The Epic of New York City

by Edward Robb Ellis

  Aware that they would lose any war with America, Spanish officials conceded point after point, trying in almost every way to avoid open conflict. On February 18 the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya paid a courtesy call to the port of New York. When her commander learned of the loss of the Maine, he expressed regrets, half-masted his colors in mourning, and declined to take part in the scheduled ceremonies of welcome. Despite this, the World shrilled that the Vizcaya had treacherous intentions, saying, “While lying off the Battery, her shells will explode on the Harlem River and in the suburbs of Brooklyn.” But the Spanish cruiser left New York without even firing a pistol shot.

  Spain now asked for the recall of the American consul general in Cuba, Congress appropriated $50,000,000 for defense, the War Department began to mobilize the army, Pope Leo XIII appealed for peace, and the United States cabled an ultimatum to Spain. In the Knickerbocker Theatre at Broadway and Thirty-eighth Street audiences went wild with patriotism as the song “Unchain the Dogs of War” was introduced into the musical comedy The Bride Elect. Hearst sent Journal reporters throughout the New York area to interview mothers of sailors who had died in the Maine. Every day Hearst worked busily in his office in the Tribune Building. Pulitzer seldom visited the golden-domed World Building, directing his editorial staff from one or another of his five mansions or from aboard his yacht. Both the Journal and the World raised their price from one to two cents. The Journal introduced its readers to a new card game, called Game of War With Spain.

  Because the American navy did not own a single troopship, the government began buying yachts, coastal steamers, seagoing tugs, and other vessels to transport troops to Cuba, to patrol the American coast, and to blockade our harbors. When J. Pierpont Morgan was told that the government wanted his yacht, the Corsair, he twisted and turned in every way to keep his beloved vessel, but without avail. The Corsair was taken to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where her beautiful mahogany was ripped out. Hearst freely offered the government his yacht, the Buccaneer. John Jacob Astor placed his yacht, the Nourmahal, at the disposal of the United States, equipped an artillery battery, and later served as its lieutenant colonel. Jay Gould’s daughter, Helen M. Gould, gave the navy $100,000.

  On April 23 President McKinley called for 125,000 volunteers. Theodore Roosevelt resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to organize the First Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. He wrote his family that he had plans for a “jim-dandy regiment” in case of war and that “it would be awful to miss the fun.” He bought a uniform from Brooks Brothers in New York, sewed extra sets of pince-nez inside it, and rushed to San Antonio, Texas, where the regiment was being organized. The elite corps, which took the name of the Rough Riders, consisted of 1,000 cowboys, Indians, Ivy League athletes, and 4 New York policemen. Totally without military experience, Roosevelt accepted a commission as lieutenant colonel under the commanding officer, Colonel Leonard Wood, an army surgeon, who had fought Indians in the West. Unlike army regulars, who wore blue woolen shirts, the Rough Riders wore thin khaki uniforms.

  On April 25 Congress declared that a state of war between the United States and Spain had existed since April 21. For the next two days the Journal’s front pages asked, “HOW DO YOU LIKE THE JOURNAL’S WAR?” Someone apparently persuaded Hearst to remove the gauche boast, but in conversations with staff members he continued to refer to the conflict as “our war.”

  By this time New York had become the first motion-picture capital in history. When war was declared, two pioneer film makers saw an opportunity. J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith rushed to their movie studio on the roof of the Morse Building, at 140 Nassau Street, and made a short film, called Tearing Down the Spanish Flag. In the movie’s climactic moment, Blackton’s hand reached out from one side of the screen to pull down the Spanish colors. Shown in vaudeville houses throughout New York, the patriotic film became a smashing success.

  Cables were cut between New York and Havana. The entrance to New York harbor was mined and patrolled. George B. McClellan, Jr., then a Democratic Congressman from New York, and later mayor of this city, declared in his posthumous memoirs, “The Spanish-American War was one of the most unnecessary that has ever been fought. Its alleged purpose, the freeing of Cuba, could have been attained without firing a shot, spending a dollar or wasting a man. . . .” * Nevertheless, McClellan warned the House of Representatives that “our seacoast was entirely undefended, that we had neither great guns nor ammunition, and that any of the first-class navies could lie outside New York and destroy the city without the guns of the city’s alleged defenses being able to reach them.”

