USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress Vol. III > Part 45
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It was his farewell. On the 2d of the following April the whole civil- ized world was in mourning. By means of the instrument which he had perfected, intelligence of the death of Morse was sent thrilling beneath the billows of the ocean, across the continents, eastward, westward, and was simultaneously in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Syria, Egypt, China, Australia, and Japan. While all America sorrowed, elo- quent words of mingled admiration and condolence flashed over the wires from four continents - even from the gray old land of the Pharaohs and from Hong Kong. Never in the history of the nation had a simple citi- zen's memory met with such wide heartfelt respect. Impressive funeral ceremonies, in which millions really participated, were conducted from the Madison Square Church in New York City, Rev. Dr. William Adams, pastor and personal friend of the deceased, delivering an earnest and elo- quent discourse. The pall-bearers were John Adams Dix, the soldier, statesman, and author; Cyrus W. Field, of Atlantic Cable fame; Peter
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Cooper, the philanthropist ; Cambridge Livingston, the veteran legal scholar; Charles Butler, the eminent lawyer and railroad projector ; Daniel Huntington, the artist; William Orton, president of the Western Union Telegraph ; and Ezra Cornell.
The great political excitement of the decade centered about the election of William Henry Harrison to the Presidency in 1840. Although Martin Van Buren came into office with a large majority, the people denied him a second term with almost as strong an expression of their new preference. . President Harrison had scarcely entered upon the duties of his office, and selected his cabinet, when he died, just one month from the day of his inauguration. John Tyler, the Vice-President, succeeded to the Presiden- tial Chair. But his administration was not satisfactory to the party in power. He was married during his term of office, the only event of the kind in the history of America. His bride was a New York lady, de- scended from the lords of the manor of Gardiner's Island, and the mar- riage ceremony was performed in New York City. He assumed a style of living too aristocratic to please the public taste, drove four horses, and was accused of a desire to please his wife. The memory of the six horses attached to Washington's equipage had long since grown dim.
In New York, as in almost every other State, the Whigs achieved a sig- nal triumph in 1840. William H. Seward, afterwards Secretary of State, was re-elected Governor. During his former administration the public peace and tranquillity were severely disturbed by Anti-Rent difficulties in the manor of Rensselaerwick. Stephen Van Rensselaer, the late patroon, had suffered the arrearages of rent- merely nominal, as a handful of wheat or a fat chicken per acre - to remain uncollected. His heirs now demanded payment. The tenants complained that these semi-feudal land tenures were totally inconsistent with the spirit and genius of our insti- tutions, and refused to pay them. Armed, and disguised as Indians, they offered such resistance to the civil officers that military power was found necessary. The disturbance was subdued for the time, but broke out afresh in 1844 attracting wide attention, and the subject was carried into politics, and then into the courts. Finally the State Constitution of 1846 abolished all feudal tenures.
The city of New York was visited in 1845 by another great conflagra- tion, second only in its ravages to the fire of 1835. It broke out in midsummer, on the 19th of July, destroying three hundred and 1845. forty-five buildings in the business part of the city below Wall Street - property estimated at several millions.
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CHAPTER L.
1845-1880.
CONCLUDING CHAPTER.
CONTRASTS. - AREA OF THE CITY. - THE HARBOR IN 1880. - POPULATION. - UNION SQUARE. - MADISON SQUARE. - WAR WITH MEXICO. - DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALI- FORNIA. - THE ASTOR PLACE RIOT. - THE SEVENTH REGIMENT. - THE ASTOR LIBRARY. - JOHN JACOB ASTOR. - THE CRYSTAL PALACE. - THE WADDELL MANSION. - MURRAY HILL. - GLIMPSE OF SOCIAL LIFE. - FIFTH AVENUE RESIDENCES. - THE CHURCHES OF NEW YORK. - CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. - REV. DR. WILLIAM ADAMS. - SABBATH SCHOOLS OF THE CITY IN 1880. - PHILANTHROPY. - TENEMENT HOUSES. - ASSOCIA- TION FOR IMPROVING THE CONDITION OF THE POOR. - ASYLUMS. - HOSPITALS. - FIVE POINTS. - ARCHIBALD RUSSELL. - CENTRAL PARK. - FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 1857. - POLICE RIOTS. - THE ATLANTIC CABLE. - THE CIVIL WAR. - ACTION OF NEW YORK. - THE DRAFT RIOT. - ACADEMY OF DESIGN. - WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. - ASSAS- SINATION OF LINCOLN. - UNION LEAGUE CLUB. - LENOX LIBRARY. - METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART. - MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. - COOPER INSTITUTE. - MER- CHANTS AND PUBLIC-SPIRITED CITIZENS. - THE ELEVATED RAILROADS. - THE BROOK- LYN BRIDGE. - CONCLUSION.
