Possible end states:If we decide to "Balkanize" Libya, it might look like this. (Though borders might be tweaked after comparison to these maps.) P.S. - don't tell Joe Biden.

If you want to better understand Libya's current civil war - beyond Qaddafi is a bad man but some of the people fighting him might be al Qaeda but preventing genocide is a good thing but isn't this what we were doing in Iraq and why isn't Obama doing more for the anti-dictator protesters in Syria, Iran and Wisconsin? - read on. What follows is history, of course - but it's not the boring kind of history. It's the sort that involves explosions, empires, military conquest, airpower, guerrilla warfare, subterfuge, switching sides (the enemy of my enemy is my friend), and ... er...

On second thought, maybe it's not history after all. Maybe it's current events.

Let's begin our story exactly 100 years ago:

Deja vu?

"The Italian press began a large-scale lobbying campaign in favour of an invasion of Libya at the end of March 1911. It was fancifully depicted as rich in minerals, well-watered, and defended by only 4,000 Ottoman troops. Also, the population was described as hostile to the Ottoman Empire and friendly to the Italians: the future invasion was going to be little more than a "military walk", according to them."

Below: Italian dirigibles bomb Turkish positions on Libyan Territory. The Italian-Turkish war of 1911-1912 was the first in history that featured air attacks by airplanes and dirigible airships:

The Italians scored another famous first when they sent airplanes and dirigibles to Libya during the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-1912... The Times (London) correspondent remarked effusively that "it is already clear that no nation can afford to go to war with a marked inferiority of aerial strength."

Italian bombing efforts were unsystematic - mainly pilots dropping small bombs arbitrarily over the sides of their planes. Nonetheless, a headline in Italy's Gazetta del Popolo, printed after the initial raid, exclaimed that the bombs had scattered the "terrorized Turks."

- Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare

(Among those taking note of airpower: Giulio Douhet, whose theories on its strategic application would prove influential through World War Two and beyond.)

The short version: In 1911 Italy - sensing weakness at the edges of the Ottoman Empire (and noticing a lot of apparently available map space between British Egypt and French Algeria that was also conveniently located just across the Med from Italy) - went to war in North Africa. It wasn't quite the cakewalk they expected, but the shooting war that began in September that year concluded with the first Treaty of Lauserne just one year later, granting Italy the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica.

World War One erupted less than two years later. Italy picked the right side in that conflict, and was able to keep its colonies after its conclusion. Not surprisingly, the Italians encountered resistance to their rule (an insurgency, even, most notably from troublesome residents of Cyrenaica), but by 1934 (under Mussolini) had effectively crushed it, and united the provinces ("emirates," if you prefer) as "Libya" - a classical (Egyptian/Greek/Roman)-era name.

But then Italy picked the wrong side in World War Two. After some initial difficulties with Rommel the British swept out of Egypt and through Libya. They brought with them the last of the "rebel leaders" - the Emir of Cyrenaica - who had been living in exile in Egypt. In 1951 he became Idris I, the first and only (U.N. approved) King of Libya. (Initially the United Kingdom of Libya - composed of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan.)

At that time "Libya's biggest source of income was from scrap metal salvaged from its World War Two battlefields. There were no known natural resources--even Libya's sand was inadequate for glassmaking." But in 1959 oil was discovered there, and the economy changed overnight. Ten years later, when an aged King Idris left the country for medical treatment, Libyan army officers under the leadership of Muammar al-Gaddafi staged a coup. His subsequent 42-year reign is among the longest - and easily the most contentious - of any world leader in recent history. (In spite of a few other uses of strategic airpower - and other assets - against him.)

Improving his image through outreach:

July, 2009: Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi met his first US president on Thursday, shaking hands with Barack Obama and sitting just one place away from him at a dinner for world leaders at a G8 summit in Italy.

The two leaders were photographed greeting each other and television images later showed Obama and Gaddafi - who wore ruby red- and gold-flecked robes and hat - separated only by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the dinner table.

More recently, he seemed to be attempting to improve his image (and maintain something of a lower profile). However, in February 2011 protests against his regime erupted in eastern Libya. (Or Cyrenaica, if you prefer.)

This ends the short version of the story, which by definition lacks all the interesting details. Those can be provided in other short stories to follow...

"Dear brothers and sisters who have
fought in Iraq and Afghanistan - it is
now time to defend your land!"

Trivia section:

Didja know: "The Marching Morons [a 1951 science fiction story written by Cyril M. Kornbluth - full text here] presents an inane radio game show, "Take It and Stick It," that uses the phrases, "Would you buy that for a quarter?" and "Would you buy it for a quarter?" as its signature. The 1987 dystopian comedy, RoboCop (which presented a similarly cynical view of an over-commercialized future desensitized to violence) makes an an allusion to the line, adjusted for inflation, as the catchphrase of a TV comedian ("I'd buy that for a dollar!")."

Trivia section:

Didja know: "The Marching Morons [a 1951 science fiction story written by Cyril M. Kornbluth - full text here] presents an inane radio game show, "Take It and Stick It," that uses the phrases, "Would you buy that for a quarter?" and "Would you buy it for a quarter?" as its signature. The 1987 dystopian comedy, RoboCop (which presented a similarly cynical view of an over-commercialized future desensitized to violence) makes an an allusion to the line, adjusted for inflation, as the catchphrase of a TV comedian ("I'd buy that for a dollar!")."

