Nonetheless, Lincoln's prospects for reelection remained dim in August. "Mr. Lincoln is already beaten. He cannot be elected. And we must have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow," Horace Greeley lamented to former New York mayor George Opdyke on August 18.46 Democrats brushed aside Davis's unwillingness to negotiate and focused instead on Lincoln's demand for abolition as a precondition for peace talks. They denounced the war as sacrificing white soldiers to the president's "negro mania." Republicans, too, faulted Lincoln for committing to emancipation and handing the opposition a powerful rallying cry. In the absence of decisive progress on the battlefield, the administration and the party were losing popular support.
Many northerners still held out the hope, however misguided, that if Lincoln made reunion his absolute priority and dropped emancipation, the country could be brought back together peacefully. However, Lincoln replied to their entreaties that the value of emancipation was both practical and moral. To crush the rebellion, the Union had 130,000 black soldiers and sailors on its side, and if he broke his promise of freedom and they left, the war effort would break down in a few weeks. Moreover, Lincoln said, if he allowed the blacks who fought at Port Hudson and other battles to be reenslaved, "I should be damned in time & in eternity for doing so. The world shall know that I will keep my faith to friends and enemies, come what will."47
• • •
In Toronto, Hines put together a squad of seventy men, supplying each of them with a new pistol and ammunition, one hundred dollars, and a round-trip train ticket to Chicago. In pairs, they started leaving for Chicago on August 10, about three weeks before the Democratic convention. Hines and his top associates took a suite at the Richmond House, where a banner announcing them as the "Missouri Delegation" disguised their meetings with local Copperheads.
The streets and hotels were soon overrun with delegates and other visitors arriving by train, horse, wagon, and on foot. Some slept on the sidewalks after a long night of drinking, because they could not get rooms. Some were armed with revolvers. The crowds and the chaotic atmosphere reassured Hines that the materials of a great riot were at hand, waiting for him to strike the match.48
However, when Walsh and the other Copperheads arrived at the Richmond House the night before the convention, Hines could see that they had lost their nerve. Walsh explained that their chain of command had broken down: The Sons of Liberty in Ohio and Indiana would not be coming to Chicago for the uprising the following day, since their instructions were never delivered. Hines and his lieutenants were furious, especially since the manpower they needed to conquer all of Illinois was in the city, but they lacked the military organization to harness its strength.49
Walsh promised to try again, and the meeting was adjourned until the next day, August 29. Hines was beginning to give up hope that night as he watched the torchlight convention parade from his hotel window. His spirits quickly rose, however, when three thousand federal troops came marching into Chicago, providing what he hoped would be the spark for the uprising. Hines spread the word among the Copperheads that the soldiers had come to harass law-abiding Democrats at their convention. In fact, the troops had been sent to secure the city and reinforce the guards at Camp Douglas, where the commandant had discovered the conspiracy by deciphering the prisoners' mail.50
"We emphasized that any arrest would mean violent interference with the rights of the people," wrote Captain John Castleman, a close friend and trusted subordinate of Hines. "We knew that an arrest by the troops was our best hope and it mattered little who was arrested. In other words an inflammable mob might thus be led beyond retreat."51
Angry, drunken men taunted the soldiers throughout the night as they patrolled the city, but no violence erupted. By daybreak, Hines could see that the conspiracy had unraveled. Nonetheless, in the afternoon and evening he called two more meetings, hoping to rally five hundred Copperheads, and failing that, just two hundred. Pounding his fist on a map of Chicago spread out in front of him, Hines described how teams of ten men could fan out across the city, sever its telegraph lines, burn the bridges, and break open the Federal arsenal. They would use the last remaining telegraph wire to trumpet their success across the entire Midwest and all the way back to New York City, before setting off to conquer Springfield, Illinois, the state capital.52
Hines's vision stirred the Copperhead leaders, but they could muster no more than twenty-five men. Hines and his squad of seventy left the city the next day, putting little faith in the Copperheads' declarations that they were going to impose military discipline within the Sons of Liberty and be ready for action by Election Day in November.53
The failed plot revealed that the ranks of the Sons of Liberty were not nearly as numerous as the organization and its promoters claimed. Copperhead resistance in the Midwest proved to be confined to a relatively few zealots, while most Peace Democrats lost their taste for revolution when the moment of truth arrived, preferring to act through the political process, since prospects for success looked good in the late summer of 1864.54
The Democrats in Chicago nominated McClellan, but because his contradictory statements about peace negotiations implied that he might continue the war if elected, and Vallandigham's peace faction threatened the party's fragile unity, the convention compromised and named Congressman George Pendleton of Ohio, a peace man, for vice president. The platform endorsed slavery, condemned Lincoln's civil rights abuses, and included Vallandigham's call for an armistice to be followed by a convention at a later date to discuss reunion. Confederate leaders and newspaper editors saw their dreams coming true. If they could hold out on the battlefield until November, McClellan's election and the Democratic platform would end the war and guarantee their independence.55
Yet, as the Democrats prepared to celebrate, events in the South overtook their plans. "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won," Sherman telegraphed Lincoln on September 1. When the news spread across the North, there was wild rejoicing. "Glorious news this morning—Atlanta taken at last!!!" wrote George Templeton Strong. "If it be true, it is (coming at this political crisis) the greatest event of the war."56 Lincoln's political fortunes were reversed just in time, and the Democrats were thrown on the defensive.57
In Virginia, Edmund Ruffin recorded the casualty figures of the latest battles in his diary, while downplaying the significance of the northern victories and clinging to reports of continued popular discontent and official lenience about enforcing the draft: "The Yankee government was evidently afraid to enforce the ordered draft, (which was to have been on the 5th,) fully &strictly. First, by order from the War Department, the whole requisition was reduced from 500,000 to 300,000 men. Next, [in] the city of N.Y. and Brooklyn (where armed resistance was expected, & was threatened in the speeches at a public meeting . . .) the draft was ordered to be omitted entirely, on the ground just assumed, that these cities had furnished their quota of men, in recruits supplied to the navy."
