USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 45
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57
While the police had been dealing with the mob on Broadway, a futile attempt had been made to check the rioting on Third Avenue. An Invalid Corps of fifty men, under Lieutenant Reed, had been sent up on a horsecar to Forty-sixth Street. The mob learned of their ap- proach, tore up the track and barricaded the avenue, so that the party got no further than Forty-third Street. Here the men left the car. and after a vain attempt to reason with the crowd, the fatal mistake was made by Lient. Reed of ordering fire with blank cartridges. The mob hurled themselves npon the handful of men with derisive shonts. and wrenching the muskets from their hands, beat them with their own weapons so that many were killed and every one severely wounded.
Matters had not gone inch better at the enrolling place on Broad-
417
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
way. A part of the mob marched from Third Avenue and Forty-sixth Street down Fifth Avenue. On the corner of Thirty-fifth Street, from Judge White's residence, a United States flag was displayed. They ordered it taken down, and not being obeyed, stoned the house and were only kept from sacking it because of their hurry to get to the drafting office. This they raided like the other and set it on fire, so that here too the whole block, from Twenty-eighth to Twenty-ninth Street was soon in flames. The stores here were stocked with jewelry, costly articles of furniture, and wearing apparel, and many low ruffians and hags were seen adorning themselves with the finest gar- ments and carrying off handsome furniture to their squalid hovels. Parties of rioters, who seemed to be innumerable, also proceeded to attack the various arsenals. The one in Seventh Avenue and Thirty- fifth Street was defended by General Sandford himself and the few
-
FORT LAFAYETTE IN TIMES OF PEACE.
militiamen still available. He succeeded in dispersing the mob when- ever it sought to collect in the vicinity. The arsenal in Central Park was occupied by the Tenth New York Regiment of Volunteers.
The next day, July 14th, the mob resumed its work of firing and looting houses. It seemed to be under the direction of able leaders. who planned out the mischief to be done. The fury of the rioters on this day began to direct itself against the colored people. Their quar- ters were visited and their miserable hovels burned over their heads, the poor creatures being stoned or thrust into the flames as they sought to escape. Negroes were chased wherever seen, and hung on the nearest lampposts: if any were seen escaping to roofs of houses, the house was set on fire and the alternative left to them of perishing in the flames or of being murdered by their persecutors in the street.
418
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK,
Bnt the most dastardly thing perpetrated by the mob,-showing that men thus banded together for lawless violence abdicate all sense of humanity and become mere wild beasts, mad with the scent of blood, -was the attack upon the Colored Orphan Asylum, on Fifth Avenue, between Forty-third and Forty-fourth Streets. By the heroism and coolness of the attendants the two hundred young inmates were for- tunately conducted to a place of safety by a rear door as the raging fiends broke in the front door. The torch was applied in twenty places at once, and the building burned to the ground. From day to day the mob became bolder in their depredations. They went com- paratively unresisted over the entire island. Downtown they wrecked the ground floor of the Tribune Building, and might have utterly destroyed it, having already started a fire, when the police succeeded in driving them off. In Harlem, as well as in the downtown residence district, one house after another was robbed and fired. The citizens were panic-striken. It was rumored that the mob had seized the gas- works and the reservoirs, and were prepared to bring utter ruin upon the city.
But now the troops began to arrive and some effective checks were administered. Whenever they fired with blank cartridges, or over the heads of the people, no good results followed, but point blank fir- ing and the fall of several of the mob usnally had a sobering ef- fect. The Secretary of War ordered all the New York regiments to repair to New York, and on the evening of the 15th the Tenth and Fifty-sixth had arrived. Soon after came the Seventh, Eighth. Seventy-fourth and One Hundred and Sixty-second, and the Twenty- sixth Michigan. They had come none too soon, for destruction raged up to the moment of their arrival. We mention only one more inci- dent to illustrate the fierce inhuman vindictiveness of the mob, which makes it so much more perilous to encounter than a regular army in the field. On the morning of Tuesday a report came to Police Head- quarters that a large mob were making ready to plunder the houses on Thirty-fourth Street. on Murray Hill. Sergeant Carpenter with three hundred men was dispatched to the spot. He succeeded in driv- ing them off toward the east. At Second Avenue and Thirty-second Street they seemed to be getting ready to rally again, when Colonel O'Brien, of the Eleventh Volunteers, with a party of soldiers and two field-pieces, proceeded to attack them. In response to a volley of paving stones, Col. O'Brien leveled the pieces and fired unhesitatingly into the crowd, killing several and dispersing the mob effectually. A little later Col. O'Brien was imprudent enough to go into the neighbor- hood again unattended. While he was in a drug store a crowd collect- ed on the sidewalk. Instead of trying to escape he boldly stepped out, thinking a few words of counsel would bring them to reason. He had miscalculated. There is no generosity in a mad mob. He was set upon by a score of brutes at once. felled to the ground. and
419
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
dragged through the filth of the streets with a rope for hours. A re- ward of five hundred dollars was offered for the detection of the per- petrators of this ghoulish deed, but they were never found.
