USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 26
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All honor then to the Brooklyn preacher who did so noble a work- a work showing forth the splendid abilities wherewith he was en- dowed, and bringing incalculable advantage to his country in a time of peril, and for years subsequently. The city of Brooklyn had reason to be proud of the man who had achieved so great a triumph. It is not to be wondered at that after his death a statue of Henry Ward Beecher was reared by his fellow-citizens to grace the very heart of the city's life, and remind the throngs daily passing back and forth what honor he once brought to the city of his adoption, by the serv- ice he rendered to the country. The forms of liberated slaves clinging to the base of the statue will appropriately recall the self- devoted and courageous advocacy of that same cause of freedom when the country was not yet ready to assume the issue of the liberation of the slave, and his very life was in danger for his outspoken cham- pionship of the oppressed and downtrodden.
The great event during the year 1864 for New York and Brooklyn
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both was the Sanitary Fair. It was stated in our account of the older New York during the crisis of the war (Volume I., p. 407), that while Chicago's Fair brought $60,000, Boston's $140,000, and Cincinnati's $250,000, both New York and Brooklyn far surpassed any of these, the metropolis raising $1.100,000 by means of its Fair, and her neigh- bor across the East River nearly half a million. There had been or- ganized in Brooklyn two important associations, the "War Fund Com- mittee of Brooklyn and County of Kings," and the " Woman's Relief Association of the City of Brooklyn." The latter was the representa- tive in Brooklyn of the " United States Sanitary Commission," the ori- gin of which was briefly told in our previous volume (p. 407). The War Fund Committee had as part of its organization a sanitary commit- tee, which acted in the capacity of advisers to the association of women. When, therefore, the project took shape of holding fairs for the purpose of securing the means for supporting the merciful labors of the United States Sanitary Commission, in the various cities of the land, the work of arranging for the one in Brooklyn fell to these two bodies. In New York the initial steps for the Metropolitan Fair had already been taken, and in October, 1863, the ladies addressed a circular letter to their sisters here, announcing their purpose and plans and inviting co-operation, proposing that it might be done in the way of taking charge of a department of the Metropolitan Fair designated as that of Brooklyn. It was at first resolved to adopt this suggestion, but at a meeting of ladies in the chapel of the Packer Institute, on December 4, 1863, at which Mrs. J. S. T. Stranahan presided, the enthusiasm was so great that a bolder step was at once contemplated and resolved on. The ladies of Brooklyn determined to have an independent fair of their own, and in their own city! It had been at first thought that from seventy-five to eighty thousand dollars might be raised by the enterprise. As the bolder proposition took hold of the imagination of the citizens, larger results were pre- dieted, and the Rev. Dr. Spear went to the very height of extravagant expectation, as people then felt, in recklessly stating it as his con- viction that the sum raised would reach one hundred and fifty thon- sand dollars! Enthusiasm kept rising to a higher pitch, but prac- tical measures kept pace with it. A Committee of Sixty, composed of prominent gentlemen, was appointed to co-operate with the ladies. On December 19, at a public meeting in the chapel of the Polytechnic Institute, called by the War Fund Committee, and at which Mr. A. A. Low presided, the Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler (later D.D. ), then only recently the pastor of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, and others, made ronsing speeches, the feeling aronsed tak- ing definite shape in several generons donations on the spot. Mr. A. A. Low led with a gift of $2,500. Then several $1,000 and $500 subscriptions were made, amid the profoundest excitement, the result being the pledge of a sim of $25,000; but before the month was ont. the amount pledged had run np to $50,000.
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It had been intended by the managers of the Metropolitan Fair in New York to open the Fair on Washington's Birthday, 1864. But in December they found that they could not be ready at that time, and they announced the postponement of the opening till March 28, and as we saw in our account of it, it was not actually opened to the public until April 5. Even in this particular, the Brooklyn peo- ple, led by their energetic women, would not be disappointed. All through January meetings were held in various portions of the city. On the 21st, Flatbush let itself be heard from, leading other Long Island towns in their co-operation. The Academy of Music was en- gaged and fitted up for this new purpose. But even its great space was certain to prove inadequate. Hence two temporary wooden structures were erected-one, called the Knickerbocker Hall, stood on an open lot of ground adjoining the Academy on the west, given
UNITED STATES MARINE HOSPITAL, STAPLETON.
