustus Jay in 1819.
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"Clinton lifted one of these kegs high in the air and in full view of the assembled multitude poured its contents into the briny ocean, saying : 'This solemnity, at this place, on the first arrival of vessels from Lake Erie, is intended to indicate and commemorate the navigable communication which has been accomplished between our Mediterranean seas and the Atlantic ocean. '" Page 699.
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DESIGNING THE NATIONAL FLAG.
Peter H. Wendover of New York called attention to the flag of the United States, which did not represent all the States, and offered a motion for its alteration. While the question was pending Wendover called upon Captain Samuel C. Reid, the hero of Fayal, who happened to be in Wash- ington, and requested him to design something which would represent the increase of the States without destroying the distinctive character of the flag. As originally instituted by Congress, June 14, 1777, the flag bore thirteen stars and thirteen stripes. When new States came in, the num- ber of stars and stripes were to be correspondingly increased, pursuant to an act of Congress passed in 1794. But with the addition of new stars and stripes, the width of the stripes must necessarily be lessened.
Thus it was losing its historical significance. To return to the 1818. original device would be inappropriate, because the flag would then give no hint of the growth of the republic. Captain Reid soon hit upon the happy medium, by which the glory of the past could be combined with the progress of the present - the thirteen stripes retained as a memento of the original Union, alternate red and white, and a new star, white on a blue field, added whenever a new State was admitted, to indicate the growth of the nation. The design was unique, beautiful, and satisfactory. Wendover accepted Reid's idea, and succeeded in obtaining its adoption by Congress. On the 26th of March, Wendover wrote to Reid : "Please inform me as soon as convenient what a flag (of the size of the one float- ing over the Capitol at Washington) would cost in New York, made for the purpose, with thirteen stripes and twenty stars, forming one great luminary, as per pasteboard plan you handed me ?"
The bill providing for the alteration of the flag from and after the 4th of July, 1818, became a law on the 4th of April.
Captain Reid purchased the materials, and Mrs. Reid made the flag in the drawing-room of her house in New York City, 27 Cherry Street, near Franklin Square, assisted by a number of young ladies, whose names were worked upon the flag. It was immediately forwarded to Wendover, who wrote to Reid on the 13th of April: " I have just time to inform you that the new flag arrived here per mail this day, and was hoisted to replace the old one at two o'clock, and has given much satisfaction to all who have seen it, as far as I have heard. I am pleased with its form and pro- portions, and have no doubt it will satisfy the public mind. Mr. Clay [then Speaker of the House] says it is wrong that there should be no charge in your bill for making the flag. If pay for that will be acceptable, on being informed I will procure it. Do not understand me as intending to wound Mrs. Reid, or others who may have given aid, and please pre- sent my thanks to her and them, and accept the same for yourself."
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
Through the long-continued efforts of Thomas Eddy and John Pintard, the first Savings Bank in New York went into operation in July, 1819. The subject had been in agitation from time to time since 1803. 1819. A meeting was called in the autumn of 1816 at the City Hotel, and a constitution adopted with twenty-eight directors chosen - the list headed by De Witt Clinton and ending with John Pintard; but so many projects of benevolence were before the public that there was delay in raising the necessary capital. William Bayard was its first president ; John Pintard was chosen president in 1828, and filled the office until the year 1842.
The yellow fever appeared in the city in 1819, creating universal alarm ; but it disappeared without having raged with as much fury as on several former occasions. In the summer of 1822 it broke out in Rector Street, 1822. a part of the city hitherto esteemed secure from its ravages. The
first case occurred on the 17th of June. By the middle of July it was spreading with fearful rapidity. Business was entirely suspended in August and a part of September, and the only sounds to break the ter- rible stillness were the rumbling of hearses and the footsteps of nurses and physicians. High board-fences shut off each infected street or dis- trict below City Hall. " It has utterly desolated the lower portions of the city," wrote Robert M. Hartley under date of September 1, 1822, to his father. "Thousands have left, and other thousands, panic-stricken, are daily leaving. Stores and dwellings are closed and deserted. The custom- house, post-office, all the banks, insurance offices, and other public places of business have been removed to the upper part of Broadway and to Greenwich village, the region round about being mostly occupied by mer- chants in buildings temporarily erected for their convenience. Such a motley scene as is exhibited defies description. There are carts, cartmen, carpenters, carriages, dust, and dry goods -to the end of the alphabet." There was no relief until November.
