USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 44
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present borough, Brooklyn, also surpassed the other cities, raising $500,000. The building on Seventeenth Street contained a Dutch kitchen, furnished in Colonial style by genuine relics of the days of New Amsterdam, loaned by descendants of Director Stuyvesant. A special and somewhat kindred feature of the division of the fair in the Fourteenth Street building was a Sunny Side pavilion, containing a choice collection of Washington Irving mementoes. Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland was a leading spirit in this great enterprise. and by her as- siduous labors so overtaxed her strength that she died shortly after- ward, a victim to her patriotic zeal. By the side of the United States Sanitary Commission rose up other organizations seeking the relief or welfare of the soldiers. Such was the " Loyal Publication Society of New York." At least eighty-eight pamphlets and books issued from this society for distribution among the men in the field. The United States Christian Commission was also initiated in New York. under the auspices of the Young Men's Christian Associations of the
IRVING'S RESIDENCE, "SUNNYSIDE.
land, here assembled in convention, November 16, 1861; seeking not only the physical comfort but also the spiritual welfare of the sol- diers. And in 1864 was organized under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, of the Broadway Tabernacle, the United States Union Commission, intended to minister to the necessities of refugees from the South. A Soldiers' Rest was instituted by the benevolence of the Union League Club, on Fourth Avenne near the Harlem Railroad Depot. between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh streets mow occupied by Madison Square Garden). Here soldiers arriving or leaving the city could find a temporary home during their stay.
The guns fired on Fort Sumter, among other fine things they did for the North, sounded the knell of slavery. The logical effect of secession. as an act of legislation, might have been only separation. But the act of war begun by the South unified the North in the purpose to resist. and the logical effect of war was abolition. It became a war
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measure, a strategie move on the enemy's works. The question of secession and its right or righteousness being out of the way,-be- yond all dispute accepted at the North as being wrong on the basis of war,-there rose only one other question on the horizon, on which all men at the North were united except when that of secession came in to obscure or complicate it. Upon the removal of slavery from the Union, should that Union ever be restored,-upon this the men who fought and bled and showered treasure, the women who suffered the anguish of bereavement day by day, so that the Union might be re- stored and preserved,-all insisted with a holy earnestness. This Lincoln saw, but would not act a moment before he had seen it, for he would move only just so far as he had the people with him. On Janu- ary 1, 1863, he issued the proclamation of Emancipation. It had to be a war measure. It was an act not un-Constitutional, but extra- Constitutional, for which that document had made no provision, giv- ing no right, withholding no right. It was indeed " justified by the Constitution," but only " upon military necessity." That military necessity the guns at Fort Sumter had kindly provided. And this proclamation,-the most important American State paper since the Declaration of Independence, giving at last unreserved effect to the words of the Declaration, and taking the ring of mockery out of it which both cynics and earnest friends of liberty had always been hearing,-this proclamation had results of the greatest importance both at home and abroad, as a strategie movement in the conduct of the war. It unified all parties at home, and simplified the issue that was joined. And in it lay the only hope of preventing interference on the part of the governments of Europe. Motley, now United States Minister to Austria, a close and penetrating observer, wrote: "Our great danger comes from foreign interference. What will prevent that? Our utterly defeating the Confederates in some great and con- clusive battle, or our possession of the cotton ports and opening them to European trade, or a most unequivocal policy of slave emancipa- tion. . The last measure is to my mind the most important."
