Monday, February 20, 2012

Marinus Willett: The Rest of the Story

HISTORY

Last week we explored Marinus Willett’s early life and his remarkable expulsion of raiding British forces from Peekskill in March of 1777.
Following his victory at Peekskill, Marinus Willett and his 3rd New York Regiment were transferred to strategic Fort Stanwix, guarding German settlements in the Mohawk Valley.
Besieged by a superior force led by British Lt. Col. Barry St.Leger, the fort’s garrison showed its defiance by hastily sewing together a battle flag. The camlet cloak seized by Willett at Peekskill supplied the material for the blue field of the pennant flown over the fort.
While St. Leger was attacking the relief column of militia Gen. Nicholas Herkimer attempting to reach Fort Stanwix, Willett led a small force from the fort and raided St. Leger’s lightly guarded camps, seizing equipment and supplies and carrying them back to Fort Stanwix.
As second in command at Fort Stanwix, Willett later responded to St. Leger’s demand for its surrender. He told the major who brought the ultimatum that it was "a degrading message for a British officer to send and a less than reputable message for another British officer to carry."
Willett followed his defiance with another remarkable feat. Accompanied by militia lieutenant Levi Stockwell, a resourceful hunter and woodsman, he slipped from the fort and through the lines of the besieging British and Indians.
Each man was armed only with a spontoon, a wooden shaft about eight feet long with a sharp blade at one end. To conceal their tracks, they walked in streams. Lighting no fires, they ate only the cheese and hardtack they carried.
After covering the 50 miles to Fort Dayton in two days, they learned that a relief force commanded by adventurous and unpredictable Gen. Benedict Arnold had already been dispatched to raise the siege of Fort Stanwix.
For Willett's repeated acts of bravery, Congress later presented him with "an elegant sword," now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Worn out by incessant fighting, Willett retired on New Year's Day in 1781, but soon accepted Gov. George Clinton's appeal to return to the Mohawk Valley to repulse continuing Tory and Indian attacks.
Following the Revolution, estates of Tories confiscated by the Commissioners of Forfeitures were sold at ridiculously low prices. Marinus Willett bought a large tract formerly owned by the DeLancey family in an area called Corlear's Hook overlooking the busy East River.
Willett built a two-story mansion with small wings at each end as a home for himself and his wife. Surrounded by spacious grounds containing gardens, it was famous for luscious pears and delicious melons. He called the estate Cedar Grove.
Willett's estate, which would later became part of the teeming Lower East Side, is today the site of public housing projects. Two street names--Willett Streetand Sheriff Street--were the only reminders of his presence there.

An Enlightened View of Indians
Taking advantage of Willett’s experience with Indian adversaries in the Mohawk Valley, President Washington sent Marinus Willett as his personal representative in 1790 to negotiate with the Creek Nation, a powerful Indian tribe in Georgia and Alabama. So successful was his diplomacy, he returned to New York escorting Alexander McGillivray, the tribe's wily half-breed chief, and a delegation of sub-chiefs.
After a succession of festivities, including a reception by President Washington and Governor Clinton, the Creeks signed a peace treaty. Willett's signature appears on this historic document as a witness.
Because Indian tribes north of the Ohio River were actively resisting the inroads of settlers, to take advantage of Willett's knowledge of Indians, George Washington appointed him a brigadier general in 1792 to conduct a campaign on the Ohio frontier.
In a little-known letter to Washington demonstrating how astute he was about Indian affairs. Willett thanked the President for the honor, but declined to attack the Indians.
"It has been my uniform opinion that the United States ought to avoid an Indian war. I have generally conceived this to be our wisest policy. The reasons alleged in support of the present Indian war have never brought conviction to my mind.
"From my knowledge and experience of these people, I am clear that it is not a difficult thing to preserve peace with them. That there are bad men among them and that these will at times do acts which deserve punishment is very clear. But I hold that to go to war is not the proper way to punish them.
"Though they are not free from chicanery and intrigue, yet if their vanity is properly humored, and they are dealt justly by, it is no difficult matter to come to terms with them. The intercourse I have had with these people, the treatment I have myself received from them, and which I have known others to receive, makes me an advocate for them. To fight with them would be the last thing I should desire."
If others in government had shared Willet’s enlightened attitudes, the entire course of this nation's relations with Indian tribes might have been different.

