The volcano under the city

Front matter

THE VOLGA

UNDER THE CITY

By

Preface

XJO adequate account of the Draft-riot of 1863 ■ has ever been printed. Contemporary news-

paper reports of it were necessarily fragmentary and defective. People at that time residing in New York, including even the men who aided in suppressing the mob, had but an imperfect conception of the magnitude and bloody results of the tttmult. The difficulties in the way of obtaining data for a trustworthy record have been very great. The author of this volume has laboriously sifted the press reports for all material contained in them which was worth preserving. He has had access to the telegraph-books of the Police Department, and has carefully examined the hundreds of despatches sent and received during the riot. Many of those have here been quoted in full as a part of the record or illustrating it. ^Much help has been cheerfully given him by veteran members of the police force and others who were city officials at the time ; by officers of the volunteer and militia forces actively engaged in the struggle with the mob; and by citizens who were eye-witnesses of events narrated. The author himself was then in

Preface, the city, serving as a volunteer during the first two days of the riot, thereby obtaining vivid impressions which better prepared him for the present work.

The entire mass of material, after collection, has been thoroughly read and criticised by the very highest police authority, and the book as printed contains no statement of fact which has not received the most competent official approval.

The general reader, in order to comprehend the situation, should, from the beginning, bear in mind that the riot took place during the Civil War, in July, 1863, just after the battle of Gettysburg. The entire organized militia of the cities of New York and Brooklyn was absent on duty, having been drawn away by the national government for temporary service in that memorable campaign. Owing to the war, nevertheless, both cities contained large numbers of men who had had experience in the field and were thereby prepared for the emergency.

It is the author's conviction that his toilsome research is fully justified. The present day has its plainly perceptible perils, and with a direct reference to these the great riot offers a number of sufficiently obvious suggestions.

New York, Oct. 1, 1886, c

ONTENTS.

PAGE

I. The Unexpected Comes 7

II. The Black Joke 25

III. Burned Alive 49

IV. Down with Property! ., 60

V. Sacking an Orphan Asylum 71

VI. A Memorable Night 96

VII. Tuesday's Hard Fight 116

VIII. Street to Street, House to House 130

IX. A Very Hot Afternoon 154

X. Through a Dark Night 187

XL The Fighting on Wednesday. , 217

XII. Wednesday Night's Grapple , 241

XIII. Anarchy Dying Hard 259

XIV. Restoration of Order. ... 284

XV. The Opportunity „ 296

XVI. Then and Now 316

I. The Police 335

II. The Military 340

III. The Draft Act 341

IV. Proclamations... , ».... 344

V. Archbishop Hughes *.<,..„. „ 348

VI. Military Orders 349

Map of New York, to Central Park Frontispiece

Police Precincts marked in Red.

The Elevated Roads, Brooklyn Bridge, etc., left on to show present status, the Police Precincts being the same now as in 1863.

THE VOLCANO

Under the City.

I. The Unexpected Comes

" Thus far, everything has gone quietly, and the people generally consider the Draft as a matter of course, for we have been unable to learn of any undue excitement in regard to it in any section. Many stories have been circulated to the effect that bands, gangs, and companies have been organized, here and there, with the intention of resisting the Draft, and that the numbers are armed and drilled, hold secret meetings, and so forth ; but, from all that we can learn, no such organizations exist ; and even if they did, they will amount to nothing."

HP HAT was the editorial declaration of the New York Daily Tribime on Saturday morning, July ii, 1863 ; and there was no better authority in the country.

Three days later, come to the corner of Broadway and Twenty-third Street. It is the very heart of the city; noon, July 14, 1863.

Where have all the people gone ? Why are the streets deserted and the stores closed? Why is the air so full of smoke that you can scarcely breathe ? Are those men intoxicated who lie upon the pavement yonder? What is this awful crash and rattle which seems to come from every direction?

Stand still for a few minutes and look and listen.

That which all men said could not and would not come has come. The mob has risen, and the greatest riot known in American history is at its height.

It is an affair intensely interesting and well worthy of careful study. At this hour, a Volunteer Special, begrimed with two days of hotweather service, is sufficiently rough-looking to be almost safe, even here on Broadway, but no carefully dressed person would be so. Scores of men have been beaten half to death for the offence of wearing good clothes. It is a terrible time for women and children. Business is dead. The ships at the wharves have ceased loading or unloading. All the street-car lines have been compelled to stop running. Nearly all the telegraphlines are down. The police are apparently beaten.

