USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 42
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On May 22, 1850, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon the Advance and Rescue started on their perilous journey. There were no salutes of cannon as the little squadron left the navy yard. but the people showed their interest as they passed the Battery, where cheers and huzzas burst from an immense multitude assembled there. Ferry- boats and steamers went out of their way to salute them as the tug
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drew them out of the Bay to sea. Engaging a pilot boat, Mr. Grinnell and his sons accompanied the brigs far out to sea until the 25th, when they signaled their farewell and returned home. The expedition proved, of course, as fruitless as regards its main object-the finding of Franklin-as all those that had gone before it or that came after. They drifted helplessly in a great ice-field, several miles long and broad, to 75 degrees north latitude, and remained fixed in that position for nine months. They discovered some new coasts, when they were free again, to which was given the name of Grinnell's Land. On September 30, 1851, the two ships arrived safely at New York, having stood the wear and tear of the un- usual journey bravely, and without the loss of a single man. Dr. Kent Kane, the scientific chief of the expedition, was not without hope of success in another trial, and in December, 1852, he was commissioned by the Government to institute a second search. Mr. Grinnell again placed the Advance at his disposal, and Mr. George Peabody, the philanthropist, provided all the necessary equipments. The New York Geographical Society, and other associa- tions and individuals, gave aid by contributions in money or costly scientific apparatus, and on May 30, 1853, the Advance, now alone in her quest, left her moorings and started out to sea. A fleet of steamers accompanied her as far as The Narrows, where salutes boomed from cannons and shrieked from whistles as she passed into the Lower Bay. The expedition met with even greater hardships than before. The Ad- vance had to be abandoned in the ice. In May, 1855, the party started for home, traveling 1.300 miles over snow and ice before they reached the Northernmost settlement in Greenland. Two men died on the way. The United States Government had dispatched two vessels to the relief of Dr. Kane, and these they met on the coast of Greenland. Thus in October, 1855, after an absence of more than two years, they arrived in New York. Sir John Franklin had not been found, nor any trace of him; but the liberality and intelligent appreciation of the scientific value of arctic exploration on the part of a New York mer- chant were well rewarded. The two expeditions had added several items of importance to the information of the world regarding those mysterious and impenetrable regions of perpetual ice and snow. In 1860 Lady Franklin came in person to New York to thank its citizens for the generous aid and sympathy displayed in her behalf. She was received as the city's guest, and many attentions were paid to her.
The multitude of benevolent societies that have been established in New York in the course of her history, is another vivid and convincing proof of the higher life realized among her citizens. Many of these were in operation during the ante-bellum period we are now discuss- ing. The Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor was organized in 1843, and incorporated in 1848; an earlier society of somewhat the same nature was that for the Prevention of Pauperism.
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established in 1818. The New York Juvenile Asylum was incorpo- rated in 1851. In 1850 serious efforts were instituted by the New York Ladies' Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. to reclaim the outcasts and alleviate the misery of the Five Points. and this was the beginning of the history of the Five Points' Mission. Its operations began in a little twenty by forty room on the corner of Little Water and Cross Streets, where a Sunday-school was organ- ized, consisting of about seventy pupils the first day; but a day school was soon found to be a necessary addition. Funds coming in to aid so laudable a movement, an old brewery standing upon a triangle formed by one of the intersections of the numerous streets con- verging here, was purchased and fitted up as a Mission House, and here the Thanksgiving Dinners that have become such a
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GRINNELL EXPEDITION IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS.
