The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873 Part 15

The balance was securely invested, to meet future emergencies, a portion of which was paid to sufferers by the Orange Riot of 1871.

The following is the list of colored people known to be killed by the mob, together with the circ.u.mstances attending their murder, as given by David Barnes, in his Metropolitan record, to which reference has heretofore been made.

COLORED VICTIMS OF THE RIOT.

WILLIAM HENRY NICHOLS (colored). Nichols resided at No. 147 East Twenty-eighth Street. Mrs. Staat, his mother, was visiting him. On Wednesday, July 15th, at 3 o'clock, the house was attacked by a mob with showers of bricks and stones. In one of the rooms was a woman with a child but three days old. The rioters broke open the door with axes and rushed in. Nichols and his mother fled to the bas.e.m.e.nt; in a few moments the babe referred to was dashed by the rioters from the upper window to the yard, and instantly killed. The mob cut the waterpipes above, and the bas.e.m.e.nt was being deluged; ten persons, mostly women and children, were there, and they fled to the yard; in attempting to climb the fence, Mrs. Staat fell back from exhaustion; the rioters were instantly upon her; her son sprang to her rescue, exclaiming, "Save my mother, if you kill me." Two ruffians instantly seized him, each taking hold of an arm, while a third, armed with a crowbar, calling upon them to hold his arms apart, deliberately struck him a savage blow on the head, felling him like a bullock. He died in the N. Y. Hospital two days after.

JAMES COSTELLO (colored).--James Costello, No. 97 West Thirty-third Street, killed on Tuesday morning, July 14th. Costello was a shoemaker, an active man in his business, industrious and sober. He went out early in the morning upon an errand, was accosted, and finally was pursued by a powerful man. He ran down the street; endeavored to make his escape; was nearly overtaken by his pursuer; in self-defence he turned and shot the rioter with a revolver. The shot proved to be mortal; he died two days after. Costello was immediately set upon by the mob. They first mangled his body, then hanged it. They then cut down his body and dragged it through the gutters, smashing it with stones, and finally burnt it. The mob then attempted to kill Mrs. Costello and her children, but she escaped by climbing fences and taking refuge in a police station-house.

ABRAHAM FRANKLIN (colored).--This young man, who was murdered by the mob on the corner of Twenty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue, was a quiet, inoffensive man, of unexceptionable character. He was a cripple, but supported himself and his mother, being employed as a coachman. A short time previous to the a.s.sault, he called upon his mother to see if anything could be done by him for her safety. The old lady said she considered herself perfectly safe; but if her time to die had come, she was ready to die. Her son then knelt down by her side, and implored the protection of Heaven in behalf of his mother. The old lady said that it seemed to her that good angels were present in the room. Scarcely had the supplicant risen from his knees, when the mob broke down the door, seized him, beat him over the head and face with fists and clubs, and then hanged him in the presence of his parent. While they were thus engaged, the military came and drove them away, cutting down the body of Franklin, who raised his arm once slightly and gave a few signs of life.

The military then moved on to quell other riots, when the mob returned and again suspended the now probably lifeless body of Franklin, cutting out pieces of flesh, and otherwise shockingly mutilating it.

AUGUSTUS STUART (colored).--Died at Hospital, Blackwell's Island, July 22, from the effects of a blow received at the hands of the mob, on Wednesday evening of the Riot Week. He had been badly beaten previously by a band of rioters, and was frightened and insane from the effects of the blows which he had received. He was running toward the a.r.s.enal (State), Seventh Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street, for safety, when he was overtaken by the mob, from whom he received his death-blow.

PETER HEUSTON.--Peter Heuston, sixty-three years of age, a Mohawk Indian, dark complexion, but straight hair, and for several years a resident of New York, proved a victim to the riots. Heuston served with the New York Volunteers in the Mexican war. He was brutally attacked and shockingly beaten, on the 13th of July, by a gang of ruffians, who thought him to be of the African race because of his dark complexion. He died within four days, at Bellevue Hospital, from his injuries.

JEREMIAH ROBINSON (colored).--He was killed in Madison near Catharine Street. His widow stated that her husband, in order to escape, dressed himself in some of her clothes, and, in company with herself and one other woman, left their residence and went toward one of the Brooklyn ferries. Robinson wore a hood, which failed to hide his beard. Some boys, seeing his beard, lifted up the skirts of his dress, which exposed his heavy boots. Immediately the mob set upon him, and the atrocities they perpetrated are so revolting that they are unfit for publication.

