No Mean City

His honor chose an interesting line of scripture to illustrate his vision for the city's future. Though his actual call for secession from the Union was still five years away, some of his listeners might have caught an air of sedition in the comparison to a free city of the Roman empire, knowing from their Bible study that such "were permitted to use their own laws, customs and magistrates. They were also free from being subject to Roman guards." Well-versed others among the electorate, good men and Christians all, would also recognize the quote - perhaps with no little concern - as part of the apostle's defense against a lynching. Thus more than a few of Mayor Wood's constituents likely paused a moment to wonder what exactly he meant by that... But not for long would they worry it; it was an inspiring description of a worthy goal - who could argue against it? - and there was business at hand and it was time to get to it.

"AN HEIR TO THE THRONE,
or the next Republican candidate"

Date Created/Published: New York : Published by Currier & Ives, c1860.
Summary: The Republicans' purported support of Negro rights is taken to an extreme here. Editor Horace Greeley (left) and candidate Abraham Lincoln (resting his elbow on a rail at right) stand on either side of a short black man holding a spear. The latter is the deformed African man recently featured at P.T. Barnum's Museum on Broadway as the "What-is-it." (A poster for this attraction appears on the wall behind.) Greeley says, "Gentlemen allow me to introduce to you, this illustrious individual in whom you will find combined, all the graces, and virtues of Black Republicanism, and whom we propose to run as our next Candidate for the Presidency." Lincoln muses, "How fortunate! that this intellectual and noble creature should have been discovered just at this time, to prove to the world the superiority of the Colored over the Anglo Saxon race, he will be a worthy successor to carry out the policy which I shall inaugurate." The black man wonders, "What, can dey be?"

Certainly "taken to an extreme" - but is the above image an extreme example, or merely typical of 1860 New York City?

Given the abundance of evidence, it's easy enough for a twenty-first century reader (at least one who's read this particular history) to conclude that New Yorkers of the mid-nineteenth were all-in-all an unruly and racist lot, whose concern for their fellow man never grew to encompass that annoying part about "fellow," and whose definition of "man" would exclude just about anyone who didn't look an awful lot like the one they saw in the mirror - an individual who lived by the simple motto "what's in it for me?" The modern reader would be right.

But even then New York was the American city with the most of anything. (By 1850, for example, a New Yorker could claim his city had more Irish residents than Dublin, and depending on your definition of Irish, he'd be right.) By 1860: "The total population of metropolitan New York was nearly 5 percent of the whole American population, a mass of people greater than that of all but four of the thirty-four states."

And most of anything includes exceptions to the rule.

This 1860 campaign poster image of Abe likely frightened many New Yorkers.

On the day of the speech, February 27, 1860, Lincoln took a stroll on Broadway with some men from the Republican group hosting his speech. At the corner of Bleecker Street Lincoln visited the studio of the famed photographer Matthew Brady, and had his portrait taken. In the photograph, Lincoln, who was not yet wearing his beard, is standing next to a table, resting his hand on some books...

As Lincoln took the stage that evening at Cooper Union, he faced an audience of 1,500 spectators. Most of them were active in the Republican Party, and among them were such luminaries as the editor of the antislavery New York Tribune, Horace Greeley.

Greeley (photographed by Matthew Brady)

Greeley, whose exhortation to the less-privileged of New York's youth to "Go west, before you are fitted for no life but that of the factory" would be outrage enough for those who saw the same young men as voters, whether they could find factory work or not - is lampooned with ol' Abe in the cartoon above for one of the many other reasons local Democrats couldn't stand him. His newspaper, the New York Tribune, declared Lincoln's speech was "one of the most happiest and most convincing political arguments ever made in this City," adding for good measure that "No man ever made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience." He at least made an impression on Greeley, and in May won the Republican nomination for president; a brief description of Greeley's part in that is here.

But whatever influence Horace Greeley had over the Republican Party (he was a founder, and deserves credit for naming it) the grand new party had little enough influence in his town, where they could never hope for a majority of the vote, and without a major split among Democrats (in New York City, "Democrats" was already synonymous with Tammany Hall) Republicans had no chance for gaining a significant public office. Such splits happened (and would again). Slavery wasn't the only issue of the day (nativists against immigrants was a political battle some nativists didn't yet realize they'd lost), but even though many free soil Democrats had left the fold, the Democracy, as Tammany was commonly called by its members, was not yet the more harmonious machine it would become under Boss Tweed.