  Spanish Rear Admiral Pascual Cervera sailed with a formidable Spanish fleet from the Cape Verde Islands and steered west. Americans learned that he had left but did not know his destination. A rumor spread: He was going to descend on the Atlantic seaboard. Panic ensued. New York hastily reinforced its defenses. Rich New Yorkers raced out of town to inland points that seemed safer. The owners of Long Island summer hotels begged the government for protection. But instead of attacking New York or any other Atlantic port, the Spanish admiral turned up in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba on the southern shore of Cuba.

  The war spirit affected gambling in New York. Whenever a phone rang in a bookie joint, the man who answered would not say, “Hello,” but “Havana.” The correct response, indicating that the caller was to be trusted, was the muttered phrase “Remember the Maine.” In 1897 a songwriter, named Charles K. Harris, had dashed off a sentimental ballad entitled “Break the News to Mother.” This concerned the death of a fireman. After war broke out, Harris rewrote his lyrics, changing the fireman to a soldier. “Break the News to Mother” became a smash hit.

  National guard units gathered in New York City armories the day after war was declared. Three days later the first company of volunteers set up camp on the Hempstead plains of Long Island twenty-two miles east of the city. The camp was called Camp Black for New York Governor Frank S. Black, whose term had ended in 1896. The Brooklyn Eagle erected a tent and displayed a banner inviting Brooklyn soldiers and their visitors to take their ease within the canvas shelter. Not to be outdone, the New York Journal proclaimed: “The bulletin service of the Journal is now perfected to such an extent that the news is posted on all the Journal boards in and out of the city at the same time it appears on the board at the main office.” Camp Black had been thrown together so hastily that it was a squalid and uncomfortable post. With the usual cynicism of soldiers, New York boys decorated their tents with names such as The Suicide Club, Waldorf-Astoria, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  On June 13 Roosevelt and his Rough Riders sailed out of Tampa. The main body of American troops left Key West between June 12 and 14. Beginning June 20, this land force of 17,000 regulars and volunteers landed at Daiquiri, 14 miles east-southeast of Santiago de Cuba. When war was declared, Cuba contained 155,302 Spanish regular troops and 41,518 Cuban irregulars. Cuban insurgents actively in the field against Spain numbered no more than 15,000. The day after American troops landed at Daiquiri, they began moving toward Santiago.

  The most important land combat of the Spanish-American War consisted of 2 battles fought on July 1, 1898, near Santiago. At the village of El Caney, 4 miles northeast of the city, 7,000 United States troops took a strong post garrisoned by about 600 of the enemy. South of El Caney lay a series of ridges, known collectively as San Juan. The highest of these, San Juan Hill, was captured that July 1 by American forces.

  The Battle of San Juan Hill was fought mainly by United States regulars. The Seventy-first New York was the only militia regiment present. Badly officered, sweating in wool shirts, and the black powder of their rifles emitting a telltale target every time they fired, members of the Seventy-first broke and then panicked. Their disgrace was witnessed by a World correspondent, Stephen Crane. His dispatch, published in Pulitzer’s paper, angered Hearst, who called it a slander on the heroism of New Yorkers. Many men of the Seventy-first, that fateful day, recouped their morale and joine
d the regulars as individuals, but the black mark they had earned was not soon forgiven by the public.

  A better performance was turned in by Negro soldiers from New York. Members of the Ninth and Tenth cavalries, composed entirely of Negroes, fought beside the Rough Riders and won their admiration. Roosevelt later wrote: “As I heard one of the Rough Riders say after the charge at San Juan: ‘Well, the Ninth and Tenth men are all right. They can drink out of our canteens.’ ” Because of the valor of these Negroes, an area in New York City was dubbed San Juan Hill. This was located at the northern end of Hell’s Kitchen, west of Columbus Circle, along West Sixty-first, Sixty-second, and Sixty-third streets.

