Modern Battles of Trenton. Being a history of New Jersey's politics ... from ... 1868 to ... 1894

Front matter

MODERN Battles of Trenton, BEING A History of New Jersey's Politics and Legislation from the Year 1868 to the Year 1894. BY WILLIAM EDGAR SACKETT. TRENTON, N. J. : John L. Murphy, Printer. 1895. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1895, by WILLIAM E. SACKETT, Jn the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. TO THE THOUSANDS OF MY PERSONAL FRIENDS IN NEW JERSEY WHOSE PARTIALITY HAS MADE ITS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE, THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY7 INSCRIBED.

Preface

. ikIPHE story traced in these pages is that of the most important, interesting and eventful quarter century, take *™& P it all in all, in the history of New Jersey. It is one view — only my view, if you please — of the origin, the rise and the decay of a political dynasty, so to speak. Old mas ters pass out of sight in the earlier chapters; the new masters who forced them off the field of action pass out of sight in the closing •chapters. It was not the purpose, when the work was first con templated, to present the rounded story of an era in politics and legislation. I expected merely to lay before the reader my rather desultory observations of the spriDg and current and movement of public affairs during the years when I was on hand with my note-book — to describe events and chat about the men who shaped them.

But the inexorable tread of events was fashioning the sequel to my story even while I was penning it ; and, without anticipating it, I find myself the accidental histo rian of an Epoch — and of an Epoch, too, of more than passing interest to Jerseymen. Nor alone in its political phases is the quarter century epochal. It is the story of an epoch in development and progress as well. The quarter century has seen disturbing controversies set at rest, and the relations of the State to her subjects definitely settled upon lasting lines. It has seen the schools made free, a riparian policy defined and enforced, the yoke of the old monopolies that made the Commonwealth a byword in the mouth of the nations thrown off, the corporations that defied her sovereignty brought within the reach of the tax-gatherer, her system of legislation fundamentally reconstructed, great public buildings reared — and great things begun and accomplished in all directions.

The labor I have put upon the pages which cover the story of this eventful epoch has been especially grateful to me, because, from the encouragement the public men of New Jersey gave me when I first suggested the work, I feel as though I had been especially commissioned by them to tell it for them. I trust that I have discharged the commission with becoming candor and conscientiousness, and that, now that the fruit of their partiality is before them, they will see no reason to repent of the selection. It is but just that I should add that in the work I have thug undertaken and completed, my brother, Clarence, has rendered me valuable assistance.

Chapter I

Which is in the Nature of an Introduction, and, Though Ancient History, Should be Kead for a Full Comprehension of the Chapters Which Follow. f&0k i UaP HERE was, it is needless to say, a period in the history of J the State of New Jersey when her territory was a wills' F derness. New York had built up a population and a promising settlement had formed at Philadelphia, before New Jersey's woodlands were invaded by the axe of the pioneer. Though the Commonwealth lay between these two rapidly-growing communities, her progress and development were noticeably slow; and the hope of assisting her growth by artificial methods prompted her leading men to tempt enterprises likely to aid her, with the most glittering allurements she had to offer. The old-time stage-coach, with its changes of horses and drivers at the end of every ten-mile run, that spent a whole day in making the distance between the booming municipalities at either end of her, was hailed as a great boon by the pastoral people who had built their cabins upon her soil; and it did, indeed, give an impulse to settlement.

But it was all too feeble a one ; and when a party of progressive capitalists talked about opening up her territory with a railroad crossing her from the Delaware river line to Raritan bay, and running a new machine called a locomotive over it, the people went wild with joy, and were ready to encourage them by any gifts of lands or franchises, and even of money, they saw fit to ask, and she found it possible to give. The project became at once the almost exclusive topic of gossip and discussion in the taverns and at town meetings; and, when the Legislature of 1830 met, it was everywhere understood that nothing the State could do to promote it was to be withheld. Before the session had grown many weeks old, the promoters of the enterprise were in Trenton consulting with the legislators about the terms upon which the State would bargain with them, and when the Legis lature adjourned the new railroad had not only been put in com mission, but had made its own terms with the State authorities.

The running of a railroad across her surface was at that time everything but a remunerative enterprise ; it was doubtful, in deed, if this particular enterprise could ever be made to pay, and the projectors were loath to undertake it unless the State would guarantee them against the rivalry of other capitalists who might be inspired by its success, if it were successful, to establish competing lines. And so the company's charter con ferred a monopoly of all the service between New York and Philadelphia upon it ; and, because the imposition of the tax upon its property would take' from its treasury some of the money needed to carry the enterprise forward to success, it was exempted from a large part of the public burdens. It was to pay a trifling transit duty into the State treasury — and not even that till it had become a dividend-earning concern.