While achieving that united Democratic front was always as difficult as it was desirable, in 1860 it was imperative. So as the elections approached...

...Democrats stirred up fears of racial amalgamation, especially in New York, where a Republican-sponsored amendment to the state constitution appeared on the ballot, proposing to do away with the $250 property requirement for black voters. [The measure was rejected by 95% of NYC voters.]

Democratic editorials and campaign speeches accused Republicans of believing "a nigger is better than an Irishman." A parade in New York City included a float bearing effigies of Horace Greeley and "a good looking nigger wench, whom he caressed with all the affection of a true Republican." Nearby, a banner warned that "free love and free niggers will certainly elect Old Abe." Despite Lincoln's failure to oppose the fugitive slave law or call for immediate abolition in the South, the Wood brothers' Daily News [not the same paper that publishes today in New York City; this one was run by Mayor Fernando and his brother, soon-to-be U.S. Congressman Benjamin Wood] predicted "Negroes among us thicker than blackberries swarming everywhere" if he were elected, while Bennett's Herald envisioned labor competition from "four million emancipated Negroes."

(Links and brackets added above.)

Anti-Republicans Demonstrating in New York City Two Weeks Before Election

It's obvious from the description of the Greeley float that anyone taking an anti-slavery stand in America's largest city would need a thick skin - but they knew they needed more than that. The violent rhetoric employed by their opponents often led to violent action. New Yorkers living in 1860 could cite countless examples from within their own lifetimes, the most horrific involved race. Years before, when bible-thumping, temperance preaching protestant reformers first added abolition to their list of annoying character traits, Tammany Hall had responded with the power of the (newly politically empowered) mob. ("Civic pride" could be part of their motive - New York abolitionists had earned anger and hatred not just of New Yorkers, but most of the South - the city's reputation was damaged, and something had to be done.)

The Tammany bosses may not have expected the intensity of the days-long orgy of fire, looting, and lynching that ensued; violence directed not only at white abolitionists, who "went so far as to say that the negro should be debarred from no society on account of his origin or color," but also - in the words of post-Civil War Tammany apologist William Gover - "against the poor, unoffending blacks, who should not have been made to suffer for the wild and impolitic teachings of Tappan and his followers." (Gover wrote his history in 1875, New York had repealed the $250 property requirement for blacks in 1870; they were considered "voters" - if not fully human ones - by the time he penned his account.)

Patriotism, New York City style: ...suddenly the shout arose, "to Arthur Tappan's." The cry was at once taken up by a thousand voices, and the crowd started down the street. But instead of going to his house, they went to that of his brother, Lewis, in Hose Street, a still more obnoxious Abolitionist. Reaching it, they staved open the doors, and smashed in the windows, and began to pitch the furniture into the street. Chairs, sofas, tables, pictures, mirrors, and bedding, went out one after another. But all at once a lull occurred in the work of destruction. In pitching the pictures out, one came across a portrait of Washington. Suddenly the cry arose, "It is Washington! For God's sake, don't burn Washington!"

- Joel T. Headley, Great Riots of New York, pub. 1873

Tammany members must have felt some responsibility for the death and destruction; after the army ended the violence (they had to charge three barricades to do it) and filled the jails with rioters, they secured the release of all but a few of those unfortunates who'd been detained. Whether they'd participated or not, those riots were a vivid memory for most of the leading figures (and voters, of course - at least the living ones) of the 1860 election campaign in New York City; many had just launched their political careers at that time.

But old or young, this promised to be the most important election of their lives:

By October 1860, New York State appeared to be the likely president-maker... if Democrats could keep Republicans from winning New York's block of votes, the largest in the nation, they might prevent Lincoln from getting a majority of the national electoral vote, throwing the final election into the House of Representatives, where Lincoln would likely lose. The critical question for both sides was whether the Democrats could turn out a sufficiently large popular vote downstate to overcome the upstate vote for Lincoln.

Still, most leading businessmen worked for Lincoln's defeat. The richest bankers and largest merchants forced contending Democratic candidates to fuse into a joint Union ticket, then promoted it vigorously. One group of dirty tricksters rigged a stock market panic, hoping to scare the country into thinking a Republican victory would create financial chaos.
<...>
On election day thousands of stores closed and hung out signs urging patrons to vote the Union (Democratic) ticket. Many businesses circularized their employees, saying that if Lincoln were elected "the South will withdraw its custom from us and you will get little work and bad prices..."

