The Epic of New York City (54 page)

This plot had the approval of Judah P. Benjamin, successively the Confederacy's attorney general, secretary of war, and secretary of state. Already he had underground agents in Canada just across the border from New York State. They raided Union territory, tried to free Rebel prisoners, and encouraged rebellion in the North by Southern sympathizers. The Canadian-based Rebel who masterminded the scheme to incinerate New York City was Jacob Thompson, former U.S. Senator from Mississippi and onetime Secretary of the Interior in President Buchanan's Cabinet.

Benjamin gave $300,000 to Thompson, who slipped part of the sum to members of the Sons of Liberty, a secret society of treasonable Northerners and an offshoot of the Knights of the Golden Circle. Thompson heard that in New York City alone 20,000 persons were ripe for revolt against the Lincoln administration. He decided to strike on November 8, election day. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican President, would be running against former General George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate. More New Yorkers were against Lincoln than for him.

With the development of the plot against New York, messages were carried between the Confederate capital, at Richmond, Virginia, and the Rebel base of operations at St. Catharines, a Canadian town northwest of Niagara Falls. Thompson was unaware that his principal courier was a double spy whose loyalty lay with the North. All the dispatches he carried were copied and sent to Washington so that even Lincoln knew of the conspiracy against New York. On November 2 Secretary of State William H. Seward sent a telegram to Charles Godfrey Gunther, an independent Democrat who had been elected mayor of New York on December 1, 1863. Seward warned him to beware of a scheme to burn New York on or about November 8. The mayor reported this to Police Superintendent Kennedy and to General John A. Dix, who commanded the Department of the East, with headquarters in New York City. Although both men were skeptical, they alerted their subordinates.

The day before the election General Benjamin F. Butler arrived here at the head of 7,000 to 10,000 troops. Washington officials remembered all too well the disgraceful Draft Riots. Aware of the
anti-Lincoln feeling in New York, they anticipated election disorders. Meantime, a hitch developed in Thompson's plans, causing him to postpone his undercover strike against the city. Election day came and went without much trouble. Lincoln was reelected, but in New York City he lost to McClellan—78,746 to 36,673.

Thompson now picked eight daring young men for the fire raid on New York. Their leader was Lieutenant Colonel Robert Martin of the Confederacy's Tenth Kentucky Cavalry. He was tall and slender, his swarthy hawklike face bearing the stamp of resolution. Disguised as civilians and using fictitious names, the eight Rebel soldiers slipped into New York from Canada. Upon reaching this city, they made contact with local plotters, using their homes and stores as meeting places.

Federal Secret Service agents, alerted by the Union's double spy, trailed the arsonists to the city and kept them under observation. However, the Rebels acted so innocently that the federal men became convinced that they were on the wrong trail. The eight young men heard a sermon by the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, attended a lecture given by humorist Artemus Ward, enjoyed the theater, and in general conducted themselves blamelessly. The Union agents on their trail must have been rather stupid; otherwise, they would have traced the Rebels to suspicious meetings.

As days passed with no action taken, the local co-conspirators began to get nervous. At last they tried to persuade the Confederate spies not to burn down the city. But on November 15 General Sherman destroyed Atlanta's military resources and began his spectacular march to the sea. When Confederate Colonel Martin and his seven picked men read New York newspaper articles praising Sherman's gutting of Atlanta and heard rejoicing on the sidewalks of New York, they bitterly resolved to go ahead with their plan despite the mounting reluctance of their local hosts.

Second in command to Martin was Confederate Lieutenant John Headley of Kentucky. Headley later wrote an account of this episode, and because of this we can follow him step by step that fateful day of Friday, November 25, 1864.

A New York chemist who sympathized with the South made a self-igniting fire bomb, which the Rebel agents called Greek fire. Consisting of turpentine, phosphorus, and rosin, the liquid was supposed to burst into flame when exposed to air. It was poured into bottles, and each bottle was wrapped in paper. At 6
P.M.
that Friday
the eight men met in a secret cottage and were given ten bottles apiece. They stuffed them into their coat pockets.