They finally killed him and threw his body into the river. His wife and her companion ran up Madison Street, and escaped across the Grand Street Ferry to Brooklyn.

WILLIAM JONES (colored).--A crowd of rioters in Clarkson Street, in pursuit of a negro, who in self-defence had fired on some rowdies, met an inoffensive colored man returning from a bakery with a loaf of bread under his arm. They instantly set upon and beat him and, after nearly killing him, hung him to a lamppost. His body was left suspended for several hours. A fire was made underneath him, and he was literally roasted as he hung, the mob revelling in their demoniac act. Recognition of the remains, on their being recovered, was impossible; and two women, mourned for upwards of two weeks, in the case of this man, for the loss of their husbands. At the end of that time, the husband of one of the mourners, to her great joy, returned like one recovered from the grave.

The princ.i.p.al evidence which the widow, Mary Jones, had to identify the murdered man as her husband, was the fact of his having a loaf of bread under his arm, he having left the house to get a loaf of bread a few minutes before the attack.

JOSEPH REED (colored).--This was a lad of seven years of age, residing at No. 147 East Twenty-eighth Street, with an aged grandmother and widowed mother. On Wednesday morning of the fearful week, a crowd of ruffians gathered in the neighborhood, determined on a week of plunder and death. They attacked the house, stole everything they could carry with them, and, after threatening the inmates, set fire to it. The colored people who had the sole occupancy of the building, fled in confusion into the midst of the gathering crowd. And then the child was separated from his guardians. His youth and evident illness, even from the devils around him, it would be thought, should have insured his safety. But no sooner did they see his unprotected, defenceless condition, than a gang of fiendish men seized him, beat him with sticks, and bruised him with heavy cobblestones. But one, tenfold more the servant of Satan than the rest, rushed at the child, and with the stock of a pistol struck him on the temple and felled him to the ground.

A n.o.ble young fireman, by the name of John F. Govern, of No. 39 Hose Company, instantly came to the rescue, and, single-handed, held the crowd at bay. Taking the wounded and unconscious boy in his arms, he carried him to a place of safety. The terrible beating and the great fright the poor lad had undergone was too much for his feeble frame; he died on the following Tuesday.

JOSEPH JACKSON (colored), aged nineteen years, living in West Fifty-third Street, near Sixth Avenue, was in the industrious pursuit of his humble occupation of gathering provender for a herd of cattle, and when near the foot of Thirty-fourth Street, East River, July 15, was set upon by the mob, killed, and his body thrown into the river.

SAMUEL JOHNSON (colored).--On Tuesday night Johnson was attacked near Fulton Ferry by a gang who mercilessly beat and left him for dead. A proposition was made to throw him into the river, but for some reason the murderers took fright and fled. He was taken by some citizens to his home, and died the next day.

---- WILLIAMS (colored).--He was attacked on the corner of Le Roy and Washington Streets, on Tuesday morning, July 14th, knocked down, a number of men jumped upon, kicked, and stamped upon him until insensible. One of the murderers knelt on the body and drove a knife into it; the blade being too small, he threw it away and resorted to his fists. Another seized a huge stone, weighing near twenty pounds, and deliberately crushed it again and again on to the victim. A force of police, under Captain d.i.c.kson, arrived and rescued the man, who was conveyed to the New York Hospital. He was only able to articulate "Williams" in response to a question as to his name, and remained insensible thereafter, dying in a few days.

ANN DERRICKSON.--This was a white woman, the wife of a colored man, and lived at No. 11 York Street. On Wednesday, July 15th, the rioters seized a son of deceased, a lad of about twelve years, saturated his clothes and hair with camphene, and then procuring a rope, fastened one end to a lamp-post, the other around his neck, and were about to set him on fire, and hang him; they were interfered with by some citizens and by the police of the First Ward, and their diabolical attempt at murder frustrated. While Mrs. Derrickson was attempting to save the life of her son she was horribly bruised and beaten, with a cart-rung. The victim, after lingering three or four weeks, died from the effects of her injuries.

