USA > New York > New York City > The story of the city of New York > Part 26
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MINOR EVENTS.
in art. His 'Marius amid the Ruins of .Carthage ' had taken the prize at Paris under Napoleon, and he returned to New York comparatively famous. The city, thinking to do something for American art, built the Rotunda, and gave Vanderlyn the lease of it for a studio, and for the exhibition of his pictures. He showed there his ' Ma- rius,' 'Ariadne,' and the 'Garden of Versailles,' the lat- ter a panorama taking up two sides of the room.
"I could give you a volume of reminiscences about the old American Museum. It had been removed to the site of the present Herald building, and had ruined several owners, when P. T. Barnum got hold of it, and made a success of it. The fashionable place of amuse- ment in my day was the Old Park Theatre, which stood on the south side of the park, near the site of the present World building. I have seen there Edmund Kean and Charles Matthews, the great actors of that day. The Old Park Theatre was burned on the morning of the 25th of May, 1820, but John Jacob Astor and John K. Beek- man rebuilt, on the old site, in 1820-1, a much handsomer building. The park was a beautiful place in those days, with its flowers, and trees, and well-kept lawns. Tam- many Hall, the cradle of the present powerful organiza- tion, was on the east, on the corner of Frankfort Street. Aaron Burr had an office in the Hall. The south side of the square, where now are the great newspaper offices, was then covered with low, one-story buildings-cigar- stores, beer saloons, and the like. The modern giants of the press had not been thought of. I have seen them grow from infancy. The Sun was founded first, in 1833 ; next, the Herald, in 1835 ; the Tribune, in 1841; the Times, in 1851 ; and the World, in 1860."
My friend was loth to leave the spot, so many
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associations were connected with it. We passed Wall Street and Trinity Church, with their stirring and patriotic memories, and came out upon the Battery.
"This," said he, "is another historic place, and ought to be reclaimed. How absurd to give the fairest, breeziest spot in the city to emigrants, who could much better be accommodated at Communipaw. When I was young," he continued, "the Battery was the fashionable . promenade. Castle Garden then was a frowning fort, with black muzzles of guns looking seaward through em- brasures eight feet thick. The fort is there still, though few people know it. In those days we called it Fort Clinton. It was built about 1807, when the attacks of England on our commerce made it evident that we should have to whip her again to secure decent treat- ment. Later it was turned into a summer garden, and entertainments were held there. Here Jenny Lind, under the auspices of the great Barnum, made her debut in this country. I remember it perfectly. She arrived on September 1, 1850, by the Collins Line steamer At- lantic, and gave her first concert on Wednesday, Septem- ber IIth, and a second on the 13th. Four thousand people crowded into the garden to hear her sing."
We walked eastward towards the Staten Island Ferry-house.
" It was from the Battery," he continued, "that Wash- ington took boat for Paulus Hook on his way to Virginia, and here we received Lafayette on his second visit to this country in 1824. He came on the French packet Cadmus, and was met off Staten Island by a delegation of the City Fathers, headed by our handsome, courtly
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Mayor William Paulding. Next day was made a fête day in his honor. From twelve to one the bells rang merry peals. No travel or traffic was allowed on Broad- way below Chambers Street. At nine o'clock, the Cor- poration of the city, the Chamber of Commerce, the offi- cers of the army and navy, and the Society of the Cincinnati proceeded to Staten Island and escorted to the city the man whom the American people delighted to honor. The cortege landed at Castle Garden upon a carpeted stairway, above which sprang an arch richly decorated with laurel and the flags of all nations. I re- member Lafayette-a small, delicate man,-and the shouts of thousands and the salutes of artillery that greeted him. In a few moments he entered a carriage, to which four horses were attached, and proceeded up Broadway to the City Hall, where he was formally wel- comed by Mayor Paulding. A public illumination in the evening completed the ceremonies."
XXIII.
NEW YORK IN THE CIVIL WAR.
