USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 36
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Even yet the line between two cities like Washington and Balti- more was only an experiment, without great utility, without special bearing upon the affairs of men. It needed some signal illustration of its marvelous capacity for facilitating communication between dis- tant points. Providence again favored the invention with just such an illustration, one which, so to speak. flashed it at once in the face
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of the whole nation. It was the year of a Presidential election, and a nominating convention of the Democratic party was in session at Baltimore. James Polk had been put in nomination for President, and Senator Silas Wright, of New York, for Vice-President. No one thought of sending a dispatch to Wright at Washington to inquire whether he would accept the nomination. But Morse, at the ter- minus of his telegraph wire in the Supreme Court-room at the Capi- tol, learned the news from his operators at Baltimore. He at once sent word of it to the Senator. Wright did not desire the honor de- signed for him, and immediately sent back a dispatch per telegraph declining the nomination. The dispatch was announced to the con- vention. As the members did not believe that the Senator had been communicated with on the subject and had sent back his declination in so short a time, they appointed a committee to wait on him to ascertain the correctness of the rumor, and incidentally the genuineness of the work of the telegraph. The report of the committee furnished the evidence of the value and practical usefulness of the telegraph, and all the country soon knew the remarkable circumstance. Lines of telegraph now went up everywhere. In 1846 the Washington, Phila- delphia and New York line connected our city with the next impor- tant commercial center in the Union, and with the capital. Next lines went from New York to Boston, to Albany, and Buffalo. Within seven years fifty different companies were doing business, which seri- ously hampered instead of facilitating the use of the new invention, for the companies operated in hostile rivalry, and dispatches had to be constantly recopied and retransmitted between distant points. This led to consolidation of companies in various sections, until finally the Western Union comprised all the companies in the United States.
" Tippecanoe and Tyler too," had been the watchword of the cam- paign of 1840, when Harrison had been elected. And the " Tyler too " had received a different meaning from that intended when he occupied the Presidential chair, after Harrison's brief occupancy of a month. The campaign cry in 1844 had been " Polk and Texas," and Polk's election meant war with Mexico for the recognition of the independence of Texas and for its annexation to the United States. The scenes of the war were far away from New York City, but Generals Worth and Wool played a conspicuous part in them, and they were sons of the metropolis, whom the metropolis has since de- lighted to honor. Yet there were some who had their eyes wide open to the more sinister bearings of the war. They saw the ulterior pur- pose of the Southern statesmen or politicians, who desired an exten- sion of territory for the spread of slavery, which the statesmen of the North had forever barred against extension northward, even in the great western territories. And it is to the honor of Albert Gallatin, himself of the party that ruled the South, himself an adherent of Jef- ferson and Jackson, each in their day, and thus a Democrat of the
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earliest type, that in his last days he earnestly deprecated the annexa- tion of Texas. He was already eighty-five years old when the war broke out, but he lived till after its close, and till he had seen the marvelous good fortune of the Republic in acquiring California before the discovery of gold, which so powerfully contributed toward establishing a well populated ontpost on the shores of the Pa- cific. As his years grew he still retained his faculties, his vivacity, and his interest in social, literary, scientific, financial, and political matters. One after another contemporary dropped away from his side, and at last, in the early summer of 1849, Mrs. Gallatin died. This proved the finishing blow to a vitality of remarkable vigor. He now failed rapidly. His daughter Frances had married a son of General Ebenezer Stevens, and they lived upon the latter's country-seat at As- toria, L. I., known by the name of Mount Bonaparte. Hither the vet- eran statesman and financier was taken in the hope that the whole- some air of the vicinity might have a salutary effect upon him. But it was not so much his health as his spirits that were broken, and on Sunday, August 12, 1849, he died in his devoted daughter's arms. There was no public demonstration at his funeral, for the city was then in the midst of the throes of another cholera visitation.
