An old citizen of New York, acquainted with him from his youth, is authority for the statement that Kelly was as fully a leader of the young men of his neighborhood when he first grew up, as he became of the Tammany Democrats at a later day. He was of a social disposition, and while always temperate in his habits, he would go occasionally, after getting through with his day’s work, to the Ivy Green, a famous hostelry in those days in Elm street, kept by Malachi Fallon, who went to California in 1849, and which was afterward kept by John Lord. The Ivy Green, like Stonehall’s in Fulton Street, was a popular gathering place for politicians and their friends. John Clancy, Peter B. Sweeny, Matthew Brennan, David C. Broderick, and many other active young fellows, who afterwards became prominent in politics, were in the habit of visiting the Ivy Green, and John Kelly would sometimes call there for a chat with the boys. Less frequently, but once in a great while, Kelly and Broderick, the latter being a warm friend of Kelly’s, also dropped in at the Comet, another place of resort of the same kind, kept by Manus Kelly on Mott street, where they would meet the same jolly crowd that frequented the Ivy Green, and whither came quite often the celebrated Tom Hyer, Yankee Sullivan, and other champions of the manly art of self-defence. “But,” said the writer’s informant, “none of these fighting men ever intermeddled with Kelly or Broderick. The best of them would have had his hands full if he had done so.” Poor Broderick, who afterwards became a United States Senator from California, finally fell in a duel in that State.
Young Kelly was very fond of athletic sports. He was a good oarsman, was often on the water, and pulled a shell with the best. There was a crack company called the Emmet Guards in New York, when Kelly was a young man. He was first lieutenant of this company during the captaincy of James McGrath, upon whose death he was elected captain, and being fond of military matters, he brought his company to a high state of efficiency. Captain Kelly retained the command until he was elected Alderman in 1853. The Old Volunteer Fire Department was then in its zenith. He was a member of it, and one of its leading spirits. While he was in the Fire Department an incident occurred which has exercised a restraining influence over him through life. At a fireman’s parade, while he was in line of March, a burly truckman attempted to drive through the ranks. Kelly was near the horses and kept them back. The driver sprang to the ground, and made a furious attack on the young fire laddie. He received in return a blow from Kelly’s fist which ended the battle by rendering the truckman insensible. He was borne to a neighboring doctor’s office, and was resuscitated with much difficulty. For two or three days the truckman was disabled. Kelly, who had acted strictly on the defensive, nevertheless was greatly distressed for his antagonist. He had been unaware of the almost phenomenal force of his own blow, and his tremendous hitting power was first fully revealed to him by the effect of his fist on the truckman. To one of his intimate friends he declared that he deeply regretted this affair, but that, perhaps, it had served a good purpose, for he was now unalterably resolved never again as long as he lived to strike any man with all his force, no matter what the provocation might be.
His herculean strength and known courage have sometimes been seized upon by opponents for disparaging paragraphs in the newspapers, just as the combativeness of Andrew Jackson, in his earlier days, was often commented upon to his detriment. But as there was nothing mean or domineering in the temper of Jackson, any more than there is in Kelly, only the high and unconquerable spirit that felt “the rapture of the strife,” Old Hickory did not suffer in popular esteem on account of his early scrimmages. In 1828 Dr. James L. Armstrong, one of his old opponents in Tennessee, gathered up and published as a political nosegay a list of nearly one hundred pistol, sword and fist fights in which Jackson had been engaged between the ages of 23 and 60. Jackson replied to this by promising to cudgel Armstrong on sight. The courage of some men is so conspicuous that they are recognized at once as heroes. In his admirable life of Nelson, Southey relates many acts of apparently reckless intrepidity on the part of the hero of Trafalgar; but, as it was with Jackson, so was it with Nelson, his conduct was not the result of real recklessness; it was not the courage of the bull-dog, the maddened bull or the enraged lion, but rather the play of a spirit which rose with the occasion, the exhibition of a will not to be appalled by dangers common natures shrink from. It was such a courage the poet had in view when he made Brutus say—
“Set honor in one eye, and death i’ the other,
And I will look on both indifferently.”
