The Epic of New York City (42 page)

A scandalous book, entitled
Six Months in a Convent,
was published in Boston, and New Yorkers complained when the supply of copies failed to keep up with the local demand. Samuel F. B. Morse—remembered today for the telegraph and Morse code—was a New Yorker who brought out his own book, called
Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States.
He accused the Jesuits of plotting to win control of America.

The Native American Democratic Association was formed in 1835 by nativists who swore that “we as Americans will never consent to allow the government established by our Revolutionary forefathers to pass into the hands of foreigners. . . .” The association denounced office holding by aliens, opposed immigration, and attacked the Catholic Church. Irish-wooing Tammany then held a meeting at which the virtues of foreigners were proclaimed. Why, they had hearts of gold—these Irish peasants with their soft hats over one eye, their tailcoats, tight corduroy breeches, ribbed woolen stockings, thick shoes, and blackthorn shillelaghs.

In 1836 the Irish organized the Ancient Order of Hibernians. G. T. Strong, who experimented with chloroform and hashish, remarked, sniffingly, that “it's as natural for a Hibernian to tipple as for a pig to grunt.” A famous comedian, named Tom Flynn, drank heavily for years and then took the pledge. He announced that he would deliver a temperance lecture in the Chatham Theatre, which he and Charlie Thorn managed. Tom was a turncoat to tipplers, but a hero to temperance ladies, so the night of his lecture the place was packed.
The stage was set with flats for a scene in
The Drunkard's Home,
and the only props were a table holding a water pitcher and a glass.

The audience applauded as Tom Flynn strode to the center of the stage, filled his glass from the pitcher, and began talking. How old Tom could talk! Mingling humor and pathos, he described the drunkard's downfall, moving the people first to laughter and then to sobs. For two hours, wetting his throat from time to time, Tom mesmerized everyone with his eloquence about the demon rum. Toward the end he soared to a Mount Everest of oratory as all held their breaths, and then—and then old Tom faltered, swayed, and fell to the stage. Friends swarmed over the footlights, picked up his limp body, and carried it to a nearby hotel. Those left behind exchanged pitying words about his sudden illness. In the group were militant temperance workers. One of them idly examined the water pitcher and glass Tom had used. He sipped from the glass. The colorless liquid burned like fire. Then horrified drys understood that the source of Tom Flynn's inspiration had been Old Swan—his favorite gin.

It was all very well for temperance people to urge New Yorkers to drink only water, but what kind of water did they have? A book, published in 1837, said, ‘There is not perhaps in the Union a city more destitute of the blessing of good water than New York.” Seepage from boneyards and privies polluted the local water supply. A contemporary noted, “A person coming into the city from the pure air of the country, is compelled to hold his breath, or make use of some perfume to break off the disagreeable smell arising from the streets.”

A Manhattan Company official admitted to Peter Cooper, now an assistant alderman, that the water tasted brackish in summer because when the company's wells dried up, the firm pumped river water into its pipes. Alderman Samuel Stevens urged the city council to ask the state legislature to repeal the privileges of the Manhattan Company.

Townspeople had five sources of water supply: the Manhattan Company's private wells; public pumps located in almost every block; the famous Tea Water Pump; Knapp's Spring, which supplied the upper part of town; and water carted in casks from the countryside, a source only the rich could afford. As far back as the days of the Revolution there had been talk of constructing a good water supply system, and dozens of committees had looked into the matter; but nothing was done. All plans were sabotaged by public apathy, differences of opinion about the schemes, and a power struggle between the city and
private companies. City engineers now decided that the best source of supply was the Croton River, which rose in the southern part of Dutchess County, New York, and flowed through Putnam County.

New Yorkers voted for the Croton project in April, 1835. Brewers favored it because they needed better water to compete with Philadelphia beer. Many taxpayers feared the expense, but others were even more afraid of the recurrent fires that raked the city. New York now set to work to become the first big city in history to provide itself with an ample supply of pure water—far better than Rome in its days of glory.