Mostly forgotten now, Virginian Edmund Ruffin - the man who forecast the Civil War - became an urban legend in his own time. Seventy-four years old at the outbreak of the war, he was lionized in the South - credited with firing the first shot at Ft Sumter and the critical shot that turned Union retreat into a rout at Bull Run. (Bio here, and another account of Sumter here.) Whatever the degree of truth to any of those accounts, few did more to inspire those first shots than Ruffin.

Many more shots followed; by the end of the war his Virginia estates were in ruins, his beloved Confederacy crushed, and the Union preserved - outcomes that were absent from his pre-war Anticipations of the Future.

As was Ruffin's own end; arguably, he fired the final shot of the Civil War, too. This account from a rural (Warren County, Indiana - solid "Lincoln" in 1860 and 1864) northern paper relies on a report from a metropolitan (Richmond, Va) southern counterpart:

June 29, 1865

Edmund G. RUFFIN, Sr., of Virginia, committed suicide on Saturday at the residence of his son near Danville. This venerable ruffian it will be recollected fired the first gun in the attack on Sumter in 1861. The Richmond Whig of the 20th gives the following account: "It is now said that Mr. RUFFIN's mind has been very perceptibly effected since the evacuation of Richmond and surrender of the Confederate armies. For a week previous RUFFIN kept his chamber, busily employed writing what subsequently turned out to be the history of his political day. He also wrote letters, and in one of them left directions as to the disposal of his body. He bathed himself, put on a clean under and outer clothing, and directed that his body should be buried in the habiliments he had put on, without shroud or coffin.

"He then seated himself in a chair, put a loaded musket to his mouth, and leaning back, struck the musket with his hickory stick. The first cap did not explode, and he replaced it by another which discharged the musket, the charge of ball and buckshot blowing off the crown of the venerable old gentleman's head, and scattering his brains and snowy hair against the ceiling of the room. When the family, alarmed by the report, reached Mr. RUFFIN's room he was found lying back in his chair, the gun leaning against him and his life gone.

"A paragraph in the letter left for the perusal of the family and friends, explained the tragic deeds. It reads; "I cannot survive the loss of the liberties of my country." Mr. RUFFIN was very aged, perhaps eighty years of age, and brooding over the troubles of the times, the war and its results, no doubt unhinged his mind and caused a derangement of his once strong and vigorous faculties."

Recognizable by name or not, his image remains iconic of the southern fire eater. Neither he, the Yankee army, or even time could fully extinguish the blaze he helped light; his memory is revered among those few who imagine themselves the guardians of embers.

The less imaginative will always deal with the ashes, and build anew.

He was more than just a model mayor - he was the model for every aspiring Democrat politician who followed him: "In 1849, at the age of thirty-seven, Wood retired from active business and entered a profession. Or to be precise, he created a profession, the science of politics." Others have refined it since, but few have done anything he didn't do first.

He rode to power on the votes of a "permanent underclass" Tammany Hall had created in the newly-established slums of New York (aided by the gangs within them), then portrayed himself as their champion - and to others as the only thing standing between Wall Street and their pitchforks. He declared the city had grown so much as to be ungovernable, but when he had his own biography published months after he took office it proclaimed that he'd already greatly improved its image in the eyes of the world. (On the plus side, he should be rightly credited with many civic improvements, some of which probably didn't put money directly in his own pocket.)

In the end, "a greater schemer opposed him. This was Tweed" - the man who drove him from the mayor's office* ("...an act which would cover a multitude of Tweed's sins were it not that his motive was chiefly his predilection for plunder..."), but not before he'd watched and learned from Wood's successes and failures. Tweed eclipsed him in every way; when history was taught in American schools his name, synonymous with government corruption, was widely known. Now that his first successful student is all but forgotten (and thousands of others are unrecognizable as his heirs), the life of the teacher seems trivial at best. But in this new style of Democratic politics, Tweed was Augustus, Wood Julius Caesar.

Yet there is no statue of Fernando Wood in New York. In fact it's not likely many New Yorkers would even recognize the name. (Then again, probably few could tell you who's buried in Grant's Tomb**...) But once upon a time there was at least a monument with his name on it. Here's the story.

Both of William Jenkins Worth's parents were Quakers, "but he rejected the pacifism of their faith," says his Wikipedia bio. He jined the army when the War of 1812 began. His distinguished military career included that conflict, Seminole wars in Florida, and the War with Mexico.

Through it all he remained just a humble soldier, as this post-battle letter to his son in law makes clear:

After the Mexican war he was given command of the Army's Department of Texas, where...

In January 1849 Worth proposed a line of ten forts to mark the Western Texas frontier from Eagle Pass to the confluence of the West Fork and Clear Fork of the Trinity River. One month later Worth died from cholera. General William S. Harney assumed command of the Department of Texas and ordered Major Ripley A. Arnold to find a new fort site near the West Fork and Clear Fork. On June 6, 1849, Arnold established a camp on the bank of the Trinity River and named the post Camp Worth in honor of the late General Worth.