Family Matters
We get an indication of the mores of the period from Willett’s marital history and a scandal that erupted in 1781. While stationed at Fort Plain, four miles west of Canajoharie, the tall and handsome Willett met Elizabeth Seeber, an attractive woman living apart from her husband.
Separated from his wife and still mourning the untimely death of his son, a Continental soldier, three years before, Willett began a liaison with Mrs. Seeber that set tongues to wagging.
In the course of time, Mrs. Seeber gave birth to a boy, who was named Marinus W. Seeber. Willett made no secret of his paternity, providing child support and money for the youth's education. Years later, now a grown man, his son returned to Fort Plain as a teacher of dancing.
Illegitimacy was then a label one carried forever, and townspeople made life uncomfortable for him. An innocent victim of wagging tongues, Marinus W. Seeber left for parts unknown and disappeared from the pages of history.
Willett's wife of 33 years, Mary Pearsee, died at Cedar Grove in 1793. He lost no time in becoming enamored of Susannah Vardill, a beautiful widow who had already buried two husbands.
She was described as "the reigning toast of New York society." They were married on October 3, 1793, three months to the day after his first wife's death. The "toast" soon lost its zest for him, and the marriage became an unhappy one. Willett discovered that he had gotten more than he bargained for.
His new wife turned out to be a vixen and a spitfire. Susannah loved to gossip--even about her husband--and the marriage eventually soured. Mrs. Willett filed for divorce in 1799.
Marinus Willett next lost his heart to Margaret Bancker, the young daughter of Willett's friends, Christopher and Mary Smith Bancker. Willett was 59; she was 24. Despite the disparity in their ages, they married. This third marriage for Willett produced four children--three sons and a daughter. One son became a physician, another a minister, and the third a lawyer.

In Politics and Out
Willett was a founding member of the Society of the Cincinnati formed by officers of the Continental Army. To counter their aristocratic pretensions, the Tammany Society was organized. Willett became one of its leaders.
An ardent foe of Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists, he cast his lot with the anti-Federalists, joining Gov. George Clinton and Aaron Burr in unsuccessfully opposing New York's ratification of the new national constitution.
Willett was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1784 but resigned to become sheriff of the city and county of New York.
In 1807, he was appointed mayor of New York City to succeed DeWitt Clinton, and served until 1808. [For the first 150 years of the city's existence, mayors were appointed.] Four years later, Clinton defeated Willett for the post of lieutenant governor.
In or out of office, Willett was always in the public eye. During the darkest days of the War of 1812, he gave a rousing patriotic speech to a large crowd assembled in City Hall Park. In 1824, he was named a presidential elector in the bitter election that made John Quincy Adams president.
Marinus Willett died in his home at Cedar Grove on August 22, 1830, three weeks past his 90th birthday. Coincidentally, this was the anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Fort Stanwix 53 years before.
The entire city mourned his passing. His immense funeral procession, including military units and the Common Council, wound through streets lined with grieving spectators from Corlear’s Hook to Trinity Church at Wall Street and Broadway.
After the funeral ceremony conducted by the light of flickering torches his body was placed in the family vault at the southwest corner of the churchyard. A cannon at the Battery solemnly boomed 90 times at one-minute intervals to mark his 90 years of life. He reposes in the same churchyard with his arch-enemy Alexander Hamilton, buried there in 1804 after his fatal duel with Aaron Burr.
Time and the elements have badly eroded Marinus Willett's name on the red Connecticut sandstone slab covering the Willett vault, making it almost unreadable. A more permanent plaque erected in 1969 by the Sons of the American Revolution can be found nearby.
Yet, in Westchester Marinus Willett still waits to be memorialized. A plaque or some other tangible expression of Peekskill's gratitude to him would be a good start.