Just before the war with Mexico New York experienced another of those calamities in which she had managed to excel most of the cities of the Union np to that date. In 1845, or in the tenth year after the great fire noticed in the last chapter, the fire-fiend claimed her once more as a victim, having left her since that time comparatively alone. never going beyond the matter of a house or two, or half a block. The fire of 1845 occurred in the summer time, on July 19, and, besides, the Croton water works, put ample supplies of the extinguishing fluid at the disposal of the " fire-laddies," and so far forth the conditions were infinitely more favorable than those of the winter of 1835. But the record of destruction was still a very bad one. This was owing to the origin of the fire. There was a tremendous explosion in a building on New Street, near Wall. In this had been stored a quantity of salt- petre, and it was presumed, and entirely natural, too, to suppose, that this substance had exploded, although afterward there were learned discussions among the scientific denizens of the town, occasioning some irreverent lay merriment, whether salt petre would explode. The explosion, whatever caused it, shook that end of the town so that sev- eral houses near the one blown up were shattered, and windows were broken in houses as far away as Greenwich Street. The fire fortu- nately did not cover any of the ground devastated ten years before, but followed a course closely parallel to it. It burned on either side of New Street, attacking houses on the east side of Broadway and the west side of Broad Street. The other fire had only barely touched some houses on the east side of the latter street. Thus traveling. it went as far as Stone Street, between Whitehall and Broad, which, in
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the other fire, had suffered from Broad to William. Altogether three hundred and forty-five houses were destroyed, and from six to ten millions of dollars' worth of property. It was a severe blow, but not so crushing as the former one, and the city had had ten years in which to grow larger and richer. Merchants and insurance companies, in- deed, staggered under the blow, and some of them beyond the power of recovery. But pluck and courage soon made the fable of the Phe- nix applicable to this burned district as to the other. From Mayor Philip Hone's invaluable diary we get the somewhat thrilling and realistic information that soon building operations were going on at a lively rate where the fire had lately done its work. so soon, indeed, that the builders burned their hands in removing the rubbish to make way for the laying of the new foun- dations.
We have been forced to repeat the story of a fire; we are also compelled to tell again of another cholera visitation, seven- teen years after the former. In 1849 New York once more lay prostrate before the " Angel of Death." But it was not alone in its af- GENERAL WORTH. fiction. The plague struck the United States as early as December, 1848, when it broke out in New Orleans, decimating the inhabitants that could not fiee the danger. In Boston six hundred died from June to September; but this was not a circumstance compared with the death rate in St. Louis and Cincinnati, each of which cities counted six thousand dead from the disease. Philadelphia, too, was struck with terror by the fright- ful mortality within its precinets. On May 14 the cholera made its first appearance in New York, and in a spot calculated to invite its readiest execution-the Five Points. During the week ending July 21 more than seven hundred deaths occurred, the mortality that week being the greatest that had ever been experienced in any city in the United States. It will be remembered that the height of the epidemic of 1832 was also reached on July 21. Prompt and efficient measures were taken by the authorities to check the disease, as well as to allevi- ate the sufferings and promote the recovery of those who were strick-
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en with it. On the corner of Monroe (Oak) and Pearl streets, not far from the starting point of the pestilence. a three-story building of am- ple size was converted into a hospital for cholera patients exclusively. A Sanitary Commission was appointed, with three consulting physi- cians, who daily published in the papers directions for preventing the spread of the disease, especially insisting upon cleanliness of persons. premises, and streets. Still the scourge spread, claiming hundreds of victims every day. Finally a proposition came from the Board of Health that, as the schools were not occupied during the vacation weeks, they be utilized as hospitals. It was taking an exceedingly great risk to expose these buildings to the infection which might linger in them. and thus introduce germs of the disease into the systems of the children against another summer. The citizens objected strongly, and public meetings were held to protest against the scheme. But in spite of all opposition. the Board of Health carried out the project, one that in the present day our Board would be the farthest from conceiving themselves. or allowing others to entertain. Nineteen hundred patients were accommodated in the school-houses, of which over a thousand died. a much larger proportion than in 1832. when, of over two thousand patients treated in hospital, only abont eight hundred and fifty died. So far as the number of deaths could be calculated. at least three thousand died of the plague in New York, but many more may have succumbed of whom no notice was given to the public.