While the pestilence was at its height a ship entered the harbor upon which Charles Matthews was a passenger from Europe. Hearing that one hundred and forty deaths had occurred in the city that very Sept. day, he was in great consternation, and unwilling to land. Stephen Price and Edmund Simpson were the managers of the Park Theater; the latter at once addressed a note to Dr. Francis, asking him to visit Matthews for the purpose of calming his excitement. Repairing to the vessel, they found Matthews walking the deck, tottering, and in extremest agitation. He said he felt the pestilential air, every cloud was surcharged with mortality, every wave in its tossing imparted poison. He insisted upon finding shelter in some remote spot. Hoboken was suggested, and
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CHARLES MATTHEWS. EDMUND KEAN.
thither he proceeded, attended by Simpson and Dr. Francis. They found a gardener's cottage some two miles from the Jersey shore on the road to Hackensack, and the great comedian spent the entire night pacing his diminutive apartment, overwhelmed with terror and despair. The situa- tion became tolerable after a few days, and he turned for useful diversion to the poultry-yard and the pastures, practising among their inhabitants the art of mimicry for which he was renowned. His age was about forty, his figure was tall and thin, one leg was shorter than the other, and his features were extremely irregular from the effects of an injury in being thrown from a gig, but vivified with intelligence. He was a remarkable specimen of what early training and protracted and intense study may accomplish. And yet he was a dyspeptic and morbidly nervous, never paying any attention to physical improvement in his incessant strife for intellectual progress. He was always complaining and never well.
The sensation created by Edmund Kean, on his first visit to New York, had hardly died away when Matthews came. Kean arrived in 1820 and departed June 4, 1821. He was thirty-three, small of stature, but grace- ful, and when under the influence of passion effective and even grand. His little, well-wrought, strong frame seemed capable of any amount of endurance ; he was an admirable fencer, a finished gentleman, a most insidious lover, and a terrific tragedian. His face was expressive, his eye brilliant, his action free, and his voice flexible and strong. He was, like Matthews, a close student, and a master of mimic power. Both
secured the glories of success. But Kean was irregular in life, capricious in temper, and eccentric in habit, while Matthews was the apostle of temperance and circumspection. Kean mixed with all sorts of people, and when attacked by the press, ordered the papers carried from his presence with a pair of tongs. Matthews was fond of literary characters, was acquainted with Sir Walter Scott, moved in a social circle among the most eminent authors and actors, and was singularly gifted with worldly prudence.
The Old Park Theater was burned on the morning of the 25th of May; 1820, and such was the rapidity of the conflagration that not an article of wardrobe or scenery was saved. A new edifice arose upon its site, eighty feet wide by one hundred and sixty-five feet deep, running through to Theater Alley, where a large wing was attached containing the green- room and dressing-rooms. The audience entered by seven arched door- ways, all opening outward. The interior was fashioned to seat twenty- five hundred persons. It had three circles of boxes, forty-two in all, two side tiers, a spacious gallery, and a pleasant pit. It was first opened in September, 1821, and the builders, John Jacob Astor and John K. Beekman,
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Interior of Park Theater, November 7, 1822. [Charles Matthews and Miss Ellen A. Johnson in the farce of " Monsieur Tonson."]
were greatly applauded for their public spirit and good taste. It was closed until late in the autumn of 1822, on account of the prevalence of the yellow fever; but with the coming of the frosts, and the general
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INTERIOR OF PARK THEATER; 1822.
return of the citizens to their homes, it became the scene of the intro- duction of Matthews to a New York audience. The Commercial Adver- tiser of November 8, 1822, says: "We last night paid our dollar to witness this gentleman's far-famed exhibitions, and confess that 1822.
we do not regret the time or the money spent. The house was so crowded that it was with great difficulty we could procure a seat, and amidst so large an audience we could not discover even a whisper of disapprobation. Mr. Matthews played Goldfinch in the 'Road to Ruin.' The popular farce of 'Monsieur Tonson ' was performed Nov. 7. for the first time, and Mr. Matthews supported the principal char- acter with great éclat. His comic songs and imitations were the best we ever heard ; and in consequence of his variations, on being encored, the audience seemed disposed to sit all night and enjoy this species of entertainment."