Reports from the captains of the several precincts, with all the details of their operations, were made out--also from the subordinate military officers to their immediate superiors. The final reports of General Wool, commanding the Eastern Department, and Major-general Sandford, commanding the city troops, caused much remark in the city papers, and called forth a reply from General Brown, who considered himself unjustly a.s.sailed in them. Explanation of the disagreement between him and General Wool having been fully given, it is not necessary to repeat it here. The same may be said of the statement of General Wool, regarding his orders on Monday the 13th, respecting the troops in the harbor.

But in this report of General Wool to Governor Seymour, there are other statements which General Brown felt it his duty to correct. General Wool says, that finding there was a want of harmony between Generals Sandford and Brown in the disposition of troops, he issued the following order:

MAJOR-GENERAL SANDFORD, BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL BROWN.

GENTLEMEN:--It is indispensable to collect your troops not stationed, and have them divided into suitable parties, with a due proportion of police to each, and to patrol in such parts of the city as may be in the greatest danger from the rioters. This ought to be done as soon as practicable.

JOHN E. WOOL, _Major-general_.

After this had been issued, General Sandford reporting to me that his orders were not obeyed by General Brown, I issued the following order:

"All the troops called out for the protection of the city are placed under the command of General Sandford."

General Brown in his reply says, that he "_never saw or heard of this first order_." The only explanation of this, consistent with the character of both, is that General Wool sent this order to General Sandford alone--either forgetting to transmit it to General Brown, or expecting General Sandford to do it.

At all events, sent or not, it was a foolish order. One would infer from it that the whole task of putting down the riots belonged to the military, the commanders of which were to order out what co-operating force of police they deemed necessary and march up and down the disaffected districts, trampling out the lawlessness according to rule.

This might be all well enough, but the question was, how were these troops, strangers to the city, to find out where "_such parts of the city_" were in which was "_the greatest danger from the rioters_?" It showed a lamentable ignorance of mobs; they don't stay in one spot and fight it out, nor keep in one ma.s.s, nor give notice beforehand where they will strike next. Such knowledge could only be obtained from police head-quarters, the focus of the telegraph system, and _there_ the troops should have been ordered to concentrate at once, and put themselves under the direction of the Police Commissioners. Again, General Wool says he issued the following order to General Brown, on Tuesday:

"SIR:--It is reported that the rioters have already recommenced their work of destruction. To-day there must be no child's play. Some of the troops under your command should be sent immediately to attack and stop those who have commenced their infernal rascality in Yorkville and Harlem."

This order, too, General Brown says he never received. Thinking it strange, he addressed a note to General Wool's a.s.sistant adjutant-general, respecting both these orders, which had thus strangely wandered out of the way. The latter, Major Christensen, replied as follows:

"The orders of General Wool published in his report to Governor Seymour, viz.: 'That patrols of military and police should be sent through the disaffected districts;' and the one July 14th, 'To-day there must be no child's play,' etc., were not issued by me, and I cannot therefore say whether copies were sent to you or not. They were certainly _not_ sent by me.

"C.F. CHRISTENSEN,

"Major, a.s.sistant Adjutant-general."

We have explained how the error may have occurred with regard to the first order. But there is no explanation of this, except on the ground that General Wool perhaps sketched out this order, without sending it, and afterwards seeing it amid his papers, thought it was a copy of one he had sent. He was well advanced in years, and might easily fall into some such error.

It is not necessary to go into detailed account of all the statements contained in General Wool's letter which General Brown emphatically denies; but the following is worthy of notice. He says that General Brown issued orders that General Sandford countermanded, and that General Brown acted through the riots under his (Wool's) orders; whereas the latter says, he never received but three orders from Wool during the whole time, and only _one_ of those referred to any action towards the rioters, and that was to bring off some killed and wounded men left by a military force sent out either by Sandford or Wool, and which had been chased from the field by the mob.

But the statements of General Wool are entirely thrown into the shade by the following a.s.sertion of General Sandford, in his report. He says: "With the remnant of the [his] division (left in the city), and the first reinforcements from General Wool, detachments were sent to all parts of the city, and the rioters everywhere beaten and dispersed on Monday afternoon, Monday night, and Tuesday morning. In a few hours, but for the interference of Brigadier-general Brown, who, in disobedience of orders," etc.