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Posted by Notorc @ 2/20/2012 08:28:00 AM 0 comments
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Monday, February 13, 2012

Marinus Willett, Forgotten Savior of Peekskill

BIOGRAPHY 

No Peekskill street bears his name.
No statue of him graces any Peekskill park.
No memorial plaque commemorating his stunning exploits during the Revolution can be found anywhere in Peekskill.
He was Lt. Col. Marinus Willett, an outstanding soldier whose determined action saved Peekskill from destruction at the hands of the British. Yet he is hardly remembered by the community he delivered from the enemy.

Meet Marinus Willett
Marinus Willett was born on July 31, 1740, in Jamaica, Long Island. Originally called Rustdorp by the Dutch, when the Brutish took over in 1664 they named it Jameco, after the Lenape word for beaver. The tenth of thirteen children and one of the six sons of Aletta Clowes and Edward Willett, Marinus was named for a great uncle, Marinus Van Varick.
Later genealogical research casts doubt on the claim made in the 19th century that he was the great-grandson of Thomas Willett, first mayor of New York in 1665. This lineage was never claimed by Marinus Willett.
Little is known about his childhood, except that he worked as a cabinet maker. At the age of 18, he gained military experience as a lieutenant in the French and Indian War by taking part in attacks on French-held Forts Ticonderoga and Frontenac.
In the years before the Revolution, Willett was a fervent and effective member of the Sons of Liberty. Like other secret societies, it was formed to protest the series of onerous acts passed by the British to extract more taxes from the colonies.
After the news of the armed rebellion at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775 reached New York, the British decided to evacuate the city. On June 6th, seeing a British detachment taking five wagonloads of muskets to the docks, Willett dashed into the street, grabbed the bridle of the lead horse and stopped the column.
An unruly crowd gathered, and Willett--by now an accomplished rabble-rouser--stirred them up. He announced to the astonished British that they could only leave the city with the personal weapons they carried. The spare guns would have to remain, and remain they did. Willett even persuaded one of the British soldiers to join the American cause.
In 1892, a plaque commemorating this event was placed by the Sons of the Revolution at the northwest corner of Broad and Beaver streets. It contains a representation of old Broad Streetand Federal Hall and a medallion head of Marinus Willett.
Two months after the seizure of the British weapons, Willett became a captain in Col. Alexander McDougall's First New York militia regiment and took part in the misguided and abortive invasion of Canada.
An obvious key objective of British forces during the war, Peekskill guarded the southern gate to the Hudson Highlands, a natural mountainous barrier. Part of the Appalachian mountain chain, the Highlands commanded a vital avenue of communication--the crucial waterway known as the North River, today called the Hudson to honor its discoverer.
Travel back in time with me to the spring of 1777. British forces had wintered comfortably in New York City and now occupy Westchester as far north as Dobbs Ferry.


    Marinus Willett in a 1791 oil painting by portrait artist Ralph Earle.
Owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Above the Croton River, American forces are in control. In between is the so-called "Neutral Ground." Raided by marauding Tory forces called "skinners," who steal cattle from farmers to sell to the British in New York City, the region is defended by patriot militia and irregulars called "cowboys."
Brig. Gen. William Heath, nominally in command of the Eastern Department at Peekskill, is on leave and visiting his home in Massachusetts. Commanding Continental forces in the Highlands and headquartered at Peekskill is Scottish-born Alexander, now a Brigadier General.
McDougall, 46, a wealthy merchant and dedicated patriot, had been a member and later a leader of the Sons of Liberty. He wrote and had printed an anonymous broadside, To the Betrayed Inhabitants, protesting provincial payments for housing and provisions for British troops under the Quartering Acts. Accused of libel, he refused to post bail and was held in jail for five months. Public demonstrations became so frequent his release was ordered by Governor Tryon.
McDougall fought delaying actions in 1776 against the British at Brooklyn Heights and White Plains. [In one of those peculiar alterations that occur in street names, MacDougal Streetin New York's Greenwich Village was later named for him.]
In command at Fort Independence on Roa Hook (opposite the present entrance to Camp Smith) is Lt. Col. Marinus Willett, 36, who spends every available moment drilling his New York militia troops of the Third Continental Regiment.
At Peekskill, McDougall's forces erect redoubts and barracks in a military complex on a series of three hills lying south of the present Bear Mountain State Parkway

