The Epic of New York City (44 page)

In addition to railways, revolutionary changes in merchant shipping helped the city grow and prosper. After 1838 steamships, called packets, plied between New York and foreign ports, their success resulting from the regularity of their schedules. By 1840 New York was second only to London among ports of the world. It owned more than one-fifth of all registered American tonnage. It boasted sixty-three wharves on the East River and fifty on the Hudson. Then, beginning in 1843, came the clipper ships—long, narrow vessels with lofty sails,
the most beautiful craft ever to sail any seas, faster than steam-driven packets. They were called clippers because they clipped time off speed records.

John Jacob Astor did not live long enough to see the Astor Place riot, which took place one block north of his home. He and other rich men had donated money for the erection of the Astor Place Opera House or Theatre—the terms were used interchangeably. It rose on a site bounded on the south by Astor Place, on the west by Broadway, on the north by Eighth Street, and on the east by what is now Fourth Avenue. Seating 1,800 persons, the building had classical lines and tall colonnades that gave it the look of a Greek temple. The opera house restricted admittance to those wearing kid gloves, so working-men dubbed it the kid-glove opera house. Verdi's opera
Ernani
was presented on the opening night, November 22,1847.

The trouble began when co-managers William Niblo and James H. Hackett announced that the noted British tragedian William Macready, would appear in a four-week “farewell” engagement beginning on May 7, 1849. There was bad blood between Macready and America's greatest actor, Edwin Forrest.

Macready had passed the peak of his fame. Worried at the age of fifty-six about his being “far advanced in life,” he suffered from mental depression and a dwindling fortune. Both talented and tem-perimental, the British star was gaunt and angular, with an odd nose, square jaws, a skinny neck, and grizzled hair. He called himself an aristocrat, sneered at American life, and blinked in surprise when his superior airs offended people. New York's social leaders preferred him to Edwin Forrest because of the American's lowly birth and impassioned style of acting.

In 1849 Philadelphia-born Forrest was at the height of his popularity, the unchallenged star of the American stage and the first American tragedian to equal any British thespian. But the forty-three-year-old Forrest wanted more; he sought acclaim as the
world's greatest
tragedian. Unschooled, a coarse fellow with a ferocious temper, rugged and muscular, dark-haired and dark-eyed, Forrest radiated animal magnetism. A dabbler in politics, he was the hero of the common man, although he was almost a millionaire.

While touring Great Britain, he dined with Macready, who said kind things in his diary about Forrest. However, when the American played Hamlet in London, he was hissed by the audience and reviled by the
British press. Forrest suspected that Macready was behind these insults. Forrest later went to Edinburgh to see Macready in
Hamlet
and hissed him. The outcry in British newspapers was echoed in New York newspapers, and by the time Macready arrived here, the actors' quarrel had attracted widespread attention.

Their feud was augmented by social unrest. In 1848 a wave of revolutions convulsed Europe. American workers despised all kings and aristocrats. New York festered with a hatred of foreigners. Macready was a foreigner, an aristocrat, and the pet of local society. He had been booked into the Astor Place Opera House, the very symbol of privilege. All these factors gave nativists a chance to propagandize their doctrine of “America for Americans.” Two spread-eagle patriots began plotting.

One was Isaiah Rynders, a knife fighter, a gambler, and an English-hating Tammany politician. He owned the notorious Empire Club at 25 Park Row and half a dozen Paradise Square dives, bossed the Sixth Ward, and controlled all the vicious Five Points gangs. During a previous Macready engagement in New York, Rynders had interrupted the Englishman's curtain speech by leaping to his feet and shouting abuse.

The other plotter was E. Z. C. Judson, frontiersman, political propagandist, and writer, better known under his pen name of Ned Buntline, which he used to write hundreds of dime novels. In 1848 Judson became publisher of a weekly, called
Ned Buntline's Own.
The next year he headed a nativist group, the American Committee, and ached to start a fight between native-born Americans and aliens, between workers and aristocrats. The Macready-Forrest feud was the very opportunity he sought, and he turned a theatrical dispute into a sham patriotic crusade.

