Word of the fierce battle reached the Seventh avenue Arsenal, and Major-General Sandford dispatched Colonel H. J. O’Brien, of the Eleventh New York Volunteers, with one hundred and fifty infantrymen of various units, to the aid of the police. The troops were accompanied by two six-pound cannon and twenty-five artillerymen, under command of Lieutenant Eagleson. When he saw the troops marching up Second avenue Inspector Carpenter immediately launched another assault against the mob, but the rage of the rioters had increased and they stood their ground, pelting the soldiers and the police with bricks and stones and keeping up a steady fire from their muskets and pistols. Colonel O’Brien wheeled the troops into company front and the infantrymen fired several volleys, but still the rioters pressed forward with great fury. Lieutenant Eagleson was then ordered to fire his guns, and the six-pounders belched a hail of grape and canister into the close packed ranks of the mob, causing frightful havoc. Six rounds were discharged before the rioters fall back, and then they broke and fled in all directions, leaving the sidewalks and pavement strewn with dead and wounded. One of the killed was a woman who carried a baby in her arms. She fell at the first volley, but the baby was underneath and was not injured, although the mother was fearfully trampled as the mob surged back and forth over her body.
With comparative quiet restored in Second avenue, Inspector Carpenter started on a tour of the eastern part of the city, and engaged several mobs which were surging through the streets. Colonel O’Brien marched his soldiers back to the Arsenal, but three hours later returned alone to the scene of the battle, for his home was in the vicinity and he was concerned for the safety of his family, as well as of his property. He reached his house without incident and finding that Mrs. O’Brien and her children had fled to Brooklyn before the fighting began and were with relatives, started to return to his command. But when he rode into Second avenue he was recognized, and several men attempted to pull him from his horse, while others threw bricks at him. He dismounted and entered a saloon at Nineteenth street and Second avenue. When he came out a great crowd of men and women had assembled, and were urging each other to kill him. With his sword in one hand and his revolver in the other. Colonel O’Brien walked deliberately across the street toward his horse. But he had not gone ten feet before the mob surged forward, and he was knocked down with a club. Before he could scramble to his feet the rioters were upon him. He was kicked and beaten, and then a rope was twisted about his ankles and he was dragged back and forth over the cobblestones. A Catholic priest interfered long enough to administer the last rites of the church, and then departed, leaving Colonel O’Brien to the tender mercies of the infuriated rioters. For more than three hours they tortured him, slashing his flesh with knives and daggers, dropping stones upon his head and
Murder of Col. O’Brien
body, and hauling him up and down the street with fierce howls of victory. He was then abandoned, and throughout the long, hot July afternoon lay unconscious on the pavement, none of his friends daring to rescue him or take him water. About sundown a great mob of men and women appeared and proceeded to inflict fresh torments upon his torn and battered body, finally dragging him into his own back yard. There a gang of Five Points harpies squatted about him, and after mutilating him with knives, flung stones at his head until he was dead.
The attention of the rioters had been distracted from the Union Steam Works by the ferocity of the attacks led by Inspector Carpenter and Colonel O’Brien, but when the police and soldiers had marched away the mob reappeared and captured the factory after a brief fight with the small guard of patrolmen. But instead of removing the carbines and distributing them, the rioters did not even break out the cases. They garrisoned the plant with some five hundred thugs, evidently with the intention of using it as a headquarters and a rallying point for the rioters operating along the East Side. Two hundred policemen under command of Inspector George W. Dilks marched into Second avenue when news of the capture of the Steam Works reached Headquarters, and the building was retaken foot by foot after terrific fighting. Many of the rioters were pursued to the roofs and killed, and the dead and dying littered the halls and rooms and the sidewalk in front of the structure. A physician of the neighborhood said afterward that within an hour he dressed twenty-one wounds in the head, all of which were fatal.