The militia regiments are all in Pennsylvania. The people are rallying fast to suppress the tumult and are organizing, but in the mean time the work of destruction goes on. The mob have kindled twenty-four fires since yesterday morning, and some of these have burned whole blocks of buildings. The rioters have plundered houses and shops and stores, murdered men, maltreated women, destroyed an orphan asylum, and now threaten to do more and worse.

The men upon the pavement yonder are not drunk ; they are dead. They will be buried in due season, but you and I will never know how or by whom. The coroners have ceased holding inquests. The Burial Permit Bureau is not in operation. The cemeteries cannot be reached, from many parts of the city. There will never be any public record of the death of those men, but the real cause in each case is worth examining into, for the apparent cause was evidently the club of a policeman.

As we stand here, there is a crowd coming up Broadway, and they must be looked at as they pass.

They are whooping, yelling, blaspheming, howling, demoniac, such as no man imagined the city io The Volcano Under the City.

of New York to contain. There are women among them, and boys half grown, but none of them seem to be Americans. Who are they?

That is a very important question, and can be answered only after a more searching inquiry than can be made off-hand. Changing the form into " What are they?" this look at them partly answers it.

They carry guns, pistols, axes, hatchets, crowbars, pitchforks, knives, bludgeons, — the Red Flag. Much of their shouting is done in other tongues, but that cry is in English : " Down with the rich men ! Down with property ! Down with the police !"

It is an insurrection of evil against law ; an uprising of suppressed hellish forces against order. They mean precisely what they shout, and are fiercely carrying into effect their declared purposes.

Could this bursting-forth have been prevented ?

Decidedly it could have been, if our law-abiding, self-confident public could have believed beforehand that such a thing as this was possible. The crust over this volcano broke through at the want-of-preparation point, and all the other crust gave way. As for the crowd here, it is much like the others which, as a Volunteer Special, I have taken note of. Those fellows in front are all exconvicts, of one crime or another. There is hardly an American among them, even by adoption, still less by birth. A German, Irishman, Frenchman, any other man, coming here and really becoming American will keep out of such business. Those men have not ceased to be foreigners at heart, and have brought with them and kept in them all their inheritance of bitterness "and brutality. As for any specific object in this present outbreak, they have none. They have not thought so far as that.

The army in the field needed men ; the President ordered a conscription, under the law ; the incidents of the enforcement of the conscription provided an occasion ; the under-world seized the opportunity and broke loose, for a few hours calling itself a " Draft-riot. " It is easy, now, to discover its real character. Just such a volcano is continually in a state of perfect preparation in this and every other large city, and in many smaller gatherings of the required elements of disorder. The forces increase rather than diminish, and the ready peril asks for less and less in the way of an apparent excuse or palliation.

The writer of this book considers himself on duty, now as in July, 1863, as a Volunteer Special, with a very possible riot slumbering near him.

In telling the plain story of a fierce, midsummer madness which once came to the city of New York, the use proposed is somewhat more than the relation of an interesting episode. The signs of the times are such as summon thoughtful men to put away the indifference and unbelief which then held open wide the gate through which disaster poured in. Most important of all thoughtful men, and most directly spoken to, are the thoughtful working-men whose hands hold the entire political power of this country. They are well aware of the futility and absurdity of crime as a means or method in political operations. Outside of them, around them, controllable by them, is a vast mass of ignorance, recklessness, and depravity which does not think. To this mass, life itself seems a failure. It broods and sulks and suffers and has no hope, and it could not break loose without doing harm, unmixed with good of any sort.

The hands of American labor hold the ballot and do not need to take up the dynamite cartridge or the torch or the carbine. The American

The Unexpected Comes.

o laborer has no excuse for following blind, imported guides into ditches of blood and fire.

The history of all madness teaches that it will do, in its frenzied paroxysms, what everyday sanity has no dream of doing. History also records in many repetitions the unaccountable suddenness with which masses of men will take the infection of a great craze.

The country as a whole has forgotten that there was ever a really great riot in the city of New York. Its own population is better aware that there was a serious disturbance connected, in some vague manner, with trie " Draft" during the Civil War. Yet very few even of those who, like the writer of this book, were present, seeing in part and hearing in part, have any clear idea of the extent and nature of the terrible event.

There was a great riot, and it was only in small part either political or sectarian. What it really was must be shown step by step. The volcanic forces which broke loose had no apparent sufficient cause for such an eruption. They had no attainable object. They were under no known leadership or direction. They had but a slight and crude prior organization. Nevertheless they did an appalling amount of mischief.

H The Volcano Under the City.