  Like Roosevelt, Hearst saw action in the war. After he gave his yacht to the navy, he bought another one, named the Sylvia. Wearing a yachting cap and sporting a pistol, Hearst led his own fleet of twenty cutters to Cuba. On July 3 Admiral Cervera’s fleet tried to break out of Santiago Harbor. At that very moment Hearst’s private fleet was circling the American fleet within range of American guns, compelling the American navy to hold its fire. After the Hearst navy had pulled out of range, the U.S. navy was able to bombard the fleeing Spanish ships.

  Hearst was in Cuba a total of seventeen days. There he met a Cuban, named Honoré Laine, who had served him as a correspondent. This rebel told Hearst that forty Spanish prisoners taken at El Caney by the Americans had been turned over to his Cuban band. Hearst asked what the rebels had done with their Spanish captives. Laine replied casually, “We cut off their heads, of course.” Since this was a war of his own making and since Laine was on his side, Hearst excused the barbarity, writing in a dispatch to the Journal: “The Cuban is tender and gentle. One seldom finds a man of more generous and gracious impulses than this Laine. His hour has come and he is lost in the almost savage enjoyment of it.”

  Santiago surrendered on July 17, and nine days later the Spanish government asked for peace terms. On August 4 the War Department authorized the removal of American troops from Cuba. Now arose a great controversy. More American soldiers had fallen victim to yellow fever, malaria, and typhoid than had died in battle. New York City objected to the landing of the army in its harbor because of the danger of these infectious diseases. At the time no one knew that malaria was caused by mosquito bite.

  Finally, it was decided that the returning troops would be landed at Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island, 127 miles from New York. In haste and confusion on those early days of August an army reception center was thrown together and named Camp Wyckoff, in honor of a colonel of the regulars killed at San Juan Hill. Hospital sites were staked out. Wells were drilled. Wires were strung along the ground. A strike by Brooklyn carpenters increased the problem of creating the camp from scratch. With no warehouses ready, army supplies could not be unloaded, so Long Island Rail Road freight cars were backed up from Montauk Point the 21 miles to Amagansett.

  The omnipresent Journal put up three tents at Montauk. Soon the paper printed headlines about starving men, dying heroes, and food rotting on transports. One Journal banner shouted about “MURDER THAT IS BEING DONE AT MONTAUK.” Red Cross workers hastened to the camp. Ladies’ aid societies went into action. Society women sent their private chefs to the site. Soon the bivouacked soldiers feasted on pheasant and squab, champagne and brandy. Under the blistering sun and starry sky they lived in luxury. At last both the good and the bad came to an end. All the volunteers were discharged. The regulars were transferred to various army posts.

  This shifted part of the load to New York City. Unconscious soldiers were taken off Long Island trains and driven to Bellevue Hospital. Other sick soldiers were found in the streets in a state of collapse. Doctors and nurses worked around the clock. Ultimately, all the city’s hospitals became so jammed with bedridden soldiers that some had to be transferred to Newport and Boston.

  A public outcry arose about the government beef served American soldiers during the war. Many men denounced it as “embalmed beef,” and Roosevelt himself considered it “horrible stuff.” Newspapers demanded that a special tribunal be established to decide the issue. After a three-month hearing a military court of inquiry ruled that there was no valid reason to believe that the beef was unfit to eat. The verdict failed to convince Fiorello LaGuardia, whose father had become ill after eating some of the meat.

  The circulation war between the Journal and the World ended in a draw. Although Hearst had been unable to kill off the World, he succeeded in establishing his Journal as a force to be reckoned with in New York. His extensive coverage of the war cost him most of the $7,00,000 he got from his mother. Cable dispatches between Cuba and New York were priced as high as $2.12 a word. Both papers had published so many extras that newsdealers returned thousands of unsold copies at an enormous loss to both Hearst and Pulitzer. Each newspaper claimed a total circulation of 1,250,000, but cable bills, the rental of fleets of tugs, and the like had wiped out their profits. Both publishers were lucky that the war didn’t last longer. Their rivalry resulted in a new phrase, “yellow journalism.” This took its name from a comic strip in the World entitled “Hogan’s Alley.” Drawn by R. F. Outcault, its bad boy hero was called the Yellow Kid.

