USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 32
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Some mention has already been made of the succession of severe winters in 1817-18 and 1820-21. In the former winter persons crossed over from Flushing to Riker's Island with a horse and sleigh. In the latter the Long Island Sound was crossed from Sand's Point to the
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opposite shore, eight miles distant. The Bay and both rivers were solid surfaces of ice, upon which people disported on skates and with horses and sleighs as if they were on terra firma. Tents were put up for serving refreshments, roasted clams, oysters, hot milk, or stronger liquors. An attempt was made to roast a whole ox, but the fires were too much even for the thickness of the ice that then prevailed. A sad feature of these hard winters was the suffering among the poor; fuel and provisions rose to very high figures for that time. Best beef at 12 1-2 cents, veal at 10 cents per pound, potatoes. 56 cents per barrel, would not be deemed oppressive to-day, but it was too much for the incomes or wages of those times, and the benevolent needed to exert themselves to relieve the sufferings of the indigent.
In the way of theatrical entertainments the city had been getting upon a higher level with its increasing wealth. On January 29, 1798, the Park Theater had been opened. It was erected on Park Row, between Ann and Beekman streets, which was somewhat out of the way, but no more so than St. Paul's and the Brick Presbyterian churches in its vicinity. The prejudice against the theater was grad- ually lessening. It had been made a complaint against Washington that he had too frequently attended the old playhouse in John Street. The Park Theater began to present to New York audiences such names as those of Kean and Booth, and Wallack and Matthews. If we examine the list of plays that were here given at successive sea- sons, it is interesting to note how frequently recur Sheridan's plays (" School for Scandal," " The Rivals "), and Goldsmith's " She Stoops to Conquer," while Shakespeare's dramas are comparatively rare. On May 25, 1820, the Park Theater was completely destroyed by fire. But it had a neighbor living within sight of it, on the corner of Vesey Street and Broadway, where the Astor House now stands, who had an intense love of the drama, so that he was known as " Theater Jack." and he had a very long purse. This was John Jacob Astor. He and a Mr. Beekman furnished the necessary funds for rebuilding, and it was soon ready again for business, but the yellow fever put it out of people's hearts to be amused, and the plays languished for a while. In 1825 the patrons were first treated to Italian Opera, when Signorina Garcia, later better known as Madame Malibran, sang in " Il Barbiere di Seviglia." She was then but seventeen years old.
Meantime emigration, sudden acquisition of wealth by people of all classes, the growing obliteration of class distinctions with the ex- tension of the suffrage, and the lifting to high positions by votes of the populace those who had never dared aspire to walk on planes so elevated, were having their effects upon the social conditions of the city. As Mr. Theodore Roosevelt justly observes: " With the close of the war, the beginning of immigration on a vast scale, and the adop- tion of a more radically democratic State Constitution, the history of old New York may be said to have come to an end. and that of the
1 Nicholas G. Rutgers 2 William H. Robinson 3 Charles G. Smedburg 4 Robert G. L. De Peyster
5 Alexander Hosack 6 Dr. John Neilson
7 Dr. John W. Francis 8 Castle Rotto
9 Thomas Bibby 10 Jolin I. Boyd
11 Joseph Fowler
12 Francis Barretto
13 Gouverneur S. Bibby 14 Thomas W. C. Moore 15 James Allport
16 Walter Livingston
17 Dr. John Watts 18 James Farquhar 19 James Mackey 20 Henry N. Cruger
21 Jolm Lang
22 William Bell
23 Mordecai M. Noalı
24 Hugh Maxwell 25 William H. Maxwell 26 James Seaton
27 Thomas F. Livingston
28 Andrew Drew
29 William Wilkes
30 Charles Farquhar 31 Pierre C. Van Wyck 32 John Searle
33 John Berry 34 Robert Gillespie 35 Edmund Wilkes 36 Hamilton Wilkes 37 Captam Hill 38 Robert Watts 39 George Gillingham 40 Charles Mathews 41 Miss Ellen A. Johnson 42 Mrs. Gelston, nee Jones
99 83 80:79
43
INTERIOR OF PARK THEATRE, NOVEMBER 7, 1822. FROM A PAINTING BY JOHN SEARLE,
43 Maltby Gelston
44 Mrs. DeWitt Clinton, ure Jones
45 Mrs. Newbold, nee LeRoy 46 William Bayard, Jr. 47 Miss Ogden
48 Duncan P. Campbell 49 Jacob H. LeRoy
50 Mrs. Daniel Webster 51 William Bayard
52 Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill 53 Mrs. S. L. Mitchill 54 Mrs. James Fairlie
