Edward K. Spann.  Gotham At War: New York City, 1860-1865.  Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2002.

Edward Spann's book Gotham At War traces the city of New York and its surrounding boroughs during the tenuous Civil War years in the aspects of trade, race, drafts, politics, and others in an effort to highlight the contribution of America's largest and most diverse city to the war effort.  Spann covers New York's reaction to the war more or less thematically, and drawing on sources which include secondary sources, countless newspaper contributions, and primary sources as well. 

Before the war began, New York City harbored a great many sympathies (and trade ships) for the South, hoping to avoid an armed conflict with their Southern trading partners.  Nearly one third of American exports went through New York's harbors, including vast quantities of Southern cotton, and the enterprising people of New York were unwilling to jeopardize those profits over a civil conflict.  For this reason as well as for Lincoln's support of a strong tariff, Lincoln received a small proportion of New York's votes in the 1860 presidential election.  The Democratic Party held the political power in New York, with both mayors and all members of the city council being Democrats during the Civil War years.  The Democratic factions were split, however, which limited their control, and several influential Republican newspapers within the city held great sway for War Democrats and other moderate New Yorkers. 

Perhaps the shadiest New York politician, Fernando Wood, who would serve the city as mayor and as a House Representative in Congress, was well aware of the city's position in the nation and its importance to any potential war effort.  Wood called a secret meeting with several other prominent Democrats and proposed New York's secession in order to protect New York's trade interests and to avoid having to send any New Yorkers off to war.  Wood's proposal was rejected out of hand by his compatriots, and the issue was never raised again.

Once Confederate guns opened up on Fort Sumter, all New Yorkers were, for the moment at least, supportive of the Lincoln administration's war effort.  Two regiments were quickly mustered and send south, while others were trained and equipped.  As with all Americans on either side of the Mason-Dixie line, New Yorkers were confident that the war would be a quick one, and New York financial insiders were confident that New York banks could bear the brunt of war debt with their own cash reserves.  As the war dragged on, New York's enthusiasm for the war effort faded, but New York's financial industry was always ready and willing to accept the commitment and profits associated with helping to fund the war.

Sending thousands of young men off to fight had a number of predictable effects upon the different people of New York.  If those young men had any dependents, they would need to eat while their providers were off fighting.  In a rather ingenious scheme, the city of New York appointed a council to oversee the distribution of a portion of soldiers' pay to their dependents and some additional aid from the city's own coffers to support the destitute.  The increase in government jobs, particularly on the docks, led directly to conflict between the city's Irish and negro populations, who did not care for one another.  Employers were encouraged to employ women in any field possible in order to free up the men who occupied those positions to enlist. 

The greatest civil clash in New York came as a result of the drafts in July, 1863, which culminated in a large scale riot which involved thousands of New Yorkers and millions of dollars worth of property damage and production loss.  The Metropolitan Police were ill prepared and undermanned for such an uprising, and additional men were deputized and national guard aid brought in to quell the rioting.  The draft riots were the low point of New York's war history.

With the war's end, many returned home to work, and the staggering numbers of unemployment and poverty did not hit New York as hard as some anticipated.  There were effects, but New York remained prosperous in the transition from war back to peace. 

Political intrigue, racism, selfishness, and corruption were all hallmarks of New York's involvement in the Civil War, but so were economic prosperity, welfare, high enlistment, and critical naval contributions without which the North's victory would not have been likely.  Although there are many distracting elements in Spann's work, especially the thematic, non-chronological layout of the book, which could be confusing, the volume is one of the few which treats the unique relationship between New York and the Civil War in such a comprehensive manner.

Stephen Edwards

Gotham at War: New York City, 1860-1865. By Edward K. Spann. (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., c. 2002. Pp. xiv+213).

            Edward Spann’s Gotham at War examines the complex history of New York City during the war.  Printed as part of the American Crisis Series, Spann looks away from the battlefield to the home front, seeing the war’s effects on citizens who lived away from the firing.  Clearly located in the North, New York became an important center for the Union war effort.  At the same time, New York was a center for anti-administration feeling and some of the most violent reactions against blacks and the war effort.  Spann’s study of the Big Apple’s wartime experience covers these contradictions and their consequences.

            New York was the largest Union city, a center of finance and manpower.  Initial fears that New York business would suffer from a lack of cotton did not come to pass.  Instead, government contracts and other business replaced the now-missing Southern cotton.  New York and the immediate area became an important area for the construction of naval vessels, especially the war’s new ironclads.  New York banks and wealthy individuals helped to finance the war effort through necessary material such as beef and uniforms.  More than finances, New York contributed heavily to the Union’s manpower.  Like the rest of the North, City residents enlisted in large numbers at the war’s outbreak.  One regiment, the 7th New York, whose membership came from the wealthiest section of the city, was one of the first to gather at Washington.  Though they returned home without ever actually fighting, members of the 7th proudly announced that they were, “the first regiment in the county to pitch its tents in front of the enemy,” (21).  New Yorkers also took a great interest in the care for soldiers.  City residents, even those less than enamored with the war’s purpose, flocked to hospitals near the front to care for the wounded.  The City was the organizing site for the Woman’s Central Relief Association and the later United States Sanitary Commission, as well as providing early board members and extensive financial support.  During the course of the war, New York was able to leverage its significant financial and human capital into important fuel for the Union’s war machine.

