[billbears]

Actually the city of New York was considering leaving the union with the Southern states, as suggested by the mayor at the time

[newwahoo]

"Actually the city of New York was considering leaving the union with the Southern states, as suggested by the mayor at the time"

Bizarre but true. Mayor Fernando Wood advocated setting up a "free city". There was quite a bit of antiwar sentiment, much of it stemming from a fear of freed slaves competing for jobs up north.

While we're on NYC, I also recently found out that the secretary of war designated the NYPD as provost marshalls in 1862. Detectives spent the rest of the war hunting saboteurs and spies all across the country. If anyone has any good links about this I'd appreciate it if they'd post them.