A New York inventor had been the first to send a steamboat to sea: for John Stevens and his son Robert L. were forced by Fulton's pri- ority on New York waters to send their vessels around to the month of the Delaware. But their structure was not intended for an ocean steamship. They had, however, already hit upon the device that was to make ocean travel by sea possible to the degree of perfection that now prevails, for they had applied the idea of the screw to propulsion in the water. This was laid aside while machinery of another kind was so much the vogne and doing such good work. R. L. Stevens es- pecially directed his inventive genius to improve the paddle-wheel steamboat, and to him was owing the introduction of the walking- beam, procuring egnal results of power with a lower pressure of steam. Just as the era of steamships was opening, there was a last burst of remarkable capacity displayed by the old method of sailing ships. These feats were performed by the famous clipper-ships. whose construction must be placed entirely to the credit of Yankee genins, and many of which were built upon the shipyards of Now York. The establishment of several packet-lines between Liverpool and New York at an earlier period has already been noticed; these packets were calenlated to accomplish the trip in abont four weeks. and as the schedule of sailing advertised was based on that interval. it must have been one that could be depended on pretty regularly un-
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der ordinary circumstances. In 1840 clipper-ships began to be built at Baltimore, but New York soon became the center of their construc- tion. These vessels were built for speed as a primary consideration. The travel to Enrope, encouraged by the packets, warranted the build- ing of ships that might do less in the way of cargo, and be mainly pas- senger ships. Hence the lines of the keel were adapted to secure speed in movement through the water, the length being greater in proportion to the width than formerly. The bow was made sharp, and the shape astern was such as to derive as much propulsion as possible from the closing of the waters which the prow had divided. The results were gratifying and astonishing in the extreme. The Samuel Russell, built in 1843 at Brown & Bell's yard (successors of Brown Brothers), foot of East Houston Street, for A. A. Low, the father of President Seth Low, was one of the earliest in the service. and registered 940 tons. Clippers of that size, however, were found to be too small, not merely for carrying of cargo, but on the ground of safety, getting strained too severely in rough weather. Hence about 1850 clippers were made to register from over eleven hundred to more than two thousand tons. The Surprise, owned by A. A. Low & Brother, of nearly two thousand tons, attained a speed that was phe- nomenal. She made the journey from New York to San Francisco in ninety-six days, and one day covered a distance of 284 miles, a record which some of the slower lines of steamers to Europe to-day hardly ever surpass. Iler journey was continued from San Francisco arross the Pacific to Canton, where a cargo of tea was shipped for London, the English merchants gladly paying two or three pounds more freight per ton to her than they did to their own ships. Taking a cargo at Liverpool for New York, it was found that the trip had paid her cost, her running expenses, and a profit over and above all this of $50.000. No wonder that the large importers and their captains made fortunes rapidly. But we are not yet done with the records of speed that these clippers made. The distance between Liverpool and New York was often under favorable circumstances covered in four- teen or fifteen, or at most sixteen, days. An article in Harper's Maga- cine on this subject some years ago gave a number of instances that are almost incredible. One vessel, which had to run into Halifax for some reason, when it was enabled to proceed made up for lost time by running thence to Liverpool in six days. Nay, the clippers could beat the contemporary steamships under favorable circumstances. The Dreadnaught. built in 1853 for Edwin D. Morgan, was a famous clip- per. Nothing could catch up with her when the wind was in the right quarter. On the return from her first trip to Liverpool, in 1854. an illustration was offered of her sailing or traveling possibilities, as com- pared with steamships. The day before the one set for her departure. the Cunard steamer Canada started on her voyage to Boston, a port at least two hundred miles nearer than New York. Yet the Dread-
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manght arrived at Sandy Hook a day before the Canada reached Bos- ton! No wonder that this pre-eminence in sailing qualities gave. a great impetus to the commerce of New York. It made ship-building also one of the giant industries of the country. All along the East River shore shipyards stretched, from below and around Corlear's Ilook up to 10th Street. And the results attained were not only due to ingenuity displayed in laying out the keels and hulls, for Yankee genins applied itself as well to the sails, and contrived methods of getting the most out of the winds. It was about this time, 1851, that the schooner yacht America astonished the Englishmen who had pitted their crack sailers against her in the race for the " Queen's Cup." The course was around the Isle of Wight; at first even in a
CLIPPER SHIP DREADNAUGHT.