            Even though it was an important city for the Union war effort, Gotham did not remain wholly committed to the cause.  Though New York provided Union soldiers with supplies and uniforms, these were not always of the highest quality.  Especially in the war’s early years, uniforms made with leftover cotton material called “shoddy” fell apart after minimal use, lending the “shoddy” term to any poorly-made government-issue material.  New York was also a center of anti-war and specifically anti-administration feeling.  The Democratic Party became the dominant political faction in the City, its power divided between the Mozart and Tammany Hall machines.  Fernando and Benjamin Wood worked from the mayor’s office, newspaper printing machines and even the halls of Congress to denounce the Lincoln administration’s prosecution of the war.  Other Democrats drew their powerbase from the city, including financier August Belmont and the state’s governor Horatio Seymour.  New York Democrats drew their support from outside the upper class, especially the city’s large Irish population.  Spann makes a point of noting that the heavily Republican upstate kept New York in Lincoln’s column in the election.  It was certainly not the first time the two regions of New York disagreed on politics, and would only set the stage for further political division into the twentieth century.  These political divisions did not limit themselves to elections, though.  As the war progressed, and particularly following the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the strong Democratic faction became more violent.  The beginning of the draft caused tremendous riots to break out throughout the city, with mobs unafraid to target wealthy uptown Republicans, soldiers and blacks.  Racial divisions, partially fostered by Democrats eager to maintain their support amongst the Irish, had tragic consequences.

            Spann presents more of a series of essays than a defined course of events.  Though the chapters proceed mostly chronologically, Spann treats the war’s various aspects separately, and it would be easy to read them as such.  This kind of work also examines the war’s longer consequences, in particular attempts by individuals to understand the vast changes occurring around them.  Spann concludes that the longest lasting effect of the war was the rise of the city’s Democratic machine.  After the war ended, Southern Democrats returned to old friends in New York, eager to re-establish business relations.  The war solidified New York’s position as one of the nation’s dominant economic centers, and the Democratic Party as its dominant ruler.

Texas Christian University                                                                                          Keith Altavilla

Gotham at War: New York City, 1860-1865. By Edward K. Spann. Wilmington (DE): Scholarly Resources, 2002.

            In this story of a metropolis during a war of unprecedented scope, Edward K. Spann demonstrates that New York City was equally isolated and unique in its experiences, expectations, and reactions to the Civil War. Interestingly, after the war Gotham resuscitated antebellum relations with the South. Thus, while New York City benefited economically, structurally, and demographically from the war, it never participated wholeheartedly in the cause and never fully subscribed to the Republican vision of the Union.

            Although returns in the city fell largely to the Democratic column, a surge of Republican votes brought the state to Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln’s side during the 1860 presidential election. While a similar pattern developed in the 1864 election, Spann uses this first example to establish the important precedent of Gotham’s sympathies for the status quo. Both in 1860 and 1864, the Democratic-voting majorities within the city believed that peace and (re)union best benefited their local economies. However, Spann carefully points out that Copperhead-ism never fully took root within the city – the draft riot of July 1863 notwithstanding (which he instead attributes to dissatisfaction with the method of conscription and the disbanding of the firefighters’ regiment). New Yorkers continued to trade with the Confederacy until the initiation of a blockade, but were, according to Spann, motivated almost purely by economic imperatives rather than undiluted Southern sympathies.

            Rather, as news of the firing on Fort Sumter spread through the city, New Yorkers exhibited a great swelling of patriotism. Men from all parts of the state came to the city to volunteer in such regiments as the Seventh (the “Kid Gloves” Regiment), the Irish Sixty-Ninth, and the First Fire Zouaves (of the city’s volunteer firefighters). Local businessmen loaned millions of dollars to the federal government, and these and other local troops rushed to the defense of Washington, D.C. Spann credits both of these responses to saving the Union from an early defeat – or at least certainly saving the Union’s capital from Confederate capture.

            New Yorkers soon found war to be a profitable business. The city became the primary site of embarkation for Union exports, and New York’s ironworks profited greatly as the Federal Navy entered the iron-clad era. City merchants also supplied cloth, uniforms, meat, and equipment (including horses) to Union armies. But as this “big business” grew ever larger and more profitable, corruption followed. It was not unheard of for army officials to complain that their cavalries were outfitted with either diseased or unbroken horses, often at the cost of injury or death to their riders. Yet profits were so lucrative that businessmen willingly bribed quartermaster officials to pass their goods through cursory or blatantly fraudulent inspections.

            Spann demonstrates that not all of New York’s contributions to the Union war effort were so selfish. Indeed, New York became a central part of the Union’s system of medical care. In this, women contributed at least as much – if not more – to the effort as did their more politically empowered opposites. In addition to over 1,000 doctors, New York City offered the services of the Woman’s Central Relief Organization and the United States Sanitary Commission. Spann concludes that “such benevolent enterprises were important both in providing care for patients and in serving as a link between the people of the metropolis and the war” (79).

