The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The 1864 Attack on New York City - (11/25/1864) - Sep 16th, 2004

American History Magazine | January 2002 | Phil Scott

[SAMWolf]

The saboteurs struck on the evening of Friday, November 25. The first hotel they hit was the St. James on 26th and Broadway, where around 8:45 a guest saw smoke coming from a room that had been rented to a man calling himself John School. The locked door was broken down and the fire was put out in seconds. The room was empty, save for an empty bottle of Greek Fire in a black satchel.


Lovejoys Hotel

The next hotel to report a blaze was the United States. A young man with a carpetbag had arrived that afternoon and asked for a room on a lower floor. The only one available was on the fifth floor, however, and the man agreed to take it "with great reluctance," reported the Times. The young man's odd behavior, as well as his wig and fake whiskers, aroused the proprietor's suspicions, or so he later said. But he rented the man a room anyway. At 8:45 someone discovered flames coming from the room, and the occupant had disappeared. Again, the fire was quickly extinguished.


American Museum

A permanent resident of the St. Nicholas, a three-building hotel, noticed two men behaving suspiciously as they left the hotel. "It's all right," one reassured the other before they both disappeared into the night. At 8:55 fires broke out in Rooms 128, 129, 130, and 174, but the house fire department kept the blazes under control and restricted damage to those four rooms. Then shortly after 9:00 an employee of Barnum's Museum noticed a flash of fire on the fifth-floor staircase. His cry of fire "ran through the Lecture Room, startling everyone and causing the most intense excitement," said the New York Herald. "Almost before any of those in the Lecture Room could get out the fire had been extinguished, but this did not seem to allay the excitement . . . . The giantess became so alarmed that she ran down the main stairs into the street, and took refuge in Powers' Hotel."


La Farce House

At 9:20 a blaze erupted in a third-floor room of the Lafarge House, but guests and staff quickly extinguished it. The room's occupant, one J.B. Richardson of Camden, New Jersey, was nowhere to be found. "When the alarm of fire was given at the Lafarge, the excitement became very intense among the closely-packed mass of human beings in the Winter Garden Theatre adjoining the Lafarge," said the Times. Edwin Booth, a police inspector, and a local judge helped calm the anxious audience.



The fires continued. A room at the Belmont Hotel was set ablaze around 10:00, and a room at Tammany Hall around the same time. The man who checked into the latter room, who gave his name as C.E. Morse of Rochester, had disappeared, but his handwriting resembled that of the man who had checked into one of the rooms of the St. Nicholas Hotel that had been set alight. Both blazes were quickly extinguished. Also at 10:00, residents of the Metropolitan discovered a fire on the upper floor, but hotel workers put it out. Around 10:30 someone opened the door to a fourth-floor bedroom on the northeast wing of Lovejoy's Hotel and discovered a flaming mattress, but rapid action doused the blaze. At 11:00 in the New-England House, a man calling himself George Morse took a room on the second floor. "In a few minutes he came down stairs and went out, saying he would return," reported the Times. "Soon afterward the room which he occupied was found to be on fire." Here, too, the flames were doused quickly. Then at Lovejoy's Hotel another room was discovered on fire, this time on the southeast wing. It was rapidly extinguished.


Howard Hotel

Headley set one of his fires in the plush Astor House. He put the bedclothes and furniture on the bed, added some newspapers, poured turpentine on the pile, then took out his Greek Fire. "I opened a bottle carefully and quickly, and spilled it on the pile of rubbish. It blazed up instantly and the whole bed seemed to be in flames before I could get out," he wrote in 1906. Headley locked the door, casually made his way downstairs, and left his key with the clerk. He then set blazes at the Everett and United States Hotels. Walking down the street, Headley recognized another member of his gang, Captain Robert Cobb Kennedy, in front of him. "I closed up behind him and slapped him on the shoulder," Headley recalled. "He squatted and began to draw his pistol, but I laughed and he knew me. He laughed and said he ought to shoot me for giving him such a scare."


