The Devil's Own Work
Page 24
The suppression of the riot, meanwhile, remained in the feeble hands of Major General Wool, who relied on Sandford and Nugent, while the energetic General Brown had been out of the picture since nine o'clock the previous night. Early on Tuesday morning, however, Brown arrived at Wool's suite, admitting his error and requesting to resume command of the federal troops. Mayor Opdyke and prominent Republicans had put him up to it. When Wool restored Brown to his command, he immediately returned to the police Central Office and continued to coordinate with Commissioner Acton while ignoring General Sandford. When Sandford again called for all troops to muster at the Thirty-fifth Street arsenal—which had no telegraph link to the police Central Office—Brown declared that the order applied only to militia.15
Leaving men to guard the station houses and other public buildings, Acton had gathered the bulk of his force at the Central Office on Mulberry Street, where more than seven hundred troops under General Brown stood ready to reinforce them. Some four hundred civilian "Volunteer Specials" had been sworn in and equipped with clubs and badges; they were expected to do guard duty for the most part and free up the police and soldiers to do the heavy fighting.16
Many shopkeepers and factory owners were optimistic. Not seeing any mobs downtown and thinking the worst was over, they opened for business.17 However, looks were deceptive, and calm prevailed only in certain areas. Headley recalled that "from Sixth Avenue in the west nearly to Second Avenue in the east, and down almost to Broome Street, the streets were black with excited men." Workers from empty stores and factories had joined the crowds either by choice or by coercion, and as they ruled the streets in various wards, Acton realized he would have to strike back in several places at once. "Indeed, the air was charged with electricity," Headley wrote, "but the commissioners now felt ready to meet the storm whenever and wherever it should burst."18
At 9:15 a.m., Acton received an urgent telegram from the Twenty-first Precinct that the mob was burning buildings at Thirty-fourth Street and Second Avenue. He dispatched Inspector Carpenter from Mulberry Street with three hundred men, and they boarded the Third Avenue streetcars to speed their trip.19 Many of the rioters were just curious onlookers, and "a Catholic priest, who harangued them, urging them to maintain peace," had a temporary effect on those within earshot, Headley wrote. However, the mob, some ten thousand strong, was immediately galvanized by the arrival of Carpenter's force, which they met "with an ominous silence," according to the Tribune.20
In addition to the crowds jamming the avenue and closing in from in front and behind, on both sides rioters had ascended to the rooftops, from which they hurled "a thick shower" of paving stones and bricks at Carpenter's column, inflicting serious head injuries on two Metropolitans. The police seemed on the verge of being overwhelmed in this trap, but their officers rallied them, and a hail of gunfire from their revolvers drove the rioters back from their perches at the windows and on the rooftops. Carpenter detached fifty men to clear the rioters from the houses, while the others charged forward and dispersed the crowd in the street. Then they turned and charged the crowd that had closed in from the rear, "scattering it and filling the gutters with disabled ruffians," William Stoddard wrote.