Better known as Fort Worth, actually. And a little Texas town grew up around it that still thrives today. More: "The cities of Fort Worth, Texas and Lake Worth, Texas, the village of Worth, Illinois, Worth County, Georgia and the Lake Worth Lagoon in Florida, and consequently, the city of Lake Worth, Florida on its shores, are named in his honor."

But if you think New York City wouldn't honor someone who'd killed damn near as many Mexicans and Indians as Andy Jackson or Zach Taylor then you don't know New York. Not only is there a street named after him, he even got a corner of Madison Square...

Ceremonies of Dedication of the Worth Monument
November 25, 1857

An 1857 entry from the Reminiscences of Charles Haynes Haswell:

November 23, the remains of Major-General Worth were removed from Greenwood Cemetery to the City Hall, where they lay in state until the 25th, when they were taken under military escort to the place of the monument now standing at Twenty-fifth Street, between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, and there deposited, the monument being dedicated.

The New York Times coverage of the day - including the text of a lengthy speech from Mayor Wood and a recap of the various horse accidents (several slipped and fell on the wet pavement of Broadway) associated with the parade - is archived here.

A description of the monument:

It is the second-oldest monument in Manhattan (an 1856 equestrian statue of George Washington in Times Square is the oldest) and, along with Grant's Tomb, one of only two monuments in the city holding the remains of the person being honored.

The south face of the obelisk features a bas-relief depiction of the general on his horse, and an elaborate trophy with crossed cannons, armor, two eagles, flags and a variety of weapons.

The east face has the Latin inscription "Ducit amor patriae" (Love of country leads (me)).

The north face bears a plaque reading, "Under this monument lies the body of William Jenkins Worth, born in Hudson, N.Y., March 1, 1794, died in Texas, May 7, 1849.

The west face bears the dedication date along with the exhortation to "Honor the Brave."

All well and good and appropriate. But turning now to one of the periodic histories Tammany Hall produced extolling its many virtues through the years - this example from 1901 (when only the city's elderly would actually remember Mayor Wood):

On Madison Square, in New York, there stands a monument to General Worth, of the United States Army. It was erected under the Mayoralty of Fernando Wood, and therefore, very properly, his name was inscribed on one side of it. When Mayor Wood fell into disfavor, a subsequent Common Council had the puerile idea of erasing his name from this memorial stone, and actually did so, substituting, in its place, the rather trite phrase, "Honor the Brave."

Why, "Mr Wood was not lacking in bravery himself," the author concludes, "as his defiance of State authorities proved."

Footnotes:

*Out of the mayor's office, but back into the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was a leader in the fight against reconstruction and civil rights for the remainder of his life.

**Grant.

Next: A Night at the Opera

March 4, 1861 was a windy day in Washington; the wind provided the only sound as the crowd gathered before the still under-construction capitol building quieted, straining to hear the words of the man they'd come to see inaugurated as president, Abraham Lincoln, of late from far west Illinois.

As he turned to face them, the same wind rustled the pages on which he'd composed his inaugural address. Had it blown just so at that moment, it might have lifted the top sheets of his text, briefly revealing the last; nature's capricious reminder of the many options before him, and the gravity of the decisions he would make from this point on.

"Fellow-Citizens of the United States," he began...

In compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President "before he enters on the execution of this office."

I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement...

Certainly those in the crowd who were charged with the president's security would appreciate a brief speech. "He was inaugurated amid armed cavalry and sharpshooters at every point," Walt Whitman would later recall, "the first instance of the kind in our history, and I hope it will be the last."

His other listeners - and soon enough his words would be known nationwide (the telegraph had already changed the world) - no doubt appreciated his decision to forgo discussion of matters about which there is no special anxiety or excitement, too. They'd followed the news of the progress of his train trip from Illinois to Washington closely, but with each stop he'd refrained from offering the specifics of his thoughts on those topics about which there was.

He'd initially passed through mostly friendly territory on that trip. Certainly that was true of the remote parts of New York State, whose citizens had delivered him the largest block of electoral votes in the country. Shortly after crossing the border from Pennsylvania the Lincoln train made a stop at Westfield:

...where he was greeted by a banner: "Welcome Abraham Lincoln to the Empire State." Villard reported: "At the North East Station Mr. Lincoln took occasion to state that during the campaign he had received a letter from a young girl of this place [Erie] in which he was kindly admonished to do certain things, and among others to let his whiskers grow, and that, as he had acted on that piece of advice he would now be glad to welcome his fair correspondent if she was among the crowd. In response to the call a lassie made her way through the crowd, was helped to the platform and kissed by the President."

Grace Bedell became famous in Lincoln lure as the girl who written candidate Lincoln in October 15, 1860...

Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 25, 1860, as photographed in Chicago by Samuel G. Alschuler.

"All the ladies like whiskers," she'd advised him, "and they would tease their husband's to vote for you and then you would be President."

Lincoln wrote back : "As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now?"

Perhaps this recent New York Times account of events of November 1860 captures the mood of the era:

In Georgia, men of probity and wisdom tried to decide what to do about secession.

In Washington, men of probity and wisdom tried to decide what to do about secession.

And in Springfield, Ill., a man of probity and wisdom reached a firm decision. By all accounts, the beard is coming in nicely.

By late February 1861, both the beard and the "secession crisis" were in full bloom. Two days after his stop in Westfield the friendly regions of the state were behind him; Mr Lincoln's train approached New York City.

