They were supplemented by a gun on top of the great Municipal Building. It held a good part of the crowded tenement house district of the Lower East Side under its zone of fire, notably the doubtful sections of Cherry Street and other areas known to the police.
Church Towers as Gun Stations
On the tall towers of the suspension bridges themselves were other detachments with a gun each. The churches were not forgotten by the soldiers. The graceful steeple of Grace Church, standing at an acute angle of Broadway so that it can be seen from far down town, had been before men’s eyes so long that they had ceased, almost, to note its soft beauty. Now they looked at it with a new and acute perception, for its steeple held a gun that pointed down Broadway, whose southern zone of fire would just about reach to where the northern zone of fire from the Woolworth Building would end.
Trinity, too, had a gun in its tower, pointing down Wall Street. North and south on upper Broadway, guns on the Flatiron Building could reach any important street or any place where dangerous crowds might conceivably form. This eminence controlled both Madison and Union Squares. The tower of Madison Square Garden, near-by, also was armed. From it men could watch and reach any part of the East Side that was out of reach of the detachments in the bridge towers. Uptown New York was governed more easily still. The wide, geometrically regular streets with many open squares, were overlooked by tall apartment buildings and hotels that commanded long sweeps of avenue. As a result, many of the city squares and smaller parts had no artillery in them at all, and others had only half a battery.
The people knew that wherever they might move, they were within the range of cannon that were loaded and ready. Their Citizens’ Committee and their officials worked under guns. Every foot of their Great White Way could be changed into a Way of Death at a moment’s notice. Their women could not shop, their children could not play, except under the menace of weapons.
Small need was there in New York City of the many placards and notices warning the people against disorder. Every man’s eye was on every other man; and had one plotted mischief or rebellion, there would have been a hundred witnesses ready to suppress him, to betray him—anything to prevent those steel devils in the city towers from setting death loose in the streets!
X
THE PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID
Not until the City of New York actually was surrendered did the people of the Middle and Far West become startled into a really acute perception of the catastrophe that had fallen on the whole country.
Though they were fiery with patriotism and anger, and though they were giving not only lavishly but extravagantly of their wealth and men, they were free, unconquered and untouched. They had seen no invader. With a suddenly freshened realization of the hugeness of the country, they had attained the conviction that there was little danger that any foe possibly could reach them from the Atlantic.
They were willing to defend the East with all that they had. They were willing to toss to the air all their royal plans for the splendid future that was all but built. They were the real America, and they were willing to ruin themselves and die for America. But—the men of Chicago were a thousand miles from an enemy. Three thousand miles separated the men of the Pacific from the armed enemies in New England.