Although Forrest took no active role in the plot to humiliate his rival, he did nothing to stop it. The city seethed with excitement despite the
Herald
's remark that it was silly for the public to get worked up about the relative merits of two “impertinent” actors. Other newspapers played up the issue. When Macready opened in the opera house on the evening of May 7, 1849, he was showered with rotten eggs, old shoes, and the like.

Chagrined and angered, the British star wanted to end his New York engagement then and there. In a petition signed by forty-seven distinguished New Yorkers, among them Washington Irving and Herman Melville, he was implored to continue. Macready gave in
reluctantly. He agreed to appear again as Macbeth on the night of May 10. The same evening Forrest was to open in the Broadway Theatre a mile south of the opera house. The play was
The Gladiator,
and Forrest was to play the part of Spartacus, which gave him a chance to lead a stage assault on an oligarchy.

Newspapers heaped more fuel on the flames by printing articles headlined “Forrest and Macready.” The
Evening Post
insisted that “the fullest and most effectual arrangements must be made for the preservation of order.” It was rumored that the British crew of a Cunard liner docked here intended to rally to the defense of their countryman. The morning of May 10 New Yorkers found that the American Committee had plastered the city with posters bellowing: “Workingmen, shall Americans or English rule this city? The crew of the English steamer has threatened all Americans who shall dare to express their opinion this night at the English Aristocratic Opera House! We advocate no violence, but a free expression of opinion to all public men!”

The posters frightened Caleb S. Woodhull, who had been sworn in as Whig mayor only two days before. He called an 11
A.M
. meeting in City Hall. Into his office filed the police chief, sheriff, recorder, and Niblo and Hackett, co-managers of the opera house. Also present was Major General Charles W. Sanford, commander of the national guard's Seventh Regiment. At the very moment they discussed ways to preserve peace, Bowery B'hoys raced through the streets, scattering notices that called on everyone to show up for the evening's fun.

At 4
P.M
. Police Chief G. W. Matsell and his top officers arrived at the theater to make the arrangements decided on in the mayor's office. When Macready appeared at 5:40
P.M
., Astor Place was filling with people. A force of 325 policemen reached the opera house shortly before 6
P.M
. Matsell posted 200 of them in various parts of the building, ordered 50 to cover the rear along Eighth Street, and deployed the other 75 along Astor Place. The sky was overcast, and the temperature stood in the low fifties.

About this time General Sanford was assembling his 8 companies of guardsmen, numbering fewer than 300 men. Some mustered at the Washington Parade Ground (now Washington Square). Others formed farther downtown in the artillery drill room of the Centre Market, where they were issued 1,500 rounds of ball cartridges. A troop of light artillery was given two 6-pound cannon, plus a supply of grape and canister shot. At the arsenal there gathered 2 troops of
cavalry—haphazardly uniformed milkmen and carmen astride their own horses.

When the theater's doors opened at 7
P.M
., the sale of tickets exceeded the building's capacity of 1,800. Macready's friends outnumbered the Forrest fans 9 to 1. By 7:15
P.M
. Astor Place from Broadway to the Bowery was a field of human flesh. At that moment Recorder Frederick Tallmadge arrived, as did word from General Sanford that his forces were ready. At 7:40
P.M
., 10 minutes late, the curtain rose on
Macbeth.
Despite the rowdies in the audience, the first two scenes were played without incident.

Then, in the third scene, Macready strode onto the stage dressed as Macbeth and spoke his first line: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.” Rynders led his gangsters in a storm of hisses and groans. Macready's friends jumped to their feet to cheer and applaud and wave hats and handkerchiefs, but although they outnumbered the ruffians, they didn't make half the noise. For fifteen minutes both groups clapped and whistled and roared, all action on the stage coming to a halt. The police inside the theater stood with tensed muscles but did nothing, for they had been ordered by Chief Matsell to make no move unless he signaled them. Matsell sat in a loge where he easily could be seen. At last the play resumed; but the hubbub continued, and not a word of dialogue could be heard.