notable feature, were annually given. The " Five Points House of Industry" was an institution started by the Rev. Mr. Pease, the first missionary employed by these ladies. He hired two houses in the locality, establishing himself with his family in one of them; in the other he placed sewing machines, giving employment to the women of the neighborhood. making shirts, while he provided a school for the children. His idea was self-help rather than charity, and it worked well. Soon eight houses were in use for the enterprise. The Protestant Episcopal Church now took it under their charge, and regular incorporation was effected in 1854. In 1853 the Children's Aid Society began its useful existence under the fostering care of the Rev. Charles Loring Brace: its object, the res-
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cue and education and general improvement in condition of the home- less and friendless children roaming the streets of the city. As a branch of its work it interested itself in the newsboys, and in March, 1854, established the " Newsboys' Lodging House." The Bible So- ciety had been established in 1816, and was occupying its large edifice on the triangular block formed by Astor Place, Third and Fourth Avenues and 9th Street. The cornerstone of St. Luke's Hospital on Fifth Avenue was laid in 1854; and the Demilt Dispensary, on Second Avenue, corner of 23d Street, named after two maiden sisters who had left a large sum of money for the purpose, was established in 1851.
We have noticed in its proper place the " Great Awakening" of 1740, under the influence of the preaching of Whitefield. The present century witnessed a similar religions revival, and it fell in the decade before the war. It has been sometimes supposed that it was the re- sult of the panic of 1857, as it occurred in that same year, and the con- clusion has been drawn therefrom that commercial convulsions, with their consequent distress, are favorable to the awakening of men to the less material needs of their souls. Whether post hoc or propter hoc. the two events were certainly synchronous. In Burton's Theater on Chambers Street, between Broadway and Center, a noonday prayer- meeting was organized in an ordinarily large room. It soon became too small, and the large auditorium was thrown open. The crowds filled that too. It was at this time that the Fulton Street prayer- meetings were begun in the lecture-room of the Old Dutch Church on Fulton Street. They have been kept up ever since, although the church has been demolished, the Collegiate Church officers having pro- vided a chapel in the office-building which they erected on the site of the church. As a result of the revival, which lasted through the win- ter until the spring of 1858, it is worthy of note that the week-day evening or "prayer-meetings," customary in the churches of many denominations, at which laymen make addresses and offer prayers as well as the minister, were then initiated. Whatever may have been the statistics of " Conversions " during the awakening of 1857 to 1858. such a permanent and prolonged consequence speaks better for it than any figures. But after forty years the practice is falling off again. In many localities the prayer-meeting is left only to the wo- men, and a few churches in the city and country have accepted the situation frankly, and abandoned the practice altogether.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CRISIS OF WAR.
HE first note of war was raised on December 20, 1860, when the people of South Carolina, by their representatives in convention assembled, in the city of Charleston, announced in the hearing of all the world, and in defiance of the Amer- ican nation, that " the union before existing between South Carolina and other States under the name of the United States, was dissolved." This note was taken up rapidly by State after State in the Southern tier-Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas-all before February 1, 1861, thus before the election of Abraham Lincoln was formally consummated by the last procedure customary in the case-the official count of the electoral vote in the House of Repre- sentatives. On February 4, 1861, delegates from six of the seceding states met at Montgomery, Alabama, and constituted themselves a new union under the name of " The Confederate States of America." Thus secession had at last come. The threats of it had often been heard in the Republic. The Hartford Convention of New England States, voting no supplies for the war of 1812, except for their own defense, had come perilously near it. And, strangely enough. seces- sion from the Union so recently formed was in the minds of men as early as the time of the Hamilton-Burr duel. Gouverneur Morris was tainted with it, and this is what made Burr seem a " dangerous per- son " in Hamilton's eyes. Senator Lodge, himself a new Englander, says of Burr: "He sought the governorship of New York. behind which was the possibility of a northern confederacy and presidency. a phantom evoked by the murmurs of secession now heard among New England leaders." And Mr. Lodge advances the theory that Hamil- ton accepted Burr's challenge only for the reason that such a state of things existed. Hamilton suspected or foresaw that Burr was en- tirely capable of disrupting the Union for the sake of personal ambi- tion. He was certain that Burr would eagerly place himself at the head of a secession, or was capable of fomenting one in order to lead it ; and we now know that he did something very much like this in a southwesterly direction a few years later. Hamilton himself would rather have shed his last drop of life-blood than do such a thing. Hence he risked the duel. His conrage had been put to the proof so often that it was entirely unquestioned, and the declining of a chal- lenge could not have impeached it. But he thought that under the cir-
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cumstances there lay upon him " a peculiar necessity not to decline the call." As he put it himself significantly: " The ability to be in future useful, whether in resisting mischief or effecting good, in those crises of our public affairs which seem likely to happen, would prob- ably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this partieular." That is, should a general have been needed in the crisis apprehended, not a finger must be pointed at him in derision of his personal courage. not a breath uttered casting a doubt upon it, how- ever unreasonable.
