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Unbeknownst to Butler, a band of Confederate agents mingled in the crowd outside the Hoffman House watching the bustling military activities. The rumors, for once, had been true. Led by a pair of ex-cavalrymen from Morgan’s Raiders, the sappers had entered the country at Niagara Falls, ridden the rails to New York, checked into various hotels and boardinghouses, obtained Greek Fire (a mixture of phosphorus and bisulfide of carbon that ignited on contact with air) from a sympathetic chemist on Washington Place, and met every few days in public places like the recently opened Central Park.

Butler issued General Order No. i, calling for a peaceful election, and then lay low as the campaign entered its culminating weekend. On Friday night the Republicans paraded, in a chaos of hacks, kettledrums, and wagons festooned with bunting and slogans, from Madison Square to Union Square, converted for the occasion into a temporary coliseum with bandstands (decked with Chinese lanterns) on all four sides. On Saturday night General McClellan (whose home was on East 34th Street) presided over a Democratic parade and rally at Madison Square, three times as large as the Republican effort, culminating in a torchlight parade and fireworks and an address by McClellan from the balcony of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Monday, the day before the election, the “monied men of the city” rallied for Lincoln, at a gathering in front of the Customs House near Wall Street. According to the Times, three-fourths of the capital of the city was represented.

On Tuesday, election day, Butler deployed his troops in low profile, aboard transports, ferryboats, revenue cutters, and tugs anchored along the waterfront. Butler concentrated on key points: Wall Street, the telegraph cable over the North River, the High Bridge, Mackerelville, and the Battery. Backup troops were stationed on Governor’s Island, ready “to be landed at once in spite of barricades and opposition.” But there was no opposition. The only crowds were those who gathered in Newspaper Row to hear men call down election bulletins from upper-story telegraph rooms. New York, as Butler cabled Washington, was “the quietest city ever seen.”

Lincoln carried New York State (by a whisker) and the nation (by a plurality) but lost the metropolis (by a landslide: 73,716 to 36,687, though his percentage was not much lower than in 1860). City Republicans did better in federal elections, sending industrialist William Dodge and Henry Raymond of the Times to Congress. Peace Democrats fared poorly: Seymour was ousted from the governorship, and Fernando Wood fell before a Tammany onslaught.

Butler’s troops left the Hudson for the James, but Butler himself tarried a bit, to be wined and dined by the rich, the powerful, and the grateful. At a Fifth Avenue Hotel banquet he was given ovations and a pair of silver spurs. Beecher proposed he be a presidential candidate in 1868. He departed in a glow on November 15.

As it turned out, the congratulations were premature. The plot to burn New York had been deferred, not canceled. It had also changed its character. Copperhead supporters of the original project dropped out, disheartened by, among other things, Sherman’s sacking of Georgia. As the Confederate cause now seemed irretrievably lost, nothing could be gained by a rising. But the Confederate officers, reading about Sheridan’s scorching of the Shenandoah Valley, switched rationales. They would revenge the desolated South by ravaging the North, beginning with gay, rich, and carefree New York City. They would start by incinerating the opulent symbols of the city’s wealth, its glittering hotels. With luck, and a good wind, they might burn New York to the ground.

On the night of November 25, the conspirators set their fires in thirteen major hotels, chiefly along Broadway, including the Astor House, the Metropolitan, and the St. Nicholas (the thousand-room palace where Dix’s Department of the East was headquartered). For good measure, the Confederates kindled