THE IMPACT of the Civil War on the city was varied and colorful. When hostilities began, New York was suffering from a recession. Scores of firms went bankrupt, and thousands of men were thrown out of work. Employers took advantage of the labor surplus to cut wages from an average of $1.25 to 85 cents a day. Women were paid only $1 to $3 a week. At the same time Arnold Constable & Company sold lace at $1,000 a yard, lace parasols at $500 each, and shawls at $1,500.
By the fall of 1861 the recession had ended, and the city was prospering as never before. But it was a selective prosperity. Wages lagged behind price rises. Workers, plunged into even greater poverty, organized unions and walked off jobs. Newspaper publishers broke a strike by the printers’ union. Streetcar drivers lost their bid for an 11-hour working day. For a second time war increased Cornelius Vanderbilt’s fortune; he chartered his fleet of ships to the federal government. Cotton, once the chief export from New York, fell off to a trickle. On the other hand, torrents of wheat left Manhattan docks for England. Officers of a Russian fleet anchored here donated $4,760 to buy fuel for the poor. But William B. Astor raised his rents 30 percent.
Corruption fell like a leper’s shadow on the city, as well as on the rest of the country. Lincoln sighed that “few things are so troublesome to the government as the fierceness with which profits in trading are sought.” The New York Tribune advocated the gallows for New York profiteers who sold the army rotten blankets and “rusty and putrid pork.” Mayor Opdyke made a fortune as a secret partner in a munitions firm. Edwin D. Morgan, governor of New York State when war broke out, was a brother-in-law of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, of Connecticut. Welles gave Morgan permission to buy ships for the navy at a 2.5 percent commission, and within a few months Morgan had profited by $90,000. The House Select Committee on Government Contracts said, “Worse than traitors in arms are the men pretending loyalty to the flag, who feast and fatten on the misfortune of the nation, while patriot blood is crimsoning the plains of the South, and bodies of their countrymen are mouldering in the dust.”
The city’s social fabric was torn by the excitement of the times, the grief of separation and death, easy money, and increased tension between rich and poor. Morals degenerated. Broadway teemed with women of easy virtue. Saloons were crowded. Luxury shops and restaurants catered to the new rich. Men wore diamond buttons on their waistcoats, and women powdered their hair with gold and silver dust. The Herald estimated that an average of $30,000 was spent in the city each night just for entertainment—or a third more than in Paris. After attending The Follies of a Night to raise money for army relief, G. T. Strong mourned in his diary that “the spectacle of lavish luxury tonight was a little suggestive of fiddling while Rome is in full blaze at its corners.”
Far from this revelry and graft, Billy Yank fought on and on until, by the autumn of 1864, the South was losing the war and knew it. Union forces controlled the Mississippi, General Lee had failed in his second attempt to invade the North, General William T. Sherman’s army had captured Atlanta, and the South’s resources were about exhausted. In a spirit of desperation and vengeance the Confederates tried to burn down New York City.
This plot had the approval of Judah P. Benjamin, successively the Confederacy’s attorney general, secretary of war, and secretary of state. Already he had underground agents in Canada just across the border from New York State. They raided Union territory, tried to free Rebel prisoners, and encouraged rebellion in the North by Southern sympathizers. The Canadian-based Rebel who masterminded the scheme to incinerate New York City was Jacob Thompson, former U.S. Senator from Mississippi and onetime Secretary of the Interior in President Buchanan’s Cabinet.
Benjamin gave $300,000 to Thompson, who slipped part of the sum to members of the Sons of Liberty, a secret society of treasonable Northerners and an offshoot of the Knights of the Golden Circle. Thompson heard that in New York City alone 20,000 persons were ripe for revolt against the Lincoln administration. He decided to strike on November 8, election day. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican President, would be running against former General George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate. More New Yorkers were against Lincoln than for him.
With the development of the plot against New York, messages were carried between the Confederate capital, at Richmond, Virginia, and the Rebel base of operations at St. Catharines, a Canadian town northwest of Niagara Falls. Thompson was unaware that his principal courier was a double spy whose loyalty lay with the North. All the dispatches he carried were copied and sent to Washington so that even Lincoln knew of the conspiracy against New York. On November 2 Secretary of State William H. Seward sent a telegram to Charles Godfrey Gunther, an independent Democrat who had been elected mayor of New York on December 1, 1863. Seward warned him to beware of a scheme to burn New York on or about November 8. The mayor reported this to Police Superintendent Kennedy and to General John A. Dix, who commanded the Department of the East, with headquarters in New York City. Although both men were skeptical, they alerted their subordinates.