On the fourth day the Governor, who had arrived in the city issued a proclamation commanding the people to abstain from violence. From the steps of the City Hall he addressed a crowd of the rioters, weakly informing them that he had urged the Government to suspend the draft. With equal pusillanimity the Common Council passed an ordinance appropriating two millions and a half dollars, or six hun- dred dollars per head, to be paid for substitutes for men who had been drafted and did not wish to serve. The Mayor very properly vetoed the measure, which was rightly regarded by the populace as a victory for them, vindicating the riot and all its horrors rather than condemn- ing it. When the results were summed up it was found that between one thousand and twelve hundred persons had been killed, with an unascertainable number of wounded; and that two millions of dollars' worth of property had been destroyed. On Friday, July 17. it was an- nounced by Mayor Opdyke that order once more reigned supreme. Yet it was found expedient to keep the military under arms. For some days cavalry patroled the sections of the city where the danger- ous elements resided, and at the arsenals and armories detachments of the militia were constantly on duty. Very few suffered for the awful crimes committed; some of the ringleaders were arrested and tried, but where so many acted in concert not much could be proved in a court of law against individuals, and no penalty at all adequate was inflicted on any one. While the final restoration of order was of course due to the presence of an overwhelming force of the military, it speaks well for the city officials and their police force that the worst of the battle had been well sustained by them almost alone. General Brown, in relinquishing the command intrusted to him, said in his report, that, having been in constant co-operation with the Po- lice Department, he was prepared to declare that " never in civil or military life had he seen such untiring devotion and such efficient service."
The presidential election of 1864 was another critical period in the history of the war, and full of threats against the peace and safety of New York City. There were serious expectations of both fraud and violence at the polls. General Dix, upon reliable information, warned the officials that agents of the Confederacy in Canada were plotting to colonize in the city, as in other places, large companies of refugees, de- serters, and malcontents, who were to vote against Lincoln on election day; and prepared even to go to the extreme of subsequently " shoot- ing down peaceable citizens and plundering private property "; a repetition thus of the work of 1863. Detectives were accordingly placed upon the watch. All arrivals in town were carefully scrutin- ized, and made to give au account of themselves. Rude confirmation
1
420
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
of these rumors was not lacking. When the day for the election ap- proached the Mayor received a telegram from the Secretary of War that a conspiracy had been discovered to fire the principal northern cities on that day, Not waiting to learn whether the Mayor believed him or not, General Benjamin F. Butler was sent from Fortress Mon- roe to take command of the troops in the city, and seven thousand additional soldiers were sent with him and quartered at Fort Ham-
-
F
LINCOLN STATUE IN UNION SQUARE.
ilton and on Governor's Island. Ou Election Day these troops were placed on steamers and stationed off the Battery and other points along the North and East River fronts, ready to act at a moment's call. There was no occasion, however, to invoke their aid or interfer- ence. But a few weeks later, on the night of Evacuation Day (November 25), when the extra troops had all been withdrawn,
421
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
a number of fires occurred simultaneously in several of the hotels of the city, in Barnum's Museum, among some of the shipping in the harbor, and in a lumber yard on the North River. A party of eight men, headed by one Robert Kennedy,-who was afterward caught and hanged, and confessed the crime,-had come into the city for the express purpose of firing all these buildings, hoping to inflict still greater damage during the confusion and panic likely to arise. The incendiaries had followed a uniform, con- certed plan. Carrying small traveling bags containing inflammable materials, they had engaged rooms at the various hotels. On retiring to the rooms they tore up the bedding, saturating it with camphene and turpentine. Then lighting a slow match they locked the door and went away. But their purpose was defeated in each case before much damage was done, for as the tightly closed rooms filled with smoke, the flames were extinguished.