T HE boundary line where history ceases and contemporaneous record begins has never been drawn with absolute precision. The ancient historians rarely ventured within half a century of their own time. Ma- terials for history require curing with age. The affairs of New York dur- ing the thirty-five years embraced in this chapter have widened into a thousand channels of interest and influence, affecting the whole continent. They are rich in detail, instructive in character, and voluminous in sub- stance. When faithfully digested they will form an unusually enter- taining volume in themselves. But the limits of our present work are prescribed. Brief touches upon leading events, together with a few illus- trative facts and statistics, will bring our narrative to a close.
In tracing the varied fortunes of the rising city from its birth, the reader who has noted the continuity and duration of mental influences will have no difficulty in accounting for the sympathetic activity which has been so prolific in material progress. A better combined array of moral forces than that which shaped the destiny of New York we might search
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"The harbor, eloquent with busy life, and one of the safest, largest, and most beautiful in the world, presents a striking contrast, as viewed from the Staten Island shore in 1880, to the placid solitude portrayed in our opening picture." Page 749
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the centuries to discover. Society, by the individual action of its private members in the ordinary pursuits of life, supplies the vital current which creates and sustains prosperity. Turning backward to the beginning, we see a picturesque island, patched with forest and rock, three thousand miles from civilization. The intervening years disappear, as if by mirac- ulous magic - and our eyes rest upon a great metropolis with its miles and miles of roofs and broken outline of spires, towers, and domes, telling of re- ligion, art, and trade ; while on either side, as far as the eye can reach, the water-line is fringed with a for- est of masts, from which float the vari- colored flags that rep- resent the commerce of the globe. The ex- treme length of the city is now sixteen miles, and its area forty-one and one half square miles. As a port of entry it com- View from Union Square, North. prises Brooklyn, Jersey City, and all the other municipalities situated on New York Bay and the Hudson and East Rivers opposite the metropolis. It is estimated that sixty per cent of the entire foreign commerce of the United States is carried on through this port alone, the arrivals and de- partures of vessels numbering twenty thousand annually, of which over five thousand are steamers. The harbor, eloquent with busy life, and one of the safest, largest, and most beautiful in the world, presents a striking contrast, as viewed from the Staten Island shore in 1880, to the placid solitude portrayed in our opening picture. Stately ships and steamers in one endless procession are plowing waters then rippled only by a few bark canoes; while scores of ferry-boats moving to and from the neighboring cities fairly illustrate the idea of perpetual motion. . The population of New York, if given on the same principle as that of London, would hardly fall short of two and one half millions, since nearly as many New Yorkers dwell outside as within the city limits ; a
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radius of from twenty to thirty miles from the City Hall has become almost a continuous city, and is virtually New York.
At the time the magnetic telegraph was first opened between New York and Philadelphia, in 1845, Union Square was becoming the
1845. fashionable place of residence for New York's oldest and wealthiest citizens. Samuel B. Ruggles had been one of the most active and efficient in securing the improvements which converted the open space into an elegant park ; and he also presented the choice little spot of land - now Gramercy Park -to the owners of sixty adjoining lots, to induce the erection of first-class dwellings in that locality. Fourteenth Street was soon filled with costly mansions ; the equestrian statue of Washington was in 1856 erected in the open thoroughfare. But business followed, making little raids here and there, and fashion became uneasy and moved on. The habitations once graced by brilliant assemblages of fair women and brave men were converted into furniture salesrooms or milliners' shops, many of which have recently been torn down to make room for elegant business structures. In 1845 but a few scattering buildings were seen from Union Square, looking north. The accompanying sketch reveals the present view from the same point.
Efforts were made to improve the ten unsightly acres at the junction of Broadway and Fifth Avenue soon after the burning of the House of Refuge in 1839. But a little stream of running water, forming a skating- pond for boys in winter, was very much in the way. James Harper, one of the famous Harper publishers, was mayor of the city from 1844 to 1847, and through his influence measures were taken to complete and beautify Madison Square, now the center of the world of amusement and fashion. When the costly white marble Fifth Avenue Hotel was begun in 1856, and finished in 1859, facing the square, the world wondered, as it seemed quite too far from the heart of the city for popular patronage.