The point from which these enterprising builders proposed to start their road was known as Camden — then a mere name given by courtesy to a railroad shed. The point to which they pro posed to run was South Amboy, on the eastern shore of the State ; thus the new venture came to be known as the Camden and Amboy Railroad. From Amboy, New York was to be reached by boat. At that time Perth Amboy, fronting on a broad bay that afforded exceptional harbor facilities, was ex pected to outstrip New York and was looked upon as the com ing metropolis of the country. The projectors of the railroad would have made this promising locality their terminal but for the fact that it would be necessary to bridge Raritan bay at a great outlay of money; and so, as the more accessible, South Amboy was chosen. The company was immediately organized, and a few years later, what is now claimed to be the first locomotive ever used for railroad traffic in the country, wa9 put upon the rails at Bordentown.

During the Columbian Exhibition of 1893, at Chicago, this primitive contrivance was taken out of the shops of the now monster corporation on the Hackensack meadows, at Jersey City, and furbished up for exhibition. Ambitious to display the whole train as she had been equipped for her first trip from Bordentown, the railroad officials sent agents all over the State to hunt up the two passeDger coaches that she had drawn. Among the rubbish of an old shop up in Sussex, one was found ; the other, minus its wheels, was doing service as a hen-coop at one of the old towns in Middlesex. They were mounted on trucks, and, gay with flags and bunting, were sped behind the locomotive across the country to Chieago. It was unique and a curiosity, and the train was hailed by great throngs at every depot past which she rolled.

To return from this digression, the charter of the company which resurrected this curiosity of its primitive days for the amusement and instruction of the people sixty-four years after it had instituted the system of locomotive travel, required that the construction of the road should be commenced within two years and completed within nine. The State reserved the right till January 1st, 1831, to subscribe for one-quarter of the capital stock, and the privilege, for three years at the expiration of thirty years, of taking the works at an appraisement. The construction of another railroad, with terminals within three miles of its termini, was to free the company from the payment even of its transit duties. The act of 1831 made this monopoly privilege even more stringent by enacting that no other railroad should be constructed across the State within three miles of its line until the expiration of the nine years limited for its completion.

In exchange for this exclusive privilege the railroad company gave the State a thousand shares of its stock, with dividends, but with the understanding that, upon the construction, by authority of the State or of the United States, of another railroad between New York and Philadelphia, the shares should be given back. It may be said incidentally that, notwithstanding the fact that the State has since chartered many railroads, these shares are still among her assets. By the time the first propositions for railroads were made, the shares had become exceptionally valuable, and one of the weapons the railroad company used for the perpetuation of its monopoly was its threat to force their return in pursuance of the arrangement under which they were taken ; but the continued possession of the shares by the State was purchased by the extension of other privileges to the railroad company.* It was not long after the Camden and Amboy monopoly had been established by the State before an equally-important movement was started on the water front at Jersey City.

Jersey City was the point on the Jersey shore that was most available for railroad pur poses, because it was di rectly opposite the heart of the metropolis. At that time it was little more than a neck of land projecting into the water at about the place where the Pennsylvania Rail road ferries are now located. It was known as Paulus Hoeck, and Charles B. Thurston. through the keen foresight of Alexander Hamilton had, away back in 1804, become the property of "The Associates of the Jersey Company." From an interesting history, prepared in 1883 by Mr. Charles B. Thurston — for over twenty years, and even at the time of this writing, Secretary of the Associates — and * It was thought ihis was done quite as much for the purpose of assisting the completion of the roads as for the investment. The State parted, as time went along, with most of the stock that thus came into its hands, and always derived a handsome revenue from it ; but General Robert F. Stockton, son of old Commodore Stockton, and who was for three years Comptroller of the State, is authority for the statement that if the State treasury had held all of the stock which it has from time to time exchanged for franchises to railroads the dividend from the stock would by this time have paid all the expenses of the State government. designed to show the title of the Associates to the shore front, the story of the absorption of the valuable water privileges at that point is gleaned.* The extreme eastern point of the upland at that time was about where Warren street runs now — the filling in since done by the railroad has extended the solid ground 1,500 to 2,000 feet into the Hudson river.