The British Attack Peekskill
On Sunday, March 23, 1777, an attack force consisting of the British frigate H.M.S. Brune, four transports and other naval support craft appears in the Hudson off Peekskill. About 500 British troops and four light cannons served by sailors are landed unopposed in Lent's Cove, between Charles Point and Indian Point.
Their mission is to destroy the Continental encampment and any wharves, warehouses, buildings, equipment or supplies useful to the American cause.
General McDougall decides that his Peekskill garrison is too small to attack the superior British force. A defeat at the hands of the enemy would open the Highlands and jeopardize the weapons and supplies stored at Continental Village and Fishkill.
McDougall prudently withdraws his troops to the north of Peekskill. The retreating Americans burn one of the barracks on Fort Hill, thus denying it to the attacking British. For the same reason, they burn a mill on McGregory Creek and several warehouses near the waterfront.
The British set up their four field pieces on Drum Hill and fire on Peekskill. Nathaniel Brown, a Continental soldier retreating before the British, stops to drink from a spring and is killed by fragments from a British cannonball. The spring near which he is standing is located on Division Street, north of the junction with Highland Avenue. It will hereafter be known as the Soldier's Spring. General McDougall sends an urgent message to Lt. Col. Willett on Roa Hook telling him to leave the fort in charge of a subordinate and to meet him at Bald Hill (north of the present Van Cortlandtville) with a detachment of troops. After the hanging of British spy Edmund Palmer in August of 1777, the hill will acquire the sinister name it bears to this day: Gallows Hill.

Colonel Willett Reports
At about three in the afternoon, Marinus Willett and 80 soldiers join McDougall on Bald Hill. Quickly taking in the situation, Willett spots British troops on a hill to the south of Peekskill Hollow Creek (the site of the present Cortlandt town hall), where they have set fire to a house. He immediately proposes to attack them by circling to their rear and asks McDougall to make a feint to the left to distract attention from his flanking movement.
Initially uncomfortable with this plan, McDougall prefers to wait for Dutchess County militia reinforcements expected the next day. Willett pesters the reluctant commander, who finally gives him permission to execute his plan.
Aggressively ordering his troops forward, Willett moves them through a gully with guns "at trail" to avoid detection. After being delayed by two fences at which they are subjected to enemy musket fire, in a loud voice Willett gives the order, “Fix bayonets and charge!”
On hearing that chilling command, the British troops, busy reloading their muskets, fall back to the Post Road
. Confusion reigns in the gathering darkness. Unfamiliar with the terrain, the entire British force is soon in disorderly retreat back to their boats, leaving behind the baggage and supplies that had been landed with their expedition. One abandoned item, a blue cloak made of camlet (a mixture of silk and wool) will have special significance for Marinus Willett.
Willett's decisiveness and the unflinching determination of his well-drilled troops undoubtedly saved Peekskill from the fate of other rebel towns struck in lightning raids.
Burning was a common British retaliatory tactic as punishment for communities storing grain and supplies for rebel forces. The previous autumn, they had burned White Plains after the battle there. One month after their attack on Peekskill, Danbury in Connecticut will be raided, and homes, warehouses and provisions destroyed. Later in 1777, the British will attack and burn the upriver town of Kingston, temporarily serving as New York’s capital because an attack on Albany was anticipated.
Two years later, the same fiery fate awaits the Connecticut towns of Groton, New Haven, East Haven, Fairfield and Green's Farms. New London will be savagely torched in 1781.
Peekskill will be overrun twice by the British—first in the fall of 1777 to guard their flank in the attack on Forts Clinton and Montgomery near Bear Mountain, and again in the summer and fall of 1779 during their campaign to capture Stony Point and Verplanck Point.
On each of these occasions, the enemy's troops will remain longer and wreak greater havoc than before. By then, Willett and his troops will be long gone. One likes to think the outcome of these subsequent attacks would have been different had Marinus Willett still been in Peekskill.