The month of April, 1865, was again one of excitement, running from the extreme of joy to that of grief and consternation, for the whole country as well as for New York. The year from its beginning had been replete with glorious tidings. One brilliant exploit followed another in quick succession: Sherman's march to the sea; the capture of Columbia and Savannah; Sheridan's dashing raid into Virginia. To cap the climax came the reports of the consummation of General Grant's steadily pursued operations against Richmond. On April 3 arrived the news of its fall, received in New York with unbounded joy, and with a touch of personal pride when it was learned that Lieut. De Peyster, one of her own sons, a scion of a family prominent in Dutch Colonial days, had been the one to place the flag of the Union upon the summit of the Confederate Capitol. The surrender of Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9 only added to the previous joy and gratitude. And then came the blow that prostrated in sudden agony every loyal heart in the Union. The first gun on Fort Sumter had been the monumental mistake of the Confederacy. The assassi- nation of President Lincoln was the very insanity of folly. No enemy of the South could have dealt her a more cruel stab. To the North it was a blow of affliction and bereavement; to the South it was a blow at life and prosperity, delaying reconciliations, keeping alive a fester- ing hatred. At half-past seven o'clock on the morning of April 15, 1865, the news reached the people of New York that the President was dead. Almost in a moment the city was clothed in habiliments of mourning. No one had either heart or head for business, yet men crowded the streets downtown. All the kindly intentions to cherish again feelings of brotherliness toward the men of the South were turned into bitter and furious anger and indignation; all those who had remained irreconcilable in their feeling toward the rebels of the South pointed in triumph to this new evidence of her incorrigible barbarity and depravity. Throngs filled Wall Street and Broad. At
422
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
noon Simeon Draper, the Collector of the Port, came ont upon the porch of the Custom House, now the Sub-Treasury, with a number of noted men, and organized on the spot a sort of mass meeting. The people became instantly hushed, and listened in solemn silence to one after another eloqueut speaker. But the appearance of no one there has more dramatic interest to us of a later day than that of General James A. Garfield, who was destined to meet with a similar fate six- teen years afterward. He quoted with impressive effect the solen words of Scripture: "Clonds and darkness are round about Him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne." And then he struck the keynote of the situation by adding among other things: " The spirit of rebellion, goaded to its last madness, has reck- lessly done itself a mortal injury, striking down with treacherous blow the kindest. gentlest, tenderest friend the people of the South could find among the rulers of the Nation." So profound was the grief everywhere felt that the police ordered (indeed the managers themselves had already so resolved) every place of amusement to be closed until after the funeral. On April 24 the body of the Presi- dent arrived in New York on its way to its last resting-place in his old home at Springfield, Illinois. It lay in state in the rotunda of the City Hall, and for a full twenty-four hours a stream of people constantly passed by the coffin on either side to take a last view of the honored remains. On the afternoon of April 25. the body was escorted to the railroad depot by a civic and military procession in which sixty thou- sand persons took part, and a million of people were estimated to have lined the streets. On the same afternoon a large gathering in Union Square listened to a funeral oration by George Bancroft, and a eulogy in his characteristic manner by William Cullen Bryant. And thus ended the final episode of the great crisis of the Civil War; the last victim of the bullet's flight had fallen; the hate of war had done to death the most shining mark the last.
A word in closing belongs to the men of New York City who laid down their lives for the cause in which Lincoln also died. The first officer to fall was Colonel Ellsworth, commander of the First New York Regiment of Volunteers. Upon the walls of the College of the City of New York is a handsome tablet inscribed with the names of the gallant youths who went forth to die the hero's death. But who can enumerate the many who deserve mention? Hon. Ellis 11. Roberts well summarizes the facts by saying: " The services of the officers and men furnished by New York adorn many of the chapters of the Civil War. If no single person attained to the first rank, a large number filled positions of great importance with eminent credit. In zeal and devotion and gallantry New York troops were not behind their fellows in any danger or trial. Wherever the sacrifices and triumphs of the National army or navy are told or sung, their deeds will be remembered aud honored."
CHAPTER XV.