During the heavy fighting which preceded the invasion of the Union Steam Works by the police the mob was led by a one-armed giant who wielded a huge bludgeon, employing it as a flail with great effect, and by a young man in dirty overalls who fought valiantly with knife and club. The giant was shot and killed, and the young man was dealt such a terrific blow on the head that he fell heavily against an iron railing, and one of the pickets penetrated his throat beneath the chin. A policeman lifted the body from the paling, and the young man was found to possess aristocratic features, well-cared-for hands, and a fair, white skin. Obviously he was a man unused to physical labor. ‘Although dressed as a laborer, in dirty overalls and filthy shirt,” wrote a chronicler of the riots, “underneath these were fine cassemere pants, a handsome, rich vest, and a fine linen shirt.” His identity was never learned, for when the police had gone his body, together with the other dead, was carried away by the rioters. It is believed to have been taken to the Five Points in a cart, and buried beneath one of the tenements at Paradise Square.
All of the carbines and ammunition which remained in the Union Steam Works were loaded into wagons and taken to Police Headquarters under heavy guard. Soon after the recapture of the factory a detachment of soldiers joined the policemen, and the combined forces made a tour of the district, dispersing several large mobs. In Twenty-first street the expedition was met by a galling fire from the windows and roofs, and the policemen fell back, while the troops advanced and silenced the sharpshooters with several well-aimed volleys. One rioter who was shooting from
The Battle for the Union Steam Works
behind a corner of a house was killed when a soldier fired through the building. The police under Inspector Dilks included, among other units, all of the reserves of the Eighteenth precinct, and while these men were fighting the mobs in First and Second avenues another gang of rioters attacked the station house in East Twenty-second street. Sergeant Burden and three men comprised the garrison, and although they made a determined resistance and kept the mob at bay for half an hour, they were finally driven out and the building burned.
Meanwhile Captain George W. Walling, already noted as one of the fiercest fighters of the Police Department because of his forays against the Honeymoon gang and the thugs of the water front, was having a busy time with a detachment of patrolmen from the Twentieth precinct. Early in the morning they marched into Pitt street, where a mob had surrounded a small body of soldiers, but before they could arrive the troops had fired into the rioters and dispersed them. Captain Walling then marched his men through the Bowery and broke up several large mobs, and an hour later was ordered to the rescue of a company of soldiers who had been attacked in front of Allerton’s Hotel, in Eleventh avenue between Fortieth and Forty-first streets, by a gang of rioters who had taken their guns away from them. After defeating this mob and recapturing many of the stolen muskets. Captain Walling marched
Storming the Barricades in Ninth Avenue
across town to Fifth avenue and Forty-seventh street, where rioters had broken into and were looting the homes of Dr. Ward and other residents of the vicinity. The detachment finally arrived at the police station in West Thirty-fifth street after several hours of hard fighting, and joined a force which was being organized to attack the barricades in Ninth avenue.
So far as the police units were concerned, the formation of this body had been completed by three o’clock in the afternoon, but it was almost two hours later before regular army troops under command of Captain Wesson arrived to support them. Meanwhile the rioters had strengthened their defenses, and had burned the Weehawken Ferry house at West Forty-second street because a saloon keeper refused to surrender hi
s stock of liquors. At six o’clock the combined military and police forces moved out of the station house and marched into Ninth avenue, where thousands of rioters, armed with muskets, pistols, bricks and paving stones, crouched behind the barricades. Captains Slott and Walling led a large detachment of police as an advance guard, but met with such a heavy fire from the entrenched mob that they were compelled to retreat. The soldiers then advanced in line of skirmishers and routed the mob with several volleys of musketry, killing between twenty and thirty. The police rushed forward, and with their clubs and axes demolished the first line of barricades, while the troops massed in the rear and kept up a steady fire to prevent a counter attack. Similar methods were employed to capture the remaining fortifications, and within two hours the mob had fled, the defenses had been cleared away and the police were in control of Ninth avenue.
