USA > New York > New York City > The Memorial History of the City of New York: From Its First Settlement to the Year 1892, Volume III > Part 44
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found a new ally in the Croton, and mechanics and printers. In the midst of the division in which the printers marched was a vehicle transporting the old press with which Benjamin Franklin had once worked in London, while from a new press upon the same cart were printed and distributed to the assembled crowds copies of the com- memorative ode written by George P. Morris, then, in conjunction with Theodore S. Fay and Nathaniel P. Willis, editing the "Mirror." Pipe, symbolic of the Croton conduits, and the implements of the workmen, were carried or drawn by others in the procession.
" There was," says the "New-York Express," " a multitude present that no man could number, and the devices presented an almost end- less variety. We could neither number the one nor the other. The procession was two hours and ten minutes in passing the 'Express' office on Broadway. The ranks were from two to ten deep. Every rank, every age, and every profession was represented. . . . The church-bells mingled their merriest peals, and the cannon spoke out morning, noon and night in their most vociferous tones of power."
At the City Hall, in the presence of a vast throng, President Stevens made formal transfer of the water-works to the city authorities, and a
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speech of acceptance was made by John L. Lawrence, president of the Croton aqueduct board. The Sacred Music Society then sang Morris's ode. The collation, which was dispensed at the City Hall, was in admirable keeping with the other festivities. It was a veritable water day: no wine or spirits of any kind were served. There was an ad- dress by the mayor, and a speech by the governor, in which he urged the completion by the State of the enlargement of the Erie Canal, which had been recently suspended because the expense of its execu- tion was discovered to be greater than had at first been anticipated. With a fair at Niblo's, and an illumination at the Astor House, a day of great rejoicing closed. No riot or disorder marred its serenity. The newly erected fountains in the City Hall Park and Union Square, for many years after the delight of foreign visitors, had all day long been shooting their lofty jets into the air, to the joy and aston- ishment of assembled multitudes.1
With the completion of the aqueduct, with the private im- provements which could be wit- nessed on every hand, with the in- crease and decoration of public squares, the initiation of railroad enterprises, the construction and equipment of steam vessels for use upon the Sound and the Hud- son, and the regular arrival and departure of ocean packets (which in this decade first came to the MANHATTAN RESERVOIR, 1846. port), with the increasing wealth of the merchants and the growing diversity and magnitude of the commercial and industrial operations of the city, it was evident that it had outgrown the old lethargic methods of the Knickerbockers and was becoming a metropolis in reality. Nature had given it a safe and capacious harbor, the Erie Canal and the railroads were opening the markets of the West, and ocean packets and river steamers were securing outlets and inlets for its commerce. The sharp contrasts of riches and poverty now began
1 "If I must live in a city, the fountains alone would determine my choice in favor of New- York." (Letters from New-York by Lydia M.Child.) The same authoress says that the Old World has nothing to equal the magnificence of the fountain in City Hall Park. "There is such a head of water that it throws the column sixty feet into the air, and drops it into the basin in a shower of dia-
monds." The fountain in this park "consists of a large central pipe with eighteen subordinate jets in a basin one hundred feet broad. By shifting the plate of the conduit pipe, the fountains can be made to assume various shapes: The Maid of the Mist; the Croton Plume; the Vase; the Dome; the Bouquet; the Sheaf of Wheat; the Weeping Willow."
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to assert themselves, but these were partly tempered by the character of our institutions and by the active and growing spirit of benevo- lence which the wealth of a free and enlightened people is sure to evoke. Nor had civic spirit begun to abate, for the affairs of the city still occupied the attention of large numbers of its best citizens, who did not hesitate to devote their time to its interests.
