The Epic of New York City

by Edward Robb Ellis

  In 1807 New York was nicknamed Gotham. It seems that three young men—Washington Irving, his brother William, and James Kirke Paulding—wrote essays poking fun at the foibles of their fellow townsmen. This wasn’t difficult because manners were ridiculously formal. For example, one gentleman always spoke of Mr. Julius Caesar and Mr. Homer. This jumble of essays was called Salmagundi, meaning a hash made of minced veal, pickled herrings, anchovies, and onions served with lemon juice and oil. After they had appeared in newspapers, the Salmagundi squibs were published in a yellow-backed pamphlet small enough to be carried in a lady’s purse. Eight hundred copies were sold the first day of publication, and this started the Knickerbocker school of literature.

  New Yorkers chuckled, even though the essays mocked them. The authors dubbed the city Gotham because of something that had happened in the English village of Gotham in the thirteenth century. King John planned to visit Gotham and buy a castle there. The villagers, realizing that they would have to maintain this estate, decided to act like idiots and scare away the king. John was amazed to see them trying to rake the moon’s reflection out of a pond, joining hands around a thornbush to keep a cuckoo from flying away, and doing other foolish things. Wanting no part of such madmen, the king decided not to settle in Gotham. The villagers later chortled that “more fools pass through Gotham than remain in it.”

  The year of Salmagundi also produced the first New York guidebook. Written by Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, its pomposity amused and irritated Washington Irving. He was surprised to learn how few New Yorkers realized that the city once had been called New Amsterdam. Irving, who was making no progress as a lawyer, consulted local libraries and in twenty-two months wrote A History of New York From the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty. Because he pretended that it had been written by an antiquarian named Diedrich Knickerbocker, his work became known as Knickerbocker’s History of New York, and it also gave the city its symbol—Father Knickerbocker. The word means baker of marbles.

  As New York became a literary center, the age of steam navigation began. For twenty years inventors had experimented with a variety of steamboats, and Robert Fulton, son of an Irish immigrant, learned from all of them. Unlike the luckless Fitch, Fulton got financial backing from wealthy Robert R. Livingston, who had become minister to France after he had sworn in Washington as President. Fulton and Livingston met in Paris. The inventor ordered an engine built in England, and when he got back to New York, he found it lying on a wharf near the Battery. He had it hauled to Charles Brown’s shipyard on the East River, and there he oversaw the construction of his steamboat.

  The Clermont was 150 feet long and 13 feet wide. To play it safe, Fulton equipped her with a mast and sail, although she had a huge paddle wheel on each side. After she had been finished, the Clermont was towed to the foot of Amos (now West Tenth) Street on the west side of Manhattan.

  One August morning in 1807 Fulton prepared to cast off for the most memorable steamship trip in history. The forty-two-year-old inventor was a reserved man with a solemn face; he was tall and slender, with large dark eyes, a high forehead, and curly brown hair. A crowd of skeptics gathered on the banks of the Hudson. Uneasy passengers aboard the ship shifted their weight from one foot to another. At last the paddle wheels stirred the water into white foam, and the ship began to move. Then she stopped. From the shore arose murmurs of “I told you so!” Fulton asked the spectators and passengers to be patient for half an hour.

  After he had adjusted the balky engine, he again gave the signal to cast off. Now the paddle wheels not only turned but also kept moving and, since they were uncovered, threw up torrents of water, drenching the passenges. The Clermont was fueled by pine knots that cast sparks and ashes out of the skinny smokestack. Warding off this fiery deluge, the passengers looked as fearful as though they were crossing the river Styx. As the hissing thumping black monster crept up the Hudson, crews of passing river sloops fell to their knees to pray, cows along the shore stuck their tails into the air and bucketed into woods, and a farmer ran home to tell his wife that he had seen “the devil on his way to Albany in a sawmill.”

  The first stop for fuel was at Clermont, Livingston’s estate 110 miles above New York; later the ship was named for this place. She made the 150-mile trip to Albany at an average of 5 miles an hour, thus completing the first real voyage ever made by a steam vessel anywhere in the world. Fulton and Livingston won a monopoly of steamboat travel in New York waters, but soon other men built and operated steamships elsewhere.