There have been, and in other lands there yet may be, such things as righteous revolutions, accompanied by tumultuous uprisings of suppressed social elements. There cannot be any need for tumult, violence, bloodshed, and devastation in these free United States, where the individual man, the voter, is ruler. It must, therefore, be accepted as an axiom that a mob of violence in the United States is a mob of crime. It is composed of criminal units, in the act of committing felony, who must be dealt with accordingly. The best dealing is the shortest, and begins at the beginning.

A mere outbreak may occur in one of many unexpected ways, but the core of any great sedition must consist, even at the outset, of men and women who have previously been guilty of criminal acts or are morally prepared for such commission. What a flood may sweep with it, once it is well a-going, will appear with sufficient plainness from the following record.

Such a nucleus, the first requisite of a mob, was found in 1863. It exists now, ready for action, in hundreds of localities, and the friends of labor and of law must watch it.

The second requisite for a great riot is the existence of real or supposed grievances, bitter enough to give force and effect to a rallying-cry. Such grievances, both real and imaginary, now everywhere exist in the disturbed relations between labor and capital. The daily crime of permitting these allies to be enemies marks the low and heathenish standard of what is called statesmanship.

A third requisite before crime will be ready to lead a tumult is a supposed or actual weakness of the known repressive forces. This, in New York, in 1863, was provided by the absence of nearly all the organized militia regiments, in response to a military necessity of the nation.

A fourth indispensable condition is a heated, feverish state of the social elements capable of rioting. The fuel must be ready to kindle. How this preparation was then made will be shown. Everything is very ready indeed at the present time, and will continue to be so until a change comes.

A fifth and highly important condition is the habitual refusal of sober-minded people to believe that there is any volcano.

The quotation from the New York Daily Tribune, at the beginning of this chapter, is selected from many like utterances to illustrate the accepted view of the situation in 1863. The press reporters discovered very little fever ; the police did not see any signs of danger ; the authorities were very sure there was no " crater." Only through the deceptive crust of a false security could there have been such a ruinous bursting-up. All who thus studied and denied erred as to the nature of the possible peril to be watched against, for they were entirely correct in declaring that the state of the popular mind with reference to the Draft was by no means seriously threatening. It was in the middle of the third year of the Civil War. The United States Government had been compelled to follow the lead of the Confederates and resort to conscription instead of volunteering in order to supply its armies. Men opposed to the war itself, to the Lincoln Administration, and the merely seditious, had made all the political capital possible out of the fact and the methods of the conscription ; yet the result of their efforts was well stated by the Tribune, and by other journals that used similar language. The specific features of the conscription or " draft " will be presented in their proper place.

The War Department had published its formal announcement that the enrolment was complete, and that the draft would begin on the nth of July. So strong was official faith in the existing order of things that no further notification was sent to the Mayor or to the Board of Metropolitan Police. No requisition was made for a police guard to preserve order at the several enrolment offices at which the Draft was to take place. No unusual military force was provided. The only shadow of such a precaution was the fact that a regiment of the Invalid Corps (crippled soldiers, five hundred strong, — or, rather, five hundred weak) was directed to furnish proper guard details. On Saturday morning, July nth, and on Monday morning, July 13th, such details were duly made, but they were regarded as mere matters of form and ceremony — something like regulation " guard-mounting " in time of peace. The brave but helpless fellows furnished a mere picture and suggestion of the armed force actually demanded by the facts of the situation.

It was generally well known that the Governor

of the State, Hon. Horatio Seymour, had been

and still was in correspondence with the national

government, with a view to a prevention, mitiga- 2 tion, or postponement of the Draft, and there were many who believed that he would succeed or had succeeded. His efforts were without result, except that the fact of their making was one element of the general suspense. He was an acute and experienced political observer, yet it does not appear that he, more than others, was in any fear of extended disorder.

In spite of all the seeming quiet, nevertheless, there were — increasingly at the very last — dark rumors of trouble to come. They circulated whisperingly from house to house through all the lower wards of the city. There were, moreover, some clear-headed citizens who began to not only perceive the presence of possible danger but to also prepare to meet it. It is a curious feature of the situation that not the timid men or the noncombatants, but some of the military officers who for various reasons remained in the city were fairly well awakened to the impending crisis before it aroused the suspicions of those who were supposed to be professionally on the watch for its indications. There were mutual conferences and exchanges of opinion among these gentlemen, of which there is no exact record, and small informal gatherings of them, in more places than one, to discuss the situation, were held on Sunday, the I2th of July.

