Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [693]
On Saturday the twentieth, what was reputedly the largest assemblage ever seen on the continent—somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 people—flooded into Union Square. (In the war years, Union Square would replace City Hall Park as the center of civic life.) It was, all agreed, “a red, white and blue wonder.” Five stands swathed in the official colors groaned with speakers (including Major Robert Anderson, the hero of Sumter). The new bronze statue of Washington was wrapped in the flag that had been fired upon at Sumter. And Broadway emporiums from Stewart’s (at Reade) to Lord and Taylor’s (at Grand) were similarly bedecked as the city’s trade and benefit societies marched behind bands and flags of their own. Virtually every workshop in the city sent a delegation to the rally.
The meeting (as banker John Austin Stevens recalled) had been planned and orchestrated toward having the populace entrust “the guidance of their action” to “the merchants of the city, the chief representatives of its wealth and influence.” As expected, those assembled ratified establishment of a Union Defense Committee (UDC), composed of thirteen Democratic and twelve Republican businessmen. These gentlemen set about launching the war effort.
On Sunday, April 21, Lincoln, impressed by the New Yorkers’ dispatch, surreptitiously ordered the transfer of two million federal dollars into UDC hands, with which to unofficially purchase arms, steamships, and supplies and to use in enlisting and dispatching troops to open the road to Washington. At the urging of none other than
The Great Union Meeting in Union Square, April 20, 1861. (© Collection of The New-York Historical Society)
Mayor Wood, recent advocate of municipal secession, the Board of Aldermen authorized borrowing another million and a half from the Bank of New York and other financial institutions to pay for volunteers and for the relief of their families while they were away. Within a week the UDC started funneling this $3.5 million into chartering ships, procuring supplies, and forwarding troops to Annapolis in armed convoys via the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. New York was established as headquarters of the army’s Department of the East, and four military depots were set up to process recruits. By Tuesday, April 23, six regiments had been dispatched. The following weeks witnessed virtually continuous ceremonies honoring departing troops. Bowery photographers did a booming business printing thousands of pictures of new soldiers decked out in their “regimentals.” By the end of 1861 the UDC had placed sixty-six New York regiments in the field and aided almost twelve thousand volunteers’ dependents.
THE B’HOYS AT WAR
The German community was aflame with war fever. A huge meeting at Steuben House on the Bowery had already established enlistment stations all through Kleindeutschland. Three-fourths of the New York Socialistischen Turnverein signed up, forming an all-Turner outfit, and many other units—such as the Seventh Volunteer Regiment (Steuben Guard) and Colonel Louis Blenker’s German Rifles—were also manned by veterans of the 1848 Continental wars. Blenker’s Regiment received a regimental flag at City Hall from Mrs. August Belmont, feasted at the Bowery’s Atlantic Garden on sausage, dark bread,