Colonel Mott had scarcely returned to his command when the mob surged forward and began the attack with a hail of bricks and stones and a brisk fire from muskets and pistols. Colonel Mott ordered Captain Howell to bring two howitzers into position in Seventh avenue to sweep Thirty-second street, and the guns were loaded with grape and canister. The infantry and cavalry then charged with bayonet and saber, driving the mob back to Eighth avenue. But the rioters came on again when the troops returned to protect the artillery, and Captain Howell shouted that he would fire the guns unless they dispersed. He was answered by jeers and shouts, and the mob rushed forward, the solid mass of humanity packing the street from curb to curb. Captain Howell ordered his gunners to fire, and scores of rioters fell dead or wounded as the shot ripped and tore through their close-packed ranks. But it was not until six rounds had been fired that they scattered and fled into Eighth avenue, and thence northward. The soldiers broke up into small detachments and cleared the side streets, and then cut down the bodies of the Negroes, after which they marched back to Headquarters in Mulberry street. Half an hour later the rioters returned, carried away their dead and wounded, and again strung up the Negroes. They dangled from the lamp-posts until late afternoon, when they were removed by a detachment of police under Captain Brower.
Artillery was again brought into action about an hour after the fighting in Eighth avenue, when the rioters attacked Jackson’s Foundry in Twenty-eighth street between First and Second avenues. Driven away in disorder by half a dozen rounds of grape and canister, elements of the mob poured across the city and set fire to several houses at Twenty-seventh street and Seventh avenue, and when the troops had departed mobs again assembled on the East
Side and burned half a dozen dwellings in Second avenue near Twenty-eighth street, although no further move was made against the foundry. During the early afternoon Colonel Nevers led a company of regular infantrymen who frustrated an attempt to destroy the iron clad Dunderberg, which was under construction in Webb’s Shipyard. Another military detachment, comprising thirty-three men of Hawkins’ Zouaves and a company of regular infantry, captured a house at Broadway and Thirty-third street in which the rioters had secreted several thousand muskets. This expedition was supported by a battery of rifled cannon which had arrived in the city about noon.
Several times on Wednesday afternoon large bodies of troops were routed by the mobs, and two howitzers were captured by the rioters after the artillerymen had been clubbed down. However, the guns were of no value to the mobs, for they had no ammunition. The most serious of the day’s defeats occurred about six o’clock, when Colonel Cleveland Winslow marched against a great mob in First avenue between Eighteenth and Nineteenth streets, with a force of two hundred volunteers commanded by Major Robinson, about fifty soldiers of the Duryea Zouaves, and two howitzers commanded by Colonel E. E. Jardine of Hawkins’ Zouaves. While the infantrymen were engaging the rioters. Colonel Jardine unlimbered his gims and trained them to sweep the avenue, but before he could fire the mob had scattered into the houses on either side of the street. Within a few minutes a heavy fire was being directed upon the troops from the roofs and windows. More than a score of soldiers were killed and wounded. The howitzers poured a rain of shot through the street with little effect, and the soldiers attempted unsuccessfully to pick off the sharpshooters, but the latter fired with such deadly accuracy that within half an hour half of the military force was dead or wounded. Among the latter was Colonel Jardine, who was shot in the thigh by a rioter who stepped into the middle of the street while the howitzers were being loaded, rested his musket on the shoulder of a comrade, and took deliberate aim. Realizing that his command would be overwhelmed if the rioters made an attack in force. Colonel Winslow ordered the troops to fall back until the police could arrive with clubs and clear the houses, and drive the thugs into the street where the artillery would be effective. But at the first sign of a retreat the mob swarmed from the buildings and launched such a savage attack that the soldiers abandoned their dead and wounded, and their artillery, and fled in disorder, only a few escaping. Colonel Jardine, with two officers of the Duryea Zouaves who had also been hurt, crawled into the basement of a dwelling in Second avenue near Nineteenth street. There two women hid them beneath a great pile of kindling wood, but they were soon found by rioters who broke into the house. Colonel Jardine’s companions were immediately clubbed to death, and he would have suffered a similar fate had not one of the leaders of the mob recognized him as an old acquaintance, and prevailed upon the rioters to spare his life. Several hours later, when the district had become quiet, the women carried Colonel Jardine to the home of a surgeon. Eventually he recovered from his wounds.