Given the overriding financial concerns, for most upper class New Yorkers party-driven political interests in and of themselves had no more influence over their vote than questions over the morality of slavery - that is to say, none. New York banks had many outstanding loans to Southern business interests - and to many in the North who depended on that business. New York shipping and textile mills depended on slave-picked Southern cotton, as did merchandisers who sold their finished product. The city had similar financial ties throughout the United States, but the South was the issue at hand. Potential losses were incalculably large - and likely cascading. This was as true in 1860 as it had been in 1834, but now the problem was larger than one of image, and couldn't be solved by sending a message to a handful of local abolitionists. The war would turn out to be less of a financial Armageddon than most anticipated (in fact, for most it was immeasurably profitable - their pleasantly surprising first exposure to the concept on such a large scale) but looking at ledgers and foreseeing a chain reaction of future disasters beginning in November, 1860 was hardly a pastime reserved to those with fevered minds.

So the strategy was win New York state, the battleground was New York City - where the upper crust (meaning money and power) were on board. Fernando Wood's thugs could deliver him enough votes to win a four-(or five-)way city mayors race, but in this case that wouldn't enough. The remaining question was tactics; in this case, how to get the average (and below average) New Yorker (the bulk of voters there and anywhere) to believe their interests were with the South. The solution was the same as it was in 1834 - make them feel threatened, too. Tell them (ironically) the big money men wanted this war in order to free the slaves - to bring another few hundred thousand workers in to compete with them for jobs - and drive wages down. (Pay no attention to the few hundred thousand getting off the boats from Europe in the harbor every year - these are blacks we're talking about, and once they've got the white man's jobs and money they'll want their white women, too!)

The-Wide Awakes

"Grand Procession of Wide-Awakes at New York on the Evening of October 3, 1860," Harper's Weekly, October 13, 1860.

New York City Republicans were a minority, but hardly docile. As elsewhere in the country, they formed groups like the "Wide-Awakes," who participated in numerous public demonstrations. While their "Tightly woven hats and oil cloth capes protected them from the flames" of their torchlight processions, they also gave them an unmistakable military appearance.

The group escorted (Republican) Senator/former NY Governor William Seward during his campaign visit to the city. (The more radical Seward had lost the Republican presidential nomination to Lincoln, but campaigned for him and became his Secretary of State.) The New York Times report from November 3, 1860:

The honor of escorting Gov. SEWARD in the early part of the evening, from the Astor House to Palace Garden, devolved upon the "City Wide-Awakes," and a more trusty band of men could not have well been chosen. They convoyed the distinguished Senator through Broadway, Fourteenth-street and Sixth-avenue, landing him safely at the entrance in Fifteenth-street, without encountering any illustration of the "irrepressible conflict" theory on the line of march.

AS the procession was passing down Broadway it was greeted with cheers from a number of Republicans who had stationed themselves in front of the Headquarters of the Young Men's Republican Union, Stuyvesant Institute. The meeting-room of a Bell and Everett Club is on the opposite side of the street, and some of the members took umbrage at the demonstrations of applause and applied approbrious epithets to the Republicans. Finally, several of the Fusion Party made a rush toward where the Republicans were standing, and calling them "negro stealers." "sons of b____s," &c., seemed bent on inciting a riot. Officer GROOT, of the Fifteenth Ward made an attempt to drive the rowdies back and in so doing, found it necessary to arrest a man named WM.H. TRAVIS, who appeared to be foremost in the disorder. The crowd made an effort to rescue this man from the custody of the policeman, who, however, was enabled to retain his prisoner by the appearance of Capt. CAFFREY with a reinforcement, and the turbulent people were dispersed, not, however, until some heads had been bruised. In the course of the disturbance, Officer LEFFERTS took one H.A. SMITH into custody, and both the prisoners were taken to the station-house, and locked up.

While this affair was transpiring another scene of excitement was witnessed in front of the New-York Hotel, where a large crowd had collected. Several well-dressed men came out of the building and mingled with the people, inciting them to make an attack upon the procession, and using language which the exercise only of extreme forbearance on the part of the Wide-Awakes forbade them to retaliate. The ardor of the rioters at this point was soon dampened by the arrest of ALEXANDER JOHNSON, one of the leaders, whom Sergeant BANTA conducted to the Station-house.

