Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [272]
After nearly six: The Lizzie Homans, the City of Limerick, and the Etna all reported seeing icebergs on their voyages across the Atlantic from Liverpool, England. Even as late as August, while Pulitzer was seaborne, a ship reached Boston with tales of seeing large quantities of ice in Iceberg Alley. NYT, 8/16/1864, 8; 8/22/1864, 8; 8/23/1864, 8; 9/1/1864, 8.
Boats bearing federal: Article in Courier de Lyon, which was sent to Secretary of State William Seward by Consul William L. Dayton in Paris, 10/17/1864. It appears, translated, in Foreign Affairs, 165.
Pulitzer knew the: Pulitzer later told friends that he slipped over the ship’s railing at night and swam ashore so as to collect his own bounty. This tale has long been considered a myth. The ship never came close to a Boston dock. But the discovery that Pulitzer was among those in Allen’s recruiting scheme gives the tale new credibility. In fact, the waterway separating Deer Island from the mainland was only about 300 feet wide at its narrowest point and a dozen feet deep. In the end, it may be that Pulitzer only embellished his escape from the clutches of the Massachusetts recruiters. Instead of thrashing about in the polluted harbor water of the docks, leaving all his personal belongings behind, he and a dozen or two dozen men probably easily traversed the channel at low tide. I compared the ship’s manifest with the rolls of Massachusetts regiments and found that almost all the men I looked up did, in the end, join the Union forces. The channel between Deer Island and the mainland was filled in by a hurricane during the twentieth century. The width and depth of the channel when Pulitzer arrived were estimated from nautical charts on deposit at the Library of Congress.
Reaching New York: One could earn $300 from the county, $75 from the state, and $300 from the federal government (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 3/19/1864, 404). Advertisements in NYH listed bounties of $400 for aliens and $600 for men willing to be substitutes. See NYH, 5/27/1864, 6/3/1864, 6/7/1864; NYT, 1/30/1864, 8.
Despite such efforts: NYT, 8/2/1864, 3. Lieutenant Colonel R. W. Winfield Simpson and Captain R. McNichol, from Kingston, ran a regular advertisement in New York newspapers. Typical of them was one that can be found in NYT, 9/29/1864, when Pulitzer was in the city; NYT, 8/7/1864. NYT, 2/4/1865, 8; NYT, 9/24/1864, 1. Information on Henry Vosburgh drawn from Descriptive Book of Drafted, Draft Register for the 13th District Headquarters in Kingston, National Archives, 159, as well as cemetery and census records provided by the Greene County (NY) Historical Society.
At the Kingston tent: Pulitzer’s military service record, NARA. (Note: His service records are sometimes hard to locate because his name is variously spelled as “Pullitzer” and “Politzer.”) Geary, We Need Men, 145. Ironically, Vosburgh’s luck in obtaining Pulitzer’s services as a substitute did not ward off an early death. He died within a year of natural causes. (Headstone at Colleburgh Cemetery, headstone inventory, Greene County Historical Society, Coxsackie, NY.)
With money in: The ring, along with letters telling its story, is stored in the Library of Congress among the collection of Joseph Pulitzer II papers. The younger Pulitzer acquired the coin in 1938, when relatives in Hungary mailed it to him. (Polgar Gyulane to JPII, 4/18/1938.)
A few days: Bill Twoney, “Hart Island—Part 1” Bronx Times Reporter, 11/24/1994; NYT, 12/12/1867, 7; NYT, 8/7/1864, 2; NYT, 1/10/1865, 4.
Pulitzer also avoided: NYT, 8/27/1864, 3 and 11/20/1864, 5. Pulitzer’s story is consistent with the fact that the cavalries were also becoming less selective about recruits. See, for instance, the poster with five charging cavalrymen in New-York Historical Society Civil War Treasures Collection, PR–055–3–207; DCS-JP, 43.
On November 12, 1864: Starr, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, Vol., 2, 322–333.
Pulitzer was assigned: Descriptive Book, Companies B-M, 1st New York Lincoln Cavalry, NARA. Stevenson, Boots and Saddles, 320.