While this battle was in progress another great crowd had attacked the home of J. S. Gibbons, a cousin of Horace Greeley, at No. 19 Lamartine Place, near Eighth avenue and Twenty-ninth street. The rioters swarmed into the house, and were looting it when they were attacked from the rear by a police force drawn from the Broadway Squad and the reserves of the Thirty-first precinct, under command of Captain James Z. Bogart. There was fierce fighting for half an hour, and in the midst of the uproar a detachment of soldiers appeared and fired a wild volley which struck policeman and rioter alike. Patrolman Dipple was shot in the thigh, the bullet entering the bone and ranging upward through the marrow. He died soon afterward. Patrolmen Robinson and Hodgson were also seriously wounded. During the pillaging of the Gibbons residence the women caused the police more trouble than the men. Not only did they fight with greater ferocity, but they clung tenaciously to whatever bit of spoil they had been able to lay their hands upon. They were not driven from the house until the police took to spanking them with their clubs.
THROUGHOUT the whole of Tuesday the police experienced great difficulty in keeping their lines of communication open, for the leaders of the mob sent out patrols which cut every telegraph wire they could find; and repair crews, escorted by soldiers, were constantly being dispatched from Headquarters to mend breaks. The rioters also tore down the railroad telegraph lines along Eleventh avenue, and ripped up great sections of the Harlem and
New Haven railroad tracks, evidently with the intention of hampering the movement of troop trains. The lines of the Police Telegraph system which remained in operation were congested with important messages, but nevertheless Commissioner Acton suspended all official business for a moment early Tuesday afternoon, and at 1:12 o’clock this telegram was sent to the police of the Fifth Precinct:
Send to Dr. Purple at 183 Hudson street to go as soon as POSSIBLE TO Inspector Leonard’s house. Baby very
SICK.
A military escort was provided for the physician, and it is of record that the sick baby recovered.
By noon Tuesday the danger to the armories, arsenals. Navy Yard and other government and state property had been materially lessened. The Seventh Regiment Armory was garrisoned by four hundred men and two howitzers, and detachments almost as large were in the Central Park, Seventh avenue and Worth street arsenals. The sub-treasury in Wall street was guarded by a troop of regular infantry and a battery of field guns, under command of Colonel Bliss of the Volunteers. Rumors of an intended raid upon the Navy Yard in the East River were received at Headquarters, and the war vessels in the harbor and in the Hudson immediately steamed up the East River; and soon all the approaches to the Yard were under the guns of the receiving ship North Carolina, the corvette Savannah, and the gunboats Granite City, Gertrude, Unadilla and Tulip. The ironclad Passaic and the steam gunboat Fuchsia had taken up positions off the Battery to prevent an attempt by the rioters to gain a footing on Governor’s Island. Warships also lay at the foot of Wall and other important streets, with their guns trained to sweep the thoroughfares with grape and canister at the first sight of rioting mobs.
About two o’clock in the afternoon the bridge over the Harlem River at Macomb’s Dam was destroyed, together with the Washington Hotel and a large planing mill at Third avenue and 129th street. There was now fierce rioting throughout Manhattan, and from the Battery to the Harlem River detachments of soldiers and policemen were constantly in contact with the mobs, emerging victorious from a great majority of the clashes. By late Tuesday afternoon Special Volunteer Policemen, to the number of almost a thousand, had been equipped with badges, uniforms and clubs, and were doing garrison and guard duty, releasing policemen and soldiers for active work in the field. Little fighting against the mobs was done by the Specials because of their lack of discipline and experience, although good work was done by a few companies composed of men who had seen battle service against the Confederates. They were led against the rioters by the officers who had commanded them in the South.