55 Dr. David Hosack 56 James Watson 57 Dr. Hugh McLean 58 John Charuaud
59 Miss Wilkes
60 Mrs. C. D Colden, nee Wilkes
61 Mrs. Robert Lenox
62 David S. Kennedy
63 John K. Beekman
64 Robert Lenox
65 Cadwallader D. Colden 66 Swift Livingston
67 Henry Brevoort 68 James W. Gerard
69 James K. Paulding
70 Henry Carey
71 Edward Price
72 Stephen Price
23 Capt. John B. Nicholson
74 Thomas Parsons
75 Herman LeRoy, Jr.
76 William LeRoy
77 Herman LeRoy
78 Mrs. Eliza Talbot
79 Alexander C. Hosack
80 Robert Dyson
81 Mrs Samuel Jones 82 Judge Samuel Jones 83 Dr. James Pendelton
84 Mrs. Pendleton, nee Jones
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modern city, with its totally different conditions. to have begun." It was a period of transition. Old New York was gone, the later New York had not yet come, for, as he remarks again: " There was still no widespread and grinding poverty, and there were no colossal fortunes. The conditions of civic or municipal life then were in no way akin to what they are now, and none of the tremendous problems with which we must now grapple had at that time arisen." For one thing, the population was not yet so enormous. nor yet so heterogeneous. In 1810 New York had nearly reached the 100.000 mark; in 1820 the pop- ulation was 123,706; in 1825, 166,086. She had passed the other great cities beyond all catching up. In 1820 Boston numbered 23,000, and Baltimore 63,000. Philadelphia in 1810 was about equal to New York; in 1820 it had only 108,000.
CHAPTER XI.
BECOMING THE COMMERCIAL CAPITAL.
N 1825 New York was already the leading city in population of that Union of which it had once been the civil capital. It was approaching more and more the character of the city after which it was originally named, and the impress of whose genius was early stamped upon it. Amsterdam had never been the capital of the Dutch Republic as a seat of its government. Even the Provincial Legislature had made The Hague its capital, as it was also the capital of the States-General or Congress of all the United Netherlands. But from very early times Amsterdam had been the metropolis of Holland, the queen of its commerce, and it is so at this day. It is an interesting coincidence that while New York had now assumed the precise character of Amsterdam, it also approached it in the number of its inhabitants. In 1827 our city passed the two hundred thousand mark, and that was about the population of the Dutch metropolis then. Its utmost number now is not more than four hundred and fifty thousand, a figure that was reached by her for- mer namesake about the year 1845.
Taking our stand at the beginning of this century, at the end of which New York will rank as the second city in the world for size and population, it is instructive to make a comparison between it and other great cities of the world as exhibiting the rapidity wherewith our city has attained its conspicuous position. In 1801 there was probably as vast a collection of people in Pekin as now; certainly it must have had its millions. But its origin is lost in the impenetrable distance of China's past history. Paris was a city immensely more populous than little New York with its sixty thousand souls. But Paris was so delectable a city in the years 355 to 361 A.D., that the Emperor Julian the Apostate loved it as his favorite residence above any place in the Roman dominions. Berlin, now with its million and more, was then an important place, one of the chief cities of Europe. It had been a capital since 1163. Amsterdam in the first year of this century greatly outnumbered as yet its municipal god-daughter. But it had had the chance of growing to its then superior proportions dur- ing nearly six centuries, having been founded in 1203. Finally, Lon- don, to which alone New York is now second, was already great in 1801. It covered forty square miles of territory, and contained a pop-
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ulation of nearly nine hundred thousand souls. But it had a history counting by eighteen centuries, going back of the birth of Christ. Here was this little city on a mere point of Manhattan Island, and still within eight years of celebrating the second centennial of the dis- covery of her very site, vet destined to outstrip all but one of these ancient municipalities and capitals, and to come dangerously near that one also before she and they would be another century okdl.
