"In the winter the filth and garbage, etc., accumulate in the streets, to the depth sometimes of two or three feet," an inspector wrote. Another commented that two streets looked like "dung-hills rather than the thoroughfares of a civilized city."51* In the Eleventh Ward,† an inspector reported that "the filth of the streets is composed of house-slops, refuse vegetables, decayed fruit, store and shop sweepings, ashes, dead animals, and even human excrements. These putrifying organic substances are ground together by the constantly passing vehicles. When dried by the summer's heat, they are driven by the wind in every direction in the form of dust." Stirred up into clouds by carriage wheels and horses' hooves, the dust spread across the entire city, another wrote. "No barrier can shut it out, no social distinction can save us from it."52
The courtyards and alleys behind the tenements were even filthier than the surrounding streets, because residents threw their household waste into shallow gutters, which tended to clog, overflow, and flood the yards, instead of carrying their contents to the street as intended. Also in the courtyard was "that most pestiferous of all sources of civic uncleanliness and unhealthiness— the privy and cesspool." Most were not connected to the sewers, were rarely emptied, and often overflowed into the yards. The worst privies were built in dark, damp cellars without ventilation and with only four seats for a hundred people. "In some places the foundation of the privies being rotten and broken . . . faecal matter runs into the cellar."53
About eighteen thousand of the poorest New Yorkers lived in cellars, "dens of death" where a family of seven could be found in a room eighteen feet square, with a seven-foot ceiling. In the Fourth Ward, where the cellars were dug below sea level, an inspector noted that "at high tide the water often wells up through the floors, submerging them to a considerable depth. In very many cases the vaults of the privies are situated on the same or a higher level, and their contents frequently ooze through the walls into the occupied apartments beside them."54
Side by side with this festering subterranean misery, the wartime boom created hundreds of millionaires in New York. When the war broke out, New York City's economy had come to a standstill because of severed ties to the South, but industries supporting the war effort invigorated it within a few months. Great Lakes-Erie Canal traffic increased, and New York surged as the shipping point of the heartland's wheat to Europe and as a manufacturing center for war materiel. Cattle, sugar, and oil poured into the city, to be processed at slaughterhouses and refineries. Ironworks produced naval equipment, guns, and ironclads, including the Monitor, launched from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in January 1862. Federal contracts and protective tariffs created a surge of industrial activity in New York City that rivaled the combined output of all the Confederate states.55
The nouveau riche were also labeled the "shoddy aristocracy" for selling defective uniforms, boots, and horses to the government. By 1863, the families constituting the top 1 percent held 61 percent of the city's wealth. On Broadway, the "Republican 'big bugocracy' sports its jewels, silks, and drapery," wrote one working-class diarist, deriding "gold bugs," speculators in gold, which rose in value against government currency with each Union setback on the battlefield.56There were conspicuous displays of finery on Fifth Avenue too, carriage rides in the newly opened Central Park, and dinners at Delmonico's—each costing enough to support a soldier and his family for almost a year. A. T. Stewart closed his Marble Palace and opened the largest retail store in the world on Broadway across from Cooper Union.57
A three-thousand-dollar shawl Stewart imported for the daughter of Salmon Chase, the secretary of the treasury, caused a sensation, people remarking that it was now worth ten men's lives.58 The Union defeat at Chancellorsville in May 1863 took another seventeen thousand men out of action and left the Irish Brigade with only a few hundred men. Amid the carnage, some Irish Americans accused the government of deliberately placing these "heroes of the Green" at the front of the battle to spare the lives of others. Still the administration continued to deny Meagher's requests to give the brigade time at home to restore itself, and he finally resigned in protest.59
The war boom, profiteering, and conspicuous consumption bred resentment not only among the urban poor in the Northeast, but in the Midwest, where farmers cut off from trade with the South by the Union blockade of the Mississippi were suffering from a severe economic depression. Prices for corn, wheat, pork, and beef had plummeted. Money and jobs were scarce, while businesses and banks failed by the hundreds. Confederate general Braxton Bragg had tried to summon up this resentment in September 1862 when he made a raid into Kentucky, established a provisional government at Frankfort, and issued a proclamation titled "To The People of the Northwest," implying that they should secede from the United States and ally themselves with the South.
Five months later, in February 1863, a baseless report of a secession movement in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois was splashed all over the newspapers in Richmond, where Confederate officials, with a good deal of wishful thinking, discussed how best to exploit the new development. The Copperhead rhetoric of Democratic newspapers in the Midwest also helped convince southern leaders that a breakaway republic like their own was in the making and just needed Confederate encouragement and support.60
John Hunt Morgan
When John Hunt Morgan and his 2,500 Confederate horsemen invaded Indiana in July, they had hoped to start a Copperhead uprising, since the southern portion of the state was a hotbed of discontent. However, like most of the Confederate leadership, Morgan misjudged antiwar sentiment in the area, where vocal critics of the administration nonetheless remained loyal to the Union. The inhabitants despised Morgan's cavalry as "horse-thieves," "extortionists," and "blackmailers," because they plundered Union army wagons and supply depots along their way. Farmers and villagers expected to be attacked by the marauding Confederate horsemen and were anything but happy to see them.61
Those who did not flee the path of the invaders banded together to confront them, and "even the Copperheads and Vallandighamites fought harder than the others," one of Morgan's men reported. On July 9, 1863, armed residents of Corydon, Indiana, surprised Morgan and his men, killing eight and wounding thirty-three before they could regroup and counterattack with swords drawn to disperse the crowd.