Carl Sandburg: "While Lincoln crossed the Empire State from west to east February 18, news came over the wires that down in Montgomery, Alabama, amid thundering cannon and cheers from an immense crowd, Jefferson Davis took his oath as President of the Confederate States of America, six today and more tomorrow."

The U.S. president-elect had revealed nothing of his intentions toward the South on his inaugural journey, but he carried with him the draft of the address he'd composed in Springfield. It concluded with remarks directed at those who believed they could form an even more perfect union: would you have peace, or war?

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you, unless you first assail it. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend" it. You can forbear the assault upon it; I can not shrink from the defense of it. With you, and not with me, is the solemn question of "Shall it be peace, or a sword?"

Among the few who'd seen it: New York Senator William Seward - soon to be his Secretary of State - who suggested he tone it down a bit.

But now the train was approaching New York City. "New York," wrote Sandburg in as apt an introduction as any, "the front door to America, where tall ships came in from the seven seas to one of the great world ports; where the 35,000 votes for Lincoln for President were a third of the total ballots; where had grown up the financial center of the country, with vast controls over trade, manufacture, transportation...

...where Mayor Fernando Wood had declared that New York should establish itself as a free city, separate from the Union, sovereign in itself like the seceded states of the South, thereby holding its trade and continuing "uninterrupted intercourse with every section" of the country; where bribe money had passed in franchise and city land deals; where the Mayor, as a party boss, had taken $5,000 apiece from two lawyers for nominations for Supreme Court judgeships; where the Mayor and his aldermen awarded a street-cleaning contract for $279,000 when another bid was $84,000 less; where the Mayor's personal fortune had risen to at least $250,000 out of politics; where only corruption of the courts of justice had saved the Mayor from conviction of forgery, perjury and other crimes; where the Mayor and his brother Ben owned lotteries and were licensed as professional gamblers through charters from Southern States; where they owned the New York Daily News and openly advocated the rights of the Confederate States.

The temptation is great to add "but other than that, not a bad little town!" - but that wasn't the half of it...

Next: Honor the Brave

"Streetcars on Park Row, circa 1860," reads the caption accompanying this photo on the New York Times web site. "The large building in the background is the headquarters of The New York Times." It was a new building then, built just for the Times, and first occupied just two years before...

Having heard from those who for months prior to the 1860 elections were anticipating (perhaps even preparing for) secession and civil war - it's appropriate to acknowledge that theirs wasn't a universal view. There are other historical records supporting Haswell's recollection (his Reminiscences was published in 1896) of the mood of the day:

Initially, many Republicans scoffed at Democratic warnings that Lincoln's election would lead to secession of the South. As late as November 29, 1860, William Cullen Bryant, poet and owner-editor of the Evening Post, declared that "nobody but a few silly people expect it will happen."

In this case silly proved to be the opposite of wrong - but Bryant was no fool. He may have acquired a New Yorker's definition of everybody and nobody, but his lifetime's experience - throughout which he stayed true to his progressive political views - can be seen as a travel guide through the changing political landscape of the decades immediately prior to the Civil War. He was an original free soil Democrat, and had introduced Abraham Lincoln to the crowd at Cooper Union in February, 1860. By then his Evening Post could rightly be called one of three influential Republican-leaning papers in New York City. (The others were Greeley's Tribune and a relative newcomer on the scene: the New York Times, a paper founded by former Tribune man Henry Jarvis Raymond in 1851.)

If the people generally refused to believe in the likelihood of secession and civil war that's attributable at least in part to desire - people generally don't want war. Unfortunately that's a part of the human condition that (depending on its manifestation) has led to as many wars as any of the less desirable (greed, for example) human traits have through history. Two nations often go to war when only one wants to - if the other is sufficiently "non-militaristic." (A truth to which older citizens of Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Holland, and a host of other European nations can attest.) But that one-sided aggressiveness wasn't the case in the American Civil War. Remarkably - if Haswell is correct in his next line, too - the South didn't want war either: "In short, it was almost universally held in the North that the South never would secede, just as the South believed that in case of secession the North would not fight for the Union."

The history of the United States to 1860 had already been one of fractious, sometimes bloody political battles. But if that everything will be just fine delusion was somehow rampant among specially those of Republican politics, it may be because those who saw their own anti-slavery stance as a moral campaign conducted under the blessing of God (one would be hard-pressed to identify a cause in American history more worthy of the claim) didn't realize the full nature of the contribution slave labor made to the wealth of so many of their fellow citizens (the sort of wealth that can buy any number of moral justifications for any argument, or at least assuage any excessive feelings of guilt) and vastly underestimated the degree (beyond murderous) of hatred and contempt in which thus-threatened Democrats subsequently held them. If so, (at least, if one accepts deeds as more indicative of feelings than words) the feelings would be mutual soon enough.

But if the Times' day-after-the-elections coverage is any example of the mood of Republicans in 1860, Haswell was right and Bryant wasn't kidding - they really didn't see it coming.