Construction of the Croton system posed engineering problems second only perhaps to the Erie Canal. A dam had to be built at the Croton River 40 miles north of what today is Bryant Park. The park-site had been a potter's field, and 100,000 corpses were dug up and removed to a new burial ground on Wards Island. On the area now occupied by the New York Public Library there rose a reservoir capable of holding 20,000,000 gallons of water, its walls resembling an Egyptian temple.

The Croton Dam created a lake 5 miles long. This flooded Westchester field, and farmers, losing court battles, went after surveyors with shotguns. A masonry conduit was laid from Croton to New York. It was elliptical in shape, 8½ feet high and 7½ feet wide. Also constructed were 16 tunnels, one of them 1,263 feet long. In Westchester County alone the aqueduct spanned numerous brooks and 25 larger streams. High Bridge, a granite structure rising 114 feet above tidewater, bore the aqueduct across the Harlem River near what is now Yankee Stadium.

On June 28, 1842, G. T. Strong, then a young lawyer, wrote in his diary: “Croton Water is slowly flowing toward the city, which at last will stand a chance of being cleaned—if water
can
clean it.” By July 4 the water was creeping up inside the new reservoir. On August 1 Strong scribbled: “There's nothing new in town, except the Croton Water, which is all full of tadpoles and animalculae, and which moreover flows through an aqueduct which I hear was used as a necessity by all the Hibernian vagbonds who worked upon it. I shall drink no Croton for some time to come. Jehiel Post has drunk some of it and is in dreadful apprehensions of breeding bullfrogs inwardly.”

On October 14, 1842, New York celebrated the completion of the Croton system. That year New Yorkers used an average of only twenty-two gallons of water a day, but within a decade consumption
soared to ninety. Now the city had pure drinking water. It had copious water for fighting fires. Fire insurance rates fell. Real estate increased in value. Health and sanitation improved—at least among the well-to-do.

The city's population nearly quadrupled between 1825 and 1855. Most immigrants settled in lower Manhattan, the former residents selling out and moving away. The built-up section of Broadway grew northward at the rate of about one mile each decade. By 1840, when Manhattan's population stood at 312,710, it had reached Fourteenth Street. Two years later a city inspector deplored the sorry condition of tenements and alleged that housing problems were caused in the main by the influx of foreigners. About 1,000 men, women, and children lived in filth and vice in the Old Brewery, which averaged a murder a night for almost 15 years. Most of these tenants were Irish.

Persecution had caused the Irish to become ever more clannish. Bishop John Hughes scorned priests who mingled with non-Catholics, calling them “Protestant priests.” In 1837 a nativist, named Aaron Clark, became the city's first Whig mayor after conducting an anti-Irish, anti-Catholic campaign. One street orator had ranted, “What mean the systematic efforts of these foreigners to keep themselves distinct from the American people? . . . What motivates them to vote? What appeals stir them? Not American but foreign interests, the interests of Ireland. . . . The foreign politician, distinguished in a cassock, is behind the curtain and moves the wires. He it is who governs them. . . .”

In a city election two years later native New Yorkers were startled to read this handbill: “IRISHMEN, to your posts, or you will lose America. By perseverance, you may become its rulers; by negligence, you will become its slaves. Your own country was lost by submitting to ambitious men. This beautiful country you gain by being firm and united. Vote the ticket, ALEXANDER STEWART, Alderman, EDWARD FLANAGAN, for Assistant—both true Irishmen.” An apologist for the Irishman, George Potter, author of
To the Golden Door,
believed that this poster was a savage propaganda hoax played on the Irish by fanatical patriots, and this seems likely. Up-and-coming Irish politicians were too canny to antagonize the majority of voters.

Tension between nativists and Irish Catholics exploded in the great school controversy. Beginning in 1801, New York State gave money to various churches for the education of poor children. De Witt
Clinton advocated public instead of religious education. In 1805 he organized a public school system for New York City. Called the Free School Society, it was created “to provide a free school for the education of poor children in the city who do not belong to, or are not provided for by an religious denomination.”