Above Paulus Hoeck and below it the shore was escalloped by deep coves — that on the north known as Aharsimus, a name which the Indians had given to it, and since corrupted into Harsimus ; that on the south, called the South Cove. The j ut of land was the property of Cornelius Van Vorst, Anthony Dye, Richard Varick and Richard Radcliffe. With his wonderful business eye Hamilton saw the commercial future of their holdings, and he framed the bill incorporating the Asso ciates of the Jersey Company for its purchase. Notable names were among those of these Associates. Old Governor Penning ton, Judge Aaron Ogden, Isaac H. Williamson, whose son Benja min was afterwards one of the famous Chancellors of the State ; General Cummings, of Newark, and Israel Condit, of Newark, were some of them. By their charter the Associates were given the privilege of owning not only the upland but the land under water beyond it, and of improving it.

It was Hamilton's idea that the particular value of this acqui sition lay in its availability for ferriage purposes; and, so that the Associates might enjoy an absolute and undisputed monopoly of transportation across the river from that point forever, he pre pared a form for their use in the sale of their acquired upland which reserved to the Associates always the enjoyment of the ferry privileges. Every deed given by them to purchasers of any part of the land expressly forbids the use of it by the purchasers for ferry purposes. By this far-seeing precaution the famous Secre tary secured to the Associates for all time an exclusive monopoly of the right to use the shore front for the transportation of pas sengers from Jersey City at any point between Harsimus and * Those who are interested in more than is here taken from Mr. Thurston's narrative, will find the whole narrative reproduced in an appendix at the end of this book. the South Cove.

A tavern keeper on the water front established a sort of a ferry between the Hoeck and New York, and paid rental to the Associates for many years before the value of it for the larger purposes of commerce developed. At about the time that the Camden and Amboy began its struggle to establish communication between New York and Philadel phia, Dudley S. Gregory and Russel H. Nevius conceived the idea of extending a railroad line from the inn-man's ferry westward into the State. This eventuated in the organization of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company, whose route was by stage over Bergen Hill to the Hackensack slope, and thence by train onward to New Brunswick. As the concern grew busy and wealthy, the necessity of securing control of the ferry privileges on the water front became apparent.

The one way of accomplish ing this was by securing a controlling interest in the stock of the Jersey Associates. The directory of the Railroad and Transpor tation Company sent out its agents to buy blocks of stock wherever they could. Mr. Gregory was among those who assisted them, and in the course of time they had secured from a number of the Associates a sufficient number cf the shares — at $430 per share — to put them in practical possession of the Associates' ferry monopoly. In course of time a serpentine roadbed was blasted through Bergen Hill ; the stage-coach service was abandoned, aud trains were run direct to the water front. The attention of the Camden and Amboy was soon directed to this new enterprise by two circumstances. The New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company offered a more direct communication with New York than that which the old road had established at South Amboy.

The new road was, besides, coming into uncomfortable competition with it for some of its traffic. It was not long before a proposition for a lease, or a consolidation, or a merger, was sent out, and eventually the new road went under the wing of the older company. This shrewd move confirmed the Camden and Amboy in the enjoyment of its transportation monopoly between New York and Philadelphia. By acquiring possession of all the water front available for ferry purposes opposite the heart of the metropolis, it was enabled to exclude any competing line from reaching New York as directly ; and for many years the chief struggle between it and lines that sought competition with it was due to their efforts to break its monopoly at this point, and secure a foothold near its own. About the time the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company projected its line, a road connecting Trenton and Philadelphia was laid out and chartered, and this, too, entered into traffic arrangements with the Camden and Amboy; thus the old monopoly came into control of a continuous line direct from New York to Philadelphia — over the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation road from New York to New Brunswick, over the Camden and Amboy from New Brunswick to Trenton, and from Trenton over the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad into Philadelphia.

The three linked roads came to be known as the United Railroad Companies of New Jersey, and Ashbel Welch was the first President of the consolidated concerns. With a closer communication between the two big cities it had started to serve, the Camden and Amboy abandoned its depot at South Amboy for passenger purposes, and carried all of its riders to the ferry at Jersey City, where they were within five minutes' sail of New York. The establishment of this through route was regarded as so large a boom to the prosperity of New Jersey — so important a step toward the development of its resources — that the Legis lature, in authorizing the consolidation of the three companies under the title of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company, agreed to absolutely prohibit the construction of any competing line between New York and Philadelphia, except with their consent ; and they bound themselves to see that the transit duties, which they paid in lieu of taxes, and the divi dends on the State's shares of the stock, did not fall below the munificent total of $30,000 per year.