Finally, the draft all over the North was to be delayed for several weeks, with the excuse that officials needed more time to prepare the necessary paperwork, Ruffin noted: "I doubt whether it was not bad policy to postpone the draft. The splendor of the glory acquired by the capture of the Mobile forts, & of Atlanta, will have greatly faded in a few weeks, & the greatly exaggerated importance of these successes will be reduced to something like truth."58
Instead, those victories began to look more and more like the beginning of the Confederacy's ultimate defeat. By late September, General Philip Sheridan had defeated Jubal Early, his nemesis in the Shenandoah Valley, which throughout the war had served the Confederacy both as a breadbasket for the army and as an invasion route to the North. Under orders from Grant, in October Sheridan began a ruthless campaign to destroy the area's crops, farms, and villages—and to smoke out the guerrillas who harassed his army.59
Enraged, Ruffin wrote in his diary: "Would that our government had the boldness & vigor, (which would be useful even at this late time,) to order the shooting
& hanging of all officers captured of these marauding & destroying forces, & all privates belonging to bodies that had engaged actively in such services! Thus treating them, not as soldiers, nor even as Yankee invaders, but as robbers, house-burners, destroyers & murderers."60
*Unlike Powers, most Irish American soldiers did more than guard duty, bearing the brunt of the war's bloodiest battles. On January 2, 1864, the shattered Irish Brigade returned to New York City, and only a few hundred relatives and friends greeted them, not the cheering throng that had sent them off. The following day, Archbishop Hughes died, which was another blow to the Irish community's morale (Spann, Gotham at War, p. 117).
*Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens, and its Civil War grave sites are part of the Walking Tour; see the appendix.
*Following on a troop call in March, this was the third round of the draft after its resumption in August 1863.
CHAPTER 19
"Villainous Threats of Laying Northern
Cities in Ashes
Despite Union victories and the president's unswerving commitment to the Emancipation Proclamation, the prospect of freedom and equality for African Americans remained dim in the fall of 1864. A little more than a year after the draft riots in New York, the city's black population was shrinking, and those who remained were struggling. The finances of black churches suffered from the steep decline in their membership.1
The interior of St. Philip's Church, on Mulberry Street across from police headquarters, was nearly wrecked during the riots, not by a mob but by the police. "Without anyone's permission, the police had broken open the door, taken possession of the building, and occupied it as a barracks for policemen and out-of-town soldiers." To the congregation, the police had behaved like looters instead of protecting their property. Extensive repairs eventually amounted to almost $2,500, of which the city, after years of delay, paid only a fraction.2
While the orphans themselves were unharmed, the Colored Orphan Asylum was in financial distress. The orphanage had moved into a new temporary home rented by the Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans in lower Westchester along the Hudson River.* The orphans enjoyed roaming free on the property, gathering nuts and playing in the woods, with panoramic views of the Hudson and plenty of fresh air—a healthful environment compared to the neighborhoods they might have encountered in the city itself. James McCune Smith, back with the orphans after a long illness, described most of the children as being in "hilarious out-door health in the pleasant abode which has been fortunately secured for them."3*
However, 1864 was a difficult year for the Colored Orphan Asylum, since the children had been deprived, "by the malice of a mob, of the home which for twenty years had sheltered them," Anna Shotwell wrote. In their new home in Carmansville, the need for clothing, bedding, and furniture created an emergency since the treasury was exhausted. "It is true that with diminished means we have been obliged to curtail expenses; several domestics have been discharged, and four teachers are performing the duties of six," Shotwell reported. "But adversity has stimulated exertion, and many who in prosperity were indifferent, have been induced to extend to us a generous support." They were rescued by private donations, including an individual gift of twenty thousand dollars.4
The city also paid seventy-three thousand dollars in damages from the riots, which was set aside for a building fund. A smaller building was erected that year on the grounds of the old asylum, and served as an "office and depot of material for the Institution" while plans for the reconstruction of the main building moved forward; a leading New York architect was approached to submit drawings.5
However, property owners in the adjacent blocks had urged the Colored Orphan Asylum to move elsewhere, and the institution gradually became another example of the increased racial segregation in New York after the draft riots. Unable to sell off the city-owned parcels "held under perpetual grant from the Corporation" and use the proceeds to buy other property, the managers forfeited the land and moved the asylum to Fifty-first Street. Four years later, it was moved again, to 143rd Street between Amsterdam and Broadway. This outlying area of the city would later become the famed black enclave of Harlem.6†
The finances of Henry Highland Garnet's Shiloh Church, like those of the city's other black churches, were in a dismal state. Garnet had wanted to accompany New York's black troops to war, but the army would not accept him as a chaplain, because the job came with an officer's commission. So Garnet had accepted an invitation to lead a church in Washington, D.C., where he hoped to lend his support to the national government.