Washington Irving returned from Spain in 1846, where he had been four years United States minister, and was once more welcomed to his native city with enthusiasm. Charles Dickens, in America at the time Irving departed on his mission, paid a noteworthy tribute to the good sense of Americans in showing respect to their own "intellectual celebri- ties." In an account of one of President Tyler's receptions, he wrote : " My dear friend Washington Irving was present the last time before going abroad. I sincerely believe that, in all the madness of American politics, few public men would have been so earnestly, devotedly, and affectionately caressed as this most charming writer; and I have seldom respected a public assembly more than I did this eager throng, when I saw them turning with one mind from noisy orators and officers of State,
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and flocking with a generous and honest impulse round the man of quiet pursuits ; proud in his promotion, as reflecting back upon their country, and grateful to him with their whole hearts for the store of graceful fancies he had poured out among them."
Meanwhile New York was sharing largely in the burdens of the nation. War with Mexico was calling many of her gallant sons into the battle- field. William Jenkins Worth, in the military service of the Union for a period covering thirty-six years, was a conspicuous figure in the Mexican struggle, and a handsome monument was subsequently erected in his honor, fronting Madison Square.1 Philip Kearny, a marvel of dash and bravery, whose mother was the daughter of John Watts the philanthro- pist, was the first man who entered, sword in hand, the San Antonio Gate of the city of Mexico, losing his left arm in the fierce strife. In the mean time Stephen Watts Kearny, uncle of the former, had fought and conquered the Mexicans in California and established a provincial govern- ment, assuming command as governor March 1, 1847. The difficulty with Mexico grew out of the annexation of Texas to the United States in 1845, as did the election of James K. Polk to the Presidency. The tri- umphant conclusion of the Mexican War resulted in the cession of New Mexico and California to the United States in February, 1848. During the same month gold was discovered in California, and people flocked there from Mexico, South America, Europe, and Asia, as well as the United States. In three years the new State had a mixed population of a quarter of a million of energetic, adventurous, reckless beings, capable of almost any crime in their mad pursuit of the shining dust. New York quivered with excitement. Visions of sudden wealth dazzled the imagination. Men left their business of all kinds and started on long, perilous overland journeys to the land of promise ; others went by sea around Cape Horn in the famous swift-sailing clippers. Hundreds of fami- lies were left without fathers, husbands, and brothers for an indefinite period. Many fortunes were made. In subsequent efforts to develop the resources of California other than gold, to construct society, and chris- tianize the heterogeneous community, New York contributed many lead- ing minds. Since 1853 Rev. Dr. William Ingraham Kip, a descendant of one of the earliest New York settlers, and the distinguished representative of a family noted in every generation since 1635 for mental vigor and strong character, has been Episcopal Bishop of California. Leland Stan-
1 General William Jenkins Worth, born at Hudson, New York, 1794, died at San Antonio, Texas, 1849, served with distinction in the Florida War, from 1840 to 1842, and in the Mexican War from 1846 to 1848. He was engaged in the capture of Monterey and Vera Cruz, in the battles of Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, Chapultepec, and the assault and capture of the city of Mexico, 13th and 14th of September, 1847.
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ford, foremost in pushing the great Pacific Railway across the continent, the grandest enterprise of the age, and governor of California from 1862 to 1864, was also a New Yorker.