light wind the America passed by all her rivals; but when the breeze freshened she left them far behind and crossed the finish line eight miles ahead of her next competitor. It was remarked as a peculiarity that her sails (fore-and-aft. of course, being a schooner) seemed per- fectly flat against the wind, with no bagging of any sort. This al- lowed whatever wind was not necessary for pushing. to slide off the sail, instead of causing a resistance in getting out of the " bag." The " Queen's Cup," which she then carried to America. becoming the " America (np." has been raced for nine times since, the last unsne- cessful attempt to regain it for England having been made in 1895.
Nevertheless, in spite of this wonderful excellence in construction and sailing qualities, the clipper was bound to be superseded in the long run by the steamship. And during the best days of the clipper
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the steamship had already begun its career. Marvelous speed might be attained by a sailing vessel, but adverse winds and waves, and tedious calms, could not be overcome by them, and left them helpless in their beauty and their strength. A power independent of the ele- ments, an element in itself, under the perfect control of man, was cer- tain to commend itself to a progressive age as the better servant, with more reliable results. And finally, not only has this power of steam commended itself for the certainty or steadiness of its operation, but quite as much for the rapidity of movement which it can impart to ships five times and six times the size of the old clippers. These ves- sels of 10,000 or 12,000 tons' burden, steam now drives through the water at the rate of over five hundred miles per day, so that the ocean journey to England requires less time now than did a trip to Albany before Fulton's day.
The honor of first demonstrating the feasibility of navigating the ocean by steam belongs to America, as it properly should. In 1818 was begun upon one of the shipyards of this city the construction of the Savannah, of three hundred tons burden, fitted with steam en- gines as an aid to sailing. In March, 1819, she sailed for Savannah, Georgia, where she was owned. On May 26, she left Savannah direct for Liverpool, accomplishing the trip in twenty-two days. As she passed the signal station near Cork she was reported to be a ship on fire. At Liverpool she created a great sensation, being visited by per- sons from London connected with the Court. It was suspected by some that her errand was the rescue of Napoleon from St. Helena, and she was closely watched accordingly. From Liverpool the Sa- vannah went to Copenhagen, Stockholm, and St. Petersburg, her cap- tain, Stevens Rogers, receiving marked attention from the sovereigns of those countries. Touching at Arendal, Norway, she thence started for home, reaching Savannah in twenty-five days. In 1829 the Dutch nation entered the field of ocean navigation by steam, the Curaçao. owned in Holland, making regular trips between the home country and her possessions in the West Indies, a still more convincing proof of the feasibility of the new method. But it was eight years more be- fore England entered upon the undertaking which she has carried to such perfection since. The first English steamship distinctly built as such was the Great Western, intended for the American service. She sailed from Bristol in April, 1838, but arrived in New York three days after another ship, the Sirius, from Liverpool, which was a sailing vessel fitted up as a steamer. On April 23 and 26. 1838, the people of New York were treated to the sight of the arrival of these rare ves- sels, and soon they were favored with two regular lines of steamers to Liverpool, the Collins and Cunard lines, which were established in 1841. The speed these steamers attained was about two hundred and ten miles per diem, and the regular time made was at most six- teen days. The Collins Line was unfortunate. Two of their steamers
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were lost at sea. In 1854 the Arctic was sunk almost instantly in col- lision with another steamer in a fog off New foundland, and nearly every one on board perished. all of Mr. Collins's family included. The profits were not sufficient to counteract these losses, hence in 1858 the line was discontinued. As is well known, the Cunard Line has re- mained the leading company to this day. her steamers still holding the records for the fastest trips across the Atlantic.