The perfect gravity with which this a.s.sertion is made is something marvellous. One would infer that the police was of no account, except to maintain order after it was fully restored by the military on Tuesday morning. General Sandford might well be ignorant of the state of things in the city, for he was cooped up in the a.r.s.enal, intent only on holding his fortress. So far as he was concerned, the whole city might have been burned up before Tuesday noon, and he would scarcely have known it, except as he saw the smoke and flames from the roof of the a.r.s.enal. He never sent out a detachment until after the Tuesday afternoon, when, as he says, but for General Brown's action, the riot would have been virtually over. The simple truth is, these reports of Generals Wool and Sandford are both mere after-thoughts, growing out of the annoyance they felt on knowing that their _martinetism_ was a total failure, and the whole work had been done by General Brown and the Police Commissioners from their head-quarters in Mulberry Street. Acton and Brown had no time to grumble or dispute about etiquette. They had something more serious on hand, and they bent their entire energies to their accomplishment.

General Sandford held the a.r.s.enal, an important point, indeed a vital one, and let him claim and receive all the credit due that achievement; but to a.s.sume any special merit in quelling the riots in the streets is simply ridiculous. That was the work of the police and the military under the commissioners and General Brown.

The statement of the Police Commissioners, Acton and Bergen, on this point is conclusive. They say that General Sandford's error consisted in "not choosing to be in close communication with this department, when alone through the police telegraph, and other certain means, trustworthy information of the movements of the mob could be promptly had."

That single statement is enough to overthrow all of General Sandford's a.s.sertions about the riot. It was hardly necessary for them to declare further in their letter to General Brown:

"So far from your action having had the effect supposed by General Sandford, we are of the opinion, already expressed in our address to the police force, that through your prompt, vigorous, and intelligent action, the intrepidity and steady valor of the small military force under you, acting with the police force, the riotous proceedings were arrested on Thursday night, and that without such aid mob violence would have continued much longer."

WELL-EARNED PRAISE.

On the week after the riot the Board of Police Commissioners issued the following address to the force, in which a well-earned tribute is paid to the military:

_To the Metropolitan Police Force._

On the morning of Monday, the 13th inst., the peace and good order of the city were broken by a mob collected in several quarters of the city, for the avowed purpose of resisting the process of drafting names to recruit the armies of the Union.

Vast crowds of men collected and fired the offices where drafting was in progress, beating and driving the officers from duty.

From the beginning, these violent proceedings were accompanied by arson, robbery, and murder.

Private property, unofficial persons of all ages, s.e.xes, and conditions, were indiscriminately a.s.sailed--none were spared, except those who were supposed by the mob to sympathize with their proceedings.

Early in the day the Superintendent was a.s.saulted, cruelly beaten, robbed, and disabled by the mob which was engaged in burning the provost marshal's office in Third Avenue, thus in a manner disarranging the organization at the Central Department, throwing new, unwonted, and responsible duties upon the Board.

At this juncture the telegraph wires of the department were cut, and the movement of the railroads and stages violently interrupted, interfering seriously with our accustomed means of transmitting orders and concentrating forces.

The militia of the city were absent at the seat of war, fighting the battles of the nation against treason and secession, and there was no adequate force in the city for the first twelve hours to resist at all points the vast and infuriated mob. The police force was not strong enough in any precinct to make head, unaided, against the overwhelming force. No course was left but to concentrate the whole force at the Central Department, and thence send detachments able to encounter and conquer the rioters. This course was promptly adopted on Monday morning.

The military were called upon to act in aid of the civil force to subdue the treasonable mob, protect life and property, and restore public order.

Under such, adverse circ.u.mstances you were called upon to encounter a mob of such strength as have never before been seen, in this country.

The force of militia under General Sandford, who were called into service by the authority of this Board, were concentrated by him at and held the a.r.s.enal in Seventh Avenue, throughout the contest. The military forces in command of Brevet Brigadier-general Harvey Brown reported at the Central Department, and there General Brown established his head-quarters, and from there expeditions, combined of police and military force, were sent out that in all cases conquered, defeated, or dispersed the mob force, and subjected them to severe chastis.e.m.e.nt. In no instance did these detachments from the Central Department, whether of police alone or police and military combined, meet with defeat or serious check.