On several occasions in his career John Kelly has exhibited this heroic quality. Through his agency, at a stormy political convention in New York, when several of the most notorious partisans of Tweed, while clutching to retain the power which had been wrested from their fallen chief, were beaten at every point, a resort to brute force was threatened, and several of the vilest desperadoes in the city were despatched from the hall to waylay Kelly and take his life as he passed along the street. Some of his friends divined the purpose of the would-be-assassins, and admonished Mr. Kelly of their movements. A carriage was sent for, and he was urged to get into it and be driven home, in order to avoid the bravos. Augustus Schell, Horace F. Clark, and several other friends tried to persuade him to enter the carriage. Mr. Kelly replied that he generally went home by a certain route, pointing to the street where the thugs were in hiding, and it was his intention to go that way then. If anybody wanted to kill him, the opportunity would be given, as he would neither seek nor avoid such miscreants. “My friends,” he quietly remarked, “if you run away from a dog, he will be very apt to bite you.” He went out of the hall and approached the corner, keeping his eyes steadily fixed on the sinister group gathered there like beasts of prey, passed on, and was not molested. Determined to take his life, but deterred by cowardice when Kelly confronted them, the villains made a plan to secrete themselves in a small unoccupied frame house on Lexington Avenue, between 33d and 34th streets, on the following morning, and to shoot him as he went down town to business. An old man living in the neighborhood, by the merest accident overheard a part of the muttered plot of the conspirators, and saw them early next morning enter the deserted house. He was a friend of Mr. Kelly, and suspected that he was to be attacked. He went out, and meeting Mr. Kelly, told him of his suspicion, and pointed out the house in which the men were concealed. John Kelly crossed the street, and proceeded deliberately to enter the house and room from which the Ring desperadoes in dumb astonishment watched his approach. Thinking they had been betrayed—for it must have flashed upon them that Kelly would not have the madness to do such a thing unless he had assistance at hand—the terrified assassins fled from the rear of the house as he entered at the front. He went into the room they had just quit, and saw four men running through a vacant lot as fast as their legs could carry them into the next street. Alone and absolutely unassisted, save by the cool judgment and unflinching courage which eminently distinguish his character, he adopted this hazardous line of conduct as the most effective way of confounding a gang of murderous ruffians, and stamping out their cowardly plots. He succeeded. The Ring men beset his path no more.
Those acquainted with John Kelly are aware that there is a humorous side to his character, and that he possesses mimic powers of a high order. It is not generally known, but it is a fact however, that when he first grew up to manhood he was one of the organizers of an Amateur Dramatic Association, which had its headquarters in a hall at the corner of Elm and Canal Streets, and which sent forth several professional actors who afterwards attained eminence on the stage. Charles Place, Samuel Truesdale, Mr. Godwin, John Kelly and other well known citizens of New York were members of this company; and several great tragedies, notably some of the now neglected ones of Shakespeare, were essayed by these aspiring youths. “Many of Mr. Kelly’s friends,” said a writer in September, 1880, in a New York weekly paper called The Hour, “will be surprised to learn that he once, in the character of Macbeth, sturdily challenged Macduff to ‘lay on’; that as the sable-clad Hamlet he was accustomed to win applause as he expressed the wish that his ‘too, too solid flesh would melt’; and that his passionate outbursts as the jealous Moor in ‘Othello’, were wont to bring down the house. Equally astonished will they be to hear that, in the versatility of his genius, he was as much a favorite in ‘Toodles’ and other of Burton’s eccentric comedy parts as in the higher walk of tragedy.”