On the corner of Fourth-avenue and Twelfth-street a more serious disturbance than either of the others occurred. About a dozen firemen had stationed themselves at that point, having their fire-caps on, and as the procession defiled by them it was met by jeers and epithets provocative of ill-temper. Officer TAYLOR, of the Fifteenth Ward, remonstrated with the firemen, who are said to have been members of Engine Company No. 23, but they refused to heed his words, and threatened him with violence. Shortly afterwards, however, they disappeared, but almost instantly returned with a reinforcement of their ranks to the number of thirty or forty, and an attack was made upon the procession. The rioters attempted to take away the torches of the Wide-Awakes, but the latter resisted them, and for a few moments a desperate fight was in progress. The firemen were armed with clubs and wrenches, which they used freely upon the heads of the Wide-Awakes, of whom several were knocked down, and dispossessed of their torches. Finally, however, the torches were recovered from the assailing party, who were driven back by the sheer force of numbers. The police came up soon after the fight ocuurred, but did not make any arrests.

After the designated line of march had been passed over the procession formed itself into an escort for Mr. SEWARD, and conducted him to his quarters at the Astor House, where he retired amid vociferous cheers.

As far as persuading Manhattanites, the Democrats' tactic was a success - Lincoln lost in New York City by a two-to-one margin. (He did no better in '64, receiving only 33.22% of the vote.) As Walt Whitman observed on Lincoln's pre-inaugural second visit to the city in1861, "...he possessed no personal popularity at all in New York City and very little political" (along with "I have no doubt (so frenzied were the ferments of the time) many an assassin's knife and pistol lurked in hip- or breast-pocket"). The tactic had worked, but for many that second visit was a bitter demonstration that the strategy had failed. The Republican ticket took the state by more than 60,000 votes, and Lincoln took the White House.

Lincoln's victory was wholly sectional. The Republican had carried every county in New England, 109 of 147 counties in the Mid-Atlantic states, and 252 of 392 counties in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. He received no votes in nine states in the Deep South, and won only 2 of 996 counties in the entire South.

At least, "wholly sectional" as long as you ignore the city with "a mass of people greater than that of all but four of the thirty-four states." (Something no resident thereof - certainly not the mayor - would be willing to let Lincoln do.)

The effort was doomed, but the battleground was the only one with a hope for Democratic success, their "fusion party" was a fusion in more ways than one. New York was a city with an established (if ever-changing, thus always uneasy) and mutually-dependent balance of power between Tammany-controlled (via the growing mass of population in the slums) government and the financial sector. (Two institutions arguably more subject to forces in chaotic flux than the will of any person or group.) Members of either (and many were members of both) had developed certain understandings and expectations of one another; certain things were understood, and while breaking written rules and agreements was acceptable on occasion, violations of unwritten rules would irretrievably end a man's career. (His life being of less concern - but that could be forfeited, too.)

The most strident call for unity in the face of the Republican peril came from the top of those swirling, chaotic forces that made New York City what it was at the start of the Civil War. There stood Mayor Fernando Wood, a man who'd ridden the turbulence of the times to power, if not lasting glory. He'd picked the winning side in the city's immigration wars, but he had also learned to unite factions during his up and down political career. (Which he'd resurrected for his first successful run at mayor in 1854 by supporting the governor's veto of a temperance law, declaring that - while not a drinking man himself, mind you - an American man had certain unalienable rights; if he wanted to have a drink or own a slave that was his own business and no other's).

Though Wood was a divorced man (but since remarried, although the divorce court had decreed his adulterous first wife "shall not marry again during the natural life" of Fernando Wood; "What became of her remains problematic," Wood biographer Jerome Mushkat concludes - noting at least one rumor that she'd become an alcoholic prostitute...) accused of questionable business and financial practices, he won the 1854 election with a Lincolnesque 33% of the vote to his nearest opponent's 31. (That was prohibitionist alderman James Barker, candidate of the short-lived nativist American - or "Know Nothing" - Party.) Wood didn't enchant a majority in that close race, but in fact he was so popular with some segments of society (Irish gang members, for example) that in New York's predominantly Irish "bloody sixth" ward he received 4,000 more votes than there were voters, overcoming the seemingly damning revelation that he - the staunch friend of the immigrant - was secretly a member (on the executive committee, even) of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party, too.