WHEN war threatened, in the exciting days of 1860-61, the voice of New York was for peace. As a commercial community, she was, from the nature of things, conservative-averse to change. Debts to the amount of millions of dollars were due her at the South. War would confiscate every dollar. So as the irrepressible conflict drew near, her merchants made serious efforts to ward it off, -- to effect a com- promise, patch up a peace. On January 12, 1861, a memorial, signed by hundreds of her business men, was sent to Congress, praying that the pending dif- ficulties might be settled on the basis of the Critten- den compromise. On the 18th, another memorial, with 40,000 names attached, praying for a peaceable solution of the difficulties, was endorsed by a meet- ing held in the Chamber of Commerce, and forwarded to Washington. A mass-meeting was held at Cooper Institute, at which three delegates were appointed to confer with the delegates of the six States that had seceded, with a view to healing the breach, and a Peace Society, with the venerable Prof. S. F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, at its head, was formed, with the same object in view. Mean-
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time, Fernando Wood, the Mayor of the city, had broached his plan for erecting New York into a free and independent State. His words seem to us iron- · ical, but they were uttered soberly-so infectious was the heresy of secession. In a message to the Common Council, dated January 7, 1861, he wrote :
"Why should not New York City, instead of support- ing by her contributions in revenues, two thirds of the expenses of the United States, become also equally in- dependent ? As a free city, with but a nominal duty on imports, her local government could be supported with- out taxes upon her people. Thus we could live free from taxes, and have cheap goods nearly duty free. . . . When disunion has become a fixed and certain fact, why may not New York disrupt the bonds which bind her to a corrupt and venal master ? " and so on.
But the brilliant reasoner failed to carry his argu- ment to its logical conclusion : for if the state had a right to secede from the nation, and the city from the state, then the ward could secede from the city, the district from the ward, and each family could set up a government of its own ; and so there would be an end, not only of the nation, the state, and the city, but of all law, order, and government. Yet the Common Council thought so well of this very illogical message, that they ordered three thousand copies printed for general circulation. At length, on April 12th, Fort Sumter was fired on. The stars and stripes bowed to the palmetto. In a moment the current of popular feeling in New York was turned. The feeling of citizenship, of nationality,
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revived The old flag had been fired on, and Democrats vied with Republicans in sentiments of patriotism and loyalty. At a great mass-meet- ing held in Union Square, on April 20th, Mayor Fernando Wood, in an eloquent speech, declared with Jackson, that " the Union must and should be preserved." * The air was surcharged with patriot- ism and military ardor. Fife, drum, and bugle, troops mustering in the armories, parading on the squares, tenting in the parks, marching rank on rank through the streets to embark for the front, were the daily sights and sounds all through the bright spring days of 1861. Bryant, the honored poet of New York, voiced the general sentiment, when he wrote :
" Lay down the axe, fling by the spade, Leave in its track the toiling plough. The rifle and the bayonet blade For arms like yours are fitter now. And let the hands that ply the pen Quit the light task, and learn to wield The horseman's crooked brand, and rein The charger on the battle-field."
The Seventh Regiment, Colonel Lefferts, the pride of the city, was the first to leave, embarking on April 19th. Next day three more gallant regiments -the Sixth, Colonel Pinckney ; the Twelfth, Colonel Butterworth ; and the Seventy-first, Colonel Vosburg, marched away. In ten days New York City alone had sent 8,000 men to the front. To care for these troops and their families, and aid the government in its work, it was quickly seen that organized effort
* Putnam's " Rebellion Record," vol. I., page 89 of Documents.
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would be necessary, and on April 20th-the day after the Seventh left for the front-at a grand mass- meeting held in Union Square a Committee of Safety was appointed to organize a Union Defence Committee. Of the latter committee Hon. John A. Dix, recently a member of President Buchanan's cabinet, was made chairman ; William M. Evarts, subsequently Secretary of State, secretary ; and Theodore Dehon, treasurer, while the most promi- nent citizens were enrolled as members. This com- mittee performed excellent service. During the war it aided in organizing and equipping forty-nine regiments comprising about 40,000 men, and dis- bursed a million of dollars in caring for the troops and their families.