Fashionable New-York was rapidly making its escape from its old abodes. The erection of Grace Church on Broadway near Tenth street, and the new Church of the Messiah, in which Dr. Dewey regu- larly officiated, and where could occasionally have been heard the elo- quence of Dr. Channing, exhibit this tendency. Washington Square, Waverly Place, Astor Place, Bond street, the lower part of Fifth Ave- nue, and East Broadway were the neighborhoods to which the wealth of the day aspired. Here preten- tious mansions were built at a cost which would have shocked the old residents about Bowling Green or in Wall street. Says Valentine, in his invaluable " Manual of the Corpora- tion," a few years later : "The dwell- ings now generally in course of con- struction by our wealthy inhabitants for their private residences are among the most splendid and costly city dwelling-houses in the world. . . . Samt Amore One hundred thousand dollars for the cost of a single city lot, free-
stone house and furniture, is not an infrequent expenditure." "Rapid approximation to the European style of living," wrote Lydia Maria Child, in 1842, "is more and more observable in this city. The num- ber of servants in livery visibly increases every season. Foreign ar- tistic upholsterers assert that there will soon be more houses in New- York furnished according to the taste and fashion of noblemen, than there are even in Paris or London"; and she adds that "furniture for a single room is often ordered at a cost of ten thousand dollars."
These luxuries came with the steam packet, which first made ocean voyages popular. When a trip to Europe could be made in sixteen days in the Sirius, the Great Western, the Britannia, or the Arcadia, there was no longer a bar to elegant travel. In 1839 James W. Wal- lack made the round trip within six weeks from the day of his fare- well benefit at the National. Steam navigation brought accessions of noted strangers, some to be fêted and honored, as Dickens, Marryat,
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Lord Morpeth, or the Prince de Joinville;1 others, like Louis Napoleon, or the ex-King of Spain, to escape for a time from an atmosphere of insecurity. The Orontes had begun to flow into the Tiber, in a double sense : not only was America becoming the asylum of Europe, but the luxury and fashion of Paris were also commencing to pervade New- York. We are fast approaching the days of Mrs. Croesus and Mrs. Potiphar, and the life which Ik Marvel satirizes in the "Lor- gnette."
The presidential campaign of the year 1844 may, we think, be regarded, next to 1860, as the most important canvass in our history. Controversies about banks and tariffs were fast hur- ried to the background before the onset of the slavery question. Houston at San Jacinto in 1836 had made Texas independent of Mexico, but the "Lone Star" was courted by the South, and one of Andrew Jackson the last acts of the Tyler adminis- tration was the proposed treaty with the republic of Texas for its annexation to the Union. The resolution of Calhoun and the South to acquire the full area of this new republic for additional slave territory prevented Van Buren's renomination at Baltimore, and secured the nomination of Polk and Silas Wright; but the Kangaroo ticket, as it was immediately dubbed,2 did not long continue in the field. Wright, who was then a senator from New-York at Washing- ton, immediately telegraphed to the convention his refusal to accept the proffered honor. History records that the convention disdained to believe that the news of the nomination had been conveyed to Washington, and that a veritable declination had been sent from that city, within an hour after the nomination. The explanation of this incredulity lies in the fact that the proceedings of this convention constituted the first public news ever transmitted over telegraphic wires. The skeptical convention adjourned to the following day before acting upon Wright's declination, meanwhile despatching a com-
1 The Prince de Joinville came to this port in the historic frigate La Belle Poule, which had recently conveyed Napoleon's remains from St. Helena to France, and which in the fall and win- er of 1841 could have been seen off the Battery, 'with her tricolor flying." In November, 1841, Dr.
Valentine Mott and his wife gave a ball, at their residence in Bleecker street, in honor of the Prince, to whom on the following day the city fathers gave a grand dinner at the Astor House. 2 " The ticket," said a leading Democrat, "is like a kangaroo-it goes upon its hind legs."
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mittee to Washington, to ascertain the nominee's decision. When it was discovered that Morse's invention was no chimera, but a veritable working machine, the city was as much astonished at this intelligence as at the unexpected nomination of Polk.