When, therefore, Lincoln had issued his proclamation the enemies of the North abroad were nonplussed. Agents of the Confederacy had industriously spread the impression at European capitals that the North was as much in favor of slavery as the South. The question of Union, or no Union, Confederation or Federation, could hardly be ex- pected to interest foreigners, or to appeal to their sympathies one way or the other. But in slavery or no slavery lay a principle of universal interest, which was certain to enlist the people of the various coun- tries of Europe on the side of anti-slavery. Thus Motley was soon en- abled to write with a sense of great relief: "The President's procla- mation was just in time. Had it been delayed it is possible England would have accepted the invitation of France, and that invitation was in reality to recognize the slaveholders' confederacy, and to make with
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it an alliance offensive and defensive. Nothing has saved us from this disaster thus far except the anti-slavery feeling in England. which throughout the country, although not so much in high places. is the predominant popular instinet in England which no statesman dares confront." . The proclamation also came in time to strengthen the hands of loyal men in New York City. The progress of the war. with frequent advantages on the part of the South, had served to dis- sipate that skin-deep loyalty of April, 1861, which had covered up the ridiculous outburst of disloyalty in January on the part of the city of- ficials. Since success did not uniformly attend the Union armies, the righteousness of the Union cause did not seem so clear to Mayor Wood and his party. In June, 1862, a mass meeting had been held in New York attended by delegates from all over the State, at which resolutions were adopted strongly criticising the President and his administration, and demanding the proposition of compromises to secure the return of peace. In the election for Governor the party cherishing such notions was victorious at the polls, and Horatio Sey- mour, who was well known to be opposed to the war, was now at the head of the State. All this boded trouble, and a few months bronght it around. Yet in the face of this state of things, perhaps nothing could have been so useful and helpful to the right cause as the direct challenge of men of all parties upon the matter of slavery. It defined the rock upon which the country had been driven to its destruction. and none but the actual enemies of the Republic could refuse to lend a hand in ridding the country of that fatal obstruction. It braced the friends of the Government to new efforts for rousing the citizens to patriotic sentiment and actions. War meetings were held, organiza- tions in support of the administration were formed; the President, by an almost divine instinct, had done the thing which the popular heart and conscience wanted done, and the great popular heart of New York was not out of unison with that of the rest of the country. Poli- ticians and partisans might confuse with their coarse clamor, but they could not silence the conscience of a whole community, and the response of the popular conscience to the righteousness of Emanci- pation put to flight the sophistries and seductions of the aliens. Hence there was a re-establishment of confidence, and a confirming of the people's purpose to maintain the conflict till the simple issue now raised before them was forever settled. And one of the results was the organization of the Union League Club, founded on " the broad basis of unqualified loyalty to the Government of the country. and unswerving support of its efforts for the suppression of the re- bellion." It counted among its members every loyal citizen of any note in the town. As one enthusiastic chronicler observes: " The history of the Union League Club is the history of New York patriot- ism."
We are hastening on now to an episode in our city's history, belong-
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ing to the year of the Proclamation (1863), which we shrink from re- counting, yet which inevitably comes across the progress of our narrative. We may put off the agony by stopping to note a few mis- cellaneous details. A gratifying incident took place soon after the memorable first of January, 1863. One of the most active spirits in the support of the Administration was Thurlow Weed. He was edi- tor of the Albany Journal, and had been one of those who had pro- voked the libel suits of the novelist Cooper. He was now a resident of New York City, and his name appears prominently in all the move- ments originating there in aid of the war. On February 18, 1863, the President summoned Mr. Weed to Washington on urgent business, not explained in the telegram that was sent to him. At the inter- view Mr. Lincoln told him that money was needed immediately for some important purpose, but that there was no appropria- tion from which it could be legitimately drawn. " Ilow much is re- quired? " asked Mr. Weed. "Fifteen thousand dollars." was the reply. "If you must have it, give me two lines to that effect." re- joined Mr. Weed. The President turned and wrote: " Mr. Weed, the matters I spoke to you about are important. I hope you will not neglect them. Truly yours, A. Lincoln." Thurlow Weed, armed with this laconic missive, took the next train for New York, and in an in- credibly short time he had obtained from eleven individuals and four firms, one thousand dollars each.