The day before the election General Benjamin F. Butler arrived here at the head of 7,000 to 10,000 troops. Washington officials remembered all too well the disgraceful Draft Riots. Aware of the anti-Lincoln feeling in New York, they anticipated election disorders. Meantime, a hitch developed in Thompson’s plans, causing him to postpone his undercover strike against the city. Election day came and went without much trouble. Lincoln was reelected, but in New York City he lost to McClellan—78,746 to 36,673.
Thompson now picked eight daring young men for the fire raid on New York. Their leader was Lieutenant Colonel Robert Martin of the Confederacy’s Tenth Kentucky Cavalry. He was tall and slender, his swarthy hawklike face bearing the stamp of resolution. Disguised as civilians and using fictitious names, the eight Rebel soldiers slipped into New York from Canada. Upon reaching this city, they made contact with local plotters, using their homes and stores as meeting places.
Federal Secret Service agents, alerted by the Union’s double spy, trailed the arsonists to the city and kept them under observation. However, the Rebels acted so innocently that the federal men became convinced that they were on the wrong trail. The eight young men heard a sermon by the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, attended a lecture given by humorist Artemus Ward, enjoyed the theater, and in general conducted themselves blamelessly. The Union agents on their trail must have been rather stupid; otherwise, they would have traced the Rebels to suspicious meetings.
As days passed with no action taken, the local co-conspirators began to get nervous. At last they tried to persuade the Confederate spies not to burn down the city. But on November 15 General Sherman destroyed Atlanta’s military resources and began his spectacular march to the sea. When Confederate Colonel Martin and his seven picked men read New York newspaper articles praising Sherman’s gutting of Atlanta and heard rejoicing on the sidewalks of New York, they bitterly resolved to go ahead with their plan despite the mounting reluctance of their local hosts.
Second in command to Martin was Confederate Lieutenant John Headley of Kentucky. Headley later wrote an account of this episode, and because of this we can follow him step by step that fateful day of Friday, November 25, 1864.
A New York chemist who sympathized with the South made a self-igniting fire bomb, which the Rebel agents called Greek fire. Consisting of turpentine, phosphorus, and rosin, the liquid was supposed to burst into flame when exposed to air. It was poured into bottles, and each bottle was wrapped in paper. At 6 P.M. that Friday the eight men met in a secret cottage and were given ten bottles apiece. They stuffed them into their coat pockets.
Two days earlier the conspirators had registered at various hotels throughout the city. Each man had signed in at several different hotels. For example, Headley had taken rooms in the Astor House, the City Hotel, the Everett House, and the United States Hotel. The Rebels planned to set as many fires as possible at about the same time, making conditions as difficult as possible for the city’s volunteer firemen.
At 7:20 o’clock that Friday evening Headley walked into the lobby of the Astor, where he was registered as W. L. Haines of Ohio. From the desk clerk he got the key to Room 204 and sauntered to his quarters. Once inside the room he lighted the gas jet against the autumn twilight. Then he pulled the blankets and sheets off his bed and loosely draped them on the headboard. Next, he piled the chairs, bureau drawers, and wooden washstand on top of the bed. Around these he stuffed newspapers. Suddenly he reflected that he did not know how quickly his fire bomb would work or if it would make any noise. To be on the safe side, he unlocked his door and put the key on the outside so that he could make a fast getaway. Out of one coat pocket he drew a bottle, carefully uncorked it, and then spilled the fluid on the rubbish. With a soft whoosh! the liquid fluttered into flame, and the entire bed was ablaze before Headley could get out of the room.
He locked the door, strolled down the hall, descended the stairs to the lobby, left his key with the desk clerk, and sauntered out onto Broadway. Then he walked to the City Hotel, where he was registered under another alias, and repeated the performance. Having left the City Hotel, he headed toward the Everett House, glancing toward the Astor as he strode along. A bright glare lighted up the room he had occupied there, but as yet no alarm had been given. Next, Headley set fire to his Everett House room. He had just started for the United States Hotel when fire bells began clanging throughout the city. That evening G. T. Strong was attending a meeting of the Sanitary Commission, and although he heard the Calvary Church bell toll mournfully, he didn’t know at first what this signified.