So it was the threat and the fear of secession in the young Republic he had aided to make a federal union, that really cost us the prema- ture loss of such a man as Hamilton in 1804. The crisis he feared was long in coming-but it came. And who, then, would have thought that the question of slavery would bring it on? In the beginning every one, both South and North, was anxious to eliminate it from the Nation, and was devising steps for its gradual disappearance. But suddenly slavery became a gold mine for the South, and now there was a change. Now everything must be done to prevent the nation from acting in its federal ca- pacity to remove Bomwill the plague-spot in FORT LAFAYETTE DURING THE WAR. this one section that disgraced the whole. And now, also, came again threats of se- cession. But they came from the North first. Secession was the purpose of the abolitionists, and thereby they hampered and complicated most fatally their glorious cause. It was not slavery that made a division of sentiment possible at the North, but the proposi- tion to clear the skirts of the North by breaking up the Union and casting off the slave-holding States. This was seriously contemplated and advocated, and the friends of union, the people with any sense of nationality, could not endure such a proposition, even at the cost of retaining slavery. Therefore many men abhorring slavery could not be abolitionists. They were content to plead guilty to Garrison's ac- cusation of a " slavish subserviency to the Union." They were proud to be " still insanely engaged." as he termed it. "in glorifying the Union." and to be pledging themselves " to frown upon all attempts to dissolve it." Thus Motley wrote: " The very reason which always prevented me from being an abolitionist before the war, in spite of my anti-slavery sentiments and opinions. now forces me to be an emanci- pationist. I did not wish to see the Government destroyed, which was:
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the avowed purpose of the abolitionists." It was because the aboli- tionists wanted to destroy the Union, to secede from the Southern States and leave them alone with their abomination, that they found such bitter fault with Lincoln and the men who, with him, wanted to save the Union as well as abolish slavery. It is for this reason Wen- dell Phillips sneered bitterly at the choice of Lincoln as nominee. " Who is this huekster in politics? Who is this country court advo- cate? " he exclaimed when the nomination had been made in 1860. It seems scarcely possible that this excellent man and eloquent orator could have descended to even a coarser bitterness than that. But he actually published an article with the heading: " Abraham Lincoln, the Slave-honnd of Illinois," opening with the sentence: " We gibbet a Northern hound to-day, side by side with the infamous Mason of Virginia." So strong was the feeling among the abolitionists that secession was alone right, that every attempt to save the Union with slavery in it seemed to them only a compromise with iniquity and a condoning of it.
It was a relief to the situation in the North, so seriously straining the relations between men who had exactly the same feelings about the one great evil that needed abolition. when the slave-holding States did what once the New England States came near doing, and what the abolitionists wanted the non-slaveholding States to do. Rather than have their institution even remotely threatened. they wonld sacrifice the Union-that is, destroy the nation. And the con- siderations that lay back of secession now. were not unlike those that came to the foreground in 1804 or 1812 in a more northerly latitude.