RIDDEN BY RING RULE.
HE people of New York City were deeply interested in the question as to what should be done to rehabilitate the States which had gone out of the Union by acts of secession sustained by war. We cannot doubt what was the martyred Lincoln's desire and purpose. We know how General Grant's mag- nanimity stood guard over baneful propositions of revenge and punishment. It was perhaps fortunate for Lincoln's fame, and for his personal happiness, that the assassin's bullet removed him from the scene of politics subsequent to the war. President Johnson, in car- rying out the policy of free and gen- erous " Restoration " of the seceding States, which was well known to be Lincoln's own; in acting upon Grant's simple but immensely significant motto " Let us have peace,"-encoun- tered the most bitter hostility. Meas- ures which he considered harsh, tend- ing needlessly to exasperate instead of conciliating the Southern people, were one by one vetoed by Mr. Johnson; till in their rage Congress actually brought in resolutions of impeachment against the President. In these fa- mous proceedings, a son of New York. William M. Evarts, bore a conspicuous part, of which the city was justly prond, in a defense of the impeached President, which resulted in his acquittal by the court that tried him. New York took special pleasure in this cireinstance, be- cause there was a prevalent sentiment here sustaining the Presi- dent in his course in behalf of the South. On Washington's birthday, 1866. a mass-meeting was called at Cooper Union, to give public expression to the feelings of the citizens regarding the contro- versy between Johnson and Congress. An hour and a half before the doors were opened an immense concourse filled the wide square in front of the Institute. In less than fifteen minutes after they were
424
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
opened not a seat was left vacant, and every inch of standing room in the aisles or corridors was taken up. Even the platform was filled with a solid mass of people. The stage was decorated with flags and bunting, and upon the rear wall hung portraits of Grant and Sherman supporting that of President Johnson in the center. At the hour for the commencement of the exercises, ex-Mayor Opdyke stepped for- ward, calling the meeting to order, and nominating as chairman the Hon. F. Bayard Cutting. The principal speaker of the evening was Secretary of State and ex-Governor of New York, William H. Sew- ard. There was a great eagerness to see and hear the man who had so narrowly escaped the fate of Lincoln. It was truly judged that one who was held to be so like him as an object of deadly hatred by the enemies of the Union, must also worthily and closely represent what would have been Mr. Lincoln's own position on the burning questions of the day. Among other things the Secretary said: " There never was and never can be any successful process for the restoration of Union and harmony among the States, except the one with which the President has avowed himself satisfied. The States sooner or later must be organized by loyal men in accordance with the change in our fundamental law and being so organized they should come by loyal representatives and resume the places in the family circle which, in a fit of caprice and passion. they rebellionsly vacated. All the rebel States except Texas have done just that thing. and Texas is doing the same thing just now as fast as possible.
. Men whose loyalty may be tried by any constitutional or legislative test. which will apply even to representatives of the States which have been loyal throughout. are now standing at the doors of Congress. .
These representatives, after a lapse of three months, yet remain waiting outside the chamber, while Congress passes law after law. imposes burden after burden, and duty after duty upon the States which thus, against their earnestly expressed desire, are left withont representation." Mr. Seward then sketched the plan that the poli- ticians in Congress seemed desirons of forcing upon the President: " That Congress, with the President concurring, should create what are called Territorial Governments in the eleven States which were once in rebellion, and that the President should administer the Gov- ernment there for an indefinite period by military force.