As the second act began, the crowd outside the opera house attacked the building. Nearby pavement had been broken up to lay sewer pipes, so the mob was well supplied with rocks. Although the theater windows had been barricaded with boards, they shattered under the impact of heavy stones. Windowpanes were reduced to slivers. The screaming, snarling, cursing mob heaved thousands of rocks and stones and bricks at the theater. Every nearby streetlamp was broken. Water hydrants were opened, flooding the pavement.

The police counterattacked with clubs. A cop thrust a hose through a window and sprayed the rioters with water, but this didn't faze them. At 8
P.M
. the police captain of the Eighth Ward told the chief that his men could not retain their positions, let alone restore order. Policemen outside the theater were greatly outnumbered, the mob ranging somewhere between 10,000 and 24,000 persons. These troublemakers were carpenters, gunsmiths, organ builders, machinists, hucksters, printers, porters, sailmakers, clerks, marble cutters, plumbers, shoemakers, paper folders, and butchers—the working class. Most were young men; some were only fifteen years old. A few wore firemen's
uniforms, carried ladders, and yelled, “Burn the damned den of aristocracy!”

At 9
P.M
. the first militiamen arrived, and Mayor Woodhull squeezed into the theater to confer with the police chief, sheriff, and recorder. Now the mob was trying to batter down the doors. Between acts Macready found a pool of water on his dressing room floor; rocks had smashed overhead pipes. But the British star insisted on finishing the play, although he raced through acts IV and V.

A militia officer, with blood streaming down his face, begged the mayor for permission to fire on the mob. Woodhull gasped, “Not yet!” The officer shouted that his men would be stoned to death. The mayor, a politician to the bitter end, vanished and left the big decision to others. Not until the end of the play, not until Macready was back in his dressing room, and not until forty-five minutes after the military had arrived, was the order to fire given.

Swaggering back and forth in front of the crowd was Ned Buntline, clad in a monkeyjacket and cap, swinging a sword and bellowing, “Workingmen! Shall Americans or English rule? Shall the sons whose fathers drove the baseborn miscreants from these shores give up liberty?” The soldiers were frightened but shrank with horror at the thought of firing on fellow citizens. In the mayor's absence Sheriff J. J. V. Westervelt finally told the militia's commanding officer to let his men fire—over the heads of the rioters.

The soldiers raised their muskets and volleyed into the air. Mob members thought that blank cartridges were being fired and continued to advance, still throwing bricks and stones. Chief Matsell, now outside the theater, was hit on the chest by a twenty-pound rock. One ruffian tore open his grimy shirt, exposing red flannel underwear, and roared, “Fire into this! Take the life of a freeborn American for a bloody British actor! Do it! Ay, you darn't!” But the militia did dare. Now the soldiers were ordered to fire point-blank at the oncoming mob. Again and again and again they raked New Yorkers.

A boy was shot in the feet. One bullet bored through a man's head and scattered his brains on the pavement. A spectator—a tall and handsome Wall Street broker—was drilled through the head as he stood in Astor Place. A gangster was hit in the left eye. A Negro woman was shot through the cheek as she lay abed in a nearby house. Two men were felled when they stepped off a horsecar on the Bowery 150 yards from the theater. An Irish woman, walking with her husband
two blocks from the scene, was wounded in one leg, which had to be amputated.

It was the worst theater riot in the history of the world. That night 22 persons were killed, and 9 others died of injuries within 5 days. A total of 150 persons were wounded. More spectators than participants were killed and injured. Many policemen and soldiers were wounded, but none perished. Macready, who escaped unhurt, was spirited out of town and up to New Rochelle.

That bloody evening eighty-six rioters were arrested and held prisoner awhile in the opera house. Among them was Ned Buntline. As he was being dragged under the stage, he broke away from his captors and tried to set fire to the building. Isaiah Rynders was not taken into custody. Ten of the eighty-six prisoners were found guilty of inciting riot and got prison terms, varying from one month to one year. Buntline received the maximum the law allowed—a year in jail and a $250 fine. He served time on Blackwells Island, and the day of his release he was met by rowdy friends and a band playing “Hail to the Chief.” A coroner's jury held that “the circumstances existing at the time justified the authorities in giving the order to fire upon the mob.”