USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress Vol. III > Part 44
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PRISONS. CITY CHARITIES.
A group of three beautiful and picturesque islands in the East River, alongside the city, are now occupied with the penal and charitable insti- tutions for which New York is famous. To trace the history of their growth and development would require a volume by itself. Blackwell's Island, of one hundred and twenty acres, was purchased by the city in 1828, for fifty thousand dollars. A heavy granite sea-wall, and various edifices turreted and battlemented in the old feudal style, were in due course of time constructed of stone quarried on the island by the convicts. Gardens and attractive grounds were laid out and cultivated, and trees planted. There are now upon the island a penitentiary, with inmates averaging about twelve hundred, an almshouse, a correctional workhouse, a large charity hospital with accommodations for eight hundred, a small- pox hospital, a blind asylum, a spacious lunatic asylum, and hospitals for paralytics, epileptics, in- curables, and the convales- cent, inhabit- ed constantly by some seven thousand per- sons, all under the charge of the Commis- sioners of Pub- lic Charities The Tombs. and Corrections. Ward's Island is nearly circular, and in parts finely wooded. Several of its hospitals and asylums are large and handsome structures. The Emigrants' Hospital receives the sick and destitute aliens from the Old World, and is in charge of the Commissioners of Emigration, created in 1847. Randall's Island, of one hundred acres, is the site of the House of Refuge, an imposing edifice, with mosque-like turrets, erected in 1854 (the first institution of the kind ever organized) ; and of the nursery, children's hospitals, asylum and school for idiots, and other charities provided by the city for destitute children. The Society for reforming Juvenile Delinquents, an outgrowth of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, established the pioneer House of Refuge in Madison Square, with six boys and three girls, in 1825. When the old arsenal was burned, in 1839, the institution was transferred to one of the hospital buildings on the East River, where it remained fifteen years - until the new edifice on Randall's Island was completed.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
The decade of which this chapter treats was marked by the foundation of the great newspaper system, which has become an engine of thought more powerful than book-making. Newspapers had long been the most appreciated of all human productions. But they were not numerous, and their circulation was limited. The New York Sun, projected by Ben- jamin H. Day in September, 1833, was the first successful penny paper in the world. Horace Greeley, in partnership with Dr. Horatio David Shepard and Francis V. Story, issued a little penny sheet in January of the same year, which survived exactly three weeks. The Sun was made up of twelve columns, each ten inches long; it had no editorials, it gave no opinions, commercial reviews, financial reports, or stock sales, and it made no promises. But it helped to make newspaper readers ; and when two years old boasted a circulation of eight thousand. One cent continued to be its price for thirty years. The penny press dates from the advent of the Sun in 1833, since when upwards of one hundred one and two cent journals have been started in New York City-although many of them had but a brief existence. The New York Herald was founded in 1835, by James Gordon Bennett, who had been in the city since 1822, engaged on various papers. He made the science of journalism a study. His new sheet was independent of party, and conducted in a manner so origi- nal and unexpected that the public seized it with avidity. In 1836 he raised the price to two cents. There were seven large morning papers at this epoch called "sixpenny sheets," and four evening papers of the same character and price. Yet Bennett prophesied, after carefully computing his accounts, "I shall be enabled to carry into effect prodigious improve- ments, and to make the Herald the greatest, the best, and the most profit- able paper that ever appeared in this country." Gerard Hallock, one of the editors of the Journal of Commerce, wrote of the penny papers about the same time, "The number of newspaper readers is probably doubled by their influence, and they circulate as pioneers among those classes who have suffered greatly from want of general intelligence."
The Journal of Commerce, founded in 1827 under the auspices of Arthur Tappan, was the " blanket sheet" of the period chiefly in compe- tition with the Courier and Enquirer - as far as obtaining fresh news was concerned. It was purchased in 1828 by David Hale and Gerard Hallock. Hale was the son of a Connecticut divine, a tall, slim, brusque, vigorous man of thirty-six, who managed the business and commercial concerns of the enterprise with persistent industry and energy. Hallock was the son of a Massachusetts divine, an accomplished linguist and gen- eral scholar of twenty-seven, who edited and guided the general policy of the journal. They inaugurated within a year the famous news-schooners,
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PENNY JOURNALISM.