Another gratifying circumstance is that three citizens of New York (including Brooklyn) played a conspicuous part in serving the coun- try's cause abroad. The President was fully aware of the desperate efforts that were being made by the Government of the Southern States to put their case as favorably as possible before the courts of Europe, so as to neutralize the defense of slavery to which it was con- mitted. There was unfortunately too much of an inclination among English and French statesmen to aid the South, if only to break up the hated Union. Therefore Mr. Lincoln requested certain men of note and influence to present our cause abroad, emphasizing that the real issue at bottom was the preservation or abolition of slavery, a system no government of Europe dared to uphold or foster in the slightest degree. One of these men was Archbishop John Hughes, of the Catholic Church of New York. Another was Bishop McIlvaine. of the Episcopal Church, of Ohio; a third was General Scott, who was now a private citizen of the metropolis, traveling in Europe. In No- vember 1861, General Scott had resigned his commission, the weight of years fully justifying the step. He had at once come back to New York, and here a delegation from the Union Defense Committee called on him at the Brevoort House, on Fifth Avenue corner of Eighth Street, to present him with an address. Ex-Governor Hamilton Fish led the delegation. and Judge Edwards Pierrepont as spokesman gracefully alluded to his retirement in the words: "It will be
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the crowning glory of your honored life that you had the
wisdom from on high to retire at the fitting hour, and thus to make the glories of your setting sun in- effably more bright for the radiant luster which they shed upon the young and dawning hope of your be- loved land." In 1862 he went to Eu- rope and remained there for some years. He was eminently fitted to do the tactful, delicate work now asked of him by the President. For many years previous to the war, during Indian troubles, or in the Nullification muddle in South Carolina, "wherever there was imminent danger of war and a ADMIRAL JOIN D. WORDEN. strong desire to keep the peace, all thoughts turned instinctively to Scott as a fit instrument of an amicable settlement, and his success always justified the choice." His main faults (perhaps leaning to virtue's side) were an inclination to personal vanity and a somewhat pompous ceremonionsness of manner, much em- phasized by his portly and massive form. This made his posi- tion at the outbreak of the war somewhat extravagant; but for the present purpose he was calculated to be of infinite service to his country. And there was another, whose work in England partook of the sublime and the heroic. In 1863 Henry Ward Beecher deliv- ered five great speeches in as many cities of Great Britain. Manches- ter, Glasgow. Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London. He was hissed, in- terrupted, insulted, but his imperturbable good humor, readiness of wit. matchless moral courage, power of argument. and eloquence of speech, carried everything before him, enabling him to place before the English public a fair view of the situation in America, which, rightly presented, was such as to insure the heartiest sympathy and support for the North. These speeches, it has been said, did more for the Union cause in Great Britain than all that had before been said or written. Perhaps had it not been for the presence in England of Bishops Hughes and MeIlvaine and General Scott, at the time of the Trent affair, it would not have been possible to avert the war between England and the Northern States which then seemed so inevitable; it was hard enough to do so as it was.
New York, in its earlier history, stands preeminent among the cities of the country for the frequency and violence of her riots. Chicago. and other Western cities, may have borne away the palm from her in this respect lately. But up to the year 1863-with the Doctor's Mob of
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1788, the riots of 1834, 1835: 1837, 1849, and the " Dead Rabbits " ex- ploits of 1857, not to mention Mayor Wood's performances with his " own " police in the same year, all garnishing the record-New York is not easily excelled. In 1863 she added to that record the worst, bloodiest, most destructive and brutal riot of all. It goes by the name of the " Draft Riots." Call after call for volunteer troops had been necessary, but those who do not go forward at the first or second call of that kind are still more deaf to subsequent ones. Again, it had be- come easily noticeable that men raised in this volunteer fashion were not soon made into efficient troops. Their officers were elected by themselves, and therefore deferred to their subordinates rather than commanded them. These officers, too, were inexperienced, popular choice elevating them for popular points and bonhommie rather than for military qualities or experience. It was often a year or more before such troops could take the field, and a whole year's wages were wasted. Many men of influence accordingly urged the President to raise troops by the European method of conscription: that is, requir- ing all male citizens between defined ages to come forward to certain places thereto appointed, and draw lots, a certain proportion of the lots quitting of the obligation to serve, but those calling for enlist- ment to be enforced or to be redeemed by payment of a substitute. There were a good many thousands of persons throughout the country who did not wish to enter the army, but were willing to pay others for doing so, and they wanted a uniform regulation compelling those neither willing to go nor to pay to contribute equally with theni- selves. In December, 1862, the complaint was general that the eager- ness to go to the front had vanished, and by the summer of 1863 the men who had enlisted for two years would be returning home. The sentiment about conscription being such as it was, and being known to the President, it was deemed expedient to put that system of rais- ing an army into operation. Accordingly on March 3, 1863, Congress passed the " Enrollment and Conscription Act." By this the Presi- dent was given authority to recruit the army, when a deficiency threat- ened, by ordering a drawing of lots by citizens between the ages of twenty and forty-five. The men drafted were allowed to pay $300 for a substitute if they did not wish to go to the front themselves.