After years of disappointment and privation Morse had at last. been permitted to demonstrate the possibility of employing electro- magnetism for the instantaneous transmission of news. Although by -
profession an artist. this pupil of Washing- ton Allston had from his college days at Yale = been profoundly inter ested in science, and had patented many in- - ventions. The idea of an electromagnetic re- cording telegraph had first suggested itself to him while he was on a GENERAL WORTH'S RESIDENCE. 1 voyage from Havre to New-York in 1832. Re- · turning to his professional work in the university, he spent years in perfecting his invention, and was at last able to demonstrate its per- fect utility to a company of gentlemen assembled in the Geological Cabinet of the university in 1838. Patents were granted to him by the United States, but for many years no means of enabling him to test the invention were put at his disposal. England refused him a patent. Arago, the aged Humboldt, and other scientists at home and abroad were convinced of the value of the Morse system; but Congress, busied with problems of politics and finance, refused any appropriation for testing its value until 1843. At the very close of the session (on the third of March) of this year, Congress passed a bill authorizing an appropriation for a trial line between Baltimore and Washington. This bill was not passed without keen and scorn- ful opposition. One member of the House wished an amendment adding a provision that part of the money should be expended in researches upon animal magnetism, a subject then engaging the scientific and popular mind; and blunt Sam Houston, conceiving Morse to be a visionary enthusiast, worthy of enrolment with "Sec- ond Advent" Miller, suggested that "Millerism "2 should receive a
1 General William J. Worth's residence commands one of the finest views on the Hudson River. The house is a large square building, with a broad portico and Ionic columns extending across its entire front, while the grounds in which it stands are shaded with magnificent old trees. EDITOR.
2 " Millerism " found votaries in the city. Miller fixed October 22, 1844, for the end of the world. Stones and brickbats were thrown at the speakers at the Millerite meetings, and crackers and torpe- does were exploded under their feet. Finally the mayor, with an array of constables, was obliged
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our soldiers were victorious. Polk at once addressed Congress, and the famous vote was taken which declared that war already existed "by act of Mexico." It is not our province to narrate the history of that war, the triumphs of Taylor, or our own Worth and Wool, Scott's entry into the city of Montezuma in 1847, or the resulting contro- versy over the attempted exclusion of slavery from the vast territory purchased from Mexico under the guise of a treaty of peace; but the part which New-York took in the conflict merits brief notice.
The history of the events which led up to the war, of the war itself, and of its effects, would form a most absorbing book. The war was waged for the dismemberment of Mexico. The military honors are unquestionably due to Taylor and Scott and their brilliant subor- dinates; but the policy which added California, Utah, and New Mex- ico to the territory of the United States had its origin largely in the minds of Marcy and Bancroft, and they found men capable of execut- ing their bold designs. It was Commodore John Drake Sloat, a na- tive of this city, a hero of the war of 1812, who stole, under cover of darkness, in his ship, the Savannah, from the harbor of Mazatlan, and, reaching Monterey, California, in advance of the British admiral, com- pelled its surrender, and raised the American flag in the old Mexican capital. Under instructions from Marcy, General Stephen Watts Kearny led a force of sixteen hundred men a thousand miles through the desert to seize Santa Fe and hold New Mexico. His brilliant nephew, Philip, also a native of this city, was the first soldier to enter the gates of the city of Mexico. In attempting to follow the Mexicans into their capital after their defeat at Churubusco, he received a shot which necessitated the amputation of his left arm. Of him General Scott said, "He was the bravest man I ever knew, and the most per- fect soldier." In this war other New-Yorkers either won their spurs or gained fresh laurels. General Worth, whose statue was subse- quently erected in Madison Square, was in the thick of the fight at Monterey, at Vera Cruz, at Cerro Gordo, at Chapultepec, and at the capture of Mexico. The energetic and indomitable spirit of General Wool enabled him to raise and equip a volunteer force of twelve thousand men in less than six weeks, and as a veteran he displayed equal energy during our late civil war in saving Washington from Confederate troops. Among others who won distinction or lost their lives in this struggle were descendants of the Hamiltons, the Schuy- lers, the Morrises, and others of New-York's leading families.
During the exciting and bloody drama of the last years of this decade New-York city steadily continued her development. No seri- ous calamity occurred except the fire of July 19, 1845, the third great conflagration in the city's history, which broke out about dawn of a calm midsummer morning. As there was little wind, and an ample
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GOTHAM AS APPLIED TO NEW-YORK.
