Five Points

by Tyler Anbinder

  52. Leader, November 6, 1858 (“too Irish”); Irish-American, August 14 (Dispatch quotation), October 23 (“claims of the Sixth Ward”), 1858.

  53. Clancy captured 38,077 votes, while his Republican opponent received 30,092. John Kelly, running for sheriff at the head of the Democratic ticket, won about 1,000 more votes than Clancy—Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1859, 413.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1. Herald, December 13, 14, 1860.

  2. Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1859 (New York, 1859), 116 (Kerrigan’s clerkship); Herald, October 17, 1860.

  3. Herald, October 17, 1860.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Philip Foner, Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and the Irrepressible Conflict (Chapel Hill, 1941), 294–95.

  6. Tribune, December 17, 1860; Herald, January 19, 22, 23, 1861; Times, January 19, 22, 24, 1861, January 16, 1862 (size of Kerrigan’s regiment).

  7. William H. Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston, 1863), 507–8.

  8. The account of Kerrigan’s service and court-martial is based on his service records and on court-martial II/680, both in Record Group 153, National Archives. Sketchy accounts of the trial can be found in Tribune, December 11, 12, 18, 20, 21, 1861, and Times, January 16, 1862. For Kerrigan’s arrest, see Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, 3rd Sess., 1545; Herald, March 4, 1863.

  9. Times, August 8, 1887, p. 2 (“dare-devil”); William D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States: 1858–1886 (Washington, DC, 1947), 159–66; Herald, June 5–7, 1866.

  10. D’Arcy, Fenian Movement, 244–48; Times, November 3, 1899, p. 7.

  11. John S. Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865–1877 (1905; New York, 1969), 152–53.

  12. Herald, November 2, 1899 (“never uttered”); Times, November 3, 1899, p. 7 (“syndicate”).

  13. Irish-American, October 29, 1853, January 31, 1857; Day Book, November 11, 1857.

  14. Freeman’s Journal, July 22, 1843, October 6, 1860.

  15. Freeman’s Journal, July 22, 1843 (O’Connell quotation); Irish-American, August 12, 1849 (quotation), May 17, 1851, June 11, 1853.

  16. Freeman’s Journal, July 22, 1843; Irish-American, January 31, 1857.

  17. Irish-American, January 9, 1858; Leader, October 9, November 6, 1858 (on Douglas), March 12, 1859 (Ivy Green).

  18. Herald, November 7, 1860.

  19. Irish-American, January 26, February 16 (quotation), 1861; Leader quoted in Jerome Mushkat, Tammany: The Evolution of a Political Machine, 1789–1865 (Syracuse, 1971), 327; Times, April 16, 1861.

  20. Herald, January 23, 1861; Irish-American, April 27, 1861; Eighteenth Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (1861): 17; Voice from the Old Brewery 1 (August 2, 1861): 35; Twenty-first Annual Report of the New-York Ladies’ Home Missionary Society (New York, 1865): 9.

  21. Robert Crowe, Reminiscences of Robert Crowe, the Octogenerian [sic] Tailor (New York, 1901), 26; M. R. Werner, It Happened in New York (New York, 1957), 196; Edward Lubitz, “The Tenement Problem in New York City and the Movement for Its Reform, 1856–1867” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1970), 319.

  22. Herald, November 4 (quotation), 6, 1861; Times, July 23, 1896, p. 5 (Stacom); military service file of John Stacom, National Archives; Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Part II—Record of Events, 80 vols. (Wilmington, NC, 1997), 44: 695 (Petersburg). For the Sixth-ninth Regiment, see Irish-American, June 4, July 6, 1861; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York, 1999), 870–71; Joseph G. Bilby, The Irish Brigade in the Civil War: The 69th New York and Other Irish Regiments of the Army of the Potomac (1995; Conshohocken, PA, 1998), 11–17.

  23. Leader and Tribune, July 2, 1864; Mushkat, Tammany, 330–32; Florence E. Gibson, The Attitudes of the New York Irish Toward State and National Affairs, 1848–1892 (New York, 1951), 117.

  24. Leader, June 28, 1862, quoted in Mushkat, Tammany, 342; Times, November 15, 20, 21, 23, 1862; Official Proceedings of the Democratic Republican Nominating Convention of Tammany Hall, Which Nominated Matthew T. Brennan for the Office of Comptroller of the City of New York . . . November 20, 1862 [New York, 1862].

  25. Leader, November 22, 1862; Times, November 23, 29, 1862; Herald, November 26, 28 (“at all qualified”), 29, December 3, 1862. Brennan captured about 30,000 votes, while his running mate for corporation counsel, John E. Develin, received 33,000—Times, December 3, 1862.