It was many years before either the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western or the New Jersey Central found a way of extending their lines to tide-water at the metropolis, and during that time they were forced to enter into traffic arrangements with the favored company. The Jersey Central, which had established a line that was trying to make its way to Easton, Pa., fed into the road of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company at Elizabeth, and paid toll on all of its passengers for the privilege of riding them over the rails of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company to New York City ; but it was all the time reaching out for a water front equal to that of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company at Jersey City, and commanding as easy access to New York. Through the Jersey Associates, the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company had, as has been already narrated, secured possession of all the available ferry sites on the Jersey City shore, and if a contiguous ferry was to be secured, there was no way to get it except by making the ground.

John Taylor Johnston, who was the moving spirit in the New Jersey Central Railroad, inspected the Mud Flats, with their shallow overlay of water, in the South Cove, and concluded that hun dreds of acres might be redeemed from the river at that point by solid filling, and turned into the mammoth railroad yard his company desired. The Cove cut deep into the shore, and it was easy to see that an enormous outlay of time and money would be required to make new land, out to deep water ; but he and his associates undertook it. For years and years scow loads of the foul refuse of the New York streets were dumped upon the Flats, to the peril of the health, as well as to the discomfort, of the residents of Jersey City, whose homes, invaded by the odor, were made almost uninhabitable. In the faee of all their pro tests he persisted with the work till the land began to show above the water ; and thousands of acres stolen from the river, and added to the area of Jersey City, gave the railroad which he managed terminal facilities as accessible to New York as those the Camden and Amboy had acquired.

The Morris and Essex likewise found it impracticable for many years after it had been incorporated to make a direct com munication with the roadbed of the joint companies, and the coaches containing its passengers for New York were, on reach ing Newark, unhitched from its locomotives at the point where its Broad street station is now located, drawn by horses through Broad street to Centre, and down Centre to the station of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company, and there attached to a train to be drawn into Jersey City. The Morris and Essex Railroad was the pet project of Com modore Stevens, of Hoboken. The Commodore was a conspicuous figure among the engineers of the country, and before his death, earned the reputation of being an inventor of marked originality. The Stevens Battery, which provoked endless newspaper talk for many years, was the work of his hands and reflected much genius, though at the end it proved to be an elephant on his hands.

He was the founder of the family of Stevens whose baronial estate at Castle Point, in Hoboken, became known to all the society folks of this section of the country. In its earliest history, he owned the larger part of the territory upon which the city of Hoboken has since been built, and he was looking forward to the time when it would be possible to bring his own road to the water front there. Bergen Hill towered between this water front and his eastern terminus, out beyond the Hackensack Meadows. The piercing or crossing of this height presented serious engineering difficul ties that the Commodore hesitated to solve. But he had it in his mind to attack them some day, and in the hope of making his road, when it should be carried to the water front, a successful competitor, he was bitterly against the continued extension of monopoly rights to the Camden and Amboy Company.

The Amboy managers found in him a foeman worthy of their steel, and they deemed it wise to placate him. The result was the making of this traffic arrangement that carried his cars from Newark to Jersey City over the Amboy line, and an under standing that when he should be ready to run his locomotives under the crest of Bergen Heights, the Amboy managers would make no active opposition. The construction of a tunnel through Bergen Hill was under taken some years later by a party of capitalists promoting the con struction of the Erie Railroad ; and at about the same time there was friction between Commodore Stevens and the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company's officials concerning the division of the toll money taken at the Jersey City ferry. The Erie tunnel projectors became cramped financially in the prosecu tion of their enterprise, and applied to Commodore Stevens for aid.

He made the loan of $107,000 needed for the complete a of the tunnel on the engagement that his road should also use i When daylight was finally carried through the hill, he withdrew from his traffic arrangement with the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company, and for years his road and the Erie jointly used the tunnel. Relations between these two new allies became strained in the last year of Governor Randolph's administration, over a six-foot track, which had been substituted for one of the four-anda-half-foot tracks with which the tunnel was fitted. The Morris road insisted upon its right to use those rails as well as the other road, and the Erie resisted. Determined to make the connection, the Morris road folks sent a squad of laborers one night to insert a " frog," at the west mouth of the tunnel, that would admit trains from their road to the disputed rails.

