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By Root 6603 0

Small working parties cut down the telegraph poles along Third Avenue, isolating each of the twenty-six police precincts from central command. Others stopped railroad cars and pulled up the tracks. Rioters broke into the Armory at Twenty-first Street and Second Avenue, helping themselves to the rifles and carbines within. A separate mob headed over to Newspaper Row, across from City Hall Park, where the Tribune and The New York Times had their offices. The Times editor, Henry Raymond, kept the crowd at bay with three borrowed Gatling guns, but the Tribune building had only a small band of policemen guarding its entrance.31 Rioters burst through the doors to find that the staff had used bales of newspaper to barricade the stairs. Unable to push their way through, the mob set fire to the counters and went off in search of other prey.

By sunset, the orange sky was streaked with columns of black smoke. Hiding inside the St. Nicholas Hotel, the mayor of New York, George Opdyke, and the U.S. Army general in command of the Department of the East, John Ellis Wool, passed their responsibilities back and forth as a group of prominent citizens implored them to declare martial law. At 9:30 P.M. the New York head of the telegraph service, Edwin Sanford, sent a wire to Washington from Jersey City, whose station was still operating: “In brief the city of New York is tonight at the mercy of a mob whether organized or improvised, I am unable to say.… The situation is not improved since dark. The program is diversified by small mobs chasing isolated Negroes as hounds would chase a fox.”

Fires burned uncontrollably all over the city. Establishments that employed blacks as well as whites, such as bars and brothels, were particularly targeted. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell feared for her infirmary and ordered the servants to close the shutters and lock the doors. Every light was extinguished, leaving the occupants sitting in darkness as the muffled but unmistakable shouts of a lynch mob torturing its victim could be heard through the walls. Some of the white patients became hysterical, begging Dr. Blackwell to save the hospital by expelling the black occupants. She had almost succeeded in calming them down when one of the contraband patients went into labor. Terrified that the woman’s cries might be heard from outside, Elizabeth and two nurses carried her to the back of the infirmary. There, in a dimly lit room, they worked all night to deliver the baby.

Meanwhile, mobs were prowling the waterfront, attacking British vessels known to have black crew members. One black sailor was lynched and another suffered life-threatening injuries. Archibald turned the consulate into a safe house, but with limited space at his disposal he had to ask the legation in Washington for help. Although there were no carriages or omnibuses running, an intrepid secretary managed to reach Jersey City to send a ciphered telegram to Lord Lyons: “I consider a man-of-war essential here immediately to receive and protect British Black crews.” Lyons replied that HMS Challenger was on its way, but the warship would not reach New York for at least another twenty-four hours. Archibald could not wait that long. In desperation, he contacted the French consulate, which arranged for Admiral Reynaud to offer the Guerriere to British blacks. The French frigate steamed into the harbor, opened the gun ports, and let down rope ladders. The captain shouted through his megaphone that all colored Britons were to board the vessel by order of Consul Archibald. Seventy-one black British sailors clambered aboard, and a further seven British vessels moored alongside her.

The violence on Tuesday included mass looting as well as more raids on the armories. Rioters sacked Brooks Brothers, burned the 26th Precinct house, destroyed the Harlem River Bridge, demolished the Washington Hotel, and attacked the mayor’s house. Fifty to sixty thousand people were said to be out on the streets; barricades were being erected at various points in the city to hinder the movement of police. “Immediate action is