  26. Leader, January 10, 1863; Board of Aldermen, Documents 25 (1858), doc. 6, p. 171; Times, July 16, 1894, p. 5. Walsh by this point lived just across the Bowery in the Fourth Ward on Madison Street (the aldermanic district included portions of both wards), but his ties to Five Points remained strong with his brother Tom still a political force on lower Mulberry Street.

  27. Times, November 20, 1863, October 10, 1870, May 14, 1876. Although both Jourdan and Dowling were good fighters, Jourdan was said to have had “the greater coolness in times of bodily peril.” Once when Dowling and Jourdan went in plainclothes to capture two noted Sixth Ward thieves, they were attacked in a dark room with iron bars. Dowling drew his pistol, but Jourdan knocked his arm away, insisting on capturing the thieves alive. After a long hand-to-hand struggle, the policemen overpowered the thieves with their pistol butts, but not before the policemen were left “with blood streaming from head and face.” The two officers “dragged their equally disfigured captives . . . into a hack, where, exhausted and almost senseless, the four brutally beaten contestants rested from their labors and mingled their blood until they reached the station house. . . . From the encounter resulted Dowling’s premature and excessive baldness. He was about as nearly scalped as mortal man ever was, and from that day, instead of having a thick and heavy head of hair, his poll shone like a polished billiard ball.” In his years on the bench Dowling was consequently known as “old Baldy”—Herald, May 14, 1876.

  28. Herald, November 6, 1861; Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825–1863 (1949; reprint, Port Washington, NY, 1965), 291 (Hughes).

  29. Tribune, April 8, 1863; Leader in James F. Richardson, The New York Police: Colonial Times to 1901 (New York, 1970), 131; Irish-American, passim late 1862–early 1863.

  30. Edward K. Spann, “The Irish Community and the Civil War,” in Ronald Bayor and Timothy Meagher, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore, 1996), 203–4; Tribune, April 14, 1863; Albon P. Man, Jr., “Labor Competition and the New York Draft Riots of 1863,” Journal of Negro History 36 (1951): 398–400. The April strikers found only ten African Americans at Pier Nine and “a few” at the other East River docks, confirming that no sweeping replacement of Irish Americans by African Americans had occurred. The original culprit in the misrepresentation of this incident seems to have been Emerson D. Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in the North During the Civil War (1910; Williamstown, MA, 1976), 189–90. None of the contemporary descriptions of the June strike that I was able to locate mentioned black workers replacing white strikers. See Tribune, June 8, 9, 15, 20, 1863, and Herald, June 9, 16, 1863.

  31. Day Book quoted in Spann, “Irish Community,” 203; Irish-American, July 4, 1863.

  32. People v. Denis P. Sullivan, December 9, 1862, New York County District Attorney’s Indictment Papers, New York Municipal Archives; Herald, November 30, December 1, 1862; Times, February 11–15, 1863.

  33. Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 887–88; Irish-American, May 16, 1863; Herald, July 14, 1863.

  34. Irish-American, July 25, 1863.

  35. Leader, November 7, 1863; Luc Sante, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (New York, 1991), 353; Richard O’Connor, Hell’s Kitchen: The Roaring Days of New York’s Wild Side (New York, 1958), 16.

  36. Adrian Cook, The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863 (Lexington, KY, 1974), 213–16; Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots (New York, 1990), 28, 31–36; Tribune, July
18, 1863; Leader, July 18, November 7, 1863.

  37. Cook, Armies of the Streets, 256–68.

  38. Herald, July 14 (“Mr. Crook”) and 17, 1863; David M. Barnes, The Draft Riots in New York (New York, 1863), 14, 42–44 (all other quotations). The most recent account of the riots to repeat the erroneous story of the mission’s burning is Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 890.

  39. Herald, July 17, 1863; districts 5–11, Sixth Ward, 1870 United States manuscript census, National Archives. For Five Points’ importance as a residence for African-American sailors on shore leave, see W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 185.

  40. Sixth Ward draft statistics based upon the list of draftees published in the Herald, August 26, 1863, supplemented and corrected by Register of Drafted Men, Fourth Congressional District of New York, Entry 1589, Record Group 110, National Archives. Five Pointers did not respond to the draft much differently from other New York Irish Americans. In the August 1863 draft in the Fourth Ward, the district demographically most similar to the Sixth Ward, 50% of the draftees failed to report, 40% were exempted, 2% paid the commutation fee, 7% hired substitutes, and not a single drafted man entered the army. Upstate, the draft produced far more recruits. In the Ontario county seat of Canandaigua, for example, fully 24% of those drafted paid the commutation fee, hired a substitute, or enlisted—Register of Drafted Men, Entry 1589 (Fourth Ward), Descriptive Roll of Drafted Men, Entry 2194 (Canandaigua), Record Group 110, National Archives. For Nealis, see Times, February 12–15, 1863.