We searched in vain for some one that could tell us of the feelings of the defeated. Every one declared himself a Lincoln man, or else said nothing... At length passing through Nassau-street we met an acquaintance, -- one whom we had heard during the campaign expressing his predilections for DOUGLAS, and his blissful anticipations of Arcadian Winters in office at Washington under the Douglas dynasty. We hailed him; he was in a great hurry and couldn't stop, -- bank just closing, -- all that sort of thing. We took him by the button; that is the shot across the bows that will always bring one to. He stopped, and, after a moment's attention to our inquiries. "My dear Sir," he said, "I'm a Lincoln man, and always was!'' We pursued our investigations in that direction no further. In all seriousness, we heard less about Disunion yesterday than we have heard any day in a month past ... and we learned nothing that would lead us to suppose that the people of the fairly beaten parties will acquiesce now in the expressed, will of the people a whit less gracefully than the Republicans submitted when they were overborne four years ago.
<...>
One of our wandering reporters in a ramble around town, tried to find out some discordant element in the popular sentiment, and to that end visited the chief hotels, especially those which Southerners do most approve; also the restaurants, the public places of resort, and (but it was only as a matter of duty) the drinking saloons. Thus the New-York Hotel, the Lafarge, the Metropolitan and the St. Nicholas were approached with the very best results. Although a large number of Southern gentlemen and families were residing at each of these popular establishments, there were no symptoms of revolt, of dissatisfaction even, or of anything else than a disposition for enjoyment. Nothing whatever was there to indicate that the Government would change hands on the 4th of March next, and, after that, according to YANCEY, WISE and other equally good authorities, "the deluge." ...Human nature is a singular compound of contradictions. We readily accept to-day, especially when we cannot help it, what we denied and defied yesterday. Thus it was, that some "fire-eaters," Northern and Southern, whom our wandering reporter met on Monday, rampant for BRECKINRIDGE, DOUGLAS, BELL, LANE -- anybody but LINCOLN -- and secession, with absolute ruin to the country, if he was elected -- were discovered yesterday to be as mild as newly-weaned lambs.

"That any calamity threatened the Union," they added for good measure, "seemed as far from everybody's thoughts, as the idea that a volcano might break out in the Central Park, and by its eruption convert our Empire City into another Pompeii..."

Less than six weeks later, South Carolina seceded from the Union. ("A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery," read the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union. "On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government...") Of course, no one in New York City was surprised.

Postscript

Charles Haynes Haswell's Reminiscences offers wonderful insight into a bygone era. Not intended as a history, it's a chronological series of brief descriptions of life in New York City during first half of his.

In its pages he captured an era of great and small changes in the city, like this one from 1856:

May 25, the last services were held in the old "Brick Church," which yielded its site to the Times building, the purchase having been made, despite the assertion that a condition of the gift to the church of the site, was that it should ever be occupied for a church.

Next: The End of Edmund Ruffin

ANTICIPATIONS OF THE FUTURE

******

Washington, D. C, Nov. 11th, 1864.

Edmund Ruffin

The complete election reports have now been received. As anticipated, California, Oregon, Washington, and also Sonora (the new Pacific free state, formed of territory last purchased from Mexico) all have voted the ticket of the Republican party--as called by its members, or the Black Republican, or Abolition party, as designated by its opponents. William H. Seward of New York, is elected by a much greater majority than his predecessor, President Lincoln, obtained in 1860. Seward also now has the undivided votes of all the "free" or non-slave holding states. These, by the admission of seven new states since 1859, and the greatly increased population (evidenced by the last census) of the new states admitted between 1852 and '60, with the general growth of the party in all the northern states, have served to make Seward's entire electoral vote full two-thirds of the whole number. All the fourteen slaveholding states (Delaware being no longer one) have voted against him as a unit, although there was not the remotest chance to elect his merely nominal democratic competitor. The present opposition to Seward and his party, united and unanimous as it is throughout all the slaveholding states only, is so weak, relatively to the supporters, that the thought of any future contest at the polls is more despised than feared by the now triumphant Abolition party.

- Edmund Ruffin, Anticipations for the Future, to Serve as Lessons for the Present Time, June, 1860

Alternative histories of the Civil War have been popular for many years. Modern author Harry Turtledove has produced several titles in the genre, which seems to attract non-full time writers, too. Newt Gingrich has co-authored a series. Even US Civil War buff/future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill tried his hand at it back in 1930, with a magazine piece asking what if Lee had won at Gettysburg. (Churchill's answer, condensed: The South takes Washington, frees their slaves - thereby ending European moral opposition to their cause - and wins the Civil War. North and South continue a tense relationship for years, but at last learn to live in peace under US President Teddy Roosevelt and Confederate President Woodrow Wilson. The two nations then combine with Great Britain to peacefully resolve "the European crisis of 1914, which followed the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand" and prevent what could have been a horrific global war: "It was said that Germany's Kaiser received the news with a scream of joy, and fell exhausted into a chair, exclaiming: "Saved! Saved! Saved!" Thus was a European war avoided which could have resulted in the deaths of millions of people. Kaiser Wilhelm II became one of the most respected elder statesmen of Europe." While complex and imaginative - Churchill chose to write from the perspective of an author in a world where Lee had won at Gettysburg, and titled his piece "What if Lee Had Not Won at Gettysburg" - the result is not among the eventual Nobel Prize for Literature winner's better efforts...)