It was in the earlier days an attachment to local. sectional interests above those of the nation; a selfish determination to save its shipping and manufactures, even at the expense of the national prosperity. and the national honor. So it was a devotion to sectional interests. at the expense of national duty, or conscience, or honor, which pre- cipitated the later secession. The men of the South had been keen- sighted and keen-scented regarding slavery, ever since the cotton cul- inre made it a mine of wealth. Even so innocent and remote a pro- ject as internal improvement, in the way of canals projected by the Government, or in the way of settling and managing government lands, was resented and resisted with a virulence that now seems either inexplicable or ridienlons. But there were nerves of feeling running beneath the surface into the festering sore of slavery. which made men winch when any questions of the right or duty of action on the part of the general government were raised. This was the secret and significance of the Webster-Hayne debate of 1829; and in that glorious defense of the principle of Union and Liberty, as against that other disintegrating doctrine of Union or Liberty. the son of New England forever wiped ont the stain of the days of 1812. "The avowed purpose of the abolitionists." as Motley wrote. now " became
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the avowed purpose of the slaveholders," and therefore " the whole case was turned upside down." All parties at the North could unite as one man to fight secession and slavery together, and put a quietus on them both. But that there might be hesitancy and holding back and apparent disaffection, as well as real, in the States of the North, and therefore among the citizens of New York, the presentation of these preliminary remarks will readily explain.
A most extraordinary exhibition of a real and deep and disgraceful disaffection on the part of a certain element in New York, came to the foreground even before the Confederacy had been formed, and while the Southern part of the Union was still only breaking up bit by bit. We have had more than one view of the character and actions of Mayor Fernando Wood. The Police Muddle and the affection for him so effusively displayed by the " Dead Rabbits " in 1857, had proved too much for his re-election as Mayor in 1858, though he was again a candidate. But he was placed on the shelf for only a little while. The " reform element," as usual, had become weary of their well-doing by the autumn of 1860; so that in December the " Dead Rabbits " and " Bowery Boys." and all of that ilk. came to their own again, and Fernando Wood once more became the Mayor of New York. He came in at the right time. It was now, as in days of yore, " a time to try men's souls "; and it was worth observing what kind of a soul Mr. Wood really had. He soon revealed it. South Carolina had seceded on December 20, six other States following after her during the months of December and January. It struck the Mayor that it would be a fit and happy thing for the greatest city of the country, with over eight hundred thousand inhabitants, not so much less than some of these Southern States, to do as they did. Accordingly on January 7, 1861, Mr. Wood, in his annual message to the Common Council, orac- ularly declared that disunion was "a fixed fact." This being es- tablished beyond gainsaying, Mayor Wood went on to propose that New York City should secede from a Union no longer intact, and be- come a " free city." like Hamburg and the Hanseatic towns of Ger- many, whose commerce had long been their sole glory. Then allow- ing his fancy full play he drew a picture of a new Arcadia, a country to be called " Tri-Insula," consisting of Manhattan, Long, and Staten Islands. The message with its romantic and euphonious geographi- cal modifications-to say nothing of its civic creation-fell npon eager ears and congenial minds. The Common Council adopted the suggestion with wild enthusiasm. Having put such men in office, what else could New York expect.
Yet many noble men in the city were sick at heart when they thought of the action of their brethren and fellow citizens at the South, and longed earnestly to win them back from their fatal pre- cipitation. Disloyalty might hasten to act as it did: loyalty did not necessarily exelnde the desire to preserve peace and brotherhood.
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This was the motive of the famous Pine Street meeting. held on De- cember 15. 1860, five days before the seceding act of the Charleston Convention. Private letters had been circulated to men of promi- nence all over the State withont respect to party affiliations, asking them to unite in an effort to conciliate if possible the spirit of the South which seemed ready to break out into that antagonism not yet materialized but on the very eve of so doing. A great multitude of favorable replies were received. so that two houses in Pine Street were rented instead of one as at first intended. The leaders in the movement numbered among them such men as John A. Dix, William B. Astor, Samuel J. Tilden. Royal Phelps. Wilson G. Hunt, and James W. Beekman. When the " peace convention " met. the eminent law- yer Charles O'Conor was chosen to preside over the sessions. The dis- cussions centered about several resolu- tions, breathing a spirit of fraternity, ex- pressing a desire for the maintenance of union, yet in no weak or unworthy way offering to make a sacrifice of the higher principles involved. The urgency of ap- peal and the earnestness of the desire for peace and friendship are evinced by a let- ter accompanying the resolutions, which afforded a better opportunity for fervent pleading than was allowed by the style and phraseology appropriate to formal resolutions. It began with the address: " Fellow Citizens and Brethren of the South "; and among other things said: CHARLES O'CONOR. " We make this appeal to you in entire confidence that it will not be repulsed. .