to cruise at sea and intercept European vessels for the latest intelligence. The Courier and Enquirer immediately hired vessels for the same pur- pose, and the races of these squadrons down the bay were exciting in the extreme. In 1833 Hale and Hallock established a horse-express to Philadelphia, and, not to be outdone, the other papers instituted an oppo- sition express. An interview at a later day between Hale and Bennett was the origin of the Associated Press, founded in 1849, of which the amiable and self-poised Gerard Hallock was the president for many years.1 The New York Express was ushered into existence in 1836, under the editorial direction of James Brooks, assisted by his brother, Erastus Brooks. The first number of the New York Tribune was issued by Horace Greeley in 1841. He had been in New York ten years, and for some time had edited the New Yorker ; also the Log Cabin, a campaign journal, both of which were merged into the Tribune, with which his name henceforward was completely identified. Henry J. Raymond, who in 1851 founded the New York Times, became assistant editor of the Tribune at ten dollars a week, and gained extraordinary distinction as a reporter; he was subse- quently on the editorial staff of the Courier and Enquirer. The New York World was of a later date, making its first appearance in June, 1860 ; and in July, 1861, the Courier and Enquirer was merged into this new journal. There were no Sunday papers in New York prior to 1825. The commu- nity was startled when the Sunday Courier appeared one bright Sabbath morning. Public sentiment rebelled against the innovation, and only three or four Sunday papers were attempted during the following ten years. Even the Journal of Commerce would permit no work done in the estab- lishment between twelve o'clock Saturday night and twelve o'clock Sun- day night. The religious press of New York dates from 1820, when the New York Observer was founded by Sidney E. Morse, in connection with his brother, Richard C. Morse, sons of Rev. Dr. Jedediah Morse, the geog- rapher. They were brothers of Professor Samuel F. B. Morse of artistic and telegraphic fame. But few journals under this head proved success- ful prior to 1840. The Christian Intelligencer, the organ of the influential and wealthy Dutch Reformed Church, projected in 1830, and ever since holding a high place among the religious publications of the country, and the New York Evangelist, founded about 1833, "to promote revivals and
1 Gerard Hallock (born 1800, died 1869,) was the brother of the late Rev. Dr. William A. Hallock, (born 1794, died 1880), who, coming to New York, founded the American Tract Society in 1825, and was its great managing head for over half a century. They were sons of the learned Rev. Moses Hallock of Plainfield, Massachusetts, who, in addition to his pastoral duties taught a classical school in his own house, fitting young men for Williams College. William Cullen Bryant was a classmate, under this instruction, with the four sons of the clergyman, two of whom came to reside in New York as above.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
missions, temperance and other reforms," ably conducted by Rev. Joshua Leavitt - subsequently of the Independent, started as an organ of the Congregationalists nearly a score of years afterward- were all that attained any literary publications George P. Morris contributors as Coo- planck, and a score in fashionable and called it " the organ commenced in 1833, Gaylord Clark. It can in 1845, a paper brilliant and versa- King, which be- financial circles of of the Evening Post, Advertiser, James quirer, and Thurlow special distinction in the city. Among the New York Mirror took the lead, with and N. P. Willis at the helm, and such per, Hallock, Hoffman, Irving, Ver- of other luminaries. It was widely read literary circles, and Willis facetiously of the Upper Ten." The Knickerbocker, was edited by the witty and genial Lewis was absorbed by the New York Amcri- under the editorial management of the tile Charles King, brother of James G. longed to the strictly aristocratic and the metropolis. Bryant was the editor William L. Stone of the Commercial Watson Webb of the Courier and En- Weed of the Albany Evening Journal. No subject bris- intellectual and ma- But the limits of possibility of enter- is sufficient for a li- tles with more intense interest than the terial development of the newspaper. this work preclude the ing into its details. It brary in itself. As the city grew, journals of every class multiplied, until their number has, in 1880, reached four hundred and thirty- seven. Of these, thirty are issued daily, eleven semi-weekly, and one hundred and ninety- four weekly.
Dutch Reformed Church in Fifth Avenue, corner of Forty-eight Street. [In the tower of this church hangs the " Silver-toned Bell " cast in Holland, in 1731, for the Middle Dutch Church in Nassau Street. See Vol. I. 524.]