  When Fulton had been in Paris, he had presented his idea for a steamboat to Napoleon. The emperor had been so impressed that he had ordered his marine minister to discuss the matter with Fulton, but nothing had been done for three years. By then it was too late. After Fulton’s success on the Hudson, Napoleon sighed: “I should have been master of the world, but those idiots of savants made fun of his invention!”

  Napoleon’s ambition kept Europe in bloody turmoil the first decade of the nineteenth century. England and its allies—but especially England—kept him from achieving his desires. Eager to make any sacrifice for “six hours’ control of that wet ditch”—the English Channel—Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States for money to invade England. The invasion never came off, but the headlong clash between France and Great Britain was felt in America.

  Neither European power paid much attention to the rights of neutrals, and the United States was by far the most important neutral. As France and England produced war matériel and fed huge armies, the demand for American produce soared, and the United States merchant marine multiplied. Each nation tried to keep American goods away from the other. Both were high-handed in halting American ships to search them. And the British impressed American seamen. As tensions mounted, it became apparent that something had to give.

  Chapter 16

  JOHN JACOB ASTOR

  FOOLS THE PRESIDENT

  TOWARD five o’clock on the afternoon of April 25, 1806, an American coastal sloop, called the Richard, was approaching New York after a trip from Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania. She reached a point two miles from Sandy Hook and a quarter mile off the Jersey shore. Suddenly three cannon shots were fired at her. They came from the Leander, one of three British warships that had been lying off New York, stopping coasters, searching merchantmen, seizing ships, and capturing American sailors. The first shot splashed into the water forty yards off the Richard’s bow. The second arched directly over her. The third ripped off the head of John Pierce, the Richard’s helmsman.

  When New Yorkers heard that the British had killed an American within sight of shore, they flared with anger. The previous day the Leander’s purser had come to town and bought food for his ship. Now that Pierce was dead, the outraged citizens seized two provision-laden boats at the wharf. Three other food-carrying craft had started down the bay, but swift American vessels overhauled them at Sandy Hook and brought them back to the city. All of the Leande’s captured supplies were loaded into ten carts and dragged by a noisy crowd to almhouses, where the food was given to the poor.

  The body of the murdered sailor was exposed to view on Burling Slip, then in the Tontine Coffee House, and finally in City Hall. Thousands seeing it muttered threat’s against England. The council denounced Pierce’s death and the unprovoked attack by a British warship, voted a public funeral, asked ships in the harbor to half-mast their flags, and requested church sextons to toll the bells.

  Although the beheading of the American seaman aroused less excitement outside New York, President Jefferson ordered the Leander to leave local waters. This did not end the friction. First the British and then the French, by a series of unilateral orders and decrees, cracked down on American commerce so harshly that the entire nation suffered. Still, both combatants sought American goods. During the first decade of the century American tonnage more than doubled, and American manufacturing boomed. The construction of the new ships increased the demand for sailors, whose wage
s rose from eight to twenty-four dollars a month. Because this was more than British seamen were paid, they deserted from every privateer and frigate entering American ports. In New York most English vessels left the harbor shorthanded.

  This provoked British authorities into ever more brazen violations of the rights of American ships and sailors. Tars were dragged aboard English ships while clutching American citizenship papers. Moreover, despite Jefferson’s order to the Leander, fleets of British frigates prowled the waters off New York, ambushed French privateers, and searched American ships for contraband goods and sailors.

  Although most British and Americans abhorred the thought of open conflict, the two nations began drifting into a second war. Congress passed four major acts restricting shipping in the hope of avoiding a clash, but to no avail. The second of these measures was the famous Embargo Act. It outlawed all international trade to and from American ports. Jefferson felt that it would teach England and France to honor neutral commerce. The ban later was extended to America’s inland waters and land-borne commerce to halt the skyrocketing trade with British Canada. Actually, the embargo hurt America more than it hurt any European power.