THE victory in First avenue was the last important success won by the mob. The regiments which had been ordered into New York began to arrive early Wednesday evening, and on Thursday morning Commissioner Acton and General Brown were able to supplement their tired forces with several thousand fresh troops who had been hardened by the campaign against the Confederates. The Seventy-Fourth Regiment of the National Guard reached the city about ten o’clock Wednesday night, and was immediately marched through the riot areas, as was the Sixty-Fifth, a Buffalo regiment, which had arrived half an hour later. At four o’clock Thursday morning the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard landed at Canal street, and soon after daybreak marched through the streets of the East Side, to the dismay of its old enemies among the gang leaders. The Sixty-Ninth Regiment detrained Thursday morning, and a few hours later the streets also resounded to the tramp of the Twenty-Sixth Michigan and the Fifty-Second and 152nd New York Volunteers. From then until Friday night troops arrived in the city in ever increasing numbers, and with the additional forces at their command General Brown and Commissioner Acton were able to effect an organization which had hitherto been impossible. Manhattan Island was divided into four districts, and headquarters were established in Harlem, in West Twenty-second and East Twenty-ninth streets, and at City Hall. In each area large bodies of soldiers and policemen were kept on reserve, while smaller detachments kept up a continuous patrol of the streets, preventing the formation of mobs. Much of this work was performed by the troops, for the police had engaged in such hard fighting since Monday that scarcely a man was unwounded, and the remainder were so weary from constant marching and battling that they could no longer cope effectively with the rioters.
Mayor Opdyke published an encouraging proclamation in the Thursday morning newspapers, urging the citizens to return to their usual occupations, and some of the street car and omnibus lines resumed operations. An official announcement, later discovered to be erroneous, was issued that the draft had been suspended in New York, and would not thereafter be enforced, and the Board of Aldermen held a special meeting and appropriated $2,500,000 with which to pay the exemption fees of all poor men who were chosen but did not want to go to war. But despite these measures fighting continued throughout the day. The most serious encounter was in Second avenue between Twenty-ninth and Thirty-first streets, where a mob defeated several small detachments of policemen and soldiers, and pursued about twenty-five of the latter into Jackson’s Foundry, which was besieged. General Brown dispatched Captain Putnam to the rescue with a battery of field guns, fifty policemen and a full company of regular infantry. When the mob attacked. Captain Putnam swept the street with his artillery, killing eleven men and wounding many more. The rioters then scattered into the buildings on either side of Second avenue, but both policemen and soldiers pursued them, and with clubbed muskets and nightsticks drove them into the street, where they were again raked by the guns. They soon fled, and the troops marched to the rescue of their beleaguered comrades in the foundry.
This was the last fight of any consequence, although there were frequent minor clashes throughout Thursday night, and a few on Friday. Another proclamation by the Mayor on Friday declared that the riotous assemblages had been dispersed, and that a sufficient military force was now on hand to suppress any
illegal movement, however formidable. At eleven o’clock Friday morning a crowd of some three thousand men and women assembled before the residence of Archbishop Hughes, at Madison avenue and Thirty-sixth street, and the prelate addressed them from a chair on his balcony, as he was so afflicted with rheumatism that he could not stand. He appealed to their religious pride and urged them to cease rioting:
“Every man has a right to defend his home or his shanty at the risk of life. The cause, however, must be just. It must not be aggressive or offensive. Do you want my advice? Well, I have been hurt by the report that you were rioters. You cannot imagine that I could hear these things without being grievously pained. Is there not some way by which you can stop these proceedings and support the laws, none of which have been enacted against you as Irishmen and Catholics? You have suffered already. No government can save itself unless it protects its citizens. Military force will be let loose on you. The innocent will be shot down, and the guilty will be likely to escape. Would it not be better to retire quietly?”
A strong force of soldiers and policemen attended the meeting, but did not molest the Archbishop’s audience, which dispersed quietly as soon as the prelate had finished speaking. “They were on the whole a peaceable crowd,” wrote Headley in Sketches of the Great Riots of New York, “and it was evidently composed chiefly if not wholly of those who had taken no part in the riot. None of the bloody heads and gashed faces, of which there were so many at that moment in the city, appeared. The address was well enough, but it came too late to be of any service. It might have saved lives and much destruction had it been delivered two days before, but now it was like the bombardment of a fortress after it had surrendered—a mere waste of ammunition. The fight was over, and to use his own not very refined illustration, he ‘spak’ too late.’ ”
General Brown was relieved by General E. R. S. Canby on the morning of Friday, and on Saturday General John A. Dix took over the command of the Department of the East from General Wool. On orders from General Dix the troops assumed the duty of guarding the city, while the police devoted several days to the recovery of stolen property. Large detachments, some with military escorts, visited the rookeries and dives of the Five Points, the Bowery and the slum districts along the Hudson and East Rivers, and in cellars and garrets found loot of every description, from barrels of sugar and luxurious rugs to tobacco and bird-seed. “Mahogany and rosewood chairs with brocade upholstering, marble top tables and stands, costly paintings and hundreds of delicate and valuable mantel ornaments are daily found in low hovels,” said a newspaper. “Every person in whose possession these articles are found disclaims all knowledge of the same, except that they found them in the street, and took them in to prevent them being burned. The entire city will be searched, and it is expected that the greatest portion of the property taken from the buildings sacked by the mob will be recovered.”
