Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [67]
During their short walk to the ferryboat to Manhattan, however, things became dangerous. The crowd pressed in on all sides, and the members of the Bryan party became separated from one another. Mrs. Bryan was pushed away from Jones, and if St. John had not come to her rescue, observers said, “she might have been badly crushed.” Mr. Bryan fared little better.
Despite the large police presence meant to protect the candidate from just such a situation, the police had obviously failed to make plans among themselves. Instead of forming a box around Bryan and clearing a passage to the ferryboat, the police became mixed with the crowd. One observer called the police arrangements “execrable” and said that “by their disorganized efforts [they helped] to create even worse disorder.”
The Bryans finally boarded the ferry Hudson City with a small remnant of their party. Deck stools were brought for them, “and perspiring and upset by their struggles Mr. Bryan and his wife sat down with the remark that they were glad the struggle was over.”
Suddenly a panic arose when the group failed to find Mrs. Bland among them. It took the aid of two policemen to extract her from the crowd at the rear of the boat and bring her forward. All the while the ferry passengers continued to cheer Mr. and Mrs. Bryan. One young man so attracted Mrs. Bryan’s attention that she handed him her bunch of roses. “This work of favor was the young man’s downfall,” the Tribune said. “Instantly he was set upon by the people around him and in the fierce struggle for the flowers they were totally destroyed.” Ultimately, all parties boarded the ferry without injury, but according to one observer, the reception had been “a gross failure.”
The near-disaster shook Bryan’s host, William St. John. For the remainder of their New York stay, St. John would ring William and Mary Bryan with a large amount of security. He would insist on a vast police presence wherever the candidate went, supplemented by a force of private detectives. St. John would even act as a sort of body-guard to Mary Bryan, rudely shoving well-wishers out of the way. All this would serve to cut the Great Commoner off from the citizens of New York.
CROSSING FROM JERSEY City to Desbrosses Street in Lower Manhattan, Bryan followed one of the most traveled paths across the Hudson, one that dated from the time Native Americans used rafts and canoes centuries before Europeans arrived. Later the Holland Tunnel would open onto the city just a few blocks away, the longest underwater tunnel in the world when it opened in 1927. But with the Brooklyn Bridge still the only major span across the Hudson and East rivers, New Yorkers were absolutely dependent on ferries and had been since the years of New Amsterdam. Indeed, Bryan now crossed at the site of the very first chartered ferry serving Manhattan, the Netherlands Council granting its charter in 1661. After that, the number of ferry services and their passengers increased dramatically, and two hundred years after the first ferry 50 million New Yorkers were taking the ferry every year. By the time Bryan rode the Hudson City across the river, the common saying held that when there was fog in the harbor, half the business population of New York would be late for work.
Bryan’s trip across the Hudson by ferry invited more comment than if he had simply ridden into the city like candidates in later years. Some papers called the Hudson Bryan’s Rubicon; others referred to it as his Delaware, the river George Washington crossed into New Jersey before the Battle of Trenton.
Perhaps writers for the New York journals were too jaded to comment on it, but for Bryan and his wife, there must have been a certain drama to the river crossing. Approaching the city across the relative calm of the water, and watching as the thousands of lights of Lower Manhattan slowly drew closer, must have made a great impression on the two residents of Lincoln, Nebraska. Suddenly after days