The draft needed to be applied to New York State and city sooner than anywhere else. The conditions of 1861 no longer prevailed, there being a deficiency of her men in the field, instead of more than her quota, as at first. At the close of the year 1862, it was reported to the department that since July, 1862, New York State was short 28,517 men in volunteers, of which 18,523 was to be charged to New York City. But for this very reason conscription was least likely to be wel- comed here. The revulsion in sentiment had carried an anti-war Gov- ernor, Horatio Seymour, into office. He could not but obey an order to institute the draft, but his reflections upon it were such as to in-
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flame the worst prejudices. He claimed that the report of his State's deficiency in volunteers was not correct; and boldly intimated that undne quotas were saddled upon districts known to be prevalently Democratic. Although the act of March 3 had called for an immediate enrollment in such States as were deficient in their contingent of troops, the examination of documents to refute these claims of Gov- ernor Seymour delayed the draft in New York until July. When the operation of the draft could no longer be averted, there were those who did not sernple to excite those dangerous elements of the New York populace which had so often made her streets fields of sanguin- ary battle. Since early in 1863 there had been at work in the city an organization calling itself by the innocent title of " The Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge." It disseminated books, pam- phlets, papers, advocating disloyalty of the rankest kind. It was to counteract this that the " Loyal Publication Society " was formed. One of the newspapers of the city, too. serupled not to act as the organ and mouthpiece of such hostility to the Administration as had taken shape in the mass meeting of June. 1862. already mentioned; and which had carried the election of Seymour in the autumn. The Daily Nous unblushingly charged that " the evident design of those who have the Conscription Act in hand in this State is to lessen the mini- ber of Democratic votes." This would be enough to arouse prejudice; it was only a shade less respectable, however, than the Governor's intimation of a similar character. that Democratic districts were dis- criminated against in the amount of the quota of men required. But a still more inflammatory statement was this: " One ont of about two and a half of our citizens are destined to be brought over into Messrs. Lincoln and Company's charnel house." The secret emissaries of the South, always present. saw their opportunity in the hatred of the draft thus systematically fomented, and did not allow these incite- ments to resistance to lose any of their force. There were murmur- ings of the coming storm, but efforts to avert it were frustrated by those high in power. Mr. George Opdyke, a Republican, was Mayor. and he foresaw that there would be trouble when the drafts should begin. Ile remonstrated with Governor Seymour against the with- drawal of all the militia from the city, but the Governor blandly re- plied that he had to obey superior orders, and that the city would be safe enough under the protection of its own police force. The draft was appointed for July 11, 1863. The enrolling offices were located at two points: Third Avenne, corner of Forty-sixth Street; and No. 1190 Broadway, near Twenty-eighth Street. Ere the day arrived the news of the simultaneons victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. on July 4. instead of discouraging the disaffected element. only served to in- flame it to a fiercer hatred of the war and its cause .- the emancipation of the negro. July 11 finally came; it fell on a Saturday. Colonel Robert Nugent. of the Sixty-ninth Regiment, an Irishman and a
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Democrat, qualified in every respect to carry out the measure in the least offensive manner, had been appointed Provost-Marshal. He took charge of the office in Broadway with Deputy-Provost-Marshal Manniere to assist him; while Deputy Vanderpoel was installed at the enrolling place on Third Avenue. Everything went quietly on this Saturday; although large crowds assembled in the vicinity of the of- fices, there was a manifestation of good humor rather than anger. The drafting wheel was set in motion, resembling those employed in lotteries for the drawing of numbers. It was watched with keen in- terest, by those who could get near enough, as a curious novelty. Sun- day intervened. and now the schemers who intended mischief put in their fine work.