  The Spanish-American War had been unnecessary, brief, inexpensive, patriotic, and relatively bloodless. The United States won hands down. This was a turning point in American history. The Spanish empire was virtually dissolved, and for the first time the United States gained an empire of its own. By acquiring the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico under the peace treaty, the United States emerged as a world power. The center of gravity in this greatly expanded nation was New York City, which now expanded in its own way.

  * From The Gentleman and the Tiger, The Autobiography of George B. McClellan, Jr., edited by Harold C. Syrett. Copyright © 1956 by The New York Historical Society; copyright © 1956 by Harold C. Syrett. Published by J. B. Lippincott Company.

  Chapter 36

  CREATION OF GREATER NEW YORK

  ANDREW HASWELL GREEN, who won a medal calling him “the father of Greater New York,” was born in Massachusetts. He was the city’s nineteenth-century Robert Moses. Historian Allan Nevins said of Green: “No citizen ever did more to improve and adorn the municipality.”

  Green was educated in an academy in his hometown of Worcester, groomed himself for West Point, gave up the idea of entering the army, became a clerk in a New York store, studied law, and entered into legal partnership with Samuel J. Tilden. Then he developed into a civic leader of vast ability and unspotted integrity. His activities were so various and his influence so great that it is difficult to understand how one man could accomplish so much.

  As city comptroller, he reestablished the city’s credit following the Tweed scandals. He planned the American Museum of Natural History. He founded the New York Zoological Society. He established the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. He devised the plan to consolidate the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations as the New York Public Library. He was president of the Central Park commission, and a bench placed in the park honored him as “directing genius of Central Park in its formative period.”

  A man with a clear mind and forceful personality, Green had a strong nose, sunken eyes and a gray beard. For thirty years he was obsessed with the idea of creating an “imperial city,” a proposal his enemies called Green’s hobby.

  Ever since 1686, when the Dongan charter was granted, New York City had consisted of just the island of Manhattan. However, consolidation of areas north, east, and south of Manhattan was predicted in 1857 by Henry C. Murphy, the former Brooklyn mayor who had sparked construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Murphy said, “It requires no spirit of prophecy to foretell the union of New York and Brooklyn at no distant day. The (East) river which divides them will soon cease to be a line of separation, and, bestrode by the colossus of commerce, will prove a link which will bind them together.”

  It was in 1868 that Andrew H. Green first dreamed of integrating the areas around New Yo
rk City into one great metropolis. He argued that the lines of unity had been laid down by nature when it “grouped together in a close indissoluble relation, at the mouth of a great river, our three islands, Manhattan, Long and Staten, making them buttresses and breakwaters of a capacious harbor.”

  The improvement of transit facilities gave impetus to his scheme, and a small step toward consolidation was taken in 1874. Three townships in what is now the western Bronx were taken from Westchester County and annexed to New York City. With that one stroke the city nearly doubled its area, jumped the Harlem River for the first time, and pushed north as far as Yonkers. Now the city, from the Battery to Yonkers, was sixteen miles long. In 1895 three other townships—or parts of townships—in the western Bronx were added to the city. These two annexations transferred a total of thirty-nine square miles from Westchester County to New York City.

  The part of the city known today as Queens and Staten Island consisted of scattered villages. The situation in Brooklyn was very different. Incorporated as a village in 1816 and as a city in 1834, Brooklyn absorbed the communities of Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and Bushwick in 1855. It took over New Lots in 1866. It added Flatbush, New Utrecht, and Gravesend in 1894. Flatlands, the last township still outside the corporate limits, became part of Brooklyn in 1896. All these gains made Brooklyn the third or fourth largest city in the United States.

  Acting on a petition by Andrew H. Green, the state legislature and the governor on May 8, 1890, jointly created “a commission to inquire into the expediency of consolidating the various municipalities of the State of New York occupying the several islands in the harbor of New York.” Green was appointed chairman. He had won a skirmish; but many battles lay ahead, and ultimate victory was far from certain.