However, despite several visits to the White House and requests to see the president, Garnet never met Lincoln. Frustrated, Garnet rationalized that the president was simply weary of numerous petitions from blacks that he could not satisfy. Accustomed to being received in Europe by "nobility and royalty," Garnet noted: "I have never seen people harder to reach than the leader of government in Washington."7
With the abolition of slavery and the status of African Americans in the United States beset by so much uncertainty, Garnet urged the National Convention of Colored Men to meet for the first time in more than ten years, which it did in Syracuse, New York, on October 4, 1864. The black convention movement had begun in 1830 with a meeting in Philadelphia dominated by local delegates, "the first attempt by blacks to achieve an organized national presence." The following year, and at subsequent meetings, attendance grew to include delegates from all over the Northeast as well as Ohio, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The debates centered on the educational, economic, and political advancement of free blacks, as well as emancipation in the South and emigration. In the 1840s, Garnet was also a driving force in the state convention movement organized by blacks in New York, and spearheaded its campaign for voting rights. Until the 1850s, black women were generally excluded from public speaking, except in separate charitable and literary societies.8
Because Garnet had collaborated with affluent whites in 1858 to establish the African Civilization Society and promote black emigration to Africa and the West Indies, the convention of 1864 isolated him and made Frederick Douglass its permanent president. Black nationalists like Garnet and his friend Alexander Crummell envisioned African Americans starting over in independent black countries, where the products of their free labor would undermine slavery around the globe. Douglass, like most of the delegates, asserted instead that blacks must struggle for progress and an equal stake in America; that their destiny lay in the land of their birth—the United States—not in the home of their ancestors.9
"How come you take money from white men, Mr. Garnet?" one delegate asked, referring to the fact that the African Civilization Society was expanding its influence by funding schools for blacks in the South. Garnet, it seemed to his critics, had made a deal with the devil.
"If Jeff Davis would send an amount to educate colored children," Garnet replied, "I would gladly receive it and say at least that's one good thing you have done." The convention proceeded to pass a resolution condemning the African Civilization Society.
Henry Highland Garnet
Stung by rejection, Garnet was walking alone that evening when a group of Irishmen leaving a tavern attacked him and stole both the wooden stump for his missing leg and his silver-plated cane, forcing him to crawl on the muddy ground. The next morning, the delegates rallied around Garnet and contributed the funds to replace his lost cane and stump.10
Garnet's searing remarks to the convention made clear that, more than a year later, blacks still relived the horror of the draft riots and needed to exorcise it from their minds.
Mr. Garnet drew a picture of the shadows which fell upon New-York city in July 1863, where demoniac hate culminated in that memorable mob. He told us of how one man was hung upon a tree; and that then a demon in human form, taking a sharp knife, cut out pieces of the quivering flesh, and offered it to the greedy, blood-thirsty mob, saying, "Who wants some nigger meat?" and then the reply, "I!" "I!" "I!" as if they were scr
ambling for pieces of gold.11
Possibly the most disturbing recollection of the draft riots ever recorded, Garnet's comparison of black flesh with gold identified both the white mob's hatred and its hunger; demagogues had preyed on the poverty of whites to convince them that blacks posed both a social and economic threat.
At the convention, blacks also took stock of their relationship to the Irish. The minutes of the Syracuse convention reveal that black leaders did not regard the Irish people per se as their enemies. On the contrary, they saw them as fellow sufferers of prejudice. Calling the lynch mob's leader a "demon in human form" implied that he was possessed and manipulated by a third party.
Mr. Garnet referred to the nationality of those composing the mob, and said he could not tell how it was that men crossing the ocean only should change as much as they. He had traveled from Belfast to Cork, and from Dublin to the Giant's Causeway, and the treatment he received was uniformly that of kindness. He had stood in public beside the great O'Connell; and we know what his hatred of oppression was. He attributed the change in the Irish people to the debasing influence of unprincipled American politicians. The name of O'Connell was received with great applause. Mr. Garnet was heartily cheered during his speech.12
Daniel O'Connell, the legendary Irish political leader, active from the 1820s until 1845, was committed to nonviolence and had warned Americans that slaveholding was a sin that would come back to haunt the United States. However, when he tried to support the antislavery movement in America, many Irish Americans withdrew financial support for his movement to abolish anti-Catholic laws in Ireland.13
The Devil's Own Work Page 38