The original water-color painting from which the accompanying illus- tration has been copied is of exceptional historic interest, because of its approved portraiture.1 The wife of Governor De Witt Clinton occupies the box in the first tier, nearest the stage. In the third box, beyond, are seated the Mayor and Mrs. Cadwallader D. Colden, daughter of Bishop Provost, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lenox, Mr. Kennedy, Miss Wilkes, and John K. Beekman. In the boxes between the two are said to be recog- nized Mrs. Daniel Webster, Mrs. Ogden, Dr. and Mrs. Mitchill, Mrs. Major Fairlie, Dr. Hosack, Jacob H. Le Roy, William Bayard, James Watson, Dr. McLane, and Mrs. Newbold ; while Henry Brevoort, James Kirke Paulding, James W. Gerard, Henry Carey, and Swift Livingston are seated just beyond. One of the second tier of boxes is occupied by Judge and Mrs. Nathaniel Pendleton and Judge and Mrs. Samuel Jones.
1 The history of the water-color painting, now in possession of the New York Historical Society, is scarcely less interesting than the picture itself. The original drawing was made for William Bayard by John Searle, a clever amateur artist, and the picture when completed was hung upon the wall of Mr. Bayard's country residence. Some years since Thomas W. Channing Moore became much interested in it while visiting Mr. Bayard, and with the instinct of a genuine antiquarian resolved that such a treasure should not be entirely lost to New York. He accordingly obtained permission to bring it to the city for the purpose of showing it to Mr. Elias Dexter. Six of the gentlemen whose portraits appear in the painting were then living - Francis Barretto, Robert G. I. De Peyster, Gouverneur S. Bibby, Wil- liam Bayard, Jr., William Maxwell, and James W. Gerard - and were invited to an inter- view for its examination. Mr. Barretto and Mr. Bibby remembered and were able to recognize nearly every person represented upon the canvas. All the gentlemen pronounced the portraits striking ; and many reminiscences were related in connection with those supposed to be present on that memorable evening when Matthews first appeared in the farce of Monsieur Tonson. A key was made to the painting, and it was photographed by Dexter ; it was then returned to its owner. Upon the death of Mr. Bayard it descended to his daugh- ter, Mrs. Harriet Bayard Van Rensselaer, and was subsequently presented by her heirs to the
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
The social life of New York at this period was invested with a peculiar charm. Wealth and refinement, money-making and good-breeding, were blended as never before. The flavor of courts clung to the numerous representatives of the old colonial aristocracy, who still formed the metal in the cup. But intellectual achievement was held in severe respect, and benevolence was the fashion of the day. The man of means was measured according to his intelligent promotion of art, science, literature, religion, and internal improvements. Pride of family existed, as was natural in such a community, but a birthright commanded little consideration unless divested of all suspicion of ignorance and vulgarity. The tone of society was elevated without being pretentious. Progress was the all-absorbing idea. The development of the industries, schemes of charity, and the education of the laboring classes were drawing-room topics. A fund had been appropriated by the State, in 1820, for the support of common schools, amounting to a million and a half of dollars. Enormous sums were expended yearly in the city from private sources. Beauty and fashion were none the less admired; amusements were patronized, and the higher obligations of polite life scrupulously fulfilled. Intercourse with the leading men and women of both the New England and Southern States secured to New York greater catholicity of spirit than elsewhere ; and the shining lights of foreign statesmanship, diplomacy, and letters, who were from time to time visitors or dwellers in the city, influenced more or less the public taste.
