BOSS TWEED: The Corrupt Pol who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York Read Free Page B

Seymour now heard the police, militia, and sheriff’s office give their reports. They painted an awful picture: When army officials had resumed the draft Monday morning, July 13, bands of mostly Irish workmen had come prepared to stop them. They’d cut telegraph lines and congregated initially at the draft office on Third Avenue. There, led by a squad of volunteer firemen, they’d forced their way inside, smashed the selection wheel and set the building ablaze. Soon, the same firemen who’d led the initial charge—the so-called “Black Joke Company”—were fighting the mob to control flames spreading to surrounding buildings. Crowds then began murderous rampages through the city, burning shops, smashing windows, looting, and killing. They made blacks a special target, attacking and burning the Colored Orphan’s Asylum on 43rd Street and lynching several black men from street-lamps. They’d threatened the Park Row buildings of the New York Tribune and New-York Times —both supporters of Lincoln and the war—and even mobbed Mayor Opdyke’s house on Fifth Avenue. Early that morning, they’d recognized Police Superintendent John Kennedy walking on the street and beat him senseless.
    Uptown, New York’s wealthiest residents fled by the thousands, driven to panic as rioters targeted posh Republican homes for looting and window breaking. The rich packed rail cars, steamboats, stagecoaches, and any other conveyance headed across the Hudson or East Rivers for safety in Brooklyn, Westchester, or New Jersey. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Only weeks earlier, Seymour had sent the bulk of New York’s own state militia—over 16,000 armed men—marching into Pennsylvania to join in opposing Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the North, culminating in the Gettysburg bloodbath. As a result, the city stood unguarded.
    Tuesday morning brought no let-up; the battle had resumed with even greater violence. Rioters fought police from behind street barricades they’d built; sounds of screams and gunfire filled the air along with the stench of burning wood and flesh. With no army to protect them and police badly outnumbered, citizens at the Stock Exchange, the Merchants Exchange, and the Union League had organized volunteers to take up rifles to defend their neighborhoods.
    Horatio Seymour appeared shaken at the news. But after an hour or so, he seemed to find himself. As the highest-ranking government official present, he decided to act. He stood up from his seat, walked downstairs to the lobby of the hotel and stepped out into the street where people could see him; he heard a few cheers, then began to walk the dozen blocks down Broadway to City Hall as other officials straggled behind. Seymour recognized that many of these rioters were his own followers. Perhaps they’d listen to reason; perhaps they’d listen to him. He had decided to appeal directly, personally, to the mob and ask them to stop.

New York Governor Horatio Seymour.

    Since early that morning, crowds had gathered around City Hall and nearby Printing House Square where the newspaper offices stood; rioters had threatened again to burn down Greeley’s New York Tribune and the New-York Times , while smashing windows and ransacking nearby shops. Worse violence was unfolding uptown on Ninth Avenue where rioters also had built barricades to fight police. Word of Governor Seymour’s approach quickly rippled through the street and people began congregating at City Hall Park.
    When Seymour reached City Hall itself, the building’s marble, columned structure with its cupola and dome rising high above the neighborhood, he climbed up onto the front steps so the crowd could see him and recognize his familiar face: tufts of gray hair, slim build, high forehead, and quick glancing eyes. Seymour, an up-stater from Utica, normally felt more comfortable at a county fair than on teeming city streets, but now he appeared calm. He stood surrounded by police