Astor House

The fires continued. A room on one of the upper floors of the Fifth Avenue Hotel burst into flames when a porter opened the door. The arsonist had saturated the bedding with phosphorous, but it didn't ignite until the open door supplied the draft it needed. The porter extinguished the fire. At the five-story Hanford Hotel-which neighbored a planing mill and a large lumberyard-one of the upper floor rooms was found ablaze, but an employee put the flames out. Had the blaze spread, the entire Lower East Side might have been threatened. Meanwhile, the police discovered a couple of hay barges spitting fire, but they put them out without much difficulty.


Fifth Avenue Hotel

Somehow the city's luck continued to hold, despite the fact that some people kept ignoring all warning of calamity. "Immediately after the first alarm was given [Police Chief of Detectives John Young] went to the Metropolitan Hotel, told the proprietors what was anticipated, and urged them to set double watches through all the halls," reported the Herald. "He also sent similar messages to the other hotels, and had his advice been heeded, many of the fires would doubtless have been prevented." All in all, the saboteurs set more than a dozen buildings ablaze that night, but none of them burned long. That was mainly because the raiders, in their desire to remain undetected, made one major mistake: "It was noticed that in every room where the phosphorus was found the windows and all apertures for the admission of air and ventilation were tightly closed," the Herald reported. Without a draft, the fires didn't have the oxygen they needed to reach dangerous levels.


James Hotel

New York City responded to the attack with fear and outrage. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper called it "The most diabolical attempt at arson and murder of which there is any record in the history of our country." The Times called the plot "one of the most fiendish and inhuman acts known to modern times." P.T. Barnum quickly assured patrons with a statement that detailed his safeguards against future fires and said his museum was "as safe a place of amusement as can be found in the world."

[SAMWolf]

The following day, the police began rounding up suspects-nearly 200 people in all. Among them was a women from Baltimore whom police had taken into custody after she was "noticed going from one hotel to another, leaving each hotel just previous to the breaking out of the fire." She was later released after explaining she had merely been trying to track down a store clerk who was living at one of the hotels. While the Times called for stricter control of Southerners in the city, and the Hotel Keepers' Association offered $20,000 in reward money for the apprehension of the arsonists, somehow all the Confederates managed to take trains out of town. They crossed back into Canada just two days later.


Robert Cobb Kennedy

Robert Cobb Kennedy was not content to lie low in Canada. He was a man of action. A former West Pointer from Louisiana, Kennedy had maintained Southern sympathies and joined the Confederate army. Although captured and sent to the notorious Johnson's Island Prison on Sandusky Bay, Lake Erie, Kennedy had escaped only six weeks before the New York attack. A contemporary at the prison remembered him as "a perfect dare-devil, and no situation, however perilous, seemed to daunt his courage." It was Kennedy who set the fire in the Barnum Museum, when he ducked into the building to hide after setting fire to his assigned hotels. Kennedy decided to burn the museum on a whim, feeling "there would be fun to start a scare," as Headley recounted. "He broke a bottle of Greek fire, he said, on the edge of a step like he would crack an egg. It blazed up and he got out to witness the result."

Just two weeks after trying to set Broadway ablaze and crossing into Canada and safety, Kennedy involved himself in another covert operation-this time a plot to rescue seven Confederate generals being transferred between prisons by rail. This plot also failed, and soon after Kennedy returned to Canada he decided to make a break for his home state. This time his luck ran out. Detectives arrested Kennedy in Detroit and placed him on a train bound for New York City. There, in a military trial, judgment was swift and furious. "The attempt to set fire to the city of New York," said General Dix, "is one of the great atrocities of the age. There is nothing in the annals of barbarism which evinces greater vindictiveness. It was not a mere attempt to destroy the city, but to set fire to crowded hotels and places of public resort, in order to secure the greatest possible destruction of human life." And then the punishment was read: "Robert C. Kennedy will be hanged from the neck till he is dead at Fort Lafayette, New York Harbor, on Saturday, the twenty-fifth day of March."