But before them all came Edmund Ruffin's Anticipations for the Future, to Serve as Lessons for the Present Time. Ruffin's book could be called the first example of Civil War alt-history - except it was written before the Civil War. The Virginia author published his work in June, 1860, just a few weeks after the new Republican Party had nominated Abraham Lincoln as their candidate for president over New York's William Seward. Ruffin predicted Lincoln would take the White House, but not all his forecasts were that accurate. His notion that the Civil War would begin after Lincoln was replaced by Seward in 1864 is one example. (That the South would win is another - but hey, maybe if they'd done things Ruffin's way...) Still, much of his work can be called prescient, and most - if not all - of what he got wrong can nonetheless be viewed as insight to the conventional wisdom of the immediate pre-Civil War day.

And much of the thinking reflected was not limited to the minds of those gentlemen living south of the Mason-Dixon. Ruffin's description of the economic impact of secession on the North...

Added to the loss of trade of the northern states, is the want of employment for their shipping, in place of the virtual monopoly formerly enjoyed of all the southern carryingtrade. And worst of all, are the effects now felt by the merchants and manufacturers of the North of the forty millions due them from the South, and sequestrated by the government of the new confederacy, for as long time as the war shall continue.

...matched the anticipations (fears, in their case) of those New York City businessmen whose very lives were dependent on the commerce described.

While one anticipated result of that economic downturn he described ("as many as one-fourth of all the usually laboring and self-supporting poor of the great northern cities, and throughout the manufacturing rural districts, are now paupers and beggars") was not their primary concern, in the real world - then as now - New York's elite had their money in the bank and their voters in the slums (but had no illusions regarding the limits of their control over either) and recognized a threat to one as a threat to both.

More from Ruffin:

And the 30,000 to 40,000 able-bodied men of this class, who burden and terrify each of the great cities of Philadelphia, New York and Boston, are not meek and humble, but sturdy and insolent beggars... There are daily assemblages, or processions of the unemployed poor, in the cities where they are most numerous, to show their numbers and strength to the rich, as a significant warning. On one late occasion such a "hunger procession" of 40,000 men, marched through the wealthier streets of New York, and took especial care to exhibit their strength in the Fifth Avenue of sumptuous palaces, the chief place of residence of the "merchant princes" of that great and rich city.

"To hunger processions there soon succeeded hunger mobs and riots, in which food only was seized at first, but in which the actors soon proceeded to plunder other moveable property, and especially money and other valuables," Ruffin wrote. No New Yorker would need his description to add to their ever-present concern, and they certainly wouldn't laugh at the idea. The panic of 1857 was still a fresh memory, and a very real one.

By September 1857 estimates of New York unemployment ran as high as forty thousand. By late October Hunt's Merchant Magazine calculated the figure in Manhattan and Brooklyn had risen to a hundred thousand.

That's not a passage from Ruffin's imagination, it's from a 21st Century history of the city. The year 1857 - in which New Yorkers had already seen Fernando Wood's police riots followed by gang battles in Five Points - did not end on a high note, and unlike those earlier episodes, this time Wood saw no friendly faces in the mob...

Crowds were bigger than ever on Monday, November 9, and demonstrators flooded City Hall itself... Wood, himself troubled by the growing throngs, now decided to post police guards around government buildings and - remembering 1837 - the flour warehouses. The next day, when another mass meeting at Tompkins Square dispatched a delegation to confer with the mayor, it found City Hall ringed by three hundred police and stocked with a brigade of militia. A few blocks further south, moreover, the federal government had deployed soldiers and sailors under Mexican War hero General Winfield Scott to guard the Custom House and Sub-Treasury building.

Despite the array of armed might and editorial calls to "shoot down any quantity of Irish or Germans" necessary - "Rioters, like other people, have heads to be broken," cried the Herald, "and bodies to be perforated with ball and steel" - thousands again swarmed into Tompkins Square, and this time some of the desperately hungry broke discipline and launched a bread riot, seizing bakers' wagons and invading food shops.

"Gaunt men and women, clad in tatters, gathered in the Park, and that most fearful of all cries, when raised by a mob, "Bread," arose on every side," recalled historian J.T. Headley in 1873.

Propositions were made to break open the stores, and get what they needed. Flour was hoarded up in them because so little could be got on from the West. The granaries there were groaning with provisions; but there was no money to pay for the transportation. There was money East, but kept locked up in fear. As this became known to the mob, their exasperation increased. To know that there were both food enough and money enough, while they were starving to death, was enough to drive them mad, and there were ominous mutterings. Fortunately, the authorities saw in time the threatened danger, and warded it off. A great many were set to work on the Central Park and other public works, while souphouses were opened throughout the city, and private associations formed to relieve the suffering; and the winter passed without any outbreak...

The ink had barely dried on the newspapers that reported those stories when Ruffin published Anticipations; Manhattanites can thus be forgiven for believing such dire predictions were anything but far-fetched.

In Ruffin's work, early riots are put down by military force - and by recruiting members of the unemployed masses into the army instead of employing them in public works - but that short-term fix doesn't reverse the North's economic death spiral, and soon "new and much more alarming riots occurred in the cities..."

An edited version of Ruffin's anticipation of the fate of the Empire City in the Civil War:

In New York the rioters and plunderers, even in advance of seizing food or money, rushed to the shops where fire-arms and ammunition were sold, and from them, and from all the private houses subsequently entered, procured as large supplies as could be obtained. The arsenals of two of the volunteer military companies also were broken open, and all the arms carried off...