Breaking down barricaded doors and fighting their way through narrow scuttles to reach the roofs, the police inside the houses clubbed the rioters mercilessly. An hour later Second Avenue was littered with bodies of men and women who had either fallen or jumped from the roofs or been clubbed as they came out the doors. At Riley's porterhouse on the corner, the rioters were "literally tossed down stairs," while "other policemen caught them as they rolled or tumbled out of the doors and administered a second dose of the locust," the Tribune reported.21
During the struggle, one of the two officers Sandford had placed in command of the arsenal on Monday night sent a detachment of 150 soldiers under Colonel H. T. O'Brien along with Lieutenant McElrath's artillery unit of twenty-five men and two cannons to support Carpenter. O'Brien, an Irish American who lived in the neighborhood, was in the process of recruiting a volunteer regiment for the war and was well known to the crowd, but not liked. Earlier in the day, the colonel had left his home "in full uniform with his sword in his hand" and lectured the mob nearby "in the most intemperate language," which the Tribune felt was not fit to print. The rioters, who expected Irishmen like O'Brien to assist them or at least remain neutral in the uprising, for the moment had "only replied with muttered threats."22
O'Brien's men joined forces with the police and marched down the avenue, but the mob had regrouped and blocked their way. Hoping to frighten the rioters away, O'Brien had the artillerists load the two cannons with blanks. He ordered his own men to fire real bullets from their muskets but to aim over the rioters' heads. The bullets "whistled through the air in every direction, shattering shutters and doors," and killing seven people, including two children who were watching from windows. The unexpected use of artillery and ammunition set off a stampede as the rioters fled, leaving only the wounded and dead and those who remained to care for them.23
"Who is responsible for this injudicious proceeding, I do not know," fumed Lieutenant McElrath to General Brown. McElrath's artillery company had been temporarily taken away from him that morning, and he knew the results were dangerous. By using blank artillery shells and having the troops aim high with their muskets, O'Brien had spared the hard-core rioters and killed bystanders, enflaming rather than suppressing the mob.24
While the police and military had temporarily cleared Second Avenue between Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Streets at 10 a.m., resistance was breaking out elsewhere. In the industrial slums of Corlear's Hook on the Lower East Side, 130 federal troops dispatched by General Brown under Lieutenant Thomas Wood confronted five thousand rioters on Pitt Street who refused to disperse. When the mob attacked with "clubs, stones, and other missiles," the soldiers opened fire, killing fourteen and wounding seventeen, by the lieutenant's count. The soldiers reloaded and scattered the rest of the mob with a bayonet charge. One private proclaimed victory by bayoneting a rioter and capturing his flag, before returning to the safety of the soldier's ranks. At the corner of Division and Grand Streets, another mob confronted these troops, but the threat of opening fire, followed up by "the point of the bayonet," was enough to clear the streets.25
Despite Lieutenant Wood's apparent success, the rioters were becoming increasingly determined and organized in this industrial zone bordering the East River, with its acres of sprawling metal shops and adjacent slums. The Delameter Iron Works on Fourteenth Street, which produced ironclad ships for the navy, had a mob at its gates, and the local precinct was urgently calling for help from the Central Office. Since Acton had no telegraphic link to Sandford at the Seventh Avenue arsenal, he sent requests for troops via the nearby Twentieth Precinct—requests that went unanswered. Acton and Brown sent some federal troops to patrol Grand Street, where the rioters waited quietly until the troops had passed before looting a gun store. In the Eleventh Precinct, just north of Grand Street on the river, the mob would not give way even after troops opened fire on them, and the military retreated. Sandford was no more cooperative on the West Side, where he could easily have dispatched troops to support the police.26
At the Tribune, James Gilmore and Sidney Gay had gone to sleep at 4 a.m. on a pair of couches and were awakened several hours later when breakfast arrived from the nearby Astor House hotel. Having learned from reporters in the field that the mob still intended "to raze the Tribune building to the ground," the two men resolved over coffee that the newspaper "must set up as an independent nationality, with war-making powers," Gilmore wrote. "It must arm itself to the very teeth, and, looking for no outside aid, resist the rioters to the last extremity."27
Gilmore proceeded to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he asked Admiral Hiram Paulding what weapons would be best. Gilmore recalled that "there was a pleasurable gleam in the old veteran's eyes, as he said: 'It's bombshells, young man,—bombshells and hand-grenades,�
�and I'll give you enough of both to send ten thousand of those rascals to the devil to-night." Paulding ordered up two wagonloads of the grenades and shells, personally adjusting the fuses on the latter so they would explode immediately upon hitting the pavement. Gilmore was both impressed and amused by the "belligerent zeal" of the "white-haired admiral" and said he hoped the bombs would not have to be used. Paulding replied that Gilmore must "plant every one of them in Printing House Square to-night. If you do there never will be another riot in New York."