The gold-seekers, in their hurried flight from New York, divided public attention with the notable Astor Place Riot in the spring of 1849. Wil- liam Charles Macready, the English actor, was on a farewell visit 1849. to the United States. Edwin Forrest, the American tragedian, had not been well received in England, some years before, owing to the alleged influence of Macready, and being extremely popular with a certain order of people in New York, it was comparatively easy to incite the spirit of retaliation. A mob collected in Astor Place to drive Macready from the
May 10. stage during the performance of Macbeth. The house was filled with one of New York's best audiences ; but disaffected persons were scattered through the building, and no sooner did Macready appear upon the stage than he was greeted with hisses, and a shower of chairs, eggs, and other missiles. The utmost confusion and terror prevailed, many ladies crept under the seats for safety, the police made a few arrests, order was temporarily restored, and the play proceeded. Meanwhile the mob outside numbered twenty thousand, composed of the very dregs of the city, with piles of paving-stones, where the street sewers were being repaired, for deadly weapons of warfare. Three hundred police were driven back, after a gallant struggle to disperse the rioters. Violent attempts of the angry multitude to force the entrances of the Opera House were unsuccessful ; doors and windows, hurriedly barricaded, were assailed with terrible fury, some of the paving-stones passing through the glass and lighting in the midst of the audience. At nine o'clock the gal- lant Seventh Regiment, in response to a summons from the civil authorities, appeared in Astor Place, preceded by mounted men, ten abreast.1 The stones of the mob rendered the horses unmanageable, and the infantry
1 History of the Seventh Regiment, National Guard, by William Swinton, pp. 14, 15, 16. The origin of the name, National Guard, by which for many years the gallant Seventh Regi- ment was exclusively known, is associated with a historic event of singular interest. During the military parade at the reception of Lafayette in 1824, some of the officers of this regi- ment were discussing a contemplated independent battalion, and paused for a suitable name. Lafayette's connection with the Paris National Guard furnished the suggestion, and John D. Wilson asked why " National Guard " would not be appropriate. It would be a pleasure, if space permitted, to record the successive steps by which this famous organization laid the broad basis of its historic fame. It first paraded as a regiment May 31, 1826, to receive an elegant stand of colors from Mayor Philip Hone, "in presence of a brilliant assemblage." It was first called into the service of quelling riots in 1834. But its national prestige dates from the eventful night of the Astor Place riot ; no honors of city or citizen were thought too high to be paid to these trustworthy guardians of law and order, and "its courage, promptness, discipline, and steadiness were long the theme of conversation."
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marching in column of platoons, was obliged to face the terrible volley of stones, but preserved its magnificent discipline under the trying ordeal; it passed through Astor Place to Third Avenue, turned and cleared Eighth Street, throwing a guard of police across at each end, and moved a second time through Broadway into Astor Place, forming a line in front of the theater. At this juncture howls and cries rendered the night-air hideous ; many persons had been injured by the stones, some killed, and all efforts to appease the infuriated mob had proved fruitless ; thus authority was given to fire. The first volley was purposely aimed high, but not the second. It told with fatal certainty ; and, pressing hard upon the flying mob, the troops soon cleared Astor Place of rioters - who rallied and returned to the attack, but a third volley scattered them completely, and ended the Astor Place Riot. The next day the city was very disorderly, but the military remained on duty -even for three days. Twenty of the rioters were believed to have been killed, and fifty or sixty wounded. Of the Seventh Regiment one hundred and fifty officers and men were seriously injured by the stones, of whom seventy were carried to their homes - but subsequently recovered. Judge Robert Emmet, son of the great lawyer, Thomas Addis Emmet, assisted Macready to escape from the Opera House, and secreted him in his own dwelling in Clinton Place for two days and nights, then drove him disguised, in his own carriage, to New Rochelle, and thence to Boston, whence he sailed for England.
At the opening of the Legislature of 1849 Governor Hamilton Fish called attention to the liberal bequest by John Jacob Astor of four hundred thousand dollars for the foundation and perpetual support 1849. of a free public library in the city of New York, and recommended the necessary legislation for giving validity to the munificent donation. John Jacob Astor, whose business career in New York City extended over up- wards of half a century, died March 29, 1848.1 He was twenty years of
1 John Jacob Astor (born 1763, died 1848) married Sarah, daughter of Adam Todd, first cousin of the wife of Henry Brevoort. Children : 1. Magdalen, married Governor Bentzen of Santa Cruz, (2) Rev. John Bristed, whose sons were Charles Astor Bristed - married Laura W., daughter of Henry Brevoort - and John J. A. Bristed ; 2. William B., married Mar- garet, daughter of General John and Alida Livingston Armstrong, and granddaughter of Judge Robert R. Livingston, of Clermont ; 3. Henry ; 4. Dorothea, married Walter Langdon ; 5. Eliza, married Count Vincent Rumpff, of Switzerland ; 6. John Jacob.