  41. Boyle’s service record can be found in the papers of the Eighteenth New York Cavalry Regiment, National Archives. The movements of his unit can be traced in Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Part II—Record of Events, 41: 600–602; Frederick H. Dyer, Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, 3 vols. (1908; Dayton, OH, 1978), 1: 380.

  42. Times, December 2, 1863; Irish-American, December 12, 1863.

  43. Irish-American, October 8, 1864.

  44. Irish-American, October 15 (“own aggrandizement”), November 5 (block quotation), 1864.

  45. Herald, November 17, 19 (quotation), 1866.

  46. Leader, Times, Herald, and Tribune, July 2, 1864. The press offered widely divergent accounts of the cause of Clancy’s death. The Herald reported that he had succumbed to Bright’s disease, a chronic inflammation of the kidneys, while the Times attributed his death to “a brain fever caused by a sunstroke received at Lake Mahopac on the 20th of last month.”

  47. William M. Ivins, Machine Politics and Money in Elections in New York City (1887; New York, 1970), 19; Matthew P. Breen, Thirty Years of New York Politics Up-to-Date (New York, 1899), 516–17. Brennan told a congressional committee in 1868 that he lived at 84 White Street and voted in the Sixth Ward, but admitted he almost always slept at his “summer residence” on “the Bloomingdale Road.” By 1869, he had given up any pretense of still residing in the Sixth Ward, listing the location of his residence as 105th Street and Broadway in the city directory—New York Election Frauds, 40th Congress, 3rd Sess. House Report No. 31 ([Washington, DC]: 1869), 442; Trow’s New York City Directory for 1869–70 (New York, 1869). I have not been able to identify with certainty the year in which this primary took place, but a story on the front page of the Times, February 26, 1872, implies that it was in 1871.

  48. Times, November 9, 1859, November 7, 1860; Herald, November 7, 1860.

  49. Testimony Relating to the Great Election Frauds of 1838 (New York, 1840); Irish-American, October 2, 1858, February 12, April 23, June 25 (quotation), 1859. For one of the few antebellum references to significant voter fraud in Five Points, see Herald, December 9, 1858.

  50. Times, November 7, 1863; John I. Davenport, Election and Naturalization Frauds in New York City, 1860–1870, 2nd ed. (New York, 1894), 49–56; Albie Burke, “Federal Regulation of Congressional Elections in Northern Cities, 1871–1894” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1968), 71.

  51. Davenport, Election and Naturalization Frauds, 49–56.

  52. Ibid., 92–93, 117–23, 274–75 (quotation). To be naturalized legally, an immigrant had to have resided in the United States for five years and to have declared his or her intention to become an American citizen at least two years before seeking naturalization. Those who had emigrated before their eighteenth birthday did not have to make the advance declaration, and those honorably discharged from the American armed forces could become citizens both without the prior declaration and after only one year of residence in the United States. In all cases the prospective citizen had to provide witnesses who could confirm that the applicant met these prerequisites and was “of good moral character.” Political parties in New York had offered, since at least the 1840s, to pay the fees and in other ways facilitate the naturalization process for immigrants, hoping of course that the grateful new citizens would cast their first ballots for their benefactors.

  53. Tribune, November 5, 1867; Davenport, Election and Naturalization Frauds, 107; The Nation 7 (November 5, 1868): 362.

  54. Davenport, Election and Naturalization Frauds, 123, 141; Times, October 24, 1868; Burke, “Federal Regulation of Congressional Elections,” 47; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (November 13, 1869): 141.

  55. Davenport, Election and Naturalization Frauds, 176–78, 242; New York Election Frauds, report p. 436, testimony pp. 239, 244, 248–50 (all references refer to “report” pages rather than the separately paginated “testimony” section, unless otherwise noted).

  56. New York Election Frauds, 505–6, 626–27; Davenport, Election and Naturalization Frauds, 180.

  57. New York Election Frauds, testimony pp. 409–11.

  58. Davenport, Election and Naturalization Frauds, 246, 286; Times, November 9, 1864; The Nation 9 (September 8, 1870): 147.