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Chester A. Smith, 2: Fighting Peekskill’s City Hall

BIOGRAPHY 

The honeymoon of Chester Smith and the newly elected Mackay administration in 1940 was short-lived. As in many marriages, the split came over money.
During the campaign, Mackay and his Democratic Common Council candidates had promised economies in government. Once in office, however, they surprised Smith and other supporters by proposing a 1941 Peekskill budget that called for spending a whopping $766,777.06.
Moreover, they proposed hefty raises for city officials: a 43% jump in salary for the city judge (from $2,800 to $4,000), a 33% boost for the corporation counsel (from $3,000 to $4,000), and a 20% increase for the city clerk (from $2,500 to $3,000). The administration also proposed to create the post of deputy comptroller with a salary of $3,600 for newly elected comptroller Albert E. Cruger.
Democratic council members made another tactical mistake; this one fatal. Chester Smith tended to monopolize and even dominate council meetings. Council members began to ignore him and disregard his suggestions and requests.
Smith's Non-Partisan Citizens Committee declared its opposition to the new administration's proposed budget. It bought newspaper advertising and mounted a direct-mail campaign that reached all 2,671 eligible voters.

Roadblocks
The council countered with a series of high-handed tactics. Instead of scheduling the budget vote at the traditional location, the Peekskill High School gymnasium, they stirred up a hornet's nest by choosing the inappropriate and much smaller three-year-old Municipal Building.
To further discourage voter turnout, the council set the time of the voting for the brief 90-minute period between 7:30 and 9 p.m., Tuesday, December 3, 1940. Only two voting machines were installed. The new administration was obviously making it difficult for voters to show their feelings about the budget.
The strategy backfired. Despite these roadblocks, 622 taxpayers turned out on a cold winter night. A line three-deep snaked its way out of the Municipal Building's rotunda and down the curved staircase onto Main Street. Many waited for hours to vote; some gave up and returned home.
To accommodate the waiting crowd, voting continued until after midnight. In the final tally, an overwhelming 80% said no. The actual numbers were 499 against the budget and only 123 in favor of it.
"Last night's election was a definite repudiation of the present city administration," opined a Peekskill Evening Star editorial the next day. The paper followed this with another strong editorial calling for selfish political maneuvering to stop.

Fighting City Hall
Immediately after the vote, Chester Smith called upon Mayor James Mackay and council member Horton, who had both defended the budget, to resign. Mackay was no neophyte in politics--he had been Peekskill's president in the mid-1930s when it was still a village. An executive with the Campbell-Ewald advertising agency at 10 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, Mackay decided the game wasn't worth the candle and stepped aside.
In January of 1941, the weekly Highland Democrat hailed Chester Smith as its "Man of the Year." Editor George E. Briggs praised him as both a "king maker" and a "king toppler."
The Common Council named a council member, 65-year-old banker William T. Horton, to serve out the remainder of Mackay's term.
 Horton was the retired manager of the Fifth Avenue branch of the Corn Exchange Bank in New York City. He had chaired the committee that framed Peekskill's city charter, had served on the Peekskill Board of Education and would later become Peekskill's city historian in 1946.
The resounding defeat of the 1941 budget had an instant salutary effect. A chastened Common Council suddenly found $19,010.90 that could be cut from the budget, reducing it to $747,766.16. Chester Smith and the Non-Partisan Citizens Committee quickly gave their blessing to the new budget. A second budget vote was scheduled for Monday, December 30, 1940.
This time the high school gymnasium was the polling place, and remained open an ample eleven hours--from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Surprisingly, the same number of voters--622--turned out. Equally surprising, the split was again 499 to 123--only this time the majority approved the budget. The taxpayers had made their point.
Budgets, of course, are an annual chore. In 1941, a 1942 budget totaling $705,280 was proposed by the Democrats. Again an unhappy Smith went into action, mounting an anti-budget campaign that called for a reduction of $65,772.80, cutting expenditures to $639,507.20.
Non-Partisan Citizens Committee advertising included a sample ballot pointedly showing voters which lever to pull down to vote against the proposed budget. The council stubbornly refused to reduce the budget.