The decade under consideration was one of peculiar intellectual vitality. Authorship took a fresh start, pub-
lishing-houses expanded (that of the Harpers occupied nine contiguous buildings when burned in 1853), art received higher recognition than
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THE ITALIAN OPERA. POETS OF 1837.
ever before, exhibitions of pictures and statuary became both lucrative and popular, while the drama struggled for elevation in keeping with the advance of public taste. "The age is itself dramatic, and the dramatic spirit now more than ever characterizes the people," wrote the critic of the Mirror in 1837.1 Four theatrical edifices were projected between 1835 and 1845. The one theater of the early years of the century is to-day represented by twenty-five, chiefly handsome and costly structures. The Italian Opera was introduced in 1825, the most select audience ever assembled within the walls of the Park Theater greeting the first appear- ance of the famous Garcia with his troupe. His daughter, afterwards Madame Malibran, then only seventeen, astonished and delighted New York with the wonderful compass and sweetness of her voice. She received ten thousand dollars for singing in English Opera at the opening of the Bowery Theater in 1826. Other troupes visited the country from time to time, but the success of the opera for a long period was not as- sured. George P. Morris wrote a play called Brier Cliff, which was pro- duced at the Chatham Theater in 1837, and repeated forty nights in succession. In 1842 he wrote the libretto of an opera, The Maid of Saxony, which was set to music and performed fourteen nights in the Park Theater.
The semi-centennial anniversary of the revival of Columbia College was celebrated in April, 1837. An imposing procession of trustees, pro- fessors, clergymen, societies, public officials, and dignitaries from univer- sities of other States, with appropriate costumes and banners, formed on the college green and marched through some of the principal streets to St. John's Church. The exercises were of a marked and memorable char-
1 In the same issue of the New York Mirror appears a list of the poets of the period, quoted from a publication long since forgotten, the New York Book. The paragraph is given for the benefit of the curious. "Who says that the American people are a mere money- getting, dollar-saving people ? Who can deny, on the contrary, that they are a nation of poets, sons of Apollo, every one of them ? Judge for yourselves. Their names, as registered in the New York Book, are: Francis Arden, John I. Bailey, Robert Barker, Ann E. Bleecker, Anthony Bleecker, S. De Witt Bloodgood, A. H. Bogart, David S. Bogart, Elizabeth Bogart, James G. Brooks, Miss Mary E. Brooks, A. L. Blauvelt, Willis G. Clark (twin brother of Lewis Gaylord Clark), Elizabeth C. Clinch, William Croswell, Isaac Clason, Lucretia M. Davidson, G. W. Doane, Joseph Rodman Drake, William Duer, Elizabeth F. Ellet, Emma C. Embury, Theodore S. Fay, Margarette V. Faugeres, William P. Hawes, Charles Fenno Hoffman, Washington Irving, John Inman, Samuel Low, Jonathan Lawrence, Jr., William Leggett, William Livingston, George P. Morris, Jacob Morton, Lindley Murray, Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, Clement C. Moore, James Nack, Rosewell Park, James K. Paulding, Edward Sanford, Robert C. Sands, Daniel Seymour, Thomas Slidell, Alfred B. Street, William L. Stone, George D. Strong, J. R. Sutermeister, T. W. Tucker, W. H. Vining, J. B. Van Schaick, and Gulian C. Verplanck. The editor of the New York Book has accomplislied a difficult task in a very satisfactory manner, although several deserving names may be found among the missing."
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
acter. An oration from Rev. Dr. Manton Eastburn reviewed the history of the college. President William A. Duer conferred the honorary degree of Master of Arts upon William Cullen Bryant, Charles Fenno Hoffman, and Fitz-Greene Halleck; of Doctor of Laws upon David B. Ogden, John Duer, and George Griffin ; and of Doctor of Divinity upon seven promi- nent clergymen. The president's levee in the evening, wrote Willis, " was one of the most striking fêtes New York ever witnessed. The picture- galleries and conservatories of half the town were laid under contribution to supply the plants, painting, and statuary with which the corridors and alcoves of the spacious suite of apartments were decorated ; and the num- ber of eminent literary and professional persons, mingling with the young sprigs of fashion and grave political characters of all parties, rendered the scene at once novel, animated, and imposing. Such reunions make the halls of learning serve a more beneficent purpose than mere pupilage in letters." During the next month the new Gothic edifice of the University was publicly dedicated to science, letters, and religion, the chapel being crowded with the beauty and intelligence of the city. One of the speakers took occasion to explain that in opening the portals of science to the archi- tect, engineer, mechanic, agriculturist, and others who wished "to pursue one or more special branches of study without being required to attend upon the whole undergraduate course," the University had no disposition to disparage classical learning. On the contrary, he affirmed that it was nowhere more effectually imparted or more rigidly exacted in candidates for degrees.