The casualties of the four days’ fighting were never exactly computed, but were as high as those of some of the important battles of the Revolution and the Civil War, including such famous engagements as Shiloh and Bull Run. Conservative estimates placed the total at two thousand killed and about eight thousand wounded, a vast majority of whom were rioters. Practically every man on the police force was injured, although only three died. The losses of the various military units were not disclosed by the War Department, but were at least fifty men killed and some three hundred wounded. Eighteen Negroes were hanged by the rioters, and about seventy others were reported missing. Five were known to have been drowned when mobs pursued them into the East and Hudson Rivers. The police and troops captured eleven thousand stand of arms, including muskets and pistols, together with several thousand bludgeons and other weapons. The property loss was estimated at about $5,000,000, and the loss to business was incalculable, due to the stoppage of trade and the exodus of thousands of citizens, many of whom did not return to the city for several months. More than a hundred buildings were burned, including a Protestant Mission, the Colored Orphan Asylum, three police stations, an Armory, three Provost Marshals’ offices, and a great number of dwellings, factories and stores. About two hundred other structures were looted and damaged.
Throughout the rioting the police and military authorities were hampered, and their plans often frustrated, by the politicians, especially the Democratic members of the Board of Aldermen and the State Legislature, who seized the opportunity to embarrass the administrations of the Republican President and the Republican Mayor. These worthy statesmen frequently appeared at Police Headquarters, and at a time when houses were being looted and burned and Negroes tortured and hanged, when business was at a standstill and the streets were filled with surging mobs, demanded that the police and soldiers be withdrawn from their districts, complaining that they were murdering the people. A Democratic Police Magistrate held a special session of his court, brought forward a test case, and solemnly pronounced the draft law to be unconstitutional, and urged the people to resist its enforcement. Most of the prisoners taken by the police during the last two days of the rioting, and during the search for stolen goods, were immediately freed through political influence, and were never brought to trial. Many of the gang leaders of the Five Points, the water front and other criminal infested areas were caught leading their thugs on looting expeditions, but politicians rushed to their aid and saved them from punishment. When the rioting had ceased only twenty men, out of the thousands who had formed the mobs, were in jail. Of these nineteen were tried and convicted, and were sentenced to an average of five years each in prison.
ALTHOUGH the gangsters and other criminals had been defeated and hammered from pillar to post by the police and soldiers during the desperate fighting of that strenuous week in July, they continued to give the police much trouble during the remaining years of the Civil War. In May, 1864, mobs began to assemble when the World and the Journal of Commerce published what purported to be a proclamation by President Lincoln, recommending a Fast Day and calling upon the city to provide 400,000 men for the Northern armies. A huge crowd swarmed for more than an hour about the office of the Journal of Commerce in Wall street, demanding that the proclamation be rescinded, while every available policeman was rushed into the district and the garrison at Governor’s Island stood to arms. The mob was only quieted when extra editions of other newspapers appeared with information from Washington that the proclamation was a hoax. Both the World and the Journal of Commerce were temporarily suppressed by the government, and the Associated Press offered a reward of $1,000 for the conviction of the author of the bogus document. Detectives learned that it had been written by Joe Howard, Jr., who was immediately arrested and sent under strong military guard to Fort Lafayette.
Burning of Barnum’s Museum
A few months later the city was again thrown into terror by the famous Black Bag conspiracy. Fire was discovered at 8:43 o’clock on the evening of November 25, 1864, in a bedroom of the St. James Hotel in Broadway, and a few minutes later Barnum’s Museum was found to be in flames. Then in rapid succession fires were started in the St. Nicholas, United States, New England and Metropolitan Hotels, and in the La Farge House and Lovejoy’s, among the most prominent hostelries in the metropolis. At midnight several gangs appeared along the Hudson River water front and attempted to set fire to the shipping tied up at the docks, and between that hour and dawn fires were discovered in the Belmont, Fifth avenue, Howard and Hanford Hotels, and in the Astor House and Tammany Hall, as well as in several lumber yards and more than a score of factories and important stores in various parts of the city. Fortunately the Fire Department, assisted by the police and great numbers of citizens, was able to extinguish all of the fires in time to prevent a general conflagration. Bags of black canvas were discovered in the hotel rooms, and when examined at Police Headquarters were found to contain a quantity of paper, a pound and a half of rosin, a bottle of turpentine and bottles containing phosphorous in water. The incendiaries started the fires by piling the bedding in the center
of the room, saturating it with turpentine, and applying a match, after which they locked the door. The hotel keepers offered a reward of $20,000 for the apprehension of the criminals, but none was caught.
Another attempt to burn Barnum’s Museum was made early in 1865, but it was not until July of that year that it was finally destroyed, together with almost the entire block bounded by Fulton, Ann and Nassau streets and Broadway, with a total loss of about $2,000,000. The fire started in the upper stories of the Museum and spread downward, gradually igniting the neighboring buildings. During the conflagration the entire police force was kept busy fighting the crowds of gangsters and other thieves who flocked to the scene and attempted to loot nearby business houses as they had done during the great fire of 1835. Several stores were broken into and robbed despite the vigilance of the police, among them Knox’s Hat Store, the hats being offered for sale by the thieves within sight of the shop from which they had been stolen.
The Gangs of New York Page 16