The uniformed volunteer companies, only, were first called out, as for the former riots. But these were too few to put down the rioters--and large reinforcements were ordered of the ordinary militia, and urgent requests were sent by the city authorities to the quarters of the commanding general, for the aid of the United States' regular troops in the neighboring garrisons.

... It is believed that the horrible and extensive massacres by the "Septembrisers 1' in Paris, in 1793, were committed by less than one thousand assassins, who, for three days, held that great city in subjection, by terror, and in quiet submission to the most atrocious and extravagant shedding of innocent blood that the world had ever known. It is not then strange that three or four thousand bloody miscreants of the most degraded conditions of society, should have paralysed with terror the people of New York. But these few thousands were growing rapidly, and with every minute of time, to ten-fold greater numbers.

...In a few hours from the beginning, there were more than 30,000 miscreants, mostly armed with some deadly weapon, engaged in sacking the houses and shops, not only of the rich, but of all whose moveables were supposed to be worth being plundered. ...the United States regular troops arrived from their barracks, to the number of 4000. About 1000 of these, who had been longest in service, fought well...

The remainder of the regular soldiers, about 3000, were all new recruits, very lately enlisted and taken from the streets and cellars of this city, and from the habits, and companionship, in misery and vice, of the present rioters, among whom they recognized their friends and relatives, and whom they saw to be now almost masters of the city and all its wealth. They had no inclination to risk and very probably to lose their lives in fighting their recent companions and friends, in whose feelings and wishes they fully and heartily shared. The usage of discipline was not yet old enough to restrain them, and they soon began to drop off, at first singly, and next in numbers, to join and aid the plunderers. This decided the success of the rioters...

But the unhappy city and its inhabitants had yet to go through still increased horrors. In the latter part of the night, when the plunderers could take no more booty, because [they were] unable to transport or secure any more, and when nearly all were drunk and furious, it was proposed by some, and readily acceded to by all who heard the proposal, that the city should be burnt.

...But a stronger and an earlier motive was doubtless operating, in the malignant hatred, which many of the actors, who had been the greatest sufferers from want and hunger, entertained for the rich, and even for all property-owners, whom they had learned to deem their worst enemies. They desired to glut their hatred and vengeance, as well as to gratify their appetites and their cupidity. The proposal to set fire to the city was therefore received with shouts of applause; and thousands of the rioters, armed, and bearing torches, spread themselves through every quarter, putting fire, as they went, to the more inflammable buildings. A strong wind was blowing, which soon spread the flames faster than did the numerous incendiaries. In two hours, this great and rich city, containing with the adjacent suburbs and connected minor cities, 1,200,000 inhabitants, was so covered by flames, that no possible human means could have prevented the full consummation of the calamity.

The fires had been kindled in so many places, nearly at one time, and so generally over the city, that the whole space was, at once, one raging sea of flame, rising in billows and breakers above the tops of the houses higher than ever sea was raised by the most violent hurricane. ...Of the many thousands of charred and partly consumed skeletons, which were afterwards to be seen among the ruins, it was conjectured that the lives of as many had been destroyed by the burning, as by armed violence in the previous combats and assassinations.

"The reports of all the circumstances of this awful event," added Ruffin, "even induced the commiseration of all but the most embittered of the southern foes." But in Ruffin's world there is no economic recovery for the North after the South wins the war, and "many northern residents predict... that the site of New York will remain, as now, overspread by the ruins left by the conflagration."

That's an edited version, lacking many of the details Ruffin provided, such as the wealthy and their children being murdered in their homes and streets. It's difficult to read Ruffin's detail-rich full account of the fate of New York City without concluding that his purpose was to terrify rich Northerners. How well that worked is debatable. As we've seen, in New York City they had reason for concern whether they read his work or not. Beyond that, if his larger purpose was to get New Yorkers to oppose Republicans they didn't need his help in that regard, either. If his even larger purpose was to prevent (and if so he seems a bit too enthusiastic about the course of events described) civil war he - like anyone else who wanted to, regardless of method - can only be called a failure.

As to where he went wrong in his description of the city-destroying riots, it's at least in part due to his jaundiced view of the potential rioters: the North's poor and near-poor (working poor) class. They weren't quite the plague of class-envying, murderous thugs overflowing every city in the North and threatening the decent citizens that he believed they were. He must have based his expectations of them on what he'd heard of them - though his mistake might have been to assume that New York was exemplary of all cities of the North. Perhaps that lack of first-hand knowledge accounts for his mistakes - he knew no such people personally because there were no such people in the South, Ruffin was convinced, and thus the problem would never exist there - because they had slaves instead of people of this class. (Stalin and Hitler would have loved this guy.)

But such people did (and do) exist - everywhere, and in New York City even the smallest minorities number in the tens of thousands. What might have happened if - per Ruffin's forecast - the economy plunged downward and stayed there is fodder for other writers of what-if scenarios - it didn't happen in the real world, where war on a scale previously unimaginable proved profitable on a scale previously unimaginable, too. Still, his anticipation for New York City wasn't completely wrong. Those are his words above, but the illustrations aren't from his book; they depict events during New York City's Civil War "draft riots" of 1863, when tens of thousands of New Yorkers did much of what Ruffin said they were capable of (and during which heavy rain saved much of the city from burning; Ruffin failed to predict the weather...) and are taken from Headley's Great Riots of New York, published ten years after they actually occurred.