Headley now touched off a fourth fire in his room at the United States Hotel. All had gone according to plan, he felt, but as he left his key with the desk clerk, he thought that the man glanced at him curiously. In that moment Headley remembered something. Each time he had registered at a hotel he had carried a black canvas bag, because it would have looked suspicious to seek lodgings without luggage. But each of his four bags was empty. Had this been discovered by the clerk at the United States Hotel? Well, it was too late to worry now.
As Headley strolled back onto Broadway, it sounded to him as though a hundred bells were ringing, and he saw great crowds gathering in the street. By the City Hall clock he noted that the time was 9:15. Eager to learn how his first blaze was doing, he walked back toward the Astor. No panic was to be seen there, but to Headley’s surprise, a horde of shrieking people poured from Barnum’s museum across the street. The plot had not included firing the museum.
Headley couldn’t tarry because his job was still not done. He walked south on Broadway and turned west toward the Hudson River waterfront. Tied up there were ships and barges of every kind. Having used four bottles of Greek fire in his four hotels, Headley had six left. Skulking from one dark corner to another, he pulled these bottles out of his pockets, one by one, and threw them here and there among the vessels. All touched off fires. One struck a barge loaded with bales of hay, making an especially spectacular blaze.
Leaving that part of the riverfront in flames, Headley now dodged back to Broadway and again walked to City Hall. Crowds clustered about the flame-scalloped hotels and Barnum’s museum. Having threaded his way through the unsuspecting multitude, the Confederate spy boarded a horsecar heading north. At the corner of the Bowery and Prince Street he swung off the vehicle to see what had happened at the Metropolitan Hotel. It was burning. Headley had walked only half a block when he recognized a man in front of him as Robert Kennedy, one of his associates. Just for the fun of it, Headley closed in behind Kennedy and slapped him on the shoulder. In a flash, Kennedy squatted, went for his gun, and whirled around. Headley laughed just in time, and Kennedy recognized him. Kennedy took his hand from his pistol and chortled that he ought to shoot Headley for giving him such a scare. Then, standing there on the Bowery, the Rebels exchanged stories of their adventures.
Kennedy said that after he had set fire to the hotels assigned him, he had gone to Barnum’s museum to see what happened. A few minutes after he arrived at the showplace, fire bells began clanging throughout the city. Kennedy started down a stairway, intending to leave the museum. The thought occurred to him that “it might be fun” to start a panic there. He had one fire bomb left. He cracked it on the edge of a step as one cracks an egg. Instantly it flared up. Kennedy ran out of the burning building and mingled with throngs near the Astor House and the City Hotel. He overheard people muttering that the Rebels were trying to burn down the city.
The six other Confederate agents had also proceeded with their nefarious work. One, named Ashbrook, had been assigned to destroy the Winter Garden theater. That evening Edwin Booth was playing the role of Julius Caesar to raise money for a statue of Shakespeare. The theater adjoined the La Farge House. After Ashbrook set fire to the hotel, he tossed a bottle of Greek fire into the theater. The audience screamed in terror, but some coolheaded men took charge of the situation and averted a tragedy.
Headley and Kennedy returned to Broadway to gaze on their handiwork. As Headley later wrote, “there was the wildest excitement imaginable.” The two spies felt their skins tighten as New Yorkers shouted that they would hang the guilty Rebels or burn them at the stake. The agents also suffered pangs of disappointment when they discovered that every blaze had been quickly brought under control, except the fire at the St. Nicholas Hotel, which was badly damaged. Hotel employees had been efficient in dousing the flames, and volunteer firemen had performed heroically. Headley concluded that the New York chemist had purposely made a weak mixture of Greek fire after the Confederates had refused to abandon their plot.
Instead of scurrying out of the city, the eight Rebel agents stayed the night. Headley parted from Kennedy and found Colonel Martin. About two o’clock in the morning Headley and Martin booked new quarters, where they slumbered until ten o’clock Saturday morning.
Then they went for breakfast to a Broadway restaurant near Twelfth Street. The place was filled with excited people, reading the morning papers to find out what had happened the night before. Headley and Martin offhandedly ordered food and then bought copies of the papers. Front pages were devoted to news of the fire raid. The Herald said that the city “has undoubtedly had a most wonderful escape.” It was pointed out that although the enemy combustible had blazed up when exposed to air, the flames had failed to take hold on the surfaces of the targets. Headlines told of the “DISCOVERY OF A VAST REBEL CONSPIRACY.” Suspicious black bags had been found in various hotels. Several people already had been arrested. Newspapers printed all the fake names used by the Confederate agents when they had checked into their hotels. Authorities were said to have full knowledge of the plot They predicted that all the villains would be caught, for every avenue of escape was being guarded. All told, nineteen hotels, two theaters, Barnum’s museum, several vessels, and some stores, factories, and lumberyards had been set on fire.