Returning to the Tribune with the wagons, Gilmore found the staff, directed by an army colonel, busily preparing for an attack. The broken doors and windows on the ground floor had been "barricaded with bales of printing-paper, thoroughly saturated with water, and a hose was attached to the huge boiler below, so that the whole floor could be deluged with scalding steam in an instant." On both the second and third floors, a cannon loaded with grapeshot and canister stood at one window, while large mounds of Admiral Paulding's hand grenades were soon arranged in front of the others.
In the editorial offices on the fourth floor, Gilmore took charge of the bombshells. Paulding had supplied him with a long wooden trough, which, projected out the window and over the street, would land the bombs on the rioters, not against the front of the building. The muskets had since been loaded with appropriate ammunition and placed at every window, while a friend of Greeley's, the abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher, had sent a Sharps revolving rifle along with his "compliments to the rioters." The nearby Times building was similarly equipped, and the release of a bombshell by Gilmore was agreed upon as the signal for the staff at both newspapers to open fire with everything they had.
Greeley had taken a streetcar downtown from his house on Nineteenth Street past barricades and plumes of smoke from burning buildings. Insisting on his routine, he walked from the streetcar through the mobs to his office.28 He was dismayed to find that the Tribune building had become an arsenal.
"What are these, Mr. Gilmore?" he asked, pointing to the bombshells by the window.
"Brimstone pills for those red ragamuffins down there on the sidewalk," Gilmore replied.
"But I wanted no arms brought into the building."
"Oh, yes; but that was yesterday. Now this building is under martial law."
"Take 'em away, take 'em away!" Greeley ordered in his high-pitched, squeaky voice. "I don't want to kill anybody, and besides they're a damn sight more likely to go off and kill some of us!"
Greeley went to his office and immersed himself in writing editorials while the mob outside continued to swell.29
He soon declared he could not concentrate surrounded by guns and ammunition and left the editorial offices for the city room, where he sat and composed his daily editorial, surrounded by jittery young reporters.30 Periodically, friends went in and pleaded with him to leave the building, and he repeatedly put them off by promising he would go as soon as he finished what he was working on. The army colonel who had organized the building's defenses warned Gilmore and Gay: "Mr. Greeley ought to go. The mob knows he is here, and if he stays it is likely they will attack us. The consequence will be a good deal of useless slaughter." Nonetheless, as the afternoon wore on and the crowd grew, Greeley remained in the city room.31
The charred ruins of the armory on Second Avenue and Twenty-first Street were still smoking at noon on Tuesday when the mob attacked the Union Steam Works one block to the north, which contained some four thousand carbines. The willingness of the police and military to use firearms in battlefield formations had made the rioters' quest for guns all the more urgent. Since factories and stores had been forced shut, the streets for ten blocks around the Union Steam Works "swarmed with infuriated men," while "all the women and children of the neighborhood seemed to be either mingling with the men in the streets, standing in doorways, or looking out through the windows."32
Encouraged by several leaders, including Francis Cusick, who had clubbed Superintendent Kennedy, the rioters drove off the police guard, poured into the Union Steam Works, and began distributing the rifles, while preparing to turn the large brick building into a stronghold.33 At 2 p.m., Inspector George Dilks and two hundred Metropolitans dispatched from the Central Office arrived to recapture the building and the arms, sparking the most intense fighting of the entire week. First they had to clear a thousand rioters from the street in front of the building, which they did by closing ranks tightly and charging into the mob like a flying wedge, clubbing men to the ground, and retrieving stolen guns.34
One of the leaders was clubbed so hard that he staggered and fell forward against an iron gate, one of the pickets entering under his chin as far as the roof of his mouth. When the police later removed the hanging body, the cashmere pants, linen shirt, and costly vest under his workman's clothing, along with his "delicate features" and "white, fair skin," fueled suspicion that wealthy Copperheads were behind the riots. The man's body, like those of so many rioters, was reportedly carried off by his friends during the week of mayhem, leaving his identity a mystery. The World also noted that one or two people in each crowd "of better appearance and apparel than the rest" were seen inciting others to violence but disappeared when the time came to follow through.35