The tendency to define a group by the example of its worst members (or best, if its your group) is an all-too-human trait that's led to many disasters (large and small) throughout history. But if Ruffin's "low class Yankee trash rioting" prediction was mistaken - at least in degree - for most of the North, he was almost proven right in New York City in 1863. But in that case Ruffin's mistakes include underestimating both the ability of that metropolis at that time to absorb and recover from violent blows (one can almost look at earlier panics and riots as "practice" in that regard) and the capability of the US Army - built on the caliber of the men (drafted and otherwise) who comprised that force.

Ruffin's view:

There is, however, one superior military advantage, or nursery for soldiers, which the northern states have, in the many thousands of the vagrant, destitute, and vicious population, and worst nuisances of their great cities. For materials for a regular or standing army, and for a long, protracted war, requiring regular forces, these men, good for nothing else, and dangerous at home, would offer a valuable supply. But such soldiers, would be destitute of every higher quality than mere physical force and obedience (if under the strictest discipline) to despotic military rule. For any moral or patriotic principle of conduct, or as volunteers, the free negroes of the South would be as respectable; and with the like necessary military rule and discipline, perhaps, would be equal in military array and conduct to the northern loafer and convict soldiers.

Ruffin's "free negroes of the South" taking arms to defend their former masters' "property rights" were a greater fantasy than the conscripted dregs and vestiges of northern slums he imagined them fighting to the death - neither he nor any southerner staked their hopes for victory on that absurdity. But his fatally flawed view of the northern army was universal throughout the South at the time, and persisted throughout the war.

In their memoirs, Union veterans would describe an army the exact opposite of the one Ruffin imagined:

Almost every known trade, profession, or calling, has its representative in our regiment--tailors and carpenters, masons and plasterers, moulders and glass-blowers, pudlers and rollers, machinists and architects, printers, book-binders, and publishers; gentlemen of leisure, politicians, merchants, legislators, judges, lawyers, doctors, preachers,--some malicious fellow might ask the privilege of completing the catalogue by naming jailbirds, idlers, loafers, drunkards, and gamblers; but we beg his pardon, and refuse the license. Were all this talent, skill and energy set to work, a city could speedily be reared, and all the multiplied appliances of civilized life set in motion and successfully carried on within the compass of a single regiment.

That example from Alexander Morrison Stewart, who published his account in 1865, the year the war ended. Through the decades that followed others would abound, including Leander Stillwell's memoirs, written after his career on the bench and published in the early twentieth century. All could be accused of bias, of course, but whatever its composition, in the end the Union army won the war. But before that day came, some units, recently dispatched to Gettysburg, would wheel around and march on (or back to) New York City, to quell the very real riots there.

The outcome is rarely obvious during any war, and certainly the North didn't march to war convinced their southern counterparts were the superior soldiers of an unbeatable army - no nation would. They too were convinced of the opposite. But Ruffin's opinion of the bulk of the Union army as vagrant, destitute loafers and convict soldiers good for nothing else and dangerous at home - and destined for a beating - not only prevailed through (and sustained) the South but gained popularity in the North (especially among northern Democrats, whose enthusiasm for the conflict plunged rapidly after its first few weeks) even as Sherman's army approached the sea. That didn't prevent victory, but it hardly helped the cause; Grant and Sherman would address the issue in their memoirs but, as with the recollections of the more "common" soldiers, obviously too late to sway public opinion during the war.

Unfortunately, that view of American soldiers as inferior beings persists. Ruffin didn't invent it, he merely documented - and helped popularize - what would prove to be wishful thinking. Call it a byproduct of a slave-owner mentality (something not unique to slave owners), it has no geographic boundary and remains fixed in the minds of many today.

Postscript:

Of course, if Stewart's description is the more accurate, his jailbirds, idlers, loafers, drunkards, and gamblers - Ruffin's vagrant, destitute loafers, dangerous at home - were at home, with many of the "city builders" occupied elsewhere.

The bulk of Ruffin's book describes his anticipations for an imagined future, but it concludes with his "Lessons for the Present Time." In that section he urges the slave states to secede without hesitation or delay. Among his explanations why he thought that a great idea: "...there will be much less probability, after a separation, of any important insurrection of our slaves, with even temporary and short-lived success, than there will be of the great cities of Boston, New York and Philadephia, and others, being sacked and burnt, and their wealthiest inhabitants massacred, by their own destitute, vicious, and desperate population..."

If they didn't rise up, Ruffin saw nothing wrong with helping them along: "Suppose that there existed in the southern states organized, numerous and rich associations... whose avowed object and whose continual action and effort through secret emissaries, were to persuade the destitute and suffering people of the North that they had equal rights to the riches and luxuries of their cities and of the world--that they were defrauded of their just rights and starved and made wretched by the actual possessors of wealth, and that they ought, and easily and safely and honestly could, take their full shares of the wealth of others ... all the probable consequences of massacre, conflagration and irregular appropriation of the property in dispute, would be the fault of the previous property-holders, and not of their former destitute victims, who could in no other way obtain their rights..."

Next: The View From Park Row offers a different perspective on the future...

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