Headley stiffened a little in his restaurant chair when he read that the clerk at the United States Hotel had given police a description of his looks, manners, and habits and had said that the suspicious-looking man had left a black bag that was entirely empty. Ah, so the clerk had noticed! Headley’s flicker of anxiety had been justified, after all.
Scanning the papers and noting how specific was the information possessed by officials, Headley and Martin realized that they had been under observation part of the time. Police had arrested a Mr. McDonald, who ran a store where they had sometimes met before registering in the hotels. Had McDonald confessed? Headley and Martin finished breakfast and sauntered out of the restaurant. Because hotelkeepers were offering a $20,000 reward for apprehension of the criminals, New Yorkers by the thousands would be on the lookout for them.
That evening all eight Rebel agents boarded a northbound train and slipped out of town without detection. Eventually they reached Toronto and safety. From his Canadian sanctuary, Jacob Thompson had to report to Confederate Secretary of State Benjamin that his picked men had failed to burn down New York. Robert Kennedy, the man Headley had bumped into on the Bowery, tried to work his way south through Detroit but was captured. The Union’s double spy had done his work well, and federal authorities did indeed know the identities of the arsonists. Kennedy was brought to New York, tried before a military commission, and hanged at Fort LaFayette.
The South was in desperate straits. With the opening of 1865 only two Confederate armies were left in the field. Below the Mason and Dixon fine, transportation had broken down, ports were blockaded or captured, Union troops held croplands, hunger spread, the Rebel army’s morale was shattered, and civilians demonstrated against the Confederate government. After Atlanta there was nothing left to oppose Sherman, whose men fanned north through South Carolina, inflicting even more damage than they had in Georgia. No single Southern defeat was due to lack of arms, but the will to win had drained from Rebel hearts. Lee evacuated Richmond, and when the news reached New York, diarist G. T. Strong wrote: “Never before did I hear cheering that came straight from the heart. . . . I walked about on the outskirts of the crowd, shaking hands with everybody, congratulating and being congratulated by scores of men I hardly even knew by sight. Men embraced and hugged each other, kissed each other, retreated into doorways to dry their tears and came out again to flourish their hats and hurrah.”
This was on April 3. Three days later, just as twilight softened the city, a young Confederate officer pulled himself out of the Lower Bay, climbed up a seawall, stepped over a fence, and stood on the Battery. Water dripped from his gray tunic with its yellow collar and cuffs; water sloshed from his faded yellow-striped blue trousers. He was Captain William R. Webb of the Second North Carolina Cavalry. Webb was one of 1,500 Rebel prisoners held in Castle Williams on Governors Island. He had escaped, slid into the water, and swum 3,200 feet to the southern tip of Manhattan. A civilian, seeing the dripping man, asked how he had happened to fall into the bay. “I swam across,” Webb replied. “I escaped from the prison stockade over there.” He pointed. “I am Captain Webb of the Confederate army.” The civilian laughed and went about his business. So did other New Yorkers who saw the strange figure, although Webb always identified himself. For three days the Rebel captain wandered about the city. No one bothered to report him to the authorities. Who cared? The war was won.
At 3:45 in the afternoon of Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union in the courthouse of Appomattox Village, 95 miles west of Richmond, Virginia. In the evening of Good Friday, April 14, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln as the President sat in Ford’s Theatre, in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died at 7:22 the following morning. When the news reached New York City, men and women sobbed. Strangely, during the week after Lincoln’s death the number of arrests in New York for drunkenness and disorder was lower than in any week for many years. On April 24, Lincoln’s body lay in state in City Hall on the way to its final resting place in Springfield, Illinois. Even the poorest of New York’s poor spent 25 cents for a tiny flag with a scrap of crepe attached.
With the war won and Lincoln dead, the city took stock of itself. It had supplied the Union army with 15,000 soldiers and contributed $400,000,000 to the war effort. The North came out of the conflict richer than it had entered it, and business in New York had been greatly stimulated. However, the population had dropped from 813,669 to fewer than 727,000.
Now, front and center, there strolled a fat man who licked his chops. They called him Boss Tweed.