rent free by its owner, Mr. A. A. Low. It was 100 by 68 feet. and two stories high. The other was named Hall of Manufactures and New England Kitchen, one hundred feet square and one story high, standing on a lot loaned free by Mrs. Packer, on Mon- tague Street, opposite the Academy, the site of the later Mercan- tile Library. The Taylor Mansion, on the northeast corner of Mon- tague and Clinton streets, was also engaged and devoted to a display of objects of art, relies, and curiosities. A newspaper was to be is- sued, called the Drum Beat, edited by Dr. Storrs, and its headquarters were here established. On February 15 the buildings were opened to receive the goods to be offered for sale at the Fair, and the amount sent in was overwhelmingly beyond the most sanguine expectations. As in New York, so here, the opening day of the Fair was celebrated by grand parades of volunteer troops and United States marines. at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. and in the evening of the same day - Washington's Birthday, as originally fixed upon - at
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7 o'clock. The main attraction was of course the Academy of Mu- sic, where most of the goods were displayed in booths arranged in concentric circles. The decorations were superb, and at night thou- sands of gas jets lent great brilliancy to the scene. Knickerbocker Hall was arranged into a vast restaurant, where five hundred people could be served at once, and from this source of income alone $24,000 were realized. The New England Kitchen set forth a farmhouse of the olden time. In the Hall of Manufactures, in the same building, was to be seen a huge broom which had been sent by Cincinnati. Upon it was inseribed the challenge: " Sent by the Managers of the Cincinnati Fair, greeting : We have swept up $240,000; Brooklyn, beat this if you can." Of course it was with immense satisfaction that the reply was sent, and the inscription amended to read : " Brooklyn sees the $240,000, and goes $150,000 better;" the elegance of which may be left uncriticised in view of the splendid fact stated. On March 11 the Fair was closed by a Calico Ball, that one event netting $2,000 alone. Altogether, and precisely speaking, the sum realized, and placed at disposal for the objects of the United States Sanitary Commission was $402,943.74. By the side of this place the popula- tion of not quite 300,000, and then comparing New York's sum of $1,100,000, with her population of over 800,000, and it will be seen that the results reflected great credit upon the people of the smaller city. But above and beyond the specific object of the Fair so gloriously and so abundantly achieved, the citizens of Brooklyn saw a deeper significance in the enterprise. It seemed to mark an era in city life. As Dr. Stiles records it, the sentiment of the day was that this was " the first great act of self-assertion ever made by the city of Brook- lyn." Previously to this, " Brooklyn was but a suburb, overshadowed by her mighty neighbor. .
. But in and by the Fair Brooklyn stood forth for once apart from New York and proved herself alive to her proud position, her abundant wealth, her great privileges and opportunities."
A most unique event growing out of the incidents of the Civil War, and standing out in bold relief as a distinctively Brooklyn affair, was the " Trip of the Oceanus." After Charleston had surrendered and Fort Sumter was again in Federal hands, it was deemed an emi- nently appropriate thing to make the raising of the United States flag over the ramparts, whence it had been violently torn four years before. a ceremony of an impressive public character. Hence, on April 3, 1865, President Lincoln announced that he had set apart the 14th of that month as the day upon which the Union flag would be raised there, that being the anniversary of the surrender. A steamer had been commissioned by the Government to carry thither the participants in the exercises, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher hay- ing been requested to deliver the principal oration, and another cele- brated Brooklyn clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Storrs, to offer the prayer