Gotham derives its origin from Goth, one of an ancient tribe of barbarians who overran the Roman Empire, and signifies a rude, ignorant person. It was also the name of a parish in Nottinghamshire, England, where people were noted for their sim- plicity and stupidity, which gained for them the satirical appellation of the "wise men of Gotham." As a popular name for the city of New-York, it was first used by Irving and Paulding in "Salmagundi," because the inhabitants were such wiseacres. In that humorous volume is quaintly recited the "Chronicles of the Renowned and Antient City of Gotham," and its invasion and final capture by the Hoppingtots, a race noted for " an unaccountable and unparalleled aptitude for huge and unmatchable feats of the leg. Led by two chiefs, Pirouet and Rigadoon, who ordered each man "to arm himself with a certain pestilent little weapon called a fiddle; to pack up in his knap- sack a pair of silk breeches, the like of ruffles, a cocked hat of the form of a half-moon, a bundle of catgut," and "a bunch of right merchantable onions," they swooped down upon the devoted Gotham. The appearance of this host, capering and grimacing, filled the citizens with alarm, followed by despondency, as fresh onslaughts to the sound of screeching fiddles were made day after day by the enemy. And the wise men of the town implored the dancing men and women to "make heel against the in- vaders, and to put themselves upon such gallant defence, such glorious array, and such sturdy evolution, elevation, and transposition of the foot as might incontinently impester the legs of the Hoppingtots, and produce their complete discomfiture." Finally the two chiefs, marshaling their entire force, made a general attack on the whole line of fortifications by a grand ball. The garrison had previously been corrupted "by a most insidious and pestilent dance called the waltz. . . . By it were the heads of the simple Gothamites most seriously turned"; the ladies of the city had been already cap- tivated by the besiegers, and the defenders themselves were wavering. Rigadoon made a short address to his companions, and without more ado " leaped into the air about a flight-shot, crossed his feet six times, after the manner of the Hoppingtots, gave a short partridge-run, and with mighty vigor and swiftness did bolt outright over the walls with a somerset. The whole army of Hoppingtots danced in after their valiant chieftain with an enormous squeaking of fiddles, and a horrific blasting and brattling of horns; insomuch that the dogs did howl in the streets, so hideously were their ears assailed." The city was shortly won, and the captors immediately put the citizens in charge of certain professors of the Hoppingtots, "who did put them under most igno- minious durance for the space of a long time, until they had learned to turn out their toes and flourish their legs after the manner of their conquerors." All ages, sexes, and conditions were put to the fiddle and the dance without mercy, so that "in pro- cess of time they have waxed to be most flagrant, outrageous, and abandoned dancers; they do ponder on naughte but how to gallantize it at balls, routs, and fandangoes; in- somuch that the like was in no time or place ever observed before." This sad chronicle closes as follows: " And to conclude, their young folk, who whilome did bestow a mo- dicum of leisure upon the head, have of late utterly abandoned this hopeful task, and have quietly, as it were, settled themselves down into mere machines, wound up by a tune, and set in motion by a fiddlestick!" Gothamite is now occasionally used to denote an inhabitant of New-York city. EDITOR.
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CARTLE GARDE
CASTLE GARDEN AS IT APPEARED IN 1850.
CHAPTER XI
TELEGRAPHS AND RAILROADS, AND THEIR IMPULSE TO COMMERCE 1847-1855
HIS period was marked by a wonderful commercial development, due in part to the rapid expansion of rail- way, steamboat, and telegraph interests, in part to the China and East India trade, no little also to the Cali- fornia trade consequent upon the discovery of gold in that State in 1848. The telegraph, which had come fairly into use by 1847, revolu- tionized the methods of business. Heretofore it had been the custom of the merchants of Pittsburg, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and all the larger interior towns to visit New-York once a year, usually in the spring, spend a month, and select their stock of goods for the coming year. Now all this was changed. The development of the railroad and telegraph made it possible for merchants in the interior to order any particular goods wanted, and to receive them within a day or two, so that the great wholesale houses, instead of carrying a large and miscellaneous stock of goods, began to limit themselves to a single line, and their customers in ordering would divide their orders among perhaps a dozen houses.
Dealings in stocks, bonds, and produce between the exchanges of the various cities were also changed by the advent of the new agent, for now the brokers could know the state of the market, and operate
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at the same time in New-York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Charleston, or New Orleans. The first telegraph-line in practical operation was finished in 1844, as has been narrated. In June, 1846, the line be- tween Philadelphia and Washington was completed and opened for business. The line between New-York and Philadelphia had been opened on January 26, 1846. The receipts of the new line from Jan- uary 27, 1846, to June 30 of the same year, as appears from the old books of the company, now in the posses- sion of the Western Union Company, were for January, $108.75; for Feb- ruary (no record); for March, $202.58; for April, $120.97; for May, $362.25; for June, after the opening of the through line, $731.32. Total for the six months, $1525.87.