President Monroe was much in New York during his eight years' ad- ministration. Mrs. Monroe was not only a New-Yorker herself, but was nearly related to several of the prominent families; her sister married Nicholas Gouverneur, of the great commercial house doing business with
New York Historical Society. The key furnishes the names, in addition to those already mentioned, of Herman Le Roy, William Le Roy, Alexander Hosack, Stephen Price, Ed- ward Price, Captain J. Richardson, Mrs. Eliza Talbot, Robert Dyson, Herman Le Roy, Jr., D. P. Campbell, Mrs. Clinton, Maltby Geltson, and Mr. Charaud, in the first and second tier of boxes ; and in the pit, Nicholas C. Rutgers, Dr. John W. Francis, Walter Livingston, Henry W. Cruger, Dr. John Watts, Pierre C. Van Wyck, Edmund Wilkes, Hamilton Wilkes, John Searle, the artist, Thomas F. Livingston, Dr. John Neilson, Thomas Bibby, the ancestor of the Bibby family in New York, whose descendants now represent the Van Cortlandts of Yonkers, Gouverneur S. Bibby, Robert G. L. De Peyster, Hugh Maxwell, William Max- well, James Seaton, Andrew Drew, William Wilkes, Charles Farquhar, John Berry, Robert Gillespie, Mordecai M. Noah, William Bell, John Lang, editor of the New York Gazette, James McKay, James Alport, James Farquhar, Thomas W. Moore, Francis Barretto, Joseph Fowler, John J. Boyd, William H. Robinson, and Robert Watts. The last named, sitting in the immediate foreground, close by the orchestra, may be recognized by his light coat. He was the one mentioned on page 650 as the handsomest man in New York. Many of the gentlemen wore their hats for protection against the draughts of cold wind sweeping through the house.
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SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW YORK.
all parts of the world - descended from the Gouverneurs so familiar to the reader in the first volume of this work ;1 and their son, Samuel L. Gouverneur, the New York postmaster for nine years, married Maria, the youngest daughter of President and Mrs. Monroe, the ceremony being per- formed at the White House. Mrs. Gouverneur was a beautiful bride, and very warmly received in New York society. She dispensed hospitalities at her elegant home in the metropolis with as much ease and dignity as her accomplished mother at the capital. Mrs. Monroe will be remembered as the mistress of the Executive Mansion who carried into execution the custom of never returning calls, which nearly produced a social revolu- tion. The question of propriety as to indiscriminate visiting on the part of the wife of the President was hotly debated, and involved diplomatic and State correspondence. Mrs. Monroe remained firm. The difficulty was finally adjusted by John Quincy Adams, who drew up the formula which has since regulated the etiquette of the social superstructure at the capital. Mrs. Monroe was extremely exacting in the matter of appro- priate dress to be worn at her receptions. On one occasion the President refused admission to a near relative who was not prepared with a suit of small-clothes and silk hose. Nearly ten years of Mrs. Monroe's life had been spent at the European capitals, while accompanying her husband on his various missions to foreign courts, and her daughters were at school in France. The elder, Eliza, who married Judge George Hay, was in the same class and on terms of intimacy with Hortense Eugénie Beauharnais, afterwards Queen of Holland.
Monroe had been re-elected President with but one dissenting vote, that of New Hampshire - given to John Quincy Adams. Tompkins was again Vice-President, and chairman of the Senate, in which Rufus King and Martin Van Buren represented New York. The chief controversy that marked Monroe's first term concerned negro slavery. The question
1 See Vol. I. 388, 440. The Gouverneurs have been ranked among the best families of New York for nearly two centuries ; few names are better known than those of Gouverneur Morris, Gouverneur Kemble, Gouverneur Ogden, and Gouverneur Kortwright. Isaac Gou- verneur, son of Nicholas and Eliza Kortwright Gouverneur, was killed in a duel with William H. Maxwell, brother of Hugh Maxwell. His brother, Samuel L. Gouverneur, married Maria, daughter of President Monroe. Their son, Samuel Lawrence Gouverneur, born in New York City, 1828, recently died in Washington ; he served in the Mexican War with distinction, and was for some years United States consul at Foo-Choo, China ; his wife was Marion, daughter of Judge Campbell, surrogate of New York City for many years. Lawrence Kort- wright, the father of Mrs. Monroe, was the son of Cornelius Kortwright, an old merchant of New York in the time of Governor Cosby, who married Miss Aspinwall. The Kortwright family intermarried with the Verplancks, the Tillotsons, the Lawrences, the Livingstons, and other eminent families. The town of Kortwright was named for Lawrence Kortwright, where he had purchased large tracts of land intending to found a manor.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
arose in connection with a petition for the admission of Missouri into the Union. A bill, with an amendment prohibiting slavery in the new State, was defeated. After much discussion a compromise was effected, by which the subject was dismissed for the time ; and Missouri took her place among the sovereign States.