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at the close of the ceremony. But a great many of the ardent patriots of Brooklyn desired to be present on an occasion so significant and grateful, and, on March 30, as the result of some efficient planning on the part of a few gentlemen, an advertisement appeared in the Brooklyn Union, announcing that the steamer Oceauns, of the Nep- tune Steamship Company, had been chartered to carry a party to Fort Sumter. The number of tickets was to be limited to one hundred and fifty. The trip was to include not only Charleston Harbor and Fort Sumter, but on the way back, Hampton Roads would be entered and visits made to Fortress Monroe, Norfolk, and as far up the river as City Point; Richmond being added after the news of the surrender came. The round trip was to cost $100 per person. The limit first set was found to be entirely below the number of those who wanted to go; it was increased by thirty, the accommodations ou the steamer not permitting the carrying of more than these one hundred and eighty persons. They included Mayor Alfred M. Wood, the Hons. George Hall, Cyrus P. Smith, and Edward A. Lambert, ex- Mayors of Brooklyn; the Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, Messrs. Henry C. Bowen, and Win. B. Bradbury. The day appointed for sailing was April 10, and when it came, the party knew what had happened at Appomattox the day before. A ferryboat was placed at their dis- posal by the Union Ferry Company to convey the excursionists di- rectly from Brooklyn to the pier at the foot of Robinson Street (as then named). The exercises at the flag-raising on April 14 began with a brief prayer by Chaplain llarris, who had made the prayer at the raising of the flag on December, 1860, when Sumter was first occupied by Major Anderson's command. The next exercise on the program was the reading of selections from the Psalms responsively, the reader being the Rev. Dr. Storrs. Then Major Anderson's dis- patch was read, recorded in our previous volume (on p. 399), where- upon Sergeant Hart, who had nailed the emblem to an improvised staff amid a storm of shot and shell, after it was shot down early in the action, now tenderly took that same flag from a U. S. mail-bag; it was made fast to the halyards of the staff. and then the hero of the surrender, now General Anderson, stepped forward, took the hal- yards from the sailors, and made a brief address ere he lifted the old battleflag to its position aloft. At the sight the whole assembly rose to their feet. Then, for about half an hour, cannon boomed their salutes, after which occurred the oration of the day, delivered by Mr. Beecher. Unusual for him, it was all carefully written out and read as written, in order that no misrepresentations of his words or senti- meuts on so crucial an occasion might be possible. For the same reason, Dr. Storrs's prayer, at the close, was also written and read.
History was making fast during the trip of the Oceanus. The party had started on the day after Appomattox, receiving the news just in time to serve as a bon royage. Ou Saturday, April 15, they turned
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their prow northward, and Sunday and Monday were passed in happy oblivion at sea. On Tuesday they were steaming toward the Capes at Hampton Roads. and the first thing that met their eyes as the darkness lifted was a steamer with flag at half-mast. A pilot boat approaching them also carried its colors at half-mast. When near enough to hail, some one asked the reason, and the reply fell with stunning effect upon the happy company. It put an end to further excursions. The Oceanus at once sailed for home, all joy and pride turned into mourning for the dead President.
When the news of the assassination reached Brooklyn on April 15 the whole city was plunged into inconsolable grief. No party divi- sions remained in the depth of that sorrow; mingling tears of indig- nation and pain washed them all away. Alderman Daniel D. Whit- ney, acting as Mayor in the absence of Mr. Wood on the Oceanus, issued a proclamation closing all public offices, placing flags at half- mast upon them, and ordering the bells of the city to be tolled from noon till one. As in New York, all places of amusement were closed. On the 17th, a mass meeting of citizens was held at the Academy of Music, where there were no demonstrations but those of mute sorrow. On April 26, Brooklyn officials and associations joined in the proces- sion that carried the remains of Lincoln through the streets of New York on their way to their last resting place in Illinois. The War Fund Committee at once appointed a sub-committee, of which Mr. James P. Wallace was made Chairman, " to open a subscription for the erection of some suitable and permanent memorial in the city, of him for whom the nation is in mourning." As a result of this prompt action, and the subsequent vigorous prosecution of the scheme, Brook- lyn's statue of Lincoln was the first of those erected in the cities of the land. Its cost was $15,000, without the pedestal, which was given by the Park Commissioners. It was unveiled on October 21, 1869, with appropriate exercises, at which Mr. A. A. Low presided. First Citizen J. S. T. Stranahan accepted the statue on behalf of the Park Commissioners, the oration being delivered by Dr. Storrs.
