Governor Seymour had reached the city, and after being closeted with Mayor Opdyke, had issued a proclamation, calling on the rioters to disperse, and saying that they would be put down at all hazards.
At a meeting of the merchants and bankers in Wall Street, it was resolved to close up business, and form volunteer companies of a hundred men each, to serve under the military. General Wetmore was one of the first to offer his services. The high-spirited citizen, William E. Dodge, was among the most prominent advocates of the measure, and soon found himself a captain under orders. The steamboat of the harbor police was busy in bringing troops and cannon from Riker's and Governor's Island, and rapidly steaming from point to point on the river, to prevent destruction around the docks. Around the arsenal cannon were placed. At the city armory, corner of White and Elm Streets, were a company of the Eighty-fourth New York Militia, and some of the Zouaves and other troops. The Sub-treasury and Custom House were defended by the Tenth National Zouaves and a hundred and fifty armed citizens. In front of the Government stores in Worth and White streets, the Invalid Corps and a company of marines patrolled, while howitzers loaded with grape and canister, stood on the corner of the street. Nearly four hundred citizens had been sworn in at police head-quarters as special policemen, and had been furnished with clubs and badges. All this time the fight was going on in every direction, while the fire-bells continually ringing increased the terror that every hour became more wide-spread. Especially was this true of the negro population. From the outset, they had felt they were to be objects of vengeance, and all day Monday and to-day those who could leave, fled into the country. They crowded the ferry-boats in every direction, fleeing for life. But old men and women, and poor families, were compelled to stay behind, and meet the fury of the mob, and to-day it became a regular hunt for them. A sight of one in the streets would call forth a halloo, as when, a fox breaks cover, and away would dash a half a dozen men in pursuit. Sometimes a whole crowd streamed after with shouts and curses, that struck deadly terror to the heart of the fugitive. If overtaken, he was pounded to death at once; if he escaped into a negro house for safety, it was set on fire, and the inmates made to share a common fate. Deeds were done and sights witnessed that one would not have dreamed of, except among savage tribes.
At one time there lay at the corner of Twenty seventh-Street and Seventh Avenue the dead body of a negro, stripped nearly naked, and around it a collection of Irishmen, absolutely dancing or shouting like wild Indians. Sullivan and Roosevelt Streets are great negro quarters, and here a negro was afraid to be seen in the street. If in want of something from a grocery, he would carefully open the door, and look up and down to see if any one was watching, and then steal cautiously forth, and hurry home on his errand. Two boarding-houses here were surrounded by a mob, but the lodgers, seeing the coming storm, fled. The desperadoes, finding only the owner left behind, wreaked their vengeance on him, and after beating him unmercifully, broke up the furniture, and then fired the buildings. A German store near by, because it was patronized extensively by negroes, shared the same fate, after its contents had been distributed among themselves. A negro barber's shop was next attacked, and the torch applied to it. A negro lodging-house in the same street next received the visit of these furies, and was soon a mass of ruins. Old men, seventy years of age, and young children, too young to comprehend what it all meant, were cruelly beaten and killed. The spirit of hell seemed to have entered the hearts of these men, and helpless womanhood was no protection against their rage. Sometimes a stalwart negro would break away from his murderers, and run for his life. With no place of safety to which he could flee, he would be headed off in every direction, and forced towards the river. Driven at last to the end of a pier, he would leap off, preferring to take his chances in the water rather than among these bloody men. If bruised and beaten in his desperate struggle for life, he would soon sink exhausted with his efforts. Sometimes he would strike out for a ship, but more often dive under the piers, and hold on to a timber for safety, until his yelling pursuers had disappeared, when he would crawl stealthily out, and with terrified face peer in every direction to see if they had gone. Two were thus run off together into the East River. It was a strange spectacle to see a hundred Irishmen pour along the streets after a poor negro. If he could reach a police station he felt safe; but, alas! if the force happened to be away on duty, he could not stay even there. Whenever the police could strike the track of the mad hunt, they stopped it summarily, and the pursuers became the pursued, and received the punishment they had designed for the negro. All this was in the nineteenth century, and in the metropolis of the freest and most enlightened nation on earth.
{Image: Hanging and burning a negro in Clarkson Street.}
The hunt for these poor creatures became so fearful, and the utter impossibility to protect them in their scattered localities so apparent, that they were received into the police stations. But these soon proved inadequate, and they were taken to head-quarters and the arsenal, where they could be protected against the mob. Here the poor creatures were gathered by hundreds, and slept on the floor, and were regularly fed by the authorities.
It is impossible to give a detailed account of what transpired in every part of the city. If there had been a single band of rioters, no matter how large, a force of military and police, properly armed, could have been concentrated to have dispersed it. But bodies of men, larger or smaller, bent on violence and devastation, were everywhere; even out at Harlem eight buildings were burned, and the lower end of Westchester was in a state of agitation and alarm. A mob of thousands would be scattered, only to come together at other points. A body of police and military plunging through the heaving multitude, acted often only as a stone flung into the water, making but a momentary vacuum. Or, if they did not come together again, they swung off only to fall in, and be absorbed by a crowd collected in another part of the city. The alarm of Monday had only been partial, but to-day it culminated. Families, husbands, and sons left their business, and with arms patrolled the streets. Stores were shut up, stages and cars stopped running, and all business was suspended.
The blood flowing through the thousand arteries of this great mart seemed suddenly frozen in its channels, and its mighty pulsations to stop at the mandate of lawless men. The city held its breath in dread, but there were firm hearts at police head-quarters. Acton never flinched, and in General Brown he found a soldier that knew his duty, and would do it at all hazards. Still, the uprising kept swelling into vaster proportions, embracing a still larger territory.
Broadway was deserted. A few hacks could be seen, but with very different occupants than those which they ordinarily contained. The iron shutters were closed on the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and a stack of arms stood in the hall-way. Crowds of respectable citizens, not on duty, were making all haste toward railroad depots and steamboat landings. Every boat, as it swung from the dock, was loaded to its utmost capacity with people leaving a city that seemed doomed to destruction; going, many knew not where, only out of New York. Cars were packed, and long trains were made up to carry the crowds in haste to get away. But travel on the Hudson River Road was soon stopped by the mob, that tore up the track to prevent communication with other parts of the State, and the arrival of troops.
The Harlem and Third Avenue tracks were also torn up, as the rioters were determined to isolate the great city, which they had doomed to destruction. Passing from one object to another, now acting as if from plan, and now intent only on destruction and plunder, the crowd streamed from point to point with shouts and yells, that sent terror through the adjoining streets. Suddenly, some one remembered that they were in the vicinity of Colonel Nugent's house, in Yorkville, the assistant provost marshal general, and shouting out the news, a rush was made for it, and it was sacked from top to bottom.
As the police were gathered together either at the precinct stations or head-quarters, ordinary patrol duty was out of the question; hence, many isolated, acts of violence could be committed with impunity. This freedom from close surveillance, coupled with the contagion of the lawless spirit which was abroad, made every section of the city where the lower classes lived more or less restless. It was impossible for the police to divide itself up so to furnish protection in individual cases, and yet be in sufficient force to cope with the mobs, that numbered by thousands. Although the whole city was heaving like a troubled sea, yet the main gathering this day had been in the upper part and on both sides of it. The terrific contests we described farther back were in the Second Avenue, on the east side, but, nearly opposite, in the Sixth Avenue, crowds had been gathering since early in the forenoon.