  Congress passed the Embargo Act on December 22, 1807, and Jefferson signed it. A few minutes later express riders galloped out of Washington with instructions to port collectors at New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. One weary horseman clattered into New York at 5 A.M. and awakened the local port collector. The sleepy official was told to forbid the departure of any ship for any foreign port. Coming wide-awake, he rustled a printer out of bed, and by 7 A.M. handbills announcing the new law were being distributed in the streets of Manhattan.

  It was like poking a stick into a beehive. People poured out of houses to fill die streets with humming confusion. Merchants, shipowners, sailors, and other citizens thronged to the wharves. Those with vested interests wanted to put to sea before the new law could be enforced. By 8 A.M. a little fleet of half-laden half-manned ships had spread their sails and were beating down toward the Narrows. None had clearances. Apparently most got away, for the port collector didn’t send his boats after them until ten o’clock.

  Fearful that the embargo would ruin them, Americans mournfully dubbed it O Grab Me—”Embargo” spelled backward. Before long, shipping came to a halt as the federal government enforced the ban along the Atlantic seaboard. Business in New York almost ground to a halt. Unemployment rose. Some citizens even began to starve. Sailors, beached through no fault of their own, became angry. On January 9, 1808, they led a mob through the streets, some demonstrators carrying signs demanding work and bread. The seamen also petitioned the mayor “to provide some means for our subsistence.”

  A soup kitchen was set up, and work relief projects were instituted. Some of the unemployed got jobs building City Hall. Others were assigned to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which the federal government had bought in 1801 from a shipbuilder, named John Jackson. Marshes were drained, and hills leveled. Earth from the cuts was dumped into the Collect, for this once-pure pond, thoughtlessly used as a garbage dump, had become so putrid that it needed to be filled in.

  Jacob Astor didn’t worry about relief projects. He was too busy scheming how to cheat the federal government and his competitors. Finally, he perfected his plan.

  One day a Chinese presented himself to Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, author of the city’s first guidebook. Mitchill was also a professor of natural history, a United States Senator from New York, and a friend of President Jefferson’s. Despite his eminence, he was considered deficient in common sense. The Chinese introduced himself as a merchant, named Punqua Wingchong. He said that he had been in New York for nine months attending to business. Now he wanted to go home to China because of pressing family matters, such as the rites connected with his grandfather’s death. The American embargo made this impossible.

  Mitchill sympathized with the plight of the honorable gendeman. On July 12, 1808, the doctor wrote a letter to President Jefferson introducing the bearer. Punqua Wingchong was now in Washington, said Mitchill, “to solicit the means of departure, in some way or other, to China; but he feels at the same time a strong desire to see the Chief Executive officer of the United States.” By this time Jefferson had left Washington to visit his home at Monticello. The Chinese wrote the President there and enclosed Mitchill’s letter. Jefferson was touched by the story. Besides, he thought that it might be wise for the administration to extend a courtesy that would be appreciated in the Celestial Court.

  The President wrote to Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, recommending that Wingchong’s request for a ship be granted. He enclosed a blank passport and urged the Secretary to “direct all the necessary details.” Gallatin went to work. On what ship did the Chinese—now referred to as a mandarin—propose to sail to China? On the Beaver. And what did the honorable Chinese wish to take aboard ship? Well, besides his personal effects, his attendants, and their luggage, about $40,000 worth of merchandise, including furs. Gallatin knew that the Beaver was owned by Jacob Astor. In fact, Gallatin and Astor were close friends. Always the scrupulous public servant, Gallatin never mixed business with pleasure. Once Astor’s name had crept into the affair, he had misgivings. Still, the President had asked him to do all he could, so on August 3 Gallatin forwarded the passport to New York’s port collector and explained why the President was willing to make an exception to the embargo.

  Then Punqua Wingchong, sleek in a silk coat gay with peacock buttons, shuffled up the gangway onto the 427-ton Beaver to take a cup of tea with her skipper. On August 13 the shipping column of the New York Commercial Advertiser printed this one-line announcement: “Yesterday the ship Beaver, Captain Galloway, sailed for China.”