From this time on telegraph-lines were extended throughout the United States with great rapidity. There were the New-York and Boston Telegraph Company; the New-York, Albany and Just. Hackers" Buffalo Company, owned by the great stage-line proprietors, Foxton and But- terfield; the New-York and Albany Company, owned by Morse's partners; the St. Louis Company, owned by Henry O'Reilly, to which Morse and his partners gave a license so loosely worded as to locality that it produced later much contention and some lawsuits; the Washington Company, owned by Morse's agent, Amos Kendal; the New-York and Mississippi Valley Printing Com- pany, which operated under the Key printing device of Royal House; and scores of others. In seven years there were over fifty separate telegraph companies doing business in the United States, nearly all of them in open competition and rivalry. This rivalry occasioned many evils and imperfections. It necessitated copying and retransmitting, with the attendant loss of time; and together with the delays, inac- curacies, and various tariffs, the result was such that in 1851 a move- ment was begun to effect a consolidation of the various interests. On March 30, 1854, the New-York and Mississippi Valley Printing Com-
1 James Henry Hackett, actor, was born in New- York city, March 15, 1800. He studied law at Columbia College, went into mercantile life, and soon married Katherine Lee-Sugg, an actress and the daughter of an English ventriloquist. Fail- ing in business, he essayed the stage, meeting with great success. His Falstaff was for years the
best on the American stage. In 1854 he brought Grisi and Mario to this country, and made a handsome fortune. Hackett numbered among his personal friends Cooper, Halleck, Irving, Paul- ding, and other prominent men. He died Decem- ber 28, 1891. EDITOR.
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property or persons by the power of steam, or of animals, or by any other power" or combination of the above. The capital stock was limited to ten millions of dollars, and the charter was to expire after fifty years. In the list of officers and incorporators were many names powerful "on 'change " fifty years ago.1
During this summer (1832) a preliminary survey was made by Colonel De Witt Clinton, Jr., under authority of the national govern- ment, and his report was so favorable that a complete and accurate instrumental survey was decided upon. By 1833 one million dollars of the capital stock had been subscribed, and in August officers and directors were appointed. The legislature of 1834 made an appropria- tion for a survey of the route under State authority, and Governor Marcy appointed Judge Benjamin Wright to conduct it. He began operations May 23, 1834, dividing the work into two grand divisions or sections-the eastern extending from the Hudson River to Bing- hamton, under the direction of James Seymour, and the western from Binghamton to Lake Erie, conducted by Charles Ellet, Jr. Judge Wright reported on January 20, 1835, that the survey had been finished, and that the complete maps, profiles, and estimates had been deposited with the secretary of state. The whole route from Pier- mont on the Hudson to Dunkirk on Lake Erie was four hundred and eighty-three miles in length (subsequently reduced to four hundred and forty-six). In his report the engineer spoke of the vast and acknowledged benefits of the Erie Canal to its commercial emporium, and that in selecting the route of the railroad he had considered economy of construction, passenger traffic, cheapness of transporta- tion, connection with lateral branches, accommodation of the in- habitants, and development of resources. The report aroused much opposition to the proposed road in the legislature. The project was denounced as "chimerical, impracticable, and useless." It was said that the road could never be constructed, and if it could, would never be used, as the southern counties were sterile, mountainous, and thinly populated, yielding but few marketable products, which could
1 They were: President, James G. King ; Vice- President, Eleazar Lord; Directors, John Duer, Goold Hoyt, Michael Burnham, Peter G. Stuy- vesant, Elihu Townsend, Samuel B. Ruggles, James Boorman, Stephen Whitney, John Rath- bone, Jr., J. Green Pearson, John G. Coster, J. H. Pierson, of Rockland County, George D. Wick- ham, of Orange County, Joshua Whitney of Broome County : Incorporators, Samuel Swart- wout, Stephen Whitney, Robert White, Cornelius Harsen, Eleazar Lord, Daniel Le Roy, William C. Redfield, Cornelius J. Blauvelt, Jeremiah H. Pier- son, William Townsend, Egbert Jansen, Charles Borland, Abraham M. Smith, Alpheus Dimmick, Randal S. Street. John P. Jones, George D. Wick. ham, Joseph Curtis, John L. Gorham, Joshua Whitney, Christopher Eldridge, James McKinney,
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