Morgan stopped for lunch at the Corydon Hotel, where he learned from the owner of Lee's defeat at Gettysburg and had to scrap his plan to link up with him in Pennsylvania. Having lost that escape route, Morgan nonetheless continued his raid instead of retreating to the Ohio River. Morgan and his men were angry about their casualties at Corydon and pillaged several towns before reaching Salem, Indiana, on July 10. By this time, the Indiana governor was mustering the militia at Indianapolis, and Burnside's cavalrymen were closing in from the south. So, instead of heading north to free the six thousand Confederate prisoners in Indianapolis, Morgan took his men toward the Ohio border, to the northeast, and continued his raid, while Union sailors took gunboats up the Ohio River, hoping to cut off his escape into Kentucky or West Virginia.62
*The Women's Prison Association, founded by Abby Hopper Gibbons, still runs transitional housing on Manhattan's Lower East Side for women leaving prison.
*A week later, Warren could report that "the citizens are making every provision to relieve our suffering people, and our city is again restored to peace." The saloonkeeper's conviction was later overturned when the two girls who had accused him retracted their story. Faulkner started a new business with help from wealthy patrons, but the black victims of the riot never received compensation from the city.
*On the East River below Catherine Street.
*Sixth Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue, and Eleventh Street between First and Second Avenues, in today's East Village.
† On the East River above Houston Street.
CHAPTER 7
A Highwayman's Call on Every
American Citizen for '$300 or Your Life'"
dmund Ruffin was one of the few sout
herners skeptical about the depth of Copperhead support in the Midwest. He dismissed reports "that many thousands of men in the northwestern states have leagued together, & bound themselves by secret oaths, not to submit to the conscription law, & to resist its being enforced, even by arms & bloodshed." He saw far more potential for a revolt in New York and New Jersey, where both governors were "malcontents" as were many state legislators.1
Indeed, in the Northeast there was both leadership and a massive urban constituency for the Copperhead movement. Although Morgan had failed to trigger a popular rebellion by tapping the resentment of midwesterners toward the federal government and the changes the war had wrought in their lives, in the Northeast, competition from black workers, magnified by Democratic politicians, continued to trigger violent retaliation by whites. In one of the deadliest incidents, during the first week of July 1863, jobs as stevedores given to blacks in Buffalo, New York, sparked a riot in which three blacks were killed and twelve severely injured.2
Also more forceful than Morgan's cavalry raid in stirring up racial and partisan divisions was the loud resistance to Republican policies by Democratic newspapers, which complained about the secrecy surrounding the federal draft lottery. With its personnel collecting names door-to-door in May and June 1863, the provost marshal general's office had nearly completed the enrollment for the draft at the beginning of July, but the exact date when names were to be drawn in each congressional district had not been made public. In fact, the provost marshal general, James Fry, had decided to begin the lottery on different dates across the North, as soon as the enrollment lists were complete in any given district. By staggering the dates, Fry hoped to expedite the process, while making it easier to quell any resistance, one district at a time.3
Manton Marble continued his attacks on the draft and beat the drums of anti-emancipation, stressing the rights of states and slaveholders. On July 8, an editorial in the World denounced the notion that the founding fathers were hypocritical in proclaiming all men to be created equal, and that "the United States has been ever since its birth a living lie." Marble cited the seventh article of the final peace treaty between England and the United States, which "stipulates that his Brittanic majesty should evacuate the country with all convenient speed and without causing any destruction or 'carrying away negroes or other property of the American inhabitants.' "
For Marble, this was "perfect proof of the status of the Negro in the mind of both England and the United States" at that time. The founders never embraced fraternity and equality, the editorial declared, ideas which led to the excesses of the French Revolution. "Men may prove a hundred times over that slavery is a moral wrong or that it is a political wrong, but they do not thereby prove that it is any man's business" except in his own state.4
In less erudite language, Peace Democrats were linking this white supremacist argument with resistance to the draft. "ENTHUSIASTIC PEACE DEMONSTRATION . . . THE DRAFT CONSIDERED," the Daily News headlines rang out on July 10. Reporting a speech from the rally by a Mr. Lindley Spring, in column one, the paper clearly espoused its message that military despotism had all but enslaved the North: "When you submit to be seized by Provost Marshals and dragged off to the army, does that vindicate your rights, does it support or relieve the necessities of your wife and children? No; it more firmly rivets your chains."
Spring then linked the draft and abolition. "The [Conscription] act begins with a long and pious preamble, like all those Abolition things which commence with a text of Scripture . . . but it is a clear case of false pretenses." The essential fact, Spring charged, was that the administration believed "the negro is as good as the white man, and they intended to make him legally so." With the draft "they offer to buy up white men for three hundred dollars each, about one third of what a good negro is worth."