We have asserted your rights as earnestly as though they had been our own. Yon cannot refuse, therefore, to listen to us, and to weigh with becoming deliberation the reasons we have for believing that the wrongs which have led to the existing alienation between the two great sections of the country may, with your co-operation. be speedily redressed. We will not review the dark history of the aggression and insult visited upon von by abolitionists and their abettors during the last thirty-five years. Our detestation of these acts of hostility is not inferior to your own. We call on you as friends to delay action until we can induce those through whose agency the evil has been brought upon ns to listen to the voice of reason and duty. We know that great changes of opinion
have already taken place. that errors and prejudices which in the heat of the canvass were inaccessible to reason have been on cool reflection renounced ; nay, more, that many whose opinions have undergone no change are willing. in a praiseworthy spirit of patriot-
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ism, to make on questions which are not fundamental the concessions necessary to preserve the Union in its integrity, and to save us from the fatal alternative of dismemberment into two or more empires, jealous of each other, and imbittered by the remembrance of differences which we had not the justice or the magnanimity to com- pose." This letter, with the resolutions, which were unanimously adopted, were placed in the hands of a committee of which ex-Presi- dent Fillmore was chairman, to be conveyed by them personally to Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and the Governors of the States then most loudly agitating secession, South Carolina, Georgia, and Ala- bama. But the appeal was in vain; and at least too late for South Carolina, for December 20 was already at hand before the Committee could get there. Then again, when the die had been cast in more than one State, the Chamber of Commerce called a large meeting of merchants on January 18, 1861, at which a memorial similar to the one of December was drawn up, and, with 40,000 signatures, sent to Washington. Once more, on January 28, a mass meeting was called at Cooper Institute. By resolution three commissioners were appointed to visit the Conventions of all of the six States then seced- ed, to labor with them in the interest of Peace and the National integ- rity, the Crittenden Compromise being submitted as a basis of con- ciliation. But the harvest had now become a whirlwind, and there was no stopping it.
The retiring administration in 1860 was noted for its inefficiency or indecision, as is too well known. Therefore it is refreshing to remind ourselves of the one brilliant exception in the person of a citizen of New York. In January, President Buchanan, thus at the very end of his term, was in need of a new Secretary of the Treasury, and he of- fered the portfolio to John A. Dix. The revenue cutters in many Southern ports had been flagitiously and treasonably seized. The first care of Mr. Dix, therefore, on arriving at his post was to send a special agent to New Orleans, Mobile, and Galveston, to prevent any more such seizures. On January 29, the agent, a Mr. Jones, tele- graphed the Secretary from New Orleans that Captain Breshwood of the McClelland, a revenue cutter stationed there. refused to obey the directions of the department. On the instant Mr. Dix wrote a reply, to be forwarded by telegraph. It was a bold and brave utter- ance, yet for its better effect he determined to act with caution. He therefore consulted Attorney-General Stanton, Secretary of War un- der Lincoln, as to its legality, and General Scott. as to the military proprieties involved. Encouraged by these officials the momentons dispatch was wired to its destination. It read: " Tell Lieut. Cald- well to arrest Capt. Breshwood, assume command of the cutter, and obey the order I gave through you. If Capt. Breshwood, after arrest, undertakes to interfere with the command of the cutter, tell Lient. Caldwell to consider him as a mutineer, and treat him accordingly.
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If any one attempts to hanl down the American flag, shoot him on the spot." There was no weakness or hesitation about language like that. The war might have been averted altogether, if dispatches so precisely to the point had gone to all the ships or fortresses within the borders of the States that were now rebelling against the Nation. For one who dared lower the Stars and Stripes there was but one treatment proper: " shoot him on the spot."
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