Two days earlier the conspirators had registered at various hotels throughout the city. Each man had signed in at several different hotels. For example, Headley had taken rooms in the Astor House, the City Hotel, the Everett House, and the United States Hotel. The Rebels planned to set as many fires as possible at about the same time, making conditions as difficult as possible for the city's volunteer firemen.

At 7:20 o'clock that Friday evening Headley walked into the lobby of the Astor, where he was registered as W. L. Haines of Ohio. From the desk clerk he got the key to Room 204 and sauntered to his quarters. Once inside the room he lighted the gas jet against the autumn twilight. Then he pulled the blankets and sheets off his bed and loosely draped them on the headboard. Next, he piled the chairs, bureau drawers, and wooden washstand on top of the bed. Around these he stuffed newspapers. Suddenly he reflected that he did not know how quickly his fire bomb would work or if it would make any noise. To be on the safe side, he unlocked his door and put the key on the outside so that he could make a fast getaway. Out of one coat pocket he drew a bottle, carefully uncorked it, and then spilled the fluid on the rubbish. With a soft
whoosh!
the liquid fluttered into flame, and the entire bed was ablaze before Headley could get out of the room.

He locked the door, strolled down the hall, descended the stairs to the lobby, left his key with the desk clerk, and sauntered out onto Broadway. Then he walked to the City Hotel, where he was registered under another alias, and repeated the performance. Having left the City Hotel, he headed toward the Everett House, glancing toward the Astor as he strode along. A bright glare lighted up the room he had occupied there, but as yet no alarm had been given. Next, Headley set fire to his Everett House room. He had just started for the United States Hotel when fire bells began clanging throughout the city. That evening G. T. Strong was attending a meeting of the Sanitary Commission, and although he heard the Calvary Church bell toll mournfully, he didn't know at first what this signified.

Headley now touched off a fourth fire in his room at the United States Hotel. All had gone according to plan, he felt, but as he left his key with the desk clerk, he thought that the man glanced at him curiously. In that moment Headley remembered something. Each
time he had registered at a hotel he had carried a black canvas bag, because it would have looked suspicious to seek lodgings without luggage. But each of his four bags was empty. Had this been discovered by the clerk at the United States Hotel? Well, it was too late to worry now.

As Headley strolled back onto Broadway, it sounded to him as though a hundred bells were ringing, and he saw great crowds gathering in the street. By the City Hall clock he noted that the time was 9:15. Eager to learn how his first blaze was doing, he walked back toward the Astor. No panic was to be seen there, but to Headley's surprise, a horde of shrieking people poured from Barnum's museum across the street. The plot had not included firing the museum.

Headley couldn't tarry because his job was still not done. He walked south on Broadway and turned west toward the Hudson River waterfront. Tied up there were ships and barges of every kind. Having used four bottles of Greek fire in his four hotels, Headley had six left. Skulking from one dark corner to another, he pulled these bottles out of his pockets, one by one, and threw them here and there among the vessels. All touched off fires. One struck a barge loaded with bales of hay, making an especially spectacular blaze.

Leaving that part of the riverfront in flames, Headley now dodged back to Broadway and again walked to City Hall. Crowds clustered about the flame-scalloped hotels and Barnum's museum. Having threaded his way through the unsuspecting multitude, the Confederate spy boarded a horsecar heading north. At the corner of the Bowery and Prince Street he swung off the vehicle to see what had happened at the Metropolitan Hotel. It was burning. Headley had walked only half a block when he recognized a man in front of him as Robert Kennedy, one of his associates. Just for the fun of it, Headley closed in behind Kennedy and slapped him on the shoulder. In a flash, Kennedy squatted, went for his gun, and whirled around. Headley laughed just in time, and Kennedy recognized him. Kennedy took his hand from his pistol and chortled that he ought to shoot Headley for giving him such a scare. Then, standing there on the Bowery, the Rebels exchanged stories of their adventures.