Meanwhile the progress of the Erie Canal was a distinguished success. It stimulated the ambition of the whole country. Enterprises of internal improvement - of lesser magnitude - were taking shape in many direc- tions. The fame of De Witt Clinton had gone to the ends of the earth. The completion of each section of the great work was attended with pub- lic ceremonials. Thousands of people made long journeys to see the deep cutting through mountain ridges, the wonderful embankments and aque- ducts, and the combined locks. Clinton's " big ditch " was the curiosity of the age.
The ancient enemies of Clinton appear to have taken alarm at his in- creasing notoriety. Having been displaced from the governorship in 1822 by the election of Joseph C. Yates, he was no longer in the political field.
Nor was he a candidate for any office. He was simply attending 1824. to his duties as president of the board of canal commissioners, and devoting toilsome days and sleepless nights to the practical realiza- tion of his stupendous views. He had for years been traversing the State to watch over the progress of the canal, without salary, or a dollar of reward for his services. His ceaseless exertions had animated industry and enterprise, facilitated the rapid circulation of capital, and given the New York public a sweet foretaste of unfolding riches -in ten thousand separate ways. He was becoming an object of popular interest and ap- plause. His wings must be clipped, or he might soar into some high seat - to the great disadvantage of his opponents and persecutors.
Thus reasoned a few uneasy legislators in April, 1824. On the last April 12.
day of the session, the Senate, on motion of John Bowman, passed a resolution for the removal of De Witt Clinton from the office of canal commissioner ! It was sent for concurrence to the Assembly, where it was acted upon almost instantaneously in the hurry and confusion prior to adjournment for the season. Unutterable amazement was created in the mind of every member not in the secret. The high-handed meas- ure had been concocted the evening before in a select but rather informal caucus ; and few instances exist in history where political cunning when held to the light, revealed so little of human nobility and so much of per- verse folly. When the announcement was made gentlemen engaged in packing up their papers paused and stared at each other, as if wondering if they had heard aright. Henry Cunningham was in the act of putting
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THE GREAT POLITICAL BLUNDER OF 1824.
on his overcoat, and without a moment for reflection threw it over his arm and turned to the speaker with flashing eyes and face glowing with indignation. He spoke for twenty minutes in a strain of manly eloquence that would have done credit to a Roman orator. "For what good and honorable purpose has this resolution been sent here for concurrence at the very last moment of the session ?" he asked. "Sir, I challenge in- quiry. We have spent rising of three months in legislation, and not one word has been dropped intimating a desire or intention to expel that honorable gentleman from the board of canal commissioners! What ne- farious and secret design, I ask, is to be effected at the expense of the honor and integrity of this legislature ?"
Clinton bore the insult like a Christian martyr. Not so New York. Clinton simply invited the most rigid scrutiny into his official conduct. His native State did more. Meetings were called in every town, village, and city, to denounce in the most public manner an act which, without the assignment of a single reason or the faintest color of necessity, had hurled from an exalted eminence, as if he were some great State culprit, the man above all others to whom New York was indebted. The April 20. feeling in New York City was intense. Ten thousand people assembled in the park in front of the City Hall on the afternoon of the 20th, embracing all classes and all political cliques and parties. Such a meeting, taking it all in all, had never been witnessed in the metropolis. Its object was to stigmatize the unjustifiable procedure of the legislature. General Robert Bogardus nominated the venerable William Few to the chair, who was greeted with unbounded applause. Stirring addresses were made. "The benefactors of states and empires cannot be hidden from the world," said Charles G. Haines. "The spirit of the age and the light of truth are with them. Combinations may arise to obscure the luster of their deeds, and diminish the magnitude and utility of their efforts ; but the calm conviction of after times will do them justice." Resolutions were submitted by Isaac S. Hone, declaring the removal of Clinton a disgrace to the State, a violation of justice, and an outrage on public opinion, and adopted by acclamation. Thousands of voices pro- claimed the unanimity with which they were received, and when the chairman called for the noes, a dead silence - a deep pause ensued.
A committee of thirty gentlemen was appointed to communicate the resolutions to Clinton, and to give them publicity throughout the State and nation ; while a vote of thanks was returned to General James Benedict, John Morss, and David Seaman from the city delega- 1824. tion who had voted against the measure. Thus New York taught narrow politicians a lesson not likely to be forgotten ; and paid a just
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