While the patriotic sons of New York were march- ing to battle, the loyal women of the city were asking what they could do for their comfort and relief in sickness, or when suffering from wounds. Some of them applied to the Rev. Henry W. Bellows, a leading Unitarian clergyman of the city, for advice, and, at his suggestion, a meet- ing was called late in April, 1861, at which a Cen- tral Relief Association was organized. To give the movement wider scope a public meeting was held at Cooper Institute on the 29th, which was addressed by Vice-President Hamlin and others. At this meeting an organization called The Women's Central Relief Association was formed, which soon had branch societies in every one of the Northern States. But the ladies soon found that they needed govern- ment sanction and authority in their work, and so,
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on the 6th of June following, the Secretary of War appointed a commission of six competent gentlemen, with Dr. Bellows at its head, "for inquiry and advice in respect to the sanitary needs of the United States forces." This commission was called the United States Sanitary Commission. The ladies worked under its authority. They held "sanitary fairs" in all the great cities, which yielded immense sums, and they collected private contributions of money, clothing, delicacies, lint, bandages, and other supplies for the hospitals. The New York branch alone is said to have sent to the army $15,000,000 in supplies and $5,000,000 in money. The same year, at the suggestion of Mr. Vincent Colyer, a well- known artist, the Christian Commission was organ- ized in New York, and soon spread throughout the country, its object being to attend to the moral and spiritual welfare of the soldiers. Meantime Miss Dorothea L. Dix had offered herself to government for gratuitous service in the hospitals, and became the leader of a noble band of devoted and patriotic women, who in this way served their country quite as effectively as their brothers who bore the musket and girded on the sword. It was a great honor to New York to have originated the Sanitary Com- mission, the Christian Commission, and the Ameri- can Order of Florence Nightingales.
The war went on with varying fortunes. The city filled her quota under the various calls of the Presi- dent for troops. At last a draft became necessary, and in May, 1863, one of 300,000 men was ordered. There were many in the city, who had vowed
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
to resist such an order, if made, and their resolu- tion was strengthened by the seditious utterances of certain politicians of the Peace Party, and also by the fact that at this time Governor Seymour had ordered the city militia away to help beat back Lee, who was invading Pennsylvania. The draft began July 11th at the Provost-Marshal's office, and proceeded quietly the first day ; but on the second an organized mob attacked the office and wrecked it, and then began a three days' reign of terror. New York then discovered that she sheltered a band of savages, capable of atrocities that might make the fiercest warrior of the dark continent blush. The mob attacked the police, insulted women, chased colored people-men, women, and children-through the streets, and when they caught them hanged them to the nearest lamp-post ; they sacked houses, burned the colored orphan asylum ; trampled under foot the national flag ; and burned, murdered, and robbed with impunity. Secretary of War Stanton at once ordered back the New York troops, but ere they arrived the rioters had been quelled by the combined force of the police, the citizens, and the small military force which had been left in the city. Two millions of dollars' worth of property had been destroyed in the three days, and one thousand of the rioters are said to have been killed.
The great event of 1864 was the Sanitary Fair of the 5th of April, which netted nearly one million dollars for the relief of the soldiers in the field.
In 1865 one event stands out conspicuously, -- the death of President Lincoln, who was shot by John
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Wilkes Booth on the evening of April 14th. The news reached New York at 7:30 on the morning of the 15th, and elicited sentiments of deepest grief and horror. Stores were closed, business was suspended, and buildings were draped in emblems of mourning. A few days later the city received, with every mark of reverence and respect, the remains of the slain patriot. Funeral honors such as had never before been paid to a citizen by a free city were tendered. The body lay in state on a splendid catafalque in the City Hall, guarded by veterans of the army. On the afternoon of the 26th the funeral party was escorted to the railway station, on its way to Illinois, by sol- diers and civic societies that filled the streets for five miles ; later an immense concourse of citizens gathered in Union Square and listened to funeral orations by William Cullen Bryant and George Bancroft. In this spring of 1865 the return of the veterans, with tattered banners and honorable scars, closed the record of the civil war ..
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XXIV.
THE MOUSE IN THE CHEESE.