            Nevertheless, Spann also concludes that New York City did not live up to its responsibilities in many other dimensions of the war effort. Gotham remained ethnically and racially divided – despite the existence and exploits of various Irish regiments and the all-black Twentieth Regiment. Similarly, despite possessing roughly one-fourth of the state’s population, the city provided just 18 percent of the state’s troops and suffered fewer than ten percent of the state’s total war casualties. The activities of “Boss” Tweed’s Volunteer Committee help explain this oddity. As New York City lost its initial patriotic fervor in the face of an increasingly costly war (whose purposes many city-dwellers did not fully support), the city began spending what totaled $10 million of public funds to purchase substitutes for conscripted New Yorkers.

            While Abraham Lincoln’s assassination brought urban and rural New York together in mourning – paralleling the unified patriotism following Fort Sumter – New York City soon looked southward in order to capitalize on the new economic order. The war had enhanced the city’s status as a vital component of the northern industrial economy, but New Yorkers moved quickly to reestablish historical relationships with the South; this effectively demonstrates the city’s opportunistic pursuit of economic self-interest. Intransigent racial attitudes accompanied this reassertion of southward sympathy, as the city established something of its own status quo ante bellum.

Matthew A. McNiece

Gotham at War: New York City, 1860-1865.  By Edward K. Spann. (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2002.  Pp. 213.  Paper.)

In the introduction to Gotham at War: New York City, 1860-1865, Edward K. Spann, an emeritus professor of history at Indiana State University, declares that “the complex relationship between the war and the civilian populations has yet to be fully detailed and analyzed” (p. xi).  His declaration is true, and the study of civil-military relations in the American Civil War has developed into a burgeoning field in the historiography of the conflict in recent years. In this particular work, which represents a sequel to Spann’s The New York Metropolis: New York City, 1840-1857 (1981), Spann uses New York City as a case study through which to examine the dynamic relationship between the warfront and the homefront, and he endeavors “to explore both the varied ways in which a great war affected a great city and the ways a great city affected a great war” (p. xiii).

There are sixteen chapters in Gotham at War, and each one deals with a different aspect of New York City during the Civil War era.  First, Spann looks at Gotham’s reaction to the coming of the war and argues that “[n]o better friend of the South existed in the North” than New York City (p. 3).  He tells the shocking story of how Mayor Fernando Wood suggested the metropolis secede from the rest of New York—Republicans who supported Abraham Lincoln dominated upstate New York—during the Pine Street Meetings on 15 December 1860 and asserts that many of Gotham’s citizens sympathized with the Confederacy because of their economic reliance on the South and their fear of Negro competition should the slaves be freed.  Spann then moves on to illustrate that the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter galvanized Gotham, uniting much of the community and producing a patriotic fervor that swept the city for a short time.  Spann also explores New York City’s role in helping “to make the Union the world’s greatest naval power,” the conflict between corruption and competence when it came to supplying the Union armies in the field, and the creation of benevolent societies to aid soldiers and their families (p. 42). 

In his most intriguing argument, Spann posits that Gotham failed to provide its fair share of manpower to the Union war effort. As casualty lists exploded and exposed the brutality of the conflict, many of metropolis’s citizens who opposed Lincoln’s war policies—namely, the Emancipation Proclamation—sought to avoid serving in the military altogether. First, many citizens relied on exemptions, and when the Union initiated the first draft in U.S. history on 1 March 1863, they hired substitutes. Bounty brokers made fortunes finding men to volunteer to meet state quotas so that others would not be drafted, and the crime of bounty-jumping reached epidemic proportions. For five days in July, the city rioted against the draft.  Hundreds died in the chaos—mainly blacks and abolitionists—and the city endured over two-million dollars in property damage. Interestingly, Spann discredits the myth that Irishmen were the principle proponents of the riots, arguing that “only a minority of the city’s Irish people had been rioters” (p. 102). Ultimately, the “great eruption” ended, “exhausted by its own excesses as much perhaps as repressed by the forces of order,” forces which included soldiers fresh from the fields of Gettysburg (p. 101). Future violence was avoided as the governments of both New York City and Brooklyn elected “to use public money to buy draft exemptions for those citizens that wanted them” (p. 103).

Spann’s Gotham at War stands as an excellent overview of a city responding to war, and it is written in a clear, concise style that makes it a perfect selection for the classroom.  Spann does well to present New York City as a friend of the South and as a blemish of the North.  Despite the book’s success as crisp summary of wartime Gotham, it would have been enlightening to see some comparison with other American cities during the war.  Such comparisons would have reinforced the qualities that set New York apart from cities like Baltimore and New Orleans.  Also, Spann relies almost solely on wartime newspapers, and although his use of these rich primary sources is to be commended, it would have been even more illuminating had Spann engaged other sources such as the wartime letters and diaries of New York’s citizens and soldiers.  Despite these criticisms, Gotham at War delivers what the The American Crisis Series of Scholarly Resources promises: “concise overviews of important persons, events, and themes in that remarkable period of America’s history.”

Jason Mann Frawley

Texas Christian University