It was merely by a sort of professional instinct that, on Saturday, Police Superintendent Kennedy made a detail of a sergeant and fifteen policemen to take charge of the Arsenal at Thirty-fifth Street and Seventh Avenue, and to hold it until relieved by a suitable military guard. No authority asked for them, nobody knew precisely why they were sent, and they could not long have held their vitally important post against any considerable party of assailants. They were an indication of vague and undefinable uneasiness, and that was all. There were many muskets and much ammunition in the Arsenal, however, and the police guard may have been sent there in time to prevent a world of mischief.

On Saturday morning, the nth of July, 1863, the actual operation of the Draft began, at the Marshal's or Enrolment Office of the Third Subdivision of the Ninth Congressional District, at No. 677 Third Avenue, corner of Forty-sixth Street. The drawings of names were made by means of a lottery-wheel, and proceeded throughout the day without any interruption whatever,

2o The Volcano Under the City.

The crowd assembled was large and contained many cloudy faces, but all utterances of discontent were seemingly within the bounds of reason. The leaders of the coming riot seem to have required the results of that day's work in order to bring their recklessness up to the proper point ; or it may be that such plans as they had formed included the precise date, the 13th, fixed upon for the general Draft, all over the city. Twelve hundred and thirty-six names were drawn, leaving only 264 men to be obtained in order to complete the quota of that subdivision. No other enrolment office was ready or attempted a beginning of operations that day. When the lottery-wheel ceased its intensely-watched revolutions, the crowd slowly dispersed. The drafted men had yet some days left in which to arrange their affairs and report for duty, or the reverse, but they all went away more or less gloomily. In proportion to the measure of their patriotism or war-spirit, or the pressure of their circumstances, or their mental and moral condition, the oppressive nature of the Conscription Act became manifest to them. Its tremendous reality also dawned upon them and upon the entire community. It was a fact, and one from which no manner of escape was provided for any drafted man who could not raise three hundred dollars to pay his exemptionfee or furnish a substitute. There was no question raised by anybody as to the fairness and impartiality of the day's work at the marshal's office. The 1236 names were distributed among all classes, ranks, and conditions, and the laborer and the millionaire were alike before the even-handed law. As to the " mob element," it was well understood that a larger proportion of this than of any other had escaped enrolment, owing to its drifting, uncertain residence and the extreme difficulty experienced by the enrolling officers in specifying its individual members. No propertyowner and no man in regular business could escape the search ; but the vagrant, the unknown, the men accustomed to conceal their whereabouts, avoided the hated " wheel " by the thousand.

In spite of this fact, however, a number of names were drawn that day of men whose previous course of life had made them well known to the police, and doubts were freely expressed by the latter as to whether all of these would actually take their places in the ranks of the army.

It may have been just as well for the army that many of the worst of them unintentionally elected to be mowed down by grape and canister in the streets of New York. Such difficulty as the police thus anticipated was with desperate men as individuals and not in any organized or collective capacity.

The purely political opponents of the conscription of men for the armies of the United States had been in a manner deprived of strength by the recent victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and were disposed to quiet. No anti-administration leader of any social standing or name or influence was or could be an advocate of anarchy. An entirely different element was nearly ready to avail itself of the situation.

The next day, the I2th of July, was Sunday. It was passed in a sort of suppressed fermentation by nearly the entire population. The coolest although most deeply interested men were the Metropolitan Police, who were hardly affected by the growing excitement. The external signs of its effect upon others escaped them altogether, or, if observed, were regarded as indicating nothing of importance. All the discussions of the evil to come, and there must have been many such, were held in secret places ; but their existence seemed to send out an atmosphere of its own that brooded heavily over the whole city. Quiet citizens in their houses felt tkat there was trouble in the air, and wondered what it might be. There were fires in two or three places on Sunday evening, but nobody connected them with the Draft, and it was only noticed that they seemed to attract larger and more disorderly crowds than ordinarily. *

The fact already alluded to, that this atmosphere pervaded and affected the several informal coteries of militia and volunteer officers, afterwards became of great importance. These gentlemen discussed the subject of a possible riot as a military problem, and took into professional consideration what might best be done by themselves in case of such an emergency. As a consequence, they were better prepared for prompt and effective action during the next twenty-four hours. On the whole, Sunday passed so quietly that its close presented no feature which seemed to call for especial action by either the civil or military authorities.

There were many reasons why the police were entirely justified in their calm assurance of security. They had good ground for their confidence in their own ability to deal with any possible disorder in the city of New York. The State and. the National governments were in like manner justifiable.