The most notable ciremmstance in the city's history at the begin- ning of the period we are now considering is the stimulus to commer- cial activity derived from the opening and the operation of the Erie and Champlain canals, and the facilities for communication afforded by steamboats. Some idea of the amount of business done on these canals may be gained from the statement that the tolls collected on imports conveyed to New York by means of their waters amounted in 1826 to $762,000, and in 1827 to $859,000. These brought to the en- porium at the mouth of the Hudson, the natural and only outlet to the marts of the world, all that agricultural, manufacturing, or mining enterprise was doing in the States and Territories bordering on the immense inland seas. While the many steamship lines plying now between towns all along the Hudson as far as Albany, and our city: as well as those connecting with New Brunswick and other towns in New Jersey, and with the manufacturing centers of the New England States by means of the convenient, practically inland navigation of the Sound; kept on pouring the products of the soil. and of skillful human hands, increasingly into the markets and shops and shipping of New York. It was thus rapidly advanc- ing to its present unrivaled position as the queen not only of the commerce of the Union, but indeed of that of the entire Western Hemisphere. Nature's purpose, manifested in the wonderful ad- vantages acenmulated so lavishly in and around the city, was getting its fulfillment beyond the wildest dreams that men had ever dared to indulge.
The year 1827 should be remembered and honored as a " red-letter " year in the history of the State. as it cansed to disappear forever from the purliens of the city the blot upon liberty which had aroused the scorn of nations less free than we were. In this year vanished forever the last vestiges of negro slavery. The abolition of this evil and this scandal, long prepared for in our State, came to its consommation then. It is both enrious and sad to see how the friends of a canse may sometimes inflict upon it the greatest hamm. It should not at this late date especially be forgotten that measures to check the evil of slavery, and the dennneiations of it as an evil, came first from men of Virginia. Josiah Parker, Theodoric Bland, and James Madison all supported a bill in Congress imposing a duty of ten dollars on every slave imported. Parker's words were that he hoped Congress " would do all in their power to restore to human nature its ancient
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privileges; to wipe off if possible the stigma under which America labored; to do away with the inconsistency in our principles justly charged upon us, and to show by our actions the purer beneficence of the doctrine held out to the world in our Declaration of Independ- ence." It is the opinion of so good an authority as Moncure D. Con- way that " had the ten dollars' import duty on negroes been adopted. American history might have been less tragical." But what defeated the measure? The strenuous opposition of two very strong anti-slav- ery advocates from New England. Que. Roger Sherman, of Connec- ticut. could not get himself to consent " to the insertion of human beings as a subject of import among goods, wares, and merchandise." This was mere sentimentalism, as it was already the fact that they were so regarded, and a heavy duty might have so discouraged the practice as to have taken them eventu- ally out of that cate- gory, sparing a traffic continued for another half dozen decades, and the expenditure of the blood and lives of a million citizens in the end. Fisher Ames advanced the objec- tion of the modern Prohibitionist who would rather let a gigantie evil go prac- tically unmolested. unrestricted, or un- puuished by an enor- JOHN JAY'S HOUSE AT BEDFORD. mous pecuniary fine. than by a license be supposed to consider it a legitimate business. He " detested slavery from his soul, but had some doubts whether im- posing a duty on such importation would not have an appearance of countenancing the practice." The duty might have put it out of all countenance or existence before cotton became king. After that en- thronement, together with the apotheosis of the dollar, slaves could not be taxed out of existence any longer. Ouly blood could then wipe out the stain.