Children of William B. and Margaret Armstrong Astor : 1. Emily, married Samuel Ward, of Washington, whose daughter, Margaret A., married Hon. John Winthrop Chanler ; 2. John Jacob, married Augusta, daughter of Thomas S. Gibbes, whose son William W., mem- ber of Assembly and State senator, married Mary Paul, of Philadelphia ; 3. Alida, married John Carey'; 4. Laura E., married Franklin Delano ; 5. William Astor, married Caroline, daughter of Abraham Schermerhorn, and has four daughters and one son - three of the former marrying respectively, James Van Allen, James R. Roosevelt, and J. Coleman Drayton. Children of Walter and Dorothea Astor Langdon : 1. Sarah A., married Francis R. Boreel,
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age when he first entered the metropolis in 1783, the same year that peace was established between England and America. A few years spent in London had opened his eyes to a mine of wealth in the American fur traffic. He began on a small scale, independent of capital, connections, or influence, and through his own masterly perceptions and force of character became the richest man of his time in the United States. He journeyed through the woods to the distant frontiers of the country, establishing fur stations along the borders of Canada and the region of the Great Lakes, soon employing his own vessels in shipping furs to Europe, with large profits on both the outward and return cargoes ; as early as 1800 he possessed a large fortune. He subsequently extended a line of trading-posts across the continent to the shores of the Pacific, sending ships around Cape Horn to take possession of the region at the mouth of the Columbia River, and thus open a direct exchange with China. At the same time he sent a confidential agent to St. Petersburg to negotiate a system of trade with the Russian posts on the Pacific. This gigantic scheme had a broader basis than mere individual profit. He counted upon extending the bounds of empire - expecting his colony in Astoria would develop into a great emporium of commerce, that, carrying the American population across the Rocky Mountains, would animate the shores of the Pacific with civilization. But for the War of 1812 his dream would doubtless have been realized. Meanwhile his investments in city real estate doubled and trebled on his hands. His wealth increased in
Chamberlain to the King of Holland, of whose children, William W. A. married Mary Emilie, daughter of Sir John Milbanke, Bart .; Eliza D. married Adolph James Charles, Baron de Pallaudt ; and Sophy R. married Otto Frederic, Baron Groenince; 2. John Langdon; 3. Eliza Langdon, married Matthew Wilks of Cruickston Park, Canada ; 4. Louisa D., married De Lancey Kane, whose children are Walter L. Kane, married Miss Hunter of Newport, De Lancey A. Kane, married Eleanora F., daughter of Adrian Iselin, S. Nicholson Kane, John I. Kane, married Annie Schermerhorn, Louisa L. Kane, Emily A. Kane, married Augustus Jay, Sibyl Kane, and Woodbury Kane; 5. Walter Langdon, married Catharine, daughter of Charles Ludlow Livingston ; 6. Woodbury Langdon, married Helen, daughter of Isaac Colford Jones ; 7. Cecilia Langdon, married M. de Nottbeck, Russian Consul ; 8. Eugene Langdon, married Harriet, daughter of Rawlins Lowndes, who after his death married Philip Schuyler.
Abraham Schermerhorn, the father of Mrs. William Astor, was the third son of Peter and Elizabeth Bussing Schermerhorn, descended from Jacob Janse Schermerhorn, who settled in New York in 1636. The grandmother of Peter was Maria Beekman, granddaughter of the famous William Beekman, founder of the Beekman family in New York. Abraham married Helen, daughter of Henry and Ann Van Cortlandt White. Their children : 1. Henry White Schermerhorn ; 2. Augustus Van Cortlandt Schermerhorn, married Ellen, daughter of Hon. James A. Bayard ; 3. Elizabeth Schermerhorn, married James I. Jones ; 4. Ann W. Scher- merhorn, married Charles Suydam ; Helen Schermerhorn, married John Treat Irving ; 5. Catharine, married Benjamin Welles ; 6. Caroline, married William Astor. John P. Schermerhorn, brother of Abraham, married Rebecca, daughter of General Ebenezer Stevens ; Jane Schermerhorn, sister of John and Abraham, married Rev. William Creighton, S. T. D.
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similar ratio to the growth of New York ; and his liberality was princely. He was a man of fine personal appearance, his features bearing the stamp of intelligent sagacity, and of commanding and pleasing address. He drew about him such eminent and scholarly men as Washington Irving, James G. King, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Henry Brevoort, Samuel Ward, Samuel B. Ruggles, Daniel Lord, and Joseph G. Cogswell, the learned editor of the New York Review. Thus he was ably assisted in planning the great free library with which his name is identified. These gentle- men were appointed trustees to carry out his intentions, together with his son, William B. Astor, his grandson, Charles Astor Bristed, and the mayor of the city and chancellor of the State ex-oficiis.
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