CHAPTER XVIII
THE NEW YORK DRAFT RIOTS IN 1863—NOTES ON JOURNALISM
One more battle I saw, known as the Draft Riots of 1863. I arrived in New York on the Monday evening, and journeyed south through the city by the light of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum in flames; a stray negro or two hanging to a lamp-post here and there. This was the flank movement of the Rebellion; an attempt not only to prevent the enforcement of the draft, which President Lincoln had too long delayed, but to compel the Unionist forces to return northward for the defence of their homes. A mad scheme, yet for near four days New York was in possession of the mob. I never understood why, since a couple of good regiments would at any moment have restored order, as the event showed. For want of them New York had to defend itself, and did it rather clumsily, enduring needless disasters and losses both of property and life.
The Tribune office was marked for destruction but was armed and garrisoned and only once did the mob effect an entrance. Then they swept into the counting-house on the ground floor and made a bonfire of such papers as they found. For a moment there was danger, but the police came up from the Spruce Street station, the rioters fled and the fire was put out. Upstairs in the editorial rooms we knew nothing about it till it was all over. Afterward a better watch was kept. Friends of The Tribune volunteered, and there was no lack of men; nor were the police again careless.
Another rush was stopped by the police in the square. As I sat at my window looking on the City Hall I saw this Rebel effort. But the police broke the solid mass of rioters as cleverly as it could have been done in Paris, where such matters are understood better than anywhere else in the world. Once scattered, these ruffians became easy victims. The police did not spare them. I not only saw, but heard. I heard the tap, tap, of the police clubs on the heads of the fugitives. At each tap a man went down; and he did not always get up again. The street was strewn with the slain.
While these incidents were occurring an effort was made to keep Mr. Greeley away from the office; partly because he was a man of peace, and we thought scenes of violence would be unpleasant to him; partly because he was in danger both in the office and as he came and went. But he would listen to no appeal. The post of danger was the Post of duty, and he stood by the ship. Mr. Greeley's passion for peace sometimes carried him far but never showed itself in an ignoble regard for his personal safety.
Sydney Howard Gay's successor in the managing editorship of The Tribune was Mr. John Russell Young, who brought with him a new life and freshness, and something not very far removed from a genius for journalism: if in the profession of journalism there be room for genius. There is room, at any rate, for originality and for bird's-eye views of things, and for an outlook upon the world which leaves no important point uncovered. There is room for courage and for quickness of perception and for an intuitive knowledge of what is news and what is not. All these qualities Mr. Young had. That the end of his relation with The Tribune was less happy than the beginning offers no reason, to my mind, for denying him the tribute which is his due.
It seems hard to believe that in 1866, in the early summer, the first news of the Austro-Prussian war came to us in New York by ship. But so it was. Mr. Young walked into my room one morning with a slip of paper in his hand from the news bureau at, I think, Quarantine, announcing the Prussian declaration of war, June 18th, and the advance of the Prussian forces. I should like you to take the first steamer to Europe, remarked Mr. Young, and walked out again. It was a Monday. The next steamer was the Cunarder China, from Boston to Liverpool via Queenstown, on the Wednesday. I sailed accordingly, and on reaching Queenstown was met by a telegram announcing the Austrian defeat at Sadowa, or, as the Prussians prefer to call it, Königgrätz, July 3rd. The war was over. There were other military operations, but an armistice was agreed to July 22nd, and the preliminaries of peace were signed at Nikolsburg, July 26th.
On the following day, July 27th, 1866, the laying of the new Atlantic cable, the first by which messages from the public were transmitted, was successfully completed by the Great Eastern, and on the 28th a friendly message from the Queen was sent to the President of the United States. The President was Mr. Andrew Johnson, and it took him two days to reply. It would have made a difference to us in America if the war news of May and June could have reached us by cable. Even such grave events as Austria's demand for the demobilization of the Prussian Army, so far back as April, and the proceedings in the Federal Diet at Frankfort in June, made no great impression on American opinion. I suppose we were already in that state of patriotic isolation when events in Europe seemed to us like events in an ancient world. The Austro-Prussian conflict was not much more to masses of Americans than the Peloponnesian War. Nor, in truth, did news from abroad by mail ever present itself with the suddenness and authority it derived from the cable. It came by mail in masses. It came by cable with the peremptory brevity which arrested attention. The home telegraph was diffuse. It was the cable which first taught us to condense. A dispatch from London was not, in the beginning, much more than a flash of lightning; and went into print as it came, without being "written up"; and was ten times the more effective.
I had gone on from London to Berlin, and it was in Berlin that the news came of a break in the peace negotiations and the sudden arrest of the homeward march of the Prussian troops which had begun August 1st. I sent a dispatch to The Tribune announcing this, and hinting at the renewal of hostilities as a possible consequence. The news came from a source which was a guarantee of its truth; and true it was. But the diplomatic difficulty was soon adjusted and again the Prussian columns flowed steadily northward. This message, which for the moment was sufficiently startling, was, I think, the first news dispatch which went by cable. It ran to near one hundred words, and the cost of it was just short of £100, or $500. The rate from London to New York was then twenty shillings a word. We wasted no words at that price.
Mr. Weaver was then manager of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, a man who thought it good policy to coerce the public. He understood much about cable business; not much about human nature. He considered himself, and for the time being he was, at the head of a monopoly. People who desired to send messages by cable to America must do so upon his terms or not at all. It never seemed to occur to him that there might be such a thing as a prohibitory rate, or that a business could not be developed to the greatest advantage by driving away customers. He was quite happy if he could wring an extra sovereign from the sender. He thought it a good stroke to compel each sender of a message to add the word "London" to his signature. It was another twenty shillings in the treasury of the company.