"No man ever went into higher office under a deeper cloud of ignominy," declared Horace Greeley. But once in office Wood proved himself a champion of social justice and hero to the underprivileged, often finding them jobs in government or employment in public works. (For example, under his control the police department hired numerous Irish officers.) As for public works, he's also recognized for his part in the development of Central Park - and no doubt he made the trains run on time, too. His supporters dubbed him "the model mayor," and a few months after his term began his biography appeared on store shelves. In its pages New Yorkers were assured his reign had already greatly improved the image of their city in the eyes of the world:

"Even in Europe he is spoken of... A distinguished American artist, just returned from Rome, says that Fernando Wood is become a household word in the mouths of citizens of this country now living in the Eternal City. Ex-President Van Buren, in his late journey through the wild mountain region of Wales, was asked in a little wayside inn, by the landlord, particulars of the appearance and manner and peculiarities of the man whom they had learned to venerate."

He was, his biographer assured literate New Yorkers, "a fit ruler for you and me." (Italics added.)

It was also during his first term that he gave the "no mean city" speech above. In 1856 he sought reelection, and for the benefit of those New Yorkers who couldn't read: "...patrolmen were reassigned or given time off so the gangs of thugs on Wood's payroll could start riots at his opponents' rallies, attacking their speakers with rocks and bricks. At the polls, the mayor's toughs harassed voters, stuffed ballot boxes, and stole returns." The police had a Union of sorts, their dues were payable to the man who gave them their jobs: Fernando Wood, who "...had turned the police department into a patronage mill, filling its ranks with immigrant supporters, then systematically levying contributions from the officers to fund his reelection."

Which he also won. Perhaps surprisingly, his support wasn't limited to his criminal gangs and police, "a hundred wealthy bankers and merchants" had also reportedly asked him to run again. Wood was born poor in America (of non-Irish parents), and had made his fortune (a considerable one, and if questionable practices were involved, well, few would want anyone to examine their own ledgers or histories too closely...) in the city he now ruled. Perhaps the wealthy saw him as one of their own. Perhaps some simply admired his jib. Or perhaps the more affluent saw him as the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks - which (for a while at least) he was.

Metropolitans vs Municipals: The New York City Police riot, City Hall, June 16, 1857

During his second term he refused to enforce a temperance law that the state finally passed. (It was said in those days that you could empty a Tammany Hall meeting by rushing in and shouting "your saloon is on fire!") Sadly, this term was also marred by several riots, including one between his police force and the one state officials created to replace it (in part because they knew he wouldn't use his private army to enforce their laws) and others (immediately after the supreme court found in favor of the state on the police issue) when gangs in the sixth ward rioted for what were no doubt unrelated grievances. (Some of this is captured in the recent film Gangs of New York, but I can't recall who played the part of Mayor Wood...) The state also decided to change the election year for mayor in New York City to odd numbered years, a move that had the coincidental side effect of shortening his second term to just one year.

Dead Rabbits vs Bowery Boys: Gang fight in Manhattan, July 4-5, 1857

He failed in that second reelection attempt. His blunder was to over reach; besides being Mayor he made himself (or tried, with some help from his friends) the head of Tammany Hall, and in doing so made too many enemies there. (Among them, young up-and-comer William "Boss" Tweed, who was watching and learning. Among other lessons: Tweed would later claim the more powerful office, but never make the mistake of making himself Mayor.) On the outs with Tammany, Wood formed his own organization, dubbed it Mozart Hall, and came roaring back two years later to at last win his third term in 1859.

New Yorkers who recalled Wood's no mean city speech from his first term might still have been surprised when two months after Lincoln's 1860 election Wood called for New York to secede from the Union, not to join the Confederacy (though he used the term throughout his speech) but to become its own "Free City" - like those in the days of ancient Rome:

When Disunion has become a fixed and certain fact, why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master - to a people and a party that have plundered her revenues, attempted to ruin her commerce, taken away the power of self--government, and destroyed the Confederacy of which she was the proud Empire City? Amid the gloom which the present and prospective condition of things must cast over the country, New York, as a Free City, may shed the only light and hope of a future reconstruction of our once blessed Confederacy.

The early economic impacts of Southern secession were already being felt when one month later Mr Lincoln returned to town.

Next: A Grim Forecast for New York City