It is pleasant to bring forward once more the name of that noblest of New York's sons. John Jay, in connection with the action of our State upon this matter. Among the most honorable titles by which he was known at the French capital was that of " ami des noirs." friend of the blacks. Under his active stimulus a society was organized in New York for the " Manumission of Slaves." as early as 1785. Jay
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was, of course, elected president; John Murray, who led in the school movement in 1805, was its treasurer. Its first quarterly meeting was held on May 12, at the famous Tontine Coffee House in Wall Street. The progress the society made in disseminating its ideas may be judged from a letter Jay wrote to an English sympathizer in 1788: " By the laws of this State," he said. " masters may now liberate healthy slaves of a proper age without giving security that they shall not become a parish charge, and the exportation as well as importa- tion of them is prohibited. The State has also manumitted such as became its property by confiscation; and we have reason to expect that the maxim that every man. of whatever color. is to be presumed to be free, until the contrary be shown, will prevail in our courts of justice. Manumission daily becomes more common among us, and the treatment which slaves in general meet with in this State is very little different from that of other servants." It was again at the in- stance of Jay, when he was Governor of the State, that a bill was introduced by a near friend of his, in January, 1796, calling for the abolition of slavery. It was killed in committee, a tie vote there hav- ing drawn the chairman's casting vote against it. The cause could afford to wait, and its patience, as well as perseverance, was rewarded by success three years later. In April. 1799. a bill abolishing slavery in the State of New York passed the Legislature and was not slow in receiving the signature of Governor Jay. It provided that all chil- dren born after July 4, 1799. should be free, but they must serve an apprenticeship in the families to which they belonged until they were twenty-eight years old. if males, and twenty-five, if females; and in the mean time the earlier provision was again emphasized that no slaves should be exported from the State. This would have placed beyond all legal restraints on the part of owners or employers the male children born in 1799 in the year 1827, and females in 1824, while those born in successive years thereafter might still have borne the species of mild thraldom which was wont to hold apprentices. But all became free in 1827. Daniel D. Tompkins, Governor of the State in 1817. recommended to the Legislature that it empower him to make a declaration of emancipation for the State. The Legislature adopted the suggestion, and passed a bill giving the Governor the power to declare that all the inhabitants of New York should be free on and after July 4. 1827. It is gratifying to reflect that the negro's life-long and industrious friend. ex-Governor John Jay, was then still living. He had retired from active politics at the expiration of his second term as Governor in 1800. Some time before that he had caused to be built a comfortable country house at Bedford. on some of the van Cortlandt property inherited through his mother, near the banks of the Bronx River, some miles beyond the limits of the Greater New York. Here. unhappily, Mrs. Jay died after a residence of only a few months, in 1801. But Jay himself was spared for many a year of
ALEXANDRE HAMILTON.
Hamilton
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peaceful life until 1829, when he died at the age of 83. Not among the least of the satisfactions which were permitted to crown so noble and useful a career must have been the declaration proclaiming free- dom to slaves in 1817, when he was already old, and finally to survive till that happy day arrived, in 1827, when the glorious Fourth was celebrated in New York by a deed than which none could have been more fitting-the abolition of slavery within the borders of the State.
There were a succession of semi-centennials coming on about this period, just as in our day the atmosphere has been kept charged with patriotic electricity by centennials of the same historic occasions. The semi-centennial of the Declaration of Independence was cele- brated with especial colat in 1826. Great preparations had been made for it everywhere, and New York was festive and brilliant in patriotic colors, with dinners and toasts and parades galore. The whole coun- try was rejoicing in the remarkable circumstance that the author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, and another member of the com- mittee appointed to draft it, John Adams, were still living. New York had its own .John Jay still with it, who had been a member with Adams of the Congress of 1774; but Jay's health and the infirmities of age would not permit him to be a participator in any of the public exercises. A day or two later and the country became aware of a more remarkable circumstance still. Both Jefferson and Adams had died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration. Jefferson passed away at his home in Virginia at fifty minutes past noon, and Adams at his home in Massachusetts late that same afternoon. Almost his last words were " Jefferson survives," but we know now he did not. Adams had not quite attained his ninety-first birthday, Jefferson had passed his eighty-third. Adams was only three years and a half younger than Washington. Had the latter lived till this auspicious day he would have been ninety-three. In 1832 the centennial of his birthday was celebrated with special honors in New York. the whole of the militia and the military stationed near marching in a grand parade. And two years later, in 1834, similar honors were paid to Washington's friend-the highest title he coveted, and cherished be- yond all insignia of nobility-Lafayette, who died on May 20 of that year. On June 26, by order of the Common Council, all the city build- ings were draped in mourning, and many private residences showed a similar respect. A procession, civil and military, marched from the City Hall to Castle Garden, carrying in state the urn which had served the same purpose at the funeral exercises in honor of Washing- ton in 1799. At Castle Garden an oration was delivered on the life of the illustrious dead; after which, in the evening, a torchlight proces- sion was organized again carrying the urn in its midst.
The yellow fever had made its last visit as a generally exterminat- ing scourge in 1822 and 1823. The quarantine arrangements then in- stituted, directed chiefly against the West Indian and South Ameri-
MUSEUM
CARPETING
51
BROADWAY AT ST. PAUL'S IN 1831.