This proceeding was rejected by Mr. Lincoln, as it is rejected by the President." Now it was to give evidence of the general commenda- tion of President Johnson in the positions thus clearly explained. on the part of New York's citizens, that the meeting was called. As the chairman of the evening said: " In the present imhappy differences between Congress and the President, the latter, in obedience to his sense of constitutional duty, declines the vast patronage and power. civil and military, which the former would give him. We honor him for this. We express to Andrew Johnson our confidence in
425
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
his integrity." But apart from what was thus said in their behalf. and the resolutions heartily indorsing the President, adopted with enthusiasm and unanimity,-we look especially to the remarkable response to the call for the meeting. We have already described the immense crowds in the auditory. After the hall had been filled to its utmost capacity, a competent police force was stationed at the doors to prevent dangerous crowding upon the stairways. Thousands were thus turned away at the doors. But they lingered in the square out- side. The Committee of Arrangements had not had the slightest idea of so general a response to the call for the meeting, else stands and speakers might have been provided. As it was, the temper of the people exhibited itself all the more strikingly. Patriotic men re- sponded to the feeling of the hour indicated by the immense throngs, and here and there ascended elevations most convenient to address the crowds, speaking warm and strong words for the President. The speakers were altogether unknown to fame, that fact alone show- ing how near to the hearts of the loyal masses of the people of the city lay the welfare of the country, in the particular method of promoting it which President Johnson proposed to pursue in opposition to Con- gress. When the speaking was over, cheer after cheer arose from the multitudes for the President, the Union. the veto message, the Stars and Stripes. A large number of ladies was among the crowds, who, when disappointed in gaining entrance to Cooper Institute Hall, lin- gered outside, contributing with all their might to the fervor and en- thusiasm of the occasion. In short, this mass-meeting of New York citizens, of all classes and conditions and ages and sexes, was the city's commentary upon the issues left to be settled by the war. It had accepted the war and sustained the war with men and treasure abundant. It now accepted peace, as Lincoln and Grant had accepted it, and therefore it stood with Johnson in the desire that differences might be healed, the crime or folly of secession be forgiven, and the Union be again as it was. By January 30, 1871, all the States of the Union were once more represented in both Houses of Congress, as they had been in 1860.
Scarce had the din and smoke of war passed away, when certain stanch and indomitable citizens of New York addressed themselves once more to a herculean task, and achieved a triumph not again doomed to disappointment. We have followed the fitful fortunes of the Atlantic Cable in a previous chapter. We cannot forbear to em- phasize how entirely the conception of that scheme and its initiatory movements belong to the credit of our city. Mr. Cyrus W. Field and Mr. Peter Cooper have already been mentioned. With these gentle- men were associated, as early as 1854, Messrs. Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, and Chandler White. Some of these men were natives of New York, all of them were prominent as citizens. One historian properly makes a note of the fact that " at six o'clock on the morning
426
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
of the Sth of May, 1854, these five New York gentlemen met at the house of Mr. Field's brother. David Dudley Field, in Gramercy Park. and in half an hour organized a company and subscribed a million and a half of dollars." It was an early hour, indeed, not usually af- fected by the New York merchants of this decade; but these men had need of being wide awake for the enterprise they had in view. And they were, as was proved by more things than this unheard-of hour for a business meeting. It would seem as if their failure, after that brief taste of success in 1858, were enough to discourage them perma- nently; or at least that it would have forever closed the pockets of in- vestors against their persuasions. But their own conrage and con- victions of ultimate success were so abounding. that they infected others with the contagion of their hope. It had been charged that the messages purporting to have been exchanged between England and the United States were not bona fide. The message from the Queen did not follow the promise of its coming till after a lapse of time suf- ficient for the mail to bring it: and that looked suspicions. But after a few weeks, confirmation of the genuineness of the cable's work came from London. The Times of August 25. 1858, contained the news of the death of a prominent telegraph opera- tor in this country which ocenrred on Angust 23. This somewhat abated the disgust and aversion which people had begun to feel to- ward the enterprise. But Civil War now also came in to set up its barrier against the un- SECTION OF ATLANTIC CABLE. dertaking. Yet these men kept on with their purpose, taking advantage of improvements in machinery, or of new devices that suggested themselves to a studions and persistent ingenuity in the construction of the materials for the cable and in the generation and transmission of the electric current. An unexpected ally appeared in the shape of that " eighth wonder." the monster ship Great Eastern, which. of little use for any- thing else, was supremely adapted for storing and paying ont the elec- tric cable. She was therefore engaged by the company, and specially prepared for this peculiar service. The second cable having been fin- ished, it was placed on board the Great Eastern, and on JJuly 23. 1865. the expedition started, as in former attempts, from Valentia Bay. on the Island of that name. close to the southwestern coast of Ireland. The huge vessel, moving majestically slow, was disturbed but little in her motion. as her extreme length enabled her to rest upon two waves at once. Ingenions machinery had been devised to render the paying out of the cable subject as little as possible to the accidents of wind and sea. But nevertheless disappointment was once more in store for the already greatly tried promoters of the splendid seheme. In spite of every precaution some hitch occurred when twelve hundred miles
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.