The rooms of the upper story adjacent to the chapel on the north side were occupied by the professor of the Literature of the Arts of Design, Samuel F. B. Morse - with his pupils - who was elected to this post when the institution was first established. In September following the dedication of the building, having completed the first crude telegraphic recording apparatus in the world, he exhibited to a select assemblage at the University the operation of his new system, and demonstrated beyond dispute his ability to communicate between two points distant half a mile from each other. He immediately applied to Congress for aid in constructing an experimental telegraph from Washington to Balti- more. But his project was received coldly, with skepticism, and even with ridicule.
Professor Morse had been a resident of New York City since 1815. As an artist he enjoyed unusual social privileges. He went to England with Washington Allston in 1811, and while abroad was the pupil of West and Copley. He studied sculpture as well as painting, and in 1813 received from the hands of the Duke of Norfolk, in presence of the for-
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THE MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.
eign ambassadors, the gold medal offered by the Adelphi Society of Arts in London for the best single figure modeled within a specified period. When he first established himself in New York he was grieved to find that petty jealousies and dissensions kept the artists apart. He made it his first business to heal animosities, and one evening invited the artists to his room, os- tensibly to eat straw- berries and cream, but really to beguile them into something like agreeable intercourse. He covered his table with prints, and scat- tered inviting casts about the room. Before the evening was spent it was proposed and unanimously agreed to meet in a similar man- ner every week. This was the germ of the National Academy of Design, of which Morse Professor Samuel F. B. Morse. became the first president - was re-elected for sixteen years - and be- fore which he delivered the first course of lectures on Fine Arts in this country. He was deeply interested in various departments of science, especially in chemistry. It was in the autumn of 1832, while on board the Havre packet Sully, returning to America, to enter upon the duties of his professorship in the University, that he conceived the great invention which won him more honors of a foreign and public kind than were ever before bestowed upon an American. In a casual conversation with some of the passengers concerning the relation between electricity and mag- netism, a recent experiment in Paris was described. Electricity had been instantaneously transmitted through a wire. The idea that in a gentle and steady current of the electric fluid a source existed of regular, continued, and rapid motions, which might be applied to a machine for conveying messages from place to place, and inscribing them on a tablet, at once took possession of the mind of Morse. We can almost see the figure of the illustrious inventor as he paced the deck full of this thought, or
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
gazed dreamily into the sea, devising mechanical contrivances to give it expression. Before the packet reached New York the essential features of the electro-magnetic transmitting and recording apparatus were sketched upon paper. While experimenting in his rooms in the New York Univer- sity, he met with little sympathy from scientists ; and the public gener- ally presumed his brilliant discovery would prove but an ingenious scien- tific pastime. He stretched half a mile of wire around and around one of his apartments, and thus could exhibit a telegraph in actual operation in 1835 ; but only in one direction - until the summer of 1837.
The story of the long-baffled efforts and final success of Morse is as remarkable as any in the annals of discovery. The lesson it teaches is as old as human genius and human ambition. Inflexible perseverance in patient endeavor is essential to achievement. He sailed for Europe, reso- lute, and undismayed by the coolness of Congress, but the governments of the Old World gave him no encouragement, and he returned to America to try again. He renewed his appeal to Congress year after year. On the last night of the session in March, 1843, he left the Capitol, after waiting patiently through the long day, thoroughly disconsolate. His amazement may be imagined the next morning, to learn that in the hurry and confusion of the midnight hour the expiring Congress voted thirty thousand dollars for the construction of a telegraph between Washington and Baltimore. He immediately commenced the work. At first the wires, inclosed in lead pipes, were buried in the earth. One day, while watching the laborers engaged in digging a trench for the purpose, near Baltimore, Morse sought refuge in a shed from a violent thunder-storm, exclaiming, " The time will come when we shall have to hang these wires on poles." Before ten miles were accomplished the lead pipes were abandoned and the wires elevated. The completion of the undertaking was announced in May, 1844.