Incongruously, after this race-baiting, the speaker dutifully advised his listeners to "resist the draft in a proper and orderly manner, as become good citizens." They should raise money, hire a lawyer, and test the legality of the act in the state courts, thus suspending enforcement of the draft with the jurisdiction of the court. Failing this, they should petition Governor Seymour to defend their rights against "a slavery worse than death" imposed by the "abolition tyranny in Washington."
The next speaker, New Jersey congressman Chauncey Burr, drew laughter and applause when he declared of the draft, "This act is very simple—it is merely a highwayman's call on every American citizen for '$300 or your life.'" Acknowledging that a challenge in the courts would take time, Burr provided specific instructions on how to avoid the draft: "When you are seized, take out a writ of habeas corpus and the action of the United States officers must cease until that is decided. Should the State fail you, you can appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. Leave no means untried to avoid compliance."
A violent edge then entered the speech. Burr declared he did not mind the term Copperhead since it was "a fair, brave snake, never meddling with you without you do with him, and then making himself feared and respected. But the black snake is a mean, sneaking fellow, who never dares to show his head when a Copperhead is around. (Applause.) They say we live by the clemency of the Government. Why, it is by your clemency that Abe Lincoln and all his satraps were not upon the gallows eighteen months ago. (Applause)."5
Caught in the awkward position of supporting an unpopular war measure, Greeley's Tribune mostly confined itself to publishing factual information about the draft and stressing that the provost marshals were being scrupulous in their collection and recording of names to ensure a fair process.6
Bennett's Herald, which declared itself independent of both political parties and espoused racist, anti-abolition views, nonetheless asserted that Chauncey Burr's speech went too far. Appealing to the "beastly passions" of the crowd, the speech was "calculated to stir up a moblike spirit in this city," the Herald warned. "If Mr. Burr is not careful he will raise a storm that will terminate in insurrection and bloody scenes in this city. When this mob spirit is once started no person can tell where it will end or who will be sacrificed by its vengeance." A "great lack of statesmanship" on the part of Democratic leaders had permitted "blustering revolutionists" like Burr to "lead the masses of the party," the Herald charged. Lacking a strong leader who might have "marked out the course for the party," the rank and file "are left to be preyed upon by unprincipled and designing men. Here rests one of the great dangers of the times, and it renders the speeches of such men as Burr all the more dangerous."7
"While the militia were thus absent from the city, and its forts and harbor unprotected," Governor Seymour wrote, the draft began on Saturday, July 11. "I was not advised of this step, and I believe the Mayor of the city was equally ignorant of the proceeding."8The day for beginning the random drawing of names of actual draftees had not been announced by the administration, and the secrecy surrounding the implementation of the draft aroused suspicion and resentment in Democratic circles, where it was assumed the quotas for New York and other heavily Democratic areas were set too high. The provost marshals, on the other hand, viewed the secrecy as necessary to forestall organized opposition, given New York City's lack of troops.
Not knowing that the draft was to begin that day, on July 11 Seymour sent his adjutant general, Major John Sprague, to Washington to seek an audience with President Lincoln and request that the draft in New York City be postponed until the militia regiments had returned from Pennsylvania. In a gesture of good faith to the administration, Seymour had selected Sprague, a federal officer, and asked Stanton to allow him a leave of absence so he could serve as the chief military aide to the governor. Seymour's attempt at transparency— bringing to his side an officer whose primary allegiance was to the Republican administration—backfired that weekend.9
Sprague went to Washington but never made the request of the president or of Stanton because he stopped first to see Provost Marshal General Fry, who ordered him not to make the request. Sprague later told Governor Se
ymour that he simply had no choice but to obey Fry, who held a higher rank in the U.S. Army. "The Governor simply waved him out of the office accompanied by a look which expressed volumes," recalled Major William Kidd, the governor's military secretary.
From then on, Seymour communicated with Sprague only through an intermediary. The episode, wrote Kidd, confirmed the darkest suspicions in the Democratic camp that Fry pushed ahead with the draft in New York precisely because he wanted to provoke a riot in the defenseless city: The rebellion would provide an excuse to impose martial law and use federal troops both to supervise and to manipulate the upcoming presidential election of 1864, when Lincoln's chances seemed slim.10
"There is a lurking mischief in the atmosphere that surrounds this unwelcome stranger," the Daily News declared of the draft on the morning of Saturday, July 11, when the drawing of names was scheduled to begin. The Herald complained that no information was available about when the draft would begin until the day before, and even then the government did not make a public announcement; the papers learned only that the provost marshal in each congressional district was instructed to begin the lottery "immediately."11
Provost Marshal General Fry did not have enough troops to contain rioting if it broke out in several districts at once, so he instructed his assistants in various states to "collect what force you can in one designated disaffected district," enforce the draft, and then move the troops to another area of resistance, in the meantime proceeding with the lottery in any districts where there was no disturbance. Optimistically, if not recklessly, Fry's order assumed rebellion would confine itself to individual congressional districts—as drawn on a map—that could be pacified in sequence.12
The Devil's Own Work Page 16