Kennedy said that after he had set fire to the hotels assigned him, he had gone to Barnum's museum to see what happened. A few minutes after he arrived at the showplace, fire bells began clanging throughout the city. Kennedy started down a stairway, intending to leave the museum. The thought occurred to him that “it might be
fun” to start a panic there. He had one fire bomb left. He cracked it on the edge of a step as one cracks an egg. Instantly it flared up. Kennedy ran out of the burning building and mingled with throngs near the Astor House and the City Hotel. He overheard people muttering that the Rebels were trying to burn down the city.

The six other Confederate agents had also proceeded with their nefarious work. One, named Ashbrook, had been assigned to destroy the Winter Garden theater. That evening Edwin Booth was playing the role of Julius Caesar to raise money for a statue of Shakespeare. The theater adjoined the La Farge House. After Ashbrook set fire to the hotel, he tossed a bottle of Greek fire into the theater. The audience screamed in terror, but some coolheaded men took charge of the situation and averted a tragedy.

Headley and Kennedy returned to Broadway to gaze on their handiwork. As Headley later wrote, “there was the wildest excitement imaginable.” The two spies felt their skins tighten as New Yorkers shouted that they would hang the guilty Rebels or burn them at the stake. The agents also suffered pangs of disappointment when they discovered that every blaze had been quickly brought under control, except the fire at the St. Nicholas Hotel, which was badly damaged. Hotel employees had been efficient in dousing the flames, and volunteer firemen had performed heroically. Headley concluded that the New York chemist had purposely made a weak mixture of Greek fire after the Confederates had refused to abandon their plot.

Instead of scurrying out of the city, the eight Rebel agents stayed the night. Headley parted from Kennedy and found Colonel Martin. About two o'clock in the morning Headley and Martin booked new quarters, where they slumbered until ten o'clock Saturday morning.

Then they went for breakfast to a Broadway restaurant near Twelfth Street. The place was filled with excited people, reading the morning papers to find out what had happened the night before. Headley and Martin offhandedly ordered food and then bought copies of the papers. Front pages were devoted to news of the fire raid. The
Herald
said that the city “has undoubtedly had a most wonderful escape.” It was pointed out that although the enemy combustible had blazed up when exposed to air, the flames had failed to take hold on the surfaces of the targets. Headlines told of the “DISCOVERY OF A VAST REBEL CONSPIRACY.” Suspicious black bags had been found in various hotels. Several people already had been arrested. Newspapers printed all the fake names used by the Confederate agents
when they had checked into their hotels. Authorities were said to have full knowledge of the plot They predicted that all the villains would be caught, for every avenue of escape was being guarded. All told, nineteen hotels, two theaters, Barnum's museum, several vessels, and some stores, factories, and lumberyards had been set on fire.

Headley stiffened a little in his restaurant chair when he read that the clerk at the United States Hotel had given police a description of his looks, manners, and habits and had said that the suspicious-looking man had left a black bag that was entirely empty. Ah, so the clerk
had
noticed! Headley's flicker of anxiety had been justified, after all.

Scanning the papers and noting how specific was the information possessed by officials, Headley and Martin realized that they had been under observation part of the time. Police had arrested a Mr. McDonald, who ran a store where they had sometimes met before registering in the hotels. Had McDonald confessed? Headley and Martin finished breakfast and sauntered out of the restaurant. Because hotelkeepers were offering a $20,000 reward for apprehension of the criminals, New Yorkers by the thousands would be on the lookout for them.

That evening all eight Rebel agents boarded a northbound train and slipped out of town without detection. Eventually they reached Toronto and safety. From his Canadian sanctuary, Jacob Thompson had to report to Confederate Secretary of State Benjamin that his picked men had failed to burn down New York. Robert Kennedy, the man Headley had bumped into on the Bowery, tried to work his way south through Detroit but was captured. The Union's double spy had done his work well, and federal authorities did indeed know the identities of the arsonists. Kennedy was brought to New York, tried before a military commission, and hanged at Fort LaFayette.