The notion of the utility of electricity for imparting information did not originate in any one mind, any more than that of the moving of ships by steam. But Morse combined and improved upon the invention of others to such a degree that out of sixty competitors he reached the most desirable result for public and private use.1 At a convention held in 1851, for the purpose of adopting a uniform system of telegraphing for all Germany, that of Morse was selected. It has superseded other sys- tems in nearly every country of the world. The representatives of the principal European powers, assembled at Paris in 1857, presented Morse four hundred thousand francs as a recompense for his invention. Gold medals of scientific merit were awarded him by the Emperor of Austria
1 History, Theory, and Practice of the Electric Telegraph, by George B. Prescott, pp. 57, 58.
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PROFESSOR SAMUEL F. B. MORSE.
and the King of Prussia. The Cross of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor was conferred on him by the Emperor of France; the Cross of Knight of the Dannebrog by the King of Denmark; the Cross of Knight Com- mander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, by the Queen of Spain; the decorations of Knighthood by the King of Portugal and the King of Italy ; and the decoration of the Nishan Iftichur (the order of glory), set in diamonds, from the Sultan of Turkey. In addition to these honors he was elected member of all the prominent European scientific and art academies, as well as those of this country; he was esteemed the most illustrious American of his age.1
The telegraph companies of Great Britain gave him a public banquet in London in 1856, and two years later the Americans in Paris tendered him a similar entertainment. As the years rolled on and the magnitude of the benefits his genius had conferred upon the human race became more and more conspicuous, New York City, the scene of his long strug- gle to bring the most wayward of the elements into obedience, united with the telegraph fraternity of the United States - June 10, 1871 - in one of the grandest tributes of respect and love ever accorded to a living man. A colossal statue, erected in his honor, "in the most beauti-
1 Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse (born 1791, died 1872) was the eldest son of Rev. Dr. Jedediah Morse, the celebrated divine and geographer - died in New Haven, 1826- whose wife was Elizabeth Ann, daughter of Judge Samuel and Rebecca (Finley) Breese, of New York, and granddaughter of Rev. Dr. Samuel Finley, President of Princeton College. Sidney Breese, the father of Judge Samuel Breese, was a New York merchant, born in Shrewsbury, Wales ; he had been a warm partisan of the Pretender, but on the failure of the rebellion entered the British navy, and finally, giving up his commission, settled in New York City, where he married Elizabeth Pinkethman. His epitaph in Trinity Churchyard, New York, has been often quoted for its quaint humor, showing the man :-
"SIDNEY BREESE, JUNE 8, 1767, MADE BY HIMSELF. HA ! SIDNEY, SIDNEY, LYEST THOU HERE ? I HERE LYE TILL TIME IS FLOWN TO ITS EXTREMITY."
Judge Samuel Breese was twice married : (2) to Elizabeth Anderson, granddaughter of Rev. James Anderson, first pastor of the Wall Street Presbyterian Church (see Vol. I. 505) ; their children who grew up were : 1. Samuel Sidney Breese, married Helen Burrows, and set- tled on a large estate in Oneida County, New York ; 2. Arthur Breese, of Utica, married Catharine, daughter of Judge Livingston of Poughkeepsie, among whose children were Rear- Admiral Samuel Livingston Breese and Chief Justice Sidney Breese, United States Senator from Illinois ; 3. Susannah Bayard Breese, married Rev. Samuel F. Snowden, of Princeton, New Jersey ; 4. Abigail Breese, married Josiah Salisbury, of Boston, and had two children, Professor Edward Elbridge Salisbury of New Haven, and Elizabeth M., the first wife of President Theodore D. Woolsey of New Haven.
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ful of the public grounds of the chief city of the Western Hemisphere, to stand for ages," was unveiled in his presence, the city through the Mayor, and the people of two States through their chief magistrates - the State of his birth and the State of his adoption - participating in the ceremonial; while a multitude fifty or sixty thousand strong witnessed the spectacle. Governor John T. Hoffman said, " Thanks to Samuel F. B. Morse, men speak to one another now, though separated by the width of the earth; and we intend that, so far as in us lies, the men who come after us shall be at no loss to discover his name for want of the recorded tes- timony of his contemporaries." William Cullen Bryant addressed the assemblage, saying, " We come together on the occasion of raising a statue, not to buried but to living merit -to a great discoverer who yet sits among us, a witness of honors which are but the first-fruits of that ample harvest which his memory will gather in the long season yet to come." The exercises of the day were gloriously concluded by a brilliant ovation in the evening at the Academy of Music, in presence of the largest and most intellectual audience ever crowded within the walls of the building. Enthusiasm reached its climax when the distinguished inventor attached his signature to the telegram : " Professor Morse sends greeting to those of the telegraphic fraternity throughout the world. Glory to God in the high- est, peace and good will to men !" A few moments later responses came from nearly all the cities of America, and from Canada, Havana, and other distant places. After numerous speeches, the revered "Father of Tele- graphy" made a few brief and touching remarks, alluding with much emotion to the demonstrations of regard "so unexampled in the history of inventions."
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