In Kelly’s younger days religious persecution and hostility to foreigners had begun to be shown in not a few localities. This intolerant spirit, which had lain dormant in America from the days of Washington to the end of Monroe’s administration, broke forth with great fury in several parts of the country after the close of the “era of good feeling.” The fathers of the Republic were liberal men who kept this spirit at a distance. Archbishop Carroll of Baltimore, the friend of Washington, was chosen by a unanimous resolution of Congress, and in compliance with the desire of the clergy and laity of all denominations, to deliver the first anniversary address upon the father of his country after his death. The address was delivered February 22, 1800, and is still preserved. Bishop Cheverus of Boston, afterwards Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux, France, was the warm personal friend of John Adams, and when the Bishop was about to build a church in Boston, the first name on the list of his subscribers was that of President Adams. When Bishop Dubois, the friend of Lafayette, was driven into exile by the French Revolution, he found a place of refuge in Virginia, a home in the private residence of James Monroe, afterwards President, friends in his host and Patrick Henry, and, having no church of his own, a chapel in the capitol at Richmond which the legislature of Virginia placed at his disposal to be used for the offices of religion. These halcyon days of Christian charity and toleration in America were now about to be rudely interrupted. In 1831, the same Dubois, then Bishop of New York, had the mortification to see his church of St. Mary’s, in that city, set on fire by an incendiary and burned down. The first Catholic college in the State of New York was built in the neighborhood of Nyack, on the Hudson, in 1833, by this prelate. Religious bigotry incited by Rev. Dr. Brownlee and other enemies of the Catholics, soon applied the torch to the structure and reduced it to ashes. In 1834 the Ursuline Convent at Charlestown, Massachusetts, was burned and sacked. Two or three years later an anti-Catholic mob formed the design of burning St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. A pious churchman, Bishop Dubois was also a man of courage. If the civil authorities would not stay the fury of the mob, he determined to protect himself, and defend his church from destruction. John Kelly, then a well grown youth and a favorite of Bishop Dubois, was selected by him on account of his prudence and extraordinary courage as a sort of aid de-camp to Lawrence Langdon, the leader of a large body of citizens who assembled in the vicinity of the Cathedral for defense. The streets were torn up for a considerable distance; paving stones, wagons and omnibuses were used for barricades; armed men filled the Cathedral, and the walls of the adjoining grave-yard glistened with swords and bayonets. The Bishop enjoined the utmost forbearance upon his people, and gave them positive orders not to begin the assault, and to avoid collision with the mob until the Cathedral might be attacked. Conspicuous in carrying out the orders of the leader, and in directing the movements of the defending party, and maintaining constant communication between Langdon and his followers, was young John Kelly of the Fourteenth Ward. The mob approached through Broadway, a dense body extending for several blocks, marching in solid line and filling the street from one side to the other. They turned into Prince Street and approached the Cathedral. Kelly carried the order at this moment for the defenders to lie down in the grave-yard and keep perfectly quiet. It was night, and the mob marched on until stopped by the barricades, when they found the whole neighborhood in a state of siege. The ample preparations to receive them disconcerted the church-burners, and the silence of the defending party, of whose presence they had become aware, made the incendiaries wary and apprehensive. They faltered and lost heart, and slunk away in the direction of the Bowery, terrified from their wicked design by the intrepid courage of one old Bishop. They passed along the sidewalk adjoining the burial-ground in lines six deep, with frightful oaths upon their lips, while the men in the city of the dead remained as still and motionless as the tenants of the tombs below, but every finger was on a trigger, and every heart beat high with resolve to defend St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the graves of their fathers from sacrilege and desecration. Driven by cowardly fear from the church, the mob crossed to the Bowery, wrecking the houses of several Irishmen, and the tavern called the Green Dragon, on the way, and finally their fury was let loose on the private residence of Mr. Arthur Tappan, the famous abolitionist, whose windows and doors they broke, and otherwise injured his property. Thus by the prudence of the Cathedral defenders in avoiding collision with the mob, a terrible sacrifice of life was escaped, and young John Kelly, inspired by the counsel of the Bishop and his own coolness and sagacity, played a prominent part in preventing bloodshed and saving the Cathedral.
The prejudice against foreigners, an outgrowth of that aversion which the old Federal party leaders manifested towards Frenchmen, Germans and Irishmen, indeed to all foreigners except Englishmen, continued to increase in bitterness after the close of the “era of good feeling.” A political party was at last organized on a platform of disfranchisement of the Irish and “the Dutch,” the latter being a commonly used misnomer for the Germans. This party took the name of Native Americans. It advocated laws prohibiting Irish and German emigrants from landing on these shores, and practical denial of the right of suffrage, or of holding office, to those already here. For some years this unwise and unstatesmanlike policy of exclusion and proscription seriously checked the tide of emigration from Europe. Had the Native Americans prevailed, instead of the fifty odd millions of population in the United States to-day, there would have been less than twenty millions, and the wealth and greatness of the country would be diminished in like proportion. Instead of being, perhaps, the greatest nation in the world, the United States would occupy the position of a fourth or fifth-rate power, a little but not much ahead of Canada on the north, and the South American governments on the south.
As the greater number of the foreign population were Roman Catholics, a sectarian element was infused into the new party, and with bigotry superadded to a widespread jealousy of foreigners, the Native American party soon signalized itself by burning down Catholic churches and colleges, and by bloody chance-medleys and deliberate riots with German and Irish adopted citizens. In the year 1844 these disturbances reached a climax. A terrible riot occurred that year in Philadelphia, in which many lives were sacrificed, and the Catholic church of St. Augustine was laid in ashes by the mob. The scenes in that city bore resemblance to some of the godless excesses in Paris during the reign of terror. To be a foreigner was to brave death, to be a Catholic to court martyrdom in free America.