On Monday, July 13. the drafting was resumed at the two enrolling offices. The Sunday papers (for these had started upon their career) informed the people of the numbers who had been drafted on the day before. The groggeries in the Five Points and along the water front were filled with their usual occupants, and the liquor and the news together, with a judicious word thrown in by those who wished to make trouble, perhaps after all to detach New York from the North,- all contributed to make the populace ripe for action on Monday. Sixty policemen were placed at each drafting place, and until ten o'clock there was no trouble. At that hour Superintendent of Police Kennedy while on a tour of inspection in citizen's clothes, was recog- nized by a mob at Forty-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue, contain- ing many criminals who had too good cause to know him. He was beaten into insensibility and left to drown in a puddle of water, when rescued by a friend. Meanwhile a crowd of roughs had been going up Third Avenue from Cooper Institute, to Forty-sixth Street entering every shop, and persuading or forcing employees to quit work and join the raid upon the enrolling offices. Before they reached Forty-sixth Street, the avenue was black with people following in their train. The mob who had just dealt with Kennedy, excited by the deed of blood, were now ready for any outrages. Joining the crowds on Third Avenue, the assault on the office began. A pistol shot was heard. This was the signal for attack. A volley of paving stones was fired into the office, knocking down the officials, upsetting inkstands, smashing chairs and tables. Thereupon the crowd surged in, destroy- ing the drafting machine, and wrecking everything in the room. The house was then set on fire. Deputy-Provost Vanderpoel had been hit with a stone, and was carried out for dead. The whole block from Forty-fifth to Forty-sixth Street was soon in flames. When the fire department hurried to the spot the rioters cut the hose and forced the men away from the hydrants. The mob now entered upon a carnival of violence, firing and robbing houses, looting stores, defying the po- lice, whose numbers were too small to control them. Superintendent Kennedy being disabled the command of the police fell to President
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Acton of the Board of Commissioners. He established himself at the headquarters in Mulberry Street, put himself in telegraphic communi- cation with all the police stations in the city, and ordered out all the reserves to report for instant service at their stations. He soon learned that a body of five thousand rioters were marching down Broad way intending to destroy Police Headquarters. Mr. Acton gave the command of the two hundred policemen stationed at the building to Sergeant Daniel Carpenter, a man of approved courage and skill. Carpenter resolved to meet the foe before they reached their destina- tion. Ilis plan of attack was simple and effective. He marched his men into Bleecker Street and so to Broadway, and while awaiting the onset of the mob with most of his men there he sent two detachments up the two parallel streets east and west of Broadway, to compass the block and fall upon the rioters on their flanks or rear. As he led his men to the fray he called ont : " llit for their heads, men; hit quick and hard. We don't want any prisoners." The few disciplined men thus brought advantageously to bear upon the unorganized mob soon car- ried the day. Broadway was cleared of rioters, except those who lay upon the pavement with cracked skulls. A few trophies were carried back to headquarters, among them banners rudely inscribed with: " Down with Lincoln." " No Draft." Nevertheless it would not do to risk defending the city against the increasing lawlessness with a mere handful of police however efficient. Before night Mayor Opdyke had telegraphed in all directions for military aid. General Wool, com- manding the Department of the East, ordered Col. Brown, of the Fifth U. S. Artillery, to report with the men under his command garrisoning the harbor forts to General Sandford of the National Guard. After some little friction the former yielded to Sandford's supremacy, and established himself at Police Headquarters to facilitate co-operation with President Acton. The Mayor also telegraphed to Governor Soy- mour asking him to order out the militia of the neighboring counties; and to the Governors of neighboring States for all the troops they conld send.
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