  59. Davenport, Election and Naturalization Frauds, 256–59, 284, 343; Burke, “Federal Regulation of Congressional Elections,” 17, 25.

  60. Davenport, Election and Naturalization Frauds, 341–43; Gustav Lening, The Dark Side of New York Life and Its Criminal Classes: From Fifth Avenue Down to the Five Points (New York, 1873), 288 (Five Points’ reputation for voter fraud).

  61. Official Proceedings of the National Democratic Convention (New York, 1868): 36; Times, April 13, 1870 (Jourdan); Tribune, March 8, 1878 (Walsh); Herald, January 20, 1879 (Brennan). Brennan could not have been on terribly bad terms with Tweed, as both Matthew Brennan and his brother Owen accepted memberships in the Americus Yacht Club that Tweed established in Greenwich, Connecticut. See Leo Hershkowitz, Tweed’s New York: Another Look (New York, 1977), 123.

  62. Alexander B. Callow, The Tweed Ring (New York, 1966), 23 (Board of Supervisors); Times, February 14, 1872 (street openings).

  63. On O’Brien’s failure to receive renomination, see Hershkowitz, Tweed’s New York, 155.

  64. Harper’s Weekly (November 18, 1871): 1084 (“You’re my man”); Tribune, October 28, December 16, 1871 (other quotations); Times, February 26, 1872.

  65. O’Donovan Rossa’s Prison Life (New York, 1874), 431–32, 436; Denis T. Lynch, The Wild Seventies, 2 vols. (1941; Port Washington, NY, 1971), 1: 135; Joseph I. C. Clarke, My Life and Memories (New York, 1925), 106; John Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel (1929; Shannon, 1969), 328–29; Alvin Harlow, Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street (New York, 1931), 417.

  66. Tyler Anbinder, “William M. Tweed,” American National Biography, 24 vols. (New York, 1999), 22: 60–62.

  67. Breen, Thirty Years, 304, 512, 555 (quotation); Jacob A. Riis, The Battle with the Slum (New York, 1902), 5.

  68. Times, August 10, 1870, October 30, 1875 (both describe funds received by Transfiguration).

  69. Times, February 14, March 11, 1872, January 3, 1874.

  70. Times, June 15, 25, October 3 (quoting Tribune), November 8, December 21, 1872, August 27, 1873.

  71. Times, June 21, September 26, October 21, 1873.

  72. Br
een, Thirty Years, 504–11; Times, December 23, 1873, February 5, 1878, November 12, 1881, September 7, 1889 (Genet’s obituary); Herald, January 20, 1879; Hershkowitz, Tweed’s New York, 262–63. Genet gave himself up in February 1878 and eventually served eight months behind bars.

  73. Breen, Thirty Years, 504–5; Times, January 20, 1879.

  74. Times, January 20, 1879.

  75. Times, October 11, 14, 1870, July 3, 7, 1872, March 8, 1878. The Times obituary erroneously states that McCunn died at age fifty-seven, but it accurately lists his date of birth as 1825.

  76. National Cyclopedia of American Biography, 63 vols. (New York, 1893–), 3: 391 (“amused himself”); Tribune, May 15, 1876; Herald, May 14, 1876; Times, May 14, 1876; Breen, Thirty Years, 523–24.

  77. Times and Herald, January 20, 1879; Tribune, January 21, 1879.

  78. Daniel Czitrom, “Underworlds and Underdogs: Big Tim Sullivan and Metropolitan Politics in New York, 1889–1913,” Journal of American History 78 (1991): 539–42 (“political ruler”); Times, April 30, 1887 (“Five Points Sullivan”), October 16, 1902, p. 3; Herald, April 18, 1889, p. 7, October 16, 1902, p. 5, May 19, 1907, magazine sect., part 1, pp. 1–2 (quotations); Sun, April 18, 1889, p. 5.

  79. For postwar comment on improving conditions in Five Points, see Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Southern Tour (London, 1866), 356; Edward W. Martin [pseud. for James D. McCabe], The Secrets of the Great City (Philadelphia, 1868), 189; Junius H. Browne, The Great Metropolis: A Mirror of New-York (Hartford, 1869), 272, 523; and Edward Crapsey, The Nether Side of New York; or, the Vice, Crime and Poverty of the Great Metropolis (New York, 1872), 155.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1. Jacob A. Riis, The Making of an American (1901; New York, 1936), 1–25.

  2. Riis, Making of an American, 26–79, 98–102. That Riis cried on the pier, not mentioned in Making of an American, is taken from his handwritten outline for the book, found in his papers at the Library of Congress.