On that day Kennedy stood on the gallows, and a hood was placed over his head. He began singing: "Trust to luck/trust to luck/stare Fate in the face/for your heart will be easy/if it's in the right place . . . " Then the platform dropped. He was the last Confederate soldier executed by the Union.


Fort Lafayette, where the Union hanged Robert Kennedy

"Though the damage was minor, as it turned out," Civil War historian Shelby Foote wrote, "the possibilities were frightening enough. Federal authorities could see in the conspiracy a forecast of what might be expected in the months ahead, when the rebels grew still more desperate over increasing signs that their war could not be won on the field of battle." Life in New York quickly returned to normal, so much so that an editorial writer for the New York Times believed that the city had not learned its lesson. "The effective measures taken by the authorities will cause a temporary suspension of incendiary operations, no doubt," he wrote, "but it becomes us to see to it that we are not put off our guard by relapsing into a somnolent indifference. It is when we have got to fancy ourselves perfectly secure, that the pestilence will break out with new and accumulated force."

Additional Sources:

chnm.gmu.edu
www.wtv-zone.com
www.correctionhistory.org
www.authentichistory.com
www.spydercorner.org
www.mrlincolnandnewyork.org

[SAMWolf]

Barnum's Letter to the Editor,
New York Times, November 27, 1864


P.T. Barnum

In the aftermath of the unsuccessful Confederate plot to burn down New York City, P. T. Barnum moved quickly to reassure the public about the safety of the American Museum. In this letter to the New York Times published the day after the scattered fires, he detailed the fire safety measures he had taken to protect his establishment and the many patrons who visited there daily.

---

To the Editor of the New York Times:

In view of the announcement in the morning papers of the attempt to fire my Museum last night, as well as other public buildings, I wish to state the following facts:

Everyday from sunrise until ten o'clock P.M., I have eleven persons continually on the different floors of the Museum, looking to the comfort of visitors, and ready at a moment's warning to extinguish any fire that might appear. From 10 o'clock at night until sunrise, I have from six to twelve persons in the Museum engaged as watchmen, sweepers, painters, &c.

I always have a large number of buckets filled with water on and under the stage, and a large firehose always screwed on to be used at a second's notice. I never allow an uncovered light in the Museum, and I heat by steam from a furnace in the cellar.

As a proof of the efficiency against fire, I submit the fact that instead of "slight damage" being done to the Museum last night, as reported by a morning paper, so speedy was the extinguishment of the flames arising from the liquid ignited on the stairs, that not even a scorch is visible.

My own sense of security is proved by the fact that I never insure for one-third the value of the Museum property.

For the safety of visitors in the lecture-room, I long ago opened nine different places of egress, so that the lecture-room, if filled with visitors, could be emptied in from three to five minutes, and the spacious openings to the street in Broadway and Ann street, render mine, I think, as safe a place of amusement as can be found in the world. The Fire Marshal and insurance agents will corroborate this statement.

Very Respectfully,

P. T. BARNUM
AMERICAN MUSEUM, Nov. 26, 1864

[SAMWolf]

Veterans for Constitution Restoration is a non-profit, non-partisan educational and grassroots activist organization. The primary area of concern to all VetsCoR members is that our national and local educational systems fall short in teaching students and all American citizens the history and underlying principles on which our Constitutional republic-based system of self-government was founded. VetsCoR members are also very concerned that the Federal government long ago over-stepped its limited authority as clearly specified in the United States Constitution, as well as the Founding Fathers' supporting letters, essays, and other public documents.

---

Actively seeking volunteers to provide this valuable service to Veterans and their families.

---

UPDATED THROUGH APRIL 2004



The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul

Click on Hagar for
"The FReeper Foxhole Compiled List of Daily Threads"

[Soaring Feather]

Good morning everyone!

[snippy_about_it]

"FALL IN" to the FReeper Foxhole!



Good Thursday Morning Everyone.
Please see a note following this post from Sam and me.


If you would like to be added to our ping list, let us know.