I HAVE read somewhere a description of a great state dinner in an old Dutch city. A famous cheese had been made for this dinner, but as the attendants cut into it they found that a sagacious mouse had tunnelled her way inside, and with her family had begun housekeeping there; so that when the good people looked for. toothsomeness and regalement they found only vermin and foulness. One morning in July, 1871, the people of New York awoke to the fact that there were mice in their municipal cheese ; in other words, that a large per cent. of the money which they-honest, hard-working taxpayers-had raised to support the city government and pay for such public improvements as were necessary, was being stolen by the very men who had sworn to ex- pend it economically and for the city's best interest. This was one of the gravest crimes that could be committed in a free state; it added treachery and perjury to the crime of theft, it tarnished the fair fame of the city, and it tended to bring government by the people into disrepute. The master-spirit of the conspirators was William M. Tweed, a coarse, pushing, aggressive person, who several years before
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THE MOUSE IN THE CHEESE.
had left the ranks of honest labor to become a poli- tician. He cultivated that corrupt, degraded class, which under the leadership of the saloon-keeper has so debauched our city politics, and soon acquired such influence over it that he became its master. By the aid of this clientage he was elected to various offices, each a little higher than the last, until finally he became Chairman of the Board of Supervisors and Deputy Street Commissioner, which virtually placed him .at the head of the public works of the city, and gave him unlimited control of the public expendi- tures. He now. formed a scheme of plundering, which for boldness and gigantic proportions has never been equalled in the history of peculation. Taking the officers of the city into his confidence, he formed that band of conspirators against the public till which the newspapers, with their happy facility for coining apt terms, named "The Ring." His method of procedure was simple yet shrewd. For every thing done for, or furnished to the city- opening, paving, or cleaning of streets, park improve- ments, public buildings, supplies furnished the city- a sum ranging from sixty to eighty-five per cent. in excess of the real cost was charged in the bills, the excess being divided among the conspirators ; if now and then an honest contractor ventured to remon- strate against presenting bills so much above the cost, he was threatened with loss of his contract, but generally the contractors were slaves of the ring. Tweed now projected public improvements on a grand scale. He lived in an ostentatious way. He gave munificently to public charities ; for a time he was quite the lion of the city.
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The new County Court-house formed the most striking example of the stealings of the ring. The Legislature had authorized the city to build it at a cost of $250,000 ; by 1871, though unfinished, it had cost $8,000,000, nearly $7,000,000 of which had gone into the pockets of the conspirators. In the few months of the ring's existence, it was estimated that it stole $20,000,000,-enough to have built the Brooklyn Bridge, or given twenty free libraries ample endowments, or provided beds in twenty well-appointed hospitals.
But detection and punishment visited the con- spirators at last, singularly enough by means which they themselves provided, with a fatuity for which we cannot account. The fraudulent bills were entered in a book entitled "County Liabilities," which was kept among the records of the auditor's office. One day, an honest clerk in this office, who owed his position to John J. O'Brien, High- Sheriff of New York, came upon this book, copied the bills, and gave the copy to his patron, O'Brien. The latter called the attention of Tweed to them, and threatened to give the copy to the news- papers unless the ring paid a bill long due him by the city ; and, as they failed to pay, he, some months after, gave the copy to the New York Times. Now the newspapers of the city had long been call- ing public attention to the fact that the warrants drawn upon the treasury were far in excess of the expenditure, and we can imagine with what avidity the Times seized upon this morsel. Next morning it startled the city with the announcement in large
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THE MOUSE IN THE CHEESE.
display type "Secret Accounts. Proofs of Un- doubted Frauds Brought to Light," and followed it with double-leaded columns of figures, giving item by item the amounts stolen by the ring. For several days it continued to publish double-leaded columns of extracts from "County Liabilities," and, on Sat- urday, July 29th, finished with a supplement printed in English and German, in which the several series of figures were brought together and tabulated. The Tribune, Herald, and other great dailies ably seconded the Times. Thomas Nast, by his cartoons in Harper's Weekly, dealt telling blows at the ring. The conspirators were dumbfounded, but thought to brazen it out. "What are you going to do about it? " asked Tweed, defiantly ; words that have since become a proverb for brazen insolence. The indig- nant people thought they would do something, and appointed seventy of their wisest and best citizens as a committee to bring the thieves to justice. Most of the latter became frightened and fled to Europe. Tweed remained, was arrested, indicted for perjury and grand larceny, found guilty, and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment in the penitentiary on Blackwell's Island. In 1875, his friends secured his release on bail, but he was at once re-arrested on a civil suit to recover six millions of dollars stolen from the city treasury. Not being able to find the bail required-three million dollars-he was placed in Ludlow Street Jail, from which he shortly after escaped and fled to Europe. He was traced to Spain, however, and arrested there; the Spanish authorities thinking that so great a rogue ought not
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to be at large, surrendered him. He was brought back, tried on the civil suit, and a verdict of $6,537,- 000 returned against him by the jury. He was un- able or unwilling to pay this, and remained in prison until his death, in January, 1878,-a miserable end, and one that carries a moral with it.