The Voters Speak
But more than the budget was at stake. Each party also had a slate of candidates running for mayor, council members and other city offices. On Tuesday, November 4, 1931, 1,357 Peekskill residents went to the polls. A convincing 71% rejected the budget.
Voters also voiced their displeasure with the Democrats. The entire Republican slate was swept into office, including 53-year-old Ralph F. Hopkins, a well-known local architect, as mayor, and six Republican council members.
In addition to many local residences, Mayor-elect Hopkins had designed the village's Colonial Revival-style Municipal Building in 1936, and such landmarks as the Masonic Temple (gutted by a disastrous fire on January 20, 2001), and the Guardian Annex. In 1950, he would design Genung's department store, which later became the Howland department store and now houses offices.
Before a new 1942 budget was put to a vote, Chester Smith reiterated his demand that $65,772.80 be cut. Knowing that the new administration would have to live within any budget approved by taxpayers, the lame-duck Common Council outdid themselves. They cut items totaling $77,838--18% more than Smith had demanded.
Smith and his committee gave the reduced budget of $627,442 their blessing. Voting was set for Tuesday, December 23, 1941. Only 385 voters showed up at the polls, but 73% of them approved the budget.
He was also instrumental in securing for the Field Library the 13-room Victorian house at 124 Union Avenue, the former Dwight Stiles Herrick residence. The house badly needed repairs, and taxes were owed by the owner, Mrs. Ida M. Adams. When Peekskill began an action because of nonpayment of taxes, Chester Smith raised the money to pay them by selling a portion of the property. He also raised $10,000 to renovate the house and an additional $13,500 as an endowment fund. After extensive repairs, the Herrick house--now the Peekskill Museum--was opened to the public on May 17, 1946.
Mayor Ralph F. Hopkins would serve three two-year terms. The Hopkins administration eventually alienated Chester Smith. In the 1947 election campaign, Chester Smith and his Non-Partisan Citizens Committee retaliated by backing the Democrats. Peekskill voters roundly rejected the Republicans in November. Under Mayor John N. Schneider, the Democrats were returned to power.

Golden Years
Chester Smith had always been a lover of books. A prolific author in his own right, he created dozens of pamphlets and brochures on a variety of subjects ranging from narrow local issues to the question of Prohibition. He began his writing career with a novel published in 1913. The American Comedy, about Putnam County’s political families, is now a collector’s item.
Over the years, Chester Smith had been the prime mover in Peekskill's Friendly Town Association. He donated two parcels of undeveloped land to the Association and convinced others to do the same. The result was seven privately owned parks open to the public. At the time, Peekskill only had six city parks. When Peekskill decided that the Association's parks would have to remain on the tax rolls, he offered to give them to the city. Peekskill declined. Smith decided to sell the parklands he had contributed.
In 1954, the Drew Seminary for Young Women, a private secondary school in Carmel, N.Y., declared bankruptcy. Smith, a trustee of the Methodist school, was appalled that it was unable to pay its debts. Legally, the school was free of any obligation to pay, but he felt that the debt should be paid in full.
"I got a good price for them," he crowed. "But I could have done better. I insisted in putting in the deeds that the property never be used for the manufacture or sale of spirits. A lot of prospective buyers balked at that." He added, "I couldn't help it, though. I'm a good Methodist. Been fighting the liquor people all my life.” He used the proceeds, $43,000, to pay the unpaid portion of the Drew Seminary's debt.
To everyone's surprise, in the mid-1950s, Chester Smith decided to become a lawyer. At the age of 74, he graduated from the New York Law School on June 18, 1959, with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. Following graduation, he was injured in an automobile accident, suffered a heart attack and twice failed to pass the bar examination.

Failing Health
A lifelong bachelor, in his later years, Chester Smith lived alone after the death of his mother and later his sister, Edith M. Smith, in 1950. On July 24, 1968, he fell in the basement of his home at 730 Hudson Avenue, after suffering what may have been a mild heart attack.
Four years later, he died in the morning of September 29, 1972, at the West Ledge Extended Care Facility on East Main Street in Peekskill, less than two months short of his 88th birthday. His obituary made the front page of that day’s edition of the Peekskill Evening Star. It revealed that there were no immediate survivors, and burial would be in Peekskill’s Hillside Cemetery.
Peekskill owes much to Chester A. Smith. Without his untiring efforts, it would not have come into existence as a city when it did. He left his mark on Peekskill in the form of numerous plaques and memorials to its famous citizens that dot the city.
Chester Smith's voluminous papers, including 88 diaries diligently-kept from 1897 to 1967, were deposited with the Syracuse University Library. If anyone could take satisfaction from a life spent in service to a community, it was Chester Allen Smith.