Inspector Dilks, having sown panic among the rioters and cleared the street, proceeded to send a detachment inside the Union Steam Works to secure the carbines. The Metropolitans fought their way up the stairs of the factory and into the main room on the second floor where the rioters had holed up. Many rioters were injured or killed after leaping from the windows, and any who escaped through the doors were clubbed down by the police waiting in the street.36
"While this was going on, a large number of women excitedly rushed forward with bricks and stones which they hurled at the police, fiercely swearing the while," the World reported. "The women manifested much more pluck and courage than the men, resolutely standing their ground when ordered to disperse by the officers." However, the attack prompted the police to start using their revolvers, and they quickly killed more than a dozen rioters. "A scene, which defies all powers of description then followed," according to the Times. "Men, women, and children rushed through the streets in the most frantic state of mind, and as the dead and wounded were borne from the place, the wild howlings of the bereaved, were truly sad to hear."37
Soldiers firing on rioters at the Union Steam Works
Dilks and his men piled as many of the carbines as they could on a large wagon, carried some in their arms, and left the rest in the Union Steam Works with a small contingent of patrolmen to guard them. On their march back to Mulberry Street "the people poured out of the houses along the way to cheer the triumphal procession," Stoddard wrote. "Dilks and his men and their trophies were a sort of sunshine in a great darkness."38
Across the North in communities where the draft lottery had not yet begun, provost marshals were hoping New York's authorities would put down the mob aggressively and set an example. In Detroit, a district provost marshal telegraphed his superior that anger over conscription "has become intensified to an alarming degree by the successful violence in the city of New York, compelling the draft to be deferred. A spark here would explode the whole and bring it into the most violent action."
The captain also underscored Detroit's recent history: "We have had a Negro riot here within the last few months that controlled the city fully, burning some thirty houses, and finally was quelled by the arrival of the Twenty-seventh Michigan Infantry. That mob violence is here now, but intensified a thousand fold . . . The condition of things is more critical than they have been at any time during the war . . . A strong force should be ordered to this city at once." The substance of this report was forwarded to Washington with the warning that parts of Detroit harbored "a most bitter opposition to the Government, and it extends to other portions of the State . . . unless the present mob is put down most summarily in New York the attempt to execute the draft here will lead to similar violence unless suppor
ted by a strong military force."
Closer to New York, in Newark, New Jersey, rioters had already smashed the windows of a district provost marshal's home and those of the Daily Mercury, which he owned. "The city authorities did nothing to prevent these outrages," a resident telegraphed Secretary of State Seward. "The citizens are at the mercy of ruffians."
Farther up the Hudson, at Kingston, New York, a district provost marshal reported that "a large meeting was held at [the village of] Rondout last evening, mostly made up of the Irish" who adopted resolutions "to resist the draft at all and any hazard, and to-day men are seen at various places in small groups making threats of resistance, &c . . . Again, we have no arms in this district and are wholly unprotected except my deputy and two special officers." At both Rondout and Saugerties, the meetings were said to have "hurrahed for Jeff. Davis and Lee."
As in Kingston, the military in Elmira, New York, expected a riot and requested five hundred "well-disciplined" troops if the draft was to be enforced. With his resources stretched thin and a flurry of such messages from across the state, Provost Marshal General James Fry ordered the draft suspended in Buffalo on Tuesday.
At the same time, he pushed forward with the drawing of names in some parts of Philadelphia, despite an appeal from the mayor to postpone the draft for a week. The army commander there was confident he could maintain order if the lottery were held in one district at a time, at least to start. Fry adopted the same strategy for Harrisburg and other parts of Pennsylvania, instructing his deputies to call on the military to "employ the necessary force to carry out the law."