A large body of rioters attempted to form a troop of cavalry with horses stolen from the stables of the Red Bird Line, but the horsemen could not manage their steeds and accomplished nothing. Another mob launched an attack against a Negro church in Thirtieth street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, and Captain Walling marched to the scene with a large force of patrolmen. The church was already in flames when the police arrived, and the rioters were fighting back the firemen who were endeavoring to put out the blaze. Walling and his men dispersed the mob, killing one man who sat astride the roof hacking at the timbers with an axe. Meanwhile other crowds were looting gun stores in Third avenue near Thirty-seventh street, and had set fire to the buildings after carrying out the arms and ammunition. Later the occupants of the block on Second avenue between Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth streets were notified that their homes would be burned that night, but within ten minutes the mob had applied the torch and hanged a Negro who fled from one of the tenements. Ten houses were burned.
There was practically no halt in the fighting on Tuesday night, bloody battles raging at various points throughout the city. For the fourth time a mob made an unsuccessful attack upon The Tribune building in Printing House Square; and between eight and nine o’clock Patrolman Bryan of the Fourth Precinct telegraphed to Headquarters that a huge crowd was threatening to burn Brooks Brothers clothing store in Catherine street.(
The police quickly dispersed the mob in the street, and then charged inside, clubbing the rioters with their nightsticks and chasing them from floor to floor. Many tried to escape down a rope which led through a trapdoor into the basement, but the police waited for them at the bottom and knocked them senseless as fast as they appeared. During the struggle several policemen were shot and seriously wounded, and it was not until Inspector Carpenter appeared with his roving command that the store was cleared. Throughout the night a heavy guard was maintained, and the next day fifty patrolmen, with a military escort, searched the low rookeries of the vicinity and recovered about $10,000 worth of clothing and other property. In one shanty they found fifty new suits, and in another a huge gunnysack filled with neckties and socks.
GOVERNOR Seymour issued a proclamation late Tuesday afternoon declaring the city to be in a state of insurrection, and at midnight Mayor Opdyke received a telegram from Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, that five regiments had been detached from the victorious Union Armies, and were being rushed to the metropolis. The message was not made public, but encouraged by the prospect of aid and by the success of the previous day’
s operations, Commissioner Acton announced in Wednesday morning’s newspapers that the backbone of the riot had been broken, and that the police were in control of the city. Nevertheless, there was heavy fighting during the next three days, and especially on Wednesday, when five Negroes were hanged and the soldiers again loosed their howitzers and field guns against the raging gangs of rioters. The five thousand liquor stores within the mob-infested areas remained open, but otherwise business had been almost entirely suspended, and the stores and factories sheltered their stocks of goods behind barred doors and shuttered windows. Except for occasional service on Sixth avenue, all of the street cars and omnibuses had ceased to operate, and the drays and carts which ordinarily rumbled through the city bearing loads of merchandise had been hidden to prevent the rioters using them to erect barricades. The roads of Westchester county and northward were crowded with men, women and children fleeing from a city that seemed doomed to destruction; and from Tuesday noon until the end of the rioting the railroad stations and the piers were crowded with great throngs that fought for places on trains and boats.
Wednesday, the 15th of July, was the hottest day of the year, and the stifling heat was made more intolerable by the columns of black smoke which curled upward from the ruins of more than three score houses which had been fired by the rioters. The fighting began before dawn, but the first conflict of importance occurred about nine o’clock, when a detachment of infantrymen of the Eighth Regiment of Volunteers, under command of General Dodge, supported by a troop of cavalry and a battery of howitzers under Colonel Mott of the Regular Army, marched out of Headquarters to disperse a mob which was reported to be hanging Negroes at Thirty-second street and Eighth avenue, within a block of the present Pennsylvania Hotel, and on the site of the Pennsylvania Railroad Station. When the column marched into Eighth avenue the soldiers found three Negroes hanging to lampposts, while a gang of ferocious women crowded about the dangling bodies, slashing them with knives as a mob of men estimated at more than five thousand yelled and cheered. The rioters fell back as the troops advanced, and Colonel Mott spurred his horse into their midst and cut down one of the Negroes with his sword, afterward running the weapon through a rioter who tried to drag him from his mount.
The Gangs of New York Page 15