THE NEW YORK DRAFT RIOTS IN 1863--NOTES ON JOURNALISM
One more battle I saw, known as the Draft Riots of 1863. I arrived
in New York on the Monday evening, and journeyed south through the
city by the light of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum in flames; a
stray negro or two hanging to a lamp-post here and there. This was
the flank movement of the Rebellion; an attempt not only to prevent
the enforcement of the draft, which President Lincoln had too long
delayed, but to compel the Unionist forces to return northward for
the defence of their homes. A mad scheme, yet for near four days New
York was in possession of the mob. I never understood why, since a
couple of good regiments would at any moment have restored order, as
the event showed. For want of them New York had to defend itself,
and did it rather clumsily, enduring needless disasters and losses
both of property and life.
_The Tribune_ office was marked for destruction but was armed and
garrisoned and only once did the mob effect an entrance. Then they
swept into the counting-house on the ground floor and {162} made a
bonfire of such papers as they found. For a moment there was danger,
but the police came up from the Spruce Street station, the rioters
fled and the fire was put out. Upstairs in the editorial rooms we
knew nothing about it till it was all over. Afterward a better watch
was kept. Friends of _The Tribune_ volunteered, and there was no
lack of men; nor were the police again careless.
Another rush was stopped by the police in the square. As I sat at my
window looking on the City Hall I saw this Rebel effort. But the
police broke the solid mass of rioters as cleverly as it could have
been done in Paris, where such matters are understood better than
anywhere else in the world. Once scattered, these ruffians became
easy victims. The police did not spare them. I not only saw, but
heard. I heard the tap, tap, of the police clubs on the heads of the
fugitives. At each tap a man went down; and he did not always get up
again. The street was strewn with the slain.
While these incidents were occurring an effort was made to keep Mr.
Greeley away from the office; partly because he was a man of peace,
and we thought scenes of violence would be unpleasant to him; partly
because he was in danger both in the office and as he came and went.
But he would listen to no appeal. The post of danger was the Post of
duty, and he stood by the ship. Mr. Greeley's passion for peace
sometimes carried him far but never showed itself in an ignoble
regard for his personal safety.
Sydney Howard Gay's successor in the {163} managing editorship of
_The Tribune_ was Mr. John Russell Young, who brought with him a new
life and freshness, and something not very far removed from a genius
for journalism: if in the profession of journalism there be room for
genius. There is room, at any rate, for originality and for
bird's-eye views of things, and for an outlook upon the world which
leaves no important point uncovered. There is room for courage and
for quickness of perception and for an intuitive knowledge of what is
news and what is not. All these qualities Mr. Young had. That the
end of his relation with _The Tribune_ was less happy than the
beginning offers no reason, to my mind, for denying him the tribute
which is his due.
It seems hard to believe that in 1866, in the early summer, the first
news of the Austro-Prussian war came to us in New York by ship. But
so it was. Mr. Young walked into my room one morning with a slip of
paper in his hand from the news bureau at, I think, Quarantine,
announcing the Prussian declaration of war, June 18th, and the
advance of the Prussian forces. I should like you to take the first
steamer to Europe, remarked Mr. Young, and walked out again. It was
a Monday. The next steamer was the Cunarder _China_, from Boston to
Liverpool via Queenstown, on the Wednesday. I sailed accordingly,
and on reaching Queenstown was met by a telegram announcing the
Austrian defeat at Sadowa, or, as the Prussians prefer to call it,
Königgrätz, July 3rd. The war was over. There were other {164}
military operations, but an armistice was agreed to July 22nd, and
the preliminaries of peace were signed at Nikolsburg, July 26th.
On the following day, July 27th, 1866, the laying of the new Atlantic
cable, the first by which messages from the public were transmitted,
was successfully completed by the _Great Eastern_, and on the 28th a
friendly message from the Queen was sent to the President of the
United States. The President was Mr. Andrew Johnson, and it took him
two days to reply. It would have made a difference to us in America
if the war news of May and June could have reached us by cable. Even
such grave events as Austria's demand for the demobilization of the
Prussian Army, so far back as April, and the proceedings in the
Federal Diet at Frankfort in June, made no great impression on
American opinion. I suppose we were already in that state of
patriotic isolation when events in Europe seemed to us like events in
an ancient world. The Austro-Prussian conflict was not much more to
masses of Americans than the Peloponnesian War. Nor, in truth, did
news from abroad by mail ever present itself with the suddenness and
authority it derived from the cable. It came by mail in masses. It
came by cable with the peremptory brevity which arrested attention.
The home telegraph was diffuse. It was the cable which first taught
us to condense. A dispatch from London was not, in the beginning,
much more than a flash of lightning; and went into print as it came,
without being {165} "written up"; and was ten times the more
effective.