  It was like splashing cold water onto a hot stove. People sizzled with indignation. Business-starved merchants and shippers, forbidden to dispatch theirs ships to foreign shores, denounced the affair as a hoax. One of them wrote Jefferson: “The great Chinese personage was no mandarin, not even a Hong Kong merchant, but a common Chinese dock loafer, smuggled out from China, who had departed from that country contrary to its laws, and would be saved from death on his return only by his obscure condition.”

  The President, embarrassed at becoming Astor’s dupe, ignored the letter. Gallatin was upset because tongues were already wagging about his friendship with Astor. The Secretary wrote the President: “Had I any discretion as to the application itself, I would have hesitated; for I apprehend that there is some speculation at bottom; and every deviation from the general rule is considered favourtism [sic] and excites dissatisfaction.”

  But by now there was nothing anyone could do, for the fast-flying Beaver was far beyond the reach of any American patrol boat. On June 1, 1809, she returned to New York with a full cargo of china-ware, spices, silks, and tea. Because of the embargo, grocers clamored for tea, the Souchong brand fetching the price once asked for imperial gunpowder tea. Since the Beaver was the first ship from China in more than a year, Astor made a profit of $200,000 on her merchandise. This was his biggest single coup to date. He had gulled the President of the United States; hoodwinked his friend, the Secretary of the Treasury; outmaneuvered the New York port collector; and beaten New York businessmen who stuck to the law. Yes, Astor was proud of himself. He took part of the money and bought a huge farm stretching from Broadway to the Hudson River in what is now mid-Manhattan.

  The same year, 1809, in New York, 1,300 men were jailed for no crime except that of having been ruined by the embargo Astor defied. The city looked like a wasteland. Waterfront streets were almost deserted. Grass grew on wharves. Ships were dismantled, their decks stripped and hatches battened down. Coffeehouses were nearly empty. Other buildings were shut or advertised for sale. The next year 1,050 New Yorkers were thrown into debtors’ prison for debts of less than $25.

  On March 1, 1809, in a face-saving gesture, Jefferson signed the Nonintercourse Act, repealing the embargo and reopening trade with all nations except France and Gre
at Britain. Three days later he was succeeded in the Presidency by his friend James Madison. Like his predecessor, Madison exhausted every effort to preserve peace, but in vain.

  Jacob Astor had much to lose if war broke out. Among other things he owned a lucrative fur post, called Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River northwest of the present city of Portland, Oregon. One day in 1812 Astor got into a coach in New York and started for Washington to plead with Madison to maintain neutrality, but halfway there he heard that the President had signed a resolution declaring that the United States was at war with England. Astor turned around and headed home. He lost Astoria, worth $800,000. Astor could afford it. A few years later he was dealing in narcotics, writing a Constantinople merchant to “please send returns in Opium” for a consignment of 1,500 red-fox furs.

  New Yorkers were divided on the issue of war. Despite the indignities suffered at the hands of England, many yearned for peace. The Commercial Advertiser printed this headline: “MOST AWFUL CALAMITY.” A strong minority of merchant princes not only opposed the war but also openly proclaimed admiration for the enemy. Although they had lost ships to the British, they more than compensated for these losses by marine insurance and inflated profits from the goods they managed to bring to port. But while they sat safely at home and counted their gains, their hired seamen had jeopardized their freedom on the high seas. Sailors, eager to get even with the British for seizing 6,000 shipmates, roared with joy when war began.

  At a mass meeting in City Hall Park it was resolved “to lay aside all animosity and private bickering, and aid the authorities in constructing fortifications.” Senator Samuel L. Mitchill, for all his bumbling, got generous federal defense appropriations for New York. When the war started, the city contained four arsenals and two forts. One fort, known at first as the Southwest Battery, had been completed in 1807. Standing on a cluster of rocks a short distance from the southern tip of Manhattan, it had walls 8 feet thick, massive bolt-studded doors, and gun embrasures. The other fort, Castle Williams, located on Governors Island, had been finished in 1811. Called the Cheesebox because of its circular shape, it was 200 feet in diameter, with red sandstone walls 40 feet high and 8 feet thick.