The last acts growing out of the war were the honoring of the liv- ing and the dead, who had gone forth to do battle for the Union from the homes of Brooklyn. The Common Council almost immediately upon the receipt of the news of the surrender of General Lee. had voted the outlay of $10,000, to be raised by tax, for the procuring of proper medals "to be presented to the heroie survivors, from this city, of many a hard-fought battle." There were nearly three thousand to be honored in this way-2,049 men and 148 officers. Those given to soldiers differed slightly from the sailors' medals. The obverse represented the city seal and motto: " Eendracht maakt Macht " ( union makes strength). On the reverse of both kinds was the inscription, " Presented by the City of Brooklyn, To one of its Veterans, 1866 "; but the soldiers' medal represented a figure in army
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uniform holding a musket, while that of the sailors showed a sailor resting against an anchor. The day of the presentation was appointed for October 25, 1866, and was made the occasion for a great civic demonstration. The whole city was arrayed in the National colors. At abont 10 a.m., the Governor of the State, Reuben E. Fenton, was welcomed at the Fulton Ferry, and the procession marched up Fulton Street, through Sands and Washington to the City Hall. Here Mayor Samuel Booth introduced the Governor to the assembled dig- nitaries, among whom appeared also Admiral Farragut. From the City Hall the procession, led by the carriages containing distinguished guests of the city, marched to Fort Greene, where the presentation was to take place. A staging had been put up for the accommoda- tion of speakers and guests, about which collected the veterans who were to receive the medals. Those who had been crippled and other- wise disabled by the war, were brought to the scene in carriages, and a place had been reserved for them on the platform. It was an affecting sight to see, upon their arrival, how generals, clergymen, every one, vied with each other in rendering some service to the poor mutilated fellows, in conveying them from the carriages to the stage. After prayer and singing, the Rev. Dr. Storrs delivered an address to the veterans, full of eloquence and power. After this, Mayor Booth made the presentation speech, carefully reported in the papers of the day, saying, among other appropriate things : " The medal we present bears with it that which money can not purchase. It represents the heart and voice of more than three hundred thousand people. The small ribbon won by the French soldier as a mark of heroic deeds is prized as highly as life itself. It bears evidence that the wearer has done something for the glory of France. The testi- monial we present you to-day bears evidence that you have done very much for the cause of liberty and good government throughout the world." There was no one better qualified to speak for the veterans in response and thanks, than that one of their own number who had been among the first to go out to the war and to suffer its perils and ills, the hero of Bull Run, Colonel Alfred M. Wood, of the " Fight- ing Fourteenth," ex-Mayor of the city. After that the medals were distributed, and the ceremonies of the day were at an end.
But Brooklyn was not yet done with its soldiers and sailors who had rendered the country such glorious service. It had honored the living: there were also the dead. Curiously enough, again on an October 21, twenty-three years after Lincoln's statue was unveiled on the Plaza, upon the same grand concourse, with its commanding prospect, there was reared another monument to those who had died in the same cause. It was the year 1892-a big leap since the war, but it is best to keep these war memories together. Brooklyn had fallen in with President Harrison's painful astronomical correctness of date, and had determined to celebrate the discovery of America
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by Columbus on October 21. and part of the day's doings were to con- sist in unveiling the Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch. Several years before, speaking at Greenwood on Decoration Day, the Hon. Seth Low, then Mayor of Brooklyn, had suggested the raising of a memorial perma- nent, striking, costly, to the dead who were yearly honored at their graves. The idea was taken up with zest at first. The sculptor. J. Q. A. Ward, was asked to draw up plans, and the monument he designed would have cost half a million. This seemed too gigantic an under- taking for the city, and as a reaction the scheme languished. But it was taken up again, the idea of a shaft erected in front of the City Hall was broached and abandoned, and, finally, the Architect, John H. Duncan, prepared plans for a memorial arch, as something unique and graceful. The cost was estimated O at $250,000. These plans were adopted and exe- cuted. As a result, there stands to-day, near enough to the en- trance to Prospect Park to form almost a portal to it, the splen- did Soldiers' and Sail- ors' Arch, which is just- ly the pride of Brook- lyn. It is larger than any other in the world. except the world-fa- mous Arc de Triomphe SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MEMORIAL ARCH. at Paris. But in beauty, chasteness, and
majestic grace it is second to none. Its material is gray granite from the State of Maine, and so white is this hard and durable stone that no one would suspect it was anything else but the most delicate marble. Its proportions are most generous : eighty feet in width and seventy one and a half feet high, as it stands upon the Plaza, resting upon a base of highly polished dark Quincy granite rising three feet above the ground. The opening of the arch is thirty-seven feet wide and forty-eight and a half feet high. The abutments on either side are forty-five by twenty-one and a half feet. In the keystone is sculptured the seal of the United States. The under side of the arch is carved in coffered panels. In the spandrels on the north are carved the coats of arms of the State and city; on the south spandrels are found the figures of Peace and Victory. There is a staircase in each
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abutment, leading to an esplanade on the top, whence a fine view is obtained of the surroundings. Over the arch there is a chamber for the preservation of flags, standards, and other mementoes of the days of strife in which the men thus honored fell. Upon this splendid and magnificent memorial there is but this simple and impressive inserip- tion, but all the more telling for its terseness: " To the Defenders of the Union, 1861-65."