I had gone on from London to Berlin, and it was in Berlin that the
news came of a break in the peace negotiations and the sudden arrest
of the homeward march of the Prussian troops which had begun August
1st. I sent a dispatch to _The Tribune_ announcing this, and hinting
at the renewal of hostilities as a possible consequence. The news
came from a source which was a guarantee of its truth; and true it
was. But the diplomatic difficulty was soon adjusted and again the
Prussian columns flowed steadily northward. This message, which for
the moment was sufficiently startling, was, I think, the first news
dispatch which went by cable. It ran to near one hundred words, and
the cost of it was just short of £100, or $500. The rate from London
to New York was then twenty shillings a word. We wasted no words at
that price.
Mr. Weaver was then manager of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company,
a man who thought it good policy to coerce the public. He understood
much about cable business; not much about human nature. He
considered himself, and for the time being he was, at the head of a
monopoly. People who desired to send messages by cable to America
must do so upon his terms or not at all. It never seemed to occur to
him that there might be such a thing as a prohibitory rate, or that a
business could not be developed to the greatest advantage by driving
away customers. He was {166} quite happy if he could wring an extra
sovereign from the sender. He thought it a good stroke to compel
each sender of a message to add the word "London" to his signature.
It was another twenty shillings in the treasury of the company.
Mr. Weaver enacted many vexatious restrictive laws the discredit of
which fell in great measure upon Mr. Cyrus Field and other directors
of the Anglo-American Telegraph Company. It was Mr. Weaver's
business to make rules. It was the business of the public to obey
them. At that time there was between the public and the
Anglo-American company no direct intercourse. We were obliged to
hand in our messages over the counter of one of the two inland
telegraph companies, which between them had a monopoly; the British
and Magnetic and the Electric. Mr. Weaver sat in solitary state in
Telegraph Street. You approached his office as you would approach a
shrine; a temple of some far-off deity. During the next few years I
had often to discuss matters with Mr. Weaver, whose regulations
embarrassed and delayed Press messages. He was opposed to all
concessions to the Press. He framed a code under which Press
messages at a reduced rate were dealt with as he chose. He would
give us no assurance as to when he would begin or when complete the
transmission of such messages. He would interrupt the transmission
of them in a purely arbitrary way, so that the first half of a
message might reach New York for next {167} morning's paper and the
last half for the day after.
At last there came a crisis. I had filed an account of the
Oxford-Harvard four-oared race from Putney to Mortlake, a column and
a half long, in good time for next day's _Tribune_. It did not
appear till the day following. I had gone with it myself to the
City, and handed in my dispatch over the counter of the British and
Magnetic office in Threadneedle Street. The office of the
Anglo-American was but two minutes distant. My inquiries about the
delay were met with civil evasions. The Anglo- people said they sent
on the dispatch as soon as they got it. The British and Magnetic
people said it had been forwarded to the Anglo- "in the ordinary
course of business." Under that specious phrase lurked the mischief.
It came out after much pressure that, in the ordinary course of
business and by a rule of the Magnetic Company, every dispatch for
the cable must be copied before it was sent on to the Anglo-. The
staff in attendance when I committed my message to the Magnetic
consisted of a boy at the counter. It was his duty to copy the
dispatch when not otherwise engaged. He completed his copy early the
next morning. This was finally admitted. I then saw Mr. Weaver and
put all I had to say into two sentences. First, the delayed dispatch
would not be paid for, since it was the Anglo- which made itself
responsible for the delay by refusing to receive the message direct
from the sender. Second, unless this rule was abolished {168} I
would notify _The Tribune_ that it was useless to forward messages
from London, and advise the editor to direct their discontinuance.
Then came a curious thing. Mr. Weaver having reflected on this
ultimatum for some thirty seconds, said:
"Mr. Smalley, I will agree to your proposal on one condition--that
you tell nobody you are allowed to hand in your messages to us. We
do not intend to alter our rule. We make an exception in your case."
I do not suppose Mr. Weaver was aware that he was giving me a great
advantage or that he meant to give it. But, although the copying
regulation of the Magnetic was abolished, direct access to the Anglo-
was a great security and a great saving of precious time. It was to
mean in the following year of 1870 that dispatches could be sent
through to New York as filed, and in time for the regular morning
issue, which otherwise would have arrived, in whole or in part, late.
It was one among several causes to which was due the success of _The
Tribune_ in the early months of the Franco-German War. The fact did
not become known in the world of journalism till some time in the
late autumn of 1870. In February, 1870, the British Government had
taken over the inland telegraphs, and with them the duty of receiving
transatlantic dispatches. The Government could have enforced the old
rule had it chosen, but it did not choose. The executive officer of
the Post Office was Mr. Scudamore, secretary to the {169}
Postmaster-General, who had no good-will to the Press and none to me.
Probably he knew nothing about the matter. But since 1870 the cable
offices have all been thrown open, or special offices opened for the
receipt of messages, and you may now file cable messages for America
in any Post Office or any cable office. The English postal telegraph
service is wonderfully good--far better than any telegraph service in
America--but I should never file a Press message in a postal office
if within reach of a cable office.
All this is highly technical and I suppose of no interest to anybody
but journalists and telegraph managers. But there are other
experiences which I hope may be found worth reading by a less select
audience.
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