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can ports, as well as the ports of States of our own Union bordering on the Mexican Gulf, had succeeded in keeping the fearful disease from our shores since. But the limited experience of our quarantine service was not proof against a visitor equally insidious and fatal, coming from a totally different direction. This was the Asiatic Chol- era, which paid its first unhappy visit to our city in the year 1832. It is still remembered where it made its first appearance, a house in Cherry Street, near James, and the fateful date was June 25. The next week the alarm had become universal, and the exodus toward the open portions of the island began again, as it had been ten years before. A special council composed of the most emi- nent members of the medical profession was appointed to deal spe- cially with the disease, and to organize precautionary measures. Four or five hospitals were improvised, where patients could be treated with greater convenience and better effect than in their own homes. so that of the two thousand persons cared for only eight hundred and fifty died. The scourge lasted from June 25 to September 1, when a fortunate early frost destroyed the disease germs floating in the air. The date July 21 is marked as indicating the height of the infliction, the greatest number of cases having been reported, and the greatest number of deaths also occurring on that one day. The total number of cases throughout the whole alarming period was set down at 5,835, of which nearly three thousand resulted fatally. It did not seem so easy to cope with this epidemie as with the yellow fever at quaran- tine, for while the latter had been successfully barred out, the Asiatic Cholera defied its watchfulness several times since this the first ap- pearance. Two years later it was again in the city, although not claiming many victims. But in 1849 it came back with greater vio- lence than ever, and in 1855 it repeated its ravages. It was supposed to keep its germs in reserve within the city and to develop them under the favorable conditions that so often prevailed in those days of primi- tive sanitary provisions. Hence quarantine was at a decided disad- vantage at its ontpost by the sea.
In every century of its brief existence the fire fiend has found occa- sion to sweep desolation over the city on Manhattan Island. In the document that affords us the first intimate glimpse into the internal and everyday affairs of the colony, describing things as they were in 1628, we already read of a fire that had carried away several of the frail huts, with their sides of bark and roofs of straw. When a better and more prosperous condition was realized, the people by the strange custom of having wooden chimneys and thatched roofs, invited calam- ity, which came often enough. The misery of war was enhanced by a fierce conflagration when the British had but barely taken possession of the city in 1776, and over four hundred buildings were reduced to ashes. Two years later a fire swept away fifty houses near the water front between Coenties Slip and Broad Street. In 1811 there was a
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considerable fire which nearly involved the Brick Presbyterian Church at Beekman Street and Park Row, but which was saved by the coolness and agility of a sailor, who climbed the tapering steeple and dashed out the fire that had started with his hat. But the most tremendous calamity of that kind which ever visited New York was what is still referred to as the " Great Fire of 1835."
At about the hour of nine o'clock in the evening of Wednesday, De- cember 16, fire and smoke were seen to come from a five-story house at 28 Merchant (now Hanover) Street, the little thoroughfare that runs with a slight bend from Wall Street to Hanover Square. This
BTN
ERICAN.
FULTON FIRE INSURANCE CO.
THE GREAT FIRE OF 1835. BURNING OF MERCHANTS' EXCHANGE.
was about opposite the Merchants' Exchange, which occupied the site of the present Custom House. It was an ideal time for a confla- gration; for several days the thermometer had ranged below zero. making it almost impossible to procure water, and on the night in question a fierce gale was blowing. Across the narrow street the fire soon leaped to the Merchants' Exchange, and one of the noblest structures in the country fell a prey to the flames. The corner-stone had been laid in 1825. and in 1827 it had been dedicated to its useful purposes. It was three lofty stories in height, with an attic and base- ment. The front on Wall Street and that on Garden Street (called
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Exchange Place from it) was over a hundred feet long, and built of marble. The first and second stories were modeled after the tem- ple of Minerva in Ionia, and were of the Ionic order. A portico in the form of an elliptical recess gave entrance to the building on the Wall Street front, a row of four columns thirty feet high and three feet in diameter, each composed of a single block of marble, adorning the front of the portico. On the roof rose a cupola sixty feet high, sup- ported within by columns, making a rotunda in the center. This was the Exchange floor, the room measuring seventy-five feet in length, fifty feet in width, and forty-two in height. The New York merchants in appropriate remembrance of the services rendered to the commerce of his country by Alexander Hamilton, had erected in the center of the rotunda a colossal marble statue of the statesman, sculptured by the artist Ball Hughes. It towered to a height of fifteen feet from the floor of the room, pedestal and all.
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