As was said, the Columbian celebration, October 21, 1892, was taken advantage of to dedicate the arch. Its cornerstone had been laid with appropriate ceremonies in 1890, by no less a person than General Sherman himself. The final completion and presentation to the city deserved equal public honors. The exercises were graced by the pres- ence of ex-President Cleveland, destined within a few weeks to be returned a second time to that exalted office. A salute of forty-four guns (the number of the States then) announced the beginning of the ceremony. The program opened with the singing of " America " by six hundred boys of the High School, after which a prayer was offered by the Rev. Dr. A. J. F. Behrends. A speech was then de- livered by Mayor Boody, and immediately before or after it there was an impromptu mumber put upon the program by the crowds as they caught sight of the ever honored J. S. T. Stranahan, still spared to see this occasion, as well as the later realization of his dream of a Greater New York. No sooner was he descried than lusty cheers went up; but he remained through only a part of the exercises. The orator of the day was the Rev. Dr. T. De Witt Talmage, who spoke in his characteristic manner, and was heard one hundred yards away. Among other things he said : " The world has no use for cowards. Men dislike them, and women hate them worse yet." Referring to the soldiers and sailors of the Civil War, he continued : " Had it not been for their courage and self-sacrifice the Republic of the United States would this moment only have been a matter of history. This continent would have been a place of quarrel and controversy and collision and bitterness, making it one of the worst misfortunes that ever happened to the world that Columbus discovered America at all. What two sublimer thoughts can you find, than America dis- covered and America redeemed?" The comment of one of the most influential of the New York daily papers on the day following the dedicatory exercises, in an editorial, was: " This form of memorial is greatly to be preferred to the more conventional forms of soldiers' monuments, consisting of shafts of stone, with groups and tablets of bronze; and Brooklyn has been quite successful in securing a struc- ture worthy of the purpose for which it was designed, and, at the same time, a fitting ornament to the Plaza that fronts the entrance of its fine park. New York still lacks a proper monument commemorative of her many sons whose lives were given up in defense of the nation."
CHAPTER X.
THE STIMULUS OF PEACE.
O ordinary misfortune," remarks Macaulay, in a famous passage, " no ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a nation wretched, as the constant progress of physical knowledge and the constant effort of every man to better himself will do to make a nation prosperous. It has often been found that profuse expenditure, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to de- stroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it." And then he draws upon the history of his own country for illustration of the truth of the apparent paradox. " It can easily be proved that, in our land, the national wealth has, during at least six centuries, been almost uninterruptedly increasing; that it was greater under the Tudors than under the Plantagenets; that it was greater under the Stuarts than under the Tudors; that, in spite of battles, sieges, and confiscations, it was greater on the day of the Restoration than on the day when the Long Parliament met; that, in spite of maladministration, of extravagance, of public bankruptcy, of two costly and unsuccessful wars, of the pestilence and of the fire, it was greater on the day of the death of Charles the Second than on the day of his Restoration." We could continue the argu- ment with its illustration by citing the facts of our own history after the Civil War. It was a disastrous war; it was so to those who lost in the struggle; it was so to those who won the victory. It was a victory at the expense of our own flesh and blood, and the ravages of war desolated the wealth of our common country, for then, as now, and ever we were, and are, but one nation, and internecine strife was deadly to us all. But the rebound came; with us, too, there went on "the constant progress of physical knowledge," and there was a stronger effort than ever on the part of every citizen to repair his in- jured business and to make up for lost time in enterprise. And quick and sure and abundant was the response of the unbounded national resources, in soil, in mineral treasures, in commercial opportunities, in the ingenious contrivances for facilitating labor, or travel, or com- munication, in rapid accessions of population.
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