It remains unquestionably true, nevertheless, that the one factor of safety which was entirely absent was a vital one : if the danger had been seen and acknowledged, it would have been provided for, and there would have been no riot extending beyond the street and square upon which it began.

II. The Black Joke

/^N Sunday evening, July 12th, no more than the customary details for duty were made by the Superintendent of Metropolitan Police. He had at his disposal about a thousand men/ well trained and entirely trustworthy, being that half of the entire force which was " on duty." The other half was " off duty," for its daily rest, but subject to summons, constituting it an available reserve. The thousand or more men on duty were scattered all over the city. The station-house of each of the thirty-two precincts* was the local headquarters and rallying-point of the men belonging to that precinct. Each station-house was connected by telegraph with the Central Office, the general business of the department being transacted through the wires. All messages of any importance were duly recorded, in ordinary times. That part of the force intrusted

* For the location of each of these, see Appendix, page 336 ; also Map of the city.

with the care of the city of Brooklyn, across the East River but included in the Metropolitan Police District, was similarly circumstanced.

The Board of Metropolitan Police was invested with the power of calling out and employing the militia regiments within its jurisdiction, but these all, seventeen in number, were now out of reach.

Superintendent Kennedy had no thought of needing militia regiments or of any special pressure upon what seemed the ample force under his direction. It was purely as a routine precaution that he ordered a sergeant and twelve men to proceed to each of the United States enrolment offices on Monday morning. It was well understood that crowds of men would then be gathered at those places, and it was a regular duty of the police to be present wherever a crowd might assemble.

The proposed preservation of the public peace was the only requisition in the case, and it was believed that the squads of Metropolitans detailed would be sufficient to insure that.

The United States officer in command of the regiment of the Invalid Corps, Colonel Ruggles, formerly of General Pope's staff, made his regulation " details," but they were late in starting to their posts of duty, and were much too late in arriving. Very little more was heard of them during the riots, although they served as garrisons of posts, here and there. They had done their best service on other fields, and were poorly adapted to the rough-and-tumble struggle of putting down a mob.

The mayor of the city, Hon. George Opdyke, came to his office at an early hour, for word had reached him that there might be disturbances in the course of the day. A friendly warning had also been sent him that his own residence might be assailed, but he quietly and bravely disregarded it. He was partly right, for none of the anti-war political leaders of whom he had any personal knowledge proposed to hurt either him or his family or his dwelling, however much they might regret the political fact that he was mayor of New York. It was well for his property, however, if not for its human inmates, that some of his neighbors learned of the giving of the warning and took a different view of the matter. The house had an armed guard before it (and not by the mayor's orders), just about in season.

The nominal, and officially the actual, commander of the militia of the metropolis was

Major-General Charles Sandford, a brave old officer, to whom it was almost in vain to carry any startling or menacing report or rumor. He was one of the last to believe that there was or could be any real danger brewing; and even after the riot was in full blast, and his own men, directed by his more wide-awake subordinates, were firing volleys down street after street, it was almost impossible to make him comprehend the gravity of the situation. He persisted in sending telegrams to Police Headquarters that " all is quiet," during the very hours of Monday when Police-President Acton's force was struggling for life against overwhelming numbers, and again towards the close of the week, when yet the mob held almost undisputed possession of entire wards. The commander of the United States Military District which included New York was Major- General John E. Wool, an army officer distinguished in three wars, but whose age and infirmities unfitted him to deal with circumstances so new to him and so surprisingly trying and perplexing. He could much better have directed an organized army in the field of battle than have handled miscellaneous forces of all sorts in a hurly-burly street fight of several days'

duration. He was quickly compelled to abandon all idea of personally supervising or directing any part of them. The immediate command of the United States troops in and about the port of New York devolved upon Brigadier-General Harvey Brown, of the United States Regular Army. He also was a veteran of many battle-fields, and he proved to be by no means out of place in this one. On being summoned to the scene of action, with a quick shrewdness and a putting aside of all mere " service" prejudices which did him honor, he at once proceeded to the Police Headquarters in Mulberry Street, and there remained, not only as commanding and directing his own men, but also as the unflinching, unhesitating counsellor and ally of Mr. Acton, the President of the Board of Police Commissioners.

It had been ordered that all the enrolment offices should be ready for proceeding with the Draft, and it was not doubted but that they would duly begin their work on Monday morning. They were not quite ready, however, and the greater part of them were yet busy with their final preparations during the morning hours. Before noon all the marshals had received further orders to cease work and convey the contents of their offices to places of greater security.