The Tweed incident was a dark blot on the city's escutcheon ; others quite as foul have since been added, and the end is not yet. They have furnished the English Saturday Review and other Tory jour- nals texts for many discourses on the evil effects of free institutions. The Tory friends one meets in London are fond of instancing it as an example of the failure of democracy.
It is useless to shut our eyes to the fact that New York is badly governed ; but equally true is it that this government was not put in power by American votes ; nor is it the outcome of American institutions. European laws and European social conditions are responsible for it. Ghetto and Judenstrasse had first to exist before the slums of New York were possible. New York has, in fact, become a sieve that catches the riff-raff of all nations. Between three and four hundred thousand emigrants, of various nationalities, arrive at New York every year. Of these, the strong, thrifty, am- bitious push forward to the West, while the vicious, ignorant, lazy, ne'er-do-wells, the mentally, morally, and physically diseased remain in New York. There were, in 1880, 478,670 foreign-born persons in New York. Many of them cannot read nor write. Many cannot even speak our language. They never heard
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THE MOUSE IN THE CHEESE.
of our Constitution, nor of any one of the traditions of our government ; yet, on election day, under the lead of the local boss, the voters among them flock to the polls, and their vote counts for as much as that of the native-born American. These European outcasts make Tweed rings possible, and elect boodle aldermen. The honest student of political science will find in them, and not in our free institutions, the genesis of the city's disgraceful government.
Again, the topography of New York is an impor- tant factor in producing this result. On a long, nar- row island, swept by navigable waters, bearing the . commerce of the world, land acquires an enormous value. Only the very rich and the very poor can live on Manhattan Island-the poor, because they are content with little space; the rich, because they can buy all they need. As a result, the great middle class -the true conservator of society-is driven to seek homes outside the city ; and as the poor outnumber the rich, the city government is entrusted, practically, to the inmates of the great tenement hives. How these alarming conditions may best be removed, is a question for the coming generation to solve. Un- doubtedly when we have statesmen for our rulers, several things will be done. Unrestricted immigration will be stopped. The crowded tenement hives will be torn down, and their inmates removed to model houses, where more than his natural right to six feet of space will be allowed each tenant ; and lastly, the city's bounds will be enlarged to include Brooklyn and her suburban villages, the towns of Westchester County along the Hudson and the Sound, and if the
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consent of New Jersey can be obtained, Jersey City and the entire peninsula between New York and Newark Bay. With so wide a territory, the forma- tion of "rings " would be much more difficult, and the votes of the middle class would be enlisted in the cause of good government.
XXV.
THE TRIUMPHS OF ART.
THE latter days of the city have been marked by two great triumphs of art-the Brooklyn Bridge and the Bartholdi Statue. As an engineering feat, the former stands unrivalled ; and its office of connect- ing the two great cities of New York and Brooklyn, making them practically one, adds to its distinction. It is a monument to the genius of the great engineer, John A. Roebling, who conceived it, and to his son, Washington A. Roebling, who, on his father's death, before his plans could be carried out, took charge of the work, and carried it to successful completion. A charter for a Bridge Company to build this great work was granted by the New York Legislature, in 1867. The company was organized in May, of that year, and in January, 1870, began the construction of the bridge. The towers, each 272 feet above tide water, were first built. Then, May 29, 1877, the first little wire, to serve as a nucleus for the pioneer cable, was run out from the towers. When 5,269 of these galvanized steel, oil-coated wires had been laid side by side-not twisted-and bound, the first of the four great cables-3,455 feet long, and! capable of sustaining a weight of 12,200 tons-was complete.
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