If you'd like to drop us a note you can write to:


The Foxhole
19093 S. Beavercreek Rd. #188
Oregon City, OR 97045

[snippy_about_it]

Attention Foxhole Family

Over the last few months, Sam and I have been in the process of starting our own business that will cater to people who feed and care about backyard birding. Our store will carry a complete line of birding products such as seed, suet, feeders, baths, houses, books, hardware, garden accessories and nature-oriented gifts.

The store should "open for business" no later than Dec 1st. Preparing for this has taken a lot of our time and will continue to do so but we won't give up the Foxhole. :-)

Just to keep everyone updated we want to let you know that Sept 16-25 we will be in Maryland on business. We planned a few extra days so we can take in as many sights as we can. Of course, thanks to Hurricane Ivan we can expect rain the entire time we are there. We hope to go to Antietam, Gettysburg, Aberdeen, Arlington and of course the Wall and other memorials in DC. We'll post everyday and check in every evening.

Needless to say we will be scarce during those 10 days. Treadhead Tuesday will not be posted again until October 5th.

Instead, beginning the 27th, Mon-Thur. for the next two weeks, Sam will be running a series on the Cold War. I still have a mixture for Fri-Sunday.

Thank you to everyone for keeping the threads going while we are out and about. We will drop in as often as we can.

The 16th and the 25th are fly days so we'll be scarce as it is a long trek across the country. :-)

[SAMWolf]

Hi Feather. Sneaking into the Foxhole today?

[nutmeg]

NYC history ping!

[Clemenza]

The sad thing is, the same trash who rioted and hung people from trees were running the city within a decade, many of its semi-literate participants becoming Alderman (back when New York still had wards).

[U S Army EOD]

We should have flown balloons into the buildings, that would have worked.

[A Jovial Cad]

Good morning, SAM. Been "out-of-pocket" the last couple of days; it's good to be back.
The Civil War was, hands down, our saddest war. At least two of my distant ancestors where volunteers in Indiana regiments on the side of the Union. Nevertheless, I have mixed feelings on it's causes, and necessity. But not on it's ultimate denouement: even Jefferson Davis himself, in his last public speech, said: "Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to take your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished--a reunited country."
That sums up my feeling entirely.

[A Jovial Cad]

Good morning, snippy. I wish both you and SAM all the best in your new endeavor. And thank you, again, for all the wonderful work the two of you do on behalf of the Freeper Foxhole!

[Iris7]

Very poor preparation on the part of the would-be arsonists.

I bet that most important buildings of that era in New York City were brick shells with wooden inner walls, floors, joists, rafters, and roofs. Folks would have to be very careful of fire breaking out in that crowded city. Besides, heating was by stove, and not central heating. (Notice Barnum bragging about his probably very rare central heating.) No wonder that the fires were soon extinguished.

[Iris7]

"...as many as 118 people may have been killed before exhausted Union troops, marching straight from their victory at Gettysburg, put down the riot."

The combat soldiers forced marched to New York City were in no mood for "nuance". The crowd did not believe the boys would shoot and would not disperse. Well, guess what.

There are various estimates of the numbers of killed and wounded. Very large numbers, impossibly large, (more than 600 killed) were claimed as innocent victims by the Leftists of the day. No way of telling numbers from the records. Quite a few. Half ass firefights occurred. Combat veterans responded appropriately.

Also, as I recollect, those events were called the "New York City draft riots." Lots of blacks were lynched for causing the war, and lots of Republicans for starting it. Darn un-PC story.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!!

[E.G.C.]

Good morning, Snippy and everyone at the foxhole.

[A Jovial Cad]

Agreed. Also, most of those Union Troops where men who'd just left the carnage of Gettysburg to march North to put down that draft-dodging riot. Many of them had seen some of their best friends blown away during the previous three days in that otherwise-bucolic corner of Pennsylvania. Those men were in no mood to put up with "draft-riot" nonsense--and I can't say I really blame them.

[Tax-chick]

Congratulations on your business! My husband and boys love birdwatching!