The Protestant-dominated society was a private corporation; voters had no say in its management. In 1812 the state organized its own public school system and let voters elect representatives to local school districts. State funds continued to be given to New York City's Free School Society, which passed them along to both Protestant and Catholic churches. In 1823 it was discovered that Baptist schools padded their enrollment books and forced teachers to kick back part of their salaries. Two years later the state stopped giving money to any Church schools. State education funds now were handed to New York City's common council, which turned them over to the Free School Society. In 1826 this group was renamed the Public School Society.

In 1839 the society ran 86 local schools, with nearly 12,000 pupils. The same year there were 7 Catholic schools in the city, attended by about 5,000 pupils. Almost half the city's children went to no school at all. Most Catholics kept their children out of the quasipublic schools because these used Protestant Bibles and textbooks bristling with anti-Catholic propaganda.

This situation caught the attention of William H. Seward, the upstate Whig who began his second term as governor in 1840. In a message to the legislature he urged the establishment of schools in which foreigners' children “may be instructed by teachers speaking the same language with themselves and professing the same faith.” Historian Allan Nevins has written: “This was a dangerous piece of folly. It would have undermined the ideal of non-sectarian education, and the equally important ideal of public education in the English tongue alone.”

But Catholics gleefully seized on Governor Seward's remark. Into action wheeled craggy-faced beak-nosed John Hughes, born in County Tyrone, Ireland, and in 1837 named coadjutor bishop of New York. On September 21, 1840, Bishop Hughes asked the city council for a fair share of state funds for parish schools. The council voted down his petition as unconstitutional.

The bishop then drafted a second petition, attacking what he called the “falsehoods” of Protestant teachings in pseudopublic schools that
were “poisoning” the minds of Catholic children. Catholics were taxpayers, too, he pointed out. The bishop even offered to place parochial schools under supervision of the Public School Society in return for public aid. He announced his willingness to debate the issue in public. Uneasy council members reopened the matter.

A protest against the bishop's second petition was made by pastors of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which held the balance of power in the society. They said that the Catholics' real purpose was to use public funds to teach Catholicism not only to their own children but to Protestant children as well. They added, “If Roman Catholic claims are admitted, all the other Christian denominations will urge similar claims.”

A two-day hearing began on October 29, 1840. Facing a hostile audience, Bishop Hughes appeared as the sole Catholic spokesman. Brilliantly and passionately, he orated more than three hours. He objected to the Public School Society on the ground that it violated the American principle of freedom of speech. He denied the charge that he wanted to preach Catholicism in public schools. He protested the use of textbooks calling Catholics “Papists.” He bet Methodists $1,000 that they couldn't prove their charge that the Catholic Bible sanctioned the slaughter of non-Catholics. Newspapers primly reminded the bishop that there was a law against betting. The next day Protestant leaders rebutted him in speeches wildly applauded by spectators.

The city council postponed action on the bishop's second petition. Not a single daily paper supported him. Angry Catholics worked off their frustations by breaking up meetings of the Public School Society and by indulging in other provocative acts. Newspapers denounced this rowdyism. A city council committee conceded that Catholic complaints were “not wholly unfounded” and offered to compromise by expunging from textbooks all comments offensive to Catholics. Nonetheless, the city council rejected the bishop's second petition by a vote of fifteen to one in January, 1841.

Twice defeated by the city fathers, Bishop Hughes now turned to the state legislature. In February, 1841, he asked the state to change the law denying state funds to Church schools. He also called for the abolition of the Public School Society. State legislators, afraid of losing either Catholic or Protestant votes, adjourned without acting on the bishop's third petition.

Thrice thwarted, Bishop Hughes planned a new strategy. Unable
to change the state law, maybe he could change the lawmakers. A statewide election was coming up. Two state senators and thirteen state assemblymen were to be elected from New York City. Four days before the fall election of 1841 the bishop convened a great meeting of Catholics in Carroll Hall. Since Whigs and Democrats opposed any change in the school system, he said, there was only one thing left for Catholics to do—pick their own candidates for state offices. For the first and only time in American history there was formed a Catholic political party, with its own slate of candidates openly pledged to support the position of the Roman Catholic Church.