The war with Mexico had resulted in the cession of the province of Northern California and adjoining territory, composing now the States of California and Nevada and the territory of New Mexico. No doubt the ceded provinces were considered of value by the citizens of the Union, for their climate and the products of the soil and vine- vard. Suddenly the news came in 1848 that gold had been found in the region acquired by the United States, and a stream of emigration started from the eastern States and from Europe, across the plains and mountains west of Mississippi, or by sea around Cape Horn, fill- ing the Pacific border with a great population. In this excitement. stirring the whole world. New York again found her account and profit. It gave an impulse to the clipper-ship business, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. in addition to his steamers to New Brunswick and the ports ou the Sound, started in 1849 a line of steamships sailing to the Isthmus of Panama, thense more quickly reaching the gold fields of California.
It seems absurd that in order to reach California, only three thou- sand miles across the country, travelers should have regularly goue by means of the clipper-ships around Cape Horn, a distance, perhaps, twenty thousand miles. Nor was the journey much less roundabout when Vanderbilt took them to the Isthmus of Panama to be trans- ferred by rail across that narrow neck, and then taken by steamer again up the coast to their destination. It shows that, until the ad- veut of the railroad, land was a much more serious obstruction to comunication than water. With clipper-ships brought to perfer- tion and with steamships just beginning to show their superiority to the best sailing machines, it was yet a long way to the transconti- mental railway, doing in a few days what it took the fastest sailer around Cape Horn to do in as many months. It was not until 1854 that the first trunk line had established its communication between New York City and the westernmost extremity of its own State. Probably in consideration of what the Erie Canal had done for the State and the city, this first great railroad was also made to bring the Erie region nearer to our doors, the vast utility of the one naturally suggesting the desirability of the other. As early as 1832, when rail- roads were still a novelty in England, the project was already con- ceived to construct a road to Lake Erie, in a general way parallel to the canal, but along the southern tier of counties of the State: and De Witt Clinton, Jr., under the auspices of the Government at Wash-
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ington, made a preliminary survey. As a result stock was subscribed for, and officers of a corporation were chosen the next year. In 1834 the State became interested in the project, making an appropriation at the instance of Governor Marcy for a complete survey from the Hudson River to Dunkirk, on the shores of Lake Erie, a distance of 483 miles. In 1836 construction of the road was actually begun at various points. In order to remain within the State, and yet get the nearest possible to New York City. the road had to run along the very sonthern borders of Rockland County. On the Hudson there fortunately was a sudden depression in the line of the Palisades. A pier a mile in length was thrown out along the shallow part of the river, here expanding into Tappan Sea, three miles wide. whence the place has derived the name of Piermont. In 1841 the first section, reaching back forty miles from Pier- mont to Goshen, was completed and operated. Some financial troubles de- layed the work and made changes of hand necessary, but successively sec- SCHOONER AMERICA 170 FO tion after section was opened: to Port COMMODORE JOHN C. STEVENS JULT BYGEORGE STEER Jervis, in January, 1848; to Bingham- NEW YORK ton, in December, 1848; to Elmira, Oc- tober 10, 1849; to Hornellsville, in September, 1850; and at last to its final destination, Dunkirk, completing the gigantic undertaking, on April 22. 1851. At every step accomplished celebrations fittingly occurred, and when the line was completed proper honors were done to the occasion. President Fillmore came from Wash- ington, attended by his Secretary of State, so much greater than himself, THE "AMERICA" CUP. Daniel Webster. Two trains conveyed these distinguished guests and a host of others, including the Gover- nor and State functionaries, and representative citizens of New York. all the way from Piermont to Dunkirk. On the morning of May 14. 1851, the start was made, and that night the gayly decorated trains reached Elmira, greeted at many points along the line by booming cannon and the display of flags. A stop was made here overnight for needed rest. The next morning the journey was continued, and Dun- kirk reached at six o'clock in the evening. On the next afternoon the
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