One of the most exciting railroad wars in the late history of the State was the result. " Jim " Fisk, the ruling genius in the Erie Railroad, had got wind of the movement, and when the Morris and Essex laborers appeared upon the scene to lay the " frog " they found their work blocked. Erie locomotives, the heaviest of them, had been steamed up to the point of attack, and lay over the very spot where they had expected to work. A pitched battle between the laborers and the locomotive bauds occurred during the night, and, the train hands being reinforced by great gangs of Erie laborers, a serious riot, that was not quelled till Governor Randolph called out the militia, ensued. The Governor himself was largely interested in the Morris and Essex Railroad ; and the State Guard, with their rifles and a cannon or two kept the Erie brigade at bay until the "frog" had been inserted.

The traffic of the two roads increased so largely as time went on that the one tunnel was not enough to accommodate them and soon after the close of the famous " frog " war the Morris road people made a sale of their tunnel rights to the Erie, and blew a tunnel for their own use through another part of the hill. What has been written shows that the little enterprise of the Camden and Amboy Company, which the State so carefully nursed in the hope that it might be successful and the tear that it would not be, grew rapidly to prosperity and wealth. Popu lation followed the line of its rails, settlements sprang up in the wilderness as fast as locomotives pushed through the forests, and its whole route from Philadelphia to New York became dotted with attractive and prosperous towns. It became one of the main thoroughfares of traffic between New York and all points South and West, and grew with almost magical speed into an enormous and wealthy corporation.

Its early alliance with the Legislature of the State, and the popular enthusiasm with which its coming had been hailed, and the State's habit of conceding to it, for the purpose of increasing her own prosperity, whatever of privilege or franchise or exemption, or even monopoly, it asked, made it arrogant and aggressive, and it soon came to be recognized as the power behind the throne in the control of all the affairs of the Com monwealth. It went into the counties, picked out its own nominees for places in the Senate and Assembly and secured their election to the seats for which they stood. The ambitious politician, hopeful for public honors, had first to make his peace with this rapidly-growing monopoly and to secure its favor and consent to his canvass. Such a thing as a candidate announcing his opposition to the railroad company and surviving the elec tion was almost unheard of in State politics.

Once in a while a man, permitted to reach a seat on the assumption that he would be favorable to its schemes, would show a disposition to curb its greedy reach for power. With its rich treasury it brought him into line with the majority of his fellows, and never failed to punish him for his temerity by defeating his re-election to his seat at the next poll. The legislation proposed for the people was all scrutinized at the companies' offices in Trenton and allowed to go through if the company was favorable or indifferent, but its disapproval doomed it to certain defeat. It selected the Governors of the State, picked out the men who were to go to Congress and named the United States Senators. So absolute was its control of all departments of the State government that the State itself came to be known derisively among the people of other States as the State of Camden and Amboy.

It went into the cities and towns and controlled Councils and Mayors with the same iron hand. It absorbed property of great value everywhere, and taking it out of the ratables increased the tax burdens of the community from which it was withdrawn. There never was a more com plete master anywhere of the destinies of a State than was this monster monopoly of the affairs of New Jersey. Its enterprise reached out in a thousand different directions, and there came a time when the State that had taken the corporation to its bosom as a child began to fear it as a master.

Chapter II

Which Treats of the First Movements to Dislodge the Camden and Amboy Monopoly, and Discloses Incidentally the Influence the Lease of the Old Lines to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company had Upon the Progress of the Battle for a Competing Line. 'fp HESE introductory explanations are made, because, all vSsiSI through the work upon which I am now engaged, the ™&$ railroads, and especially the Camden and Amboy and its successor, the Pennsylvania, present themselves as important factors in the control of State affairs. The success that had attended the Camden and Amboy's operation naturally enough roused the ambition of other capitalists for like enterprises, and as its growth was due almost entirely to the fact that it controlled the traffic between two important cities, the chief aim of rival operators was to make a line parallel with it.

Because it had acquired quite .as advantageous a tide-water terminal at Jersey City, just south of the Joint Companies' terminal, all of these rival organizations looked to the Jersey Central Railroad to admit them to New York. The Jersey Central had, soon after reaching its water front, attempted to establish a competing line by the extension of its New Jersey Southern branch out through Red Bank and Toms River towards Philadelphia. But the route was so cir cuitous and the time of travel so long as to defeat the purpose its projectors had in view in building it. Senator Torrey, whose father, John Torrey, was its most enthusiastic backer, was especially conspicuous in promoting the passage of its charter under the name originally of the Raritan and Delaware Bay Railroad. Manchester, down in the Jersey pines, was selected as its central business station, and the establishment of its car ahops there built the town into quite a flourishing community.