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Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Chester A. Smith, 1: Fighting to Make Peekskill a City

BIOGRAPHY

When the Southern states decided to leave the Union in 1861, Gen. Winfield Scott offered this mollifying advice to the North: "Say to the seceding states, ‘Wayward sisters, depart in peace.’"
Similar concessionary words were not heard in the town of Cortlandt or in Westchester County 75 years ago when Peekskill, an incorporated village since 1816, wanted to become a city. The town and the county both opposed the move, and fought it fiercely every inch of the way.
Peekskill's struggle to get out from under Cortlandt's thumb was as bitter as any quarrel between Balkan factions. In the process, Peekskill voters surprised political pundits by crossing party lines and switching loyalties to accomplish the change.

Sentiment for Separation
The movement for independence from the town began in 1934 at a meeting at Peekskill High School. Citizens gathered to protest the high salaries Cortlandt officials had voted themselves when the country was just beginning to emerge from the Depression.
Stephen D. Horton had planted seeds of separation as early as 1894, when the village of Peekskill had a population of less than ten thousand. Horton was Peekskill's president. ["President" was an archaic title used when villages incorporated. It was later dropped and replaced by the title of "Mayor."]
 Little was done about promoting the idea of independence, for four decades. In 1936, village president James Mackay, a Democrat, appointed a committee to draw up a city charter.
A year later the committee presented its proposed charter. Following an unsuccessful attempt to amend it, village trustees sent the charter to Albany, where the Legislature passed it. Gov. Herbert H. Lehman signed it, subject to its approval by the people of Peekskill. At a special vote held in 1938, 71% percent of Peekskill's voters approved the charter.
Opposition quickly surfaced. In a surprising about-face, Peekskill's Republican board of trustees now demanded sweeping changes in the charter. One amendment would take away voters' right to approve the annual city budget.
Although school budget approval by voters is common today, voter approval of a municipal budget, a holdover from colonial days, was an unusual arrangement in the 1930's.
Surprisingly, too, most members of the original charter committee caved in and came out for the amendments. So, too, did all of Peekskill's trustees. Even the influential Peekskill Evening Star, originally a charter proponent, now supported the amendments.
A few stalwarts formed an Advisory Committee to Protect the Charter, and continued to fight for the charter as written. A Committee for a New Charter opposed them. From this contest emerged the Citizens Non-Partisan Committee, with Chester A. Smith as its self-proclaimed head.
 In July 1939, Peekskill held a referendum on the proposed amendments. Only a third of those who voted so overwhelmingly the year before turned out. Nevertheless, 56% of those who voted were for leaving the charter as written.
In the municipal election campaign of 1939, the pro-charter Democrats and the anti-charter Republicans went head to head. Smith, a registered Republican, and his Non-Partisan Citizens Committee backed the Democratic slate, which won handily in the election on November 7.
Among the winners was 58-year-old James Mackay, former village president and now mayor-elect, and five Democratic candidates for the Common Council. With the defeat of the Republicans, the opponents of the charter, Chester A. Smith and his Non-Partisan Citizens Committee, became a political force to be reckoned with for a decade.

Meet Chester Smith
Chester Allen Smith would have welcomed the title of "Mr. Peekskill"--if anyone had been enterprising enough to bestow it on him. Without question, he deserved it. His life was a latter-day Horatio Alger story. A Peekskill native, he was born on November 15, 1884, the son of Louis H. and Abbie Lent Smith. His father was a descendant of John Howell, who arrived in America on the Mayflower in 1620. His mother's great grandfather was Isaac Lent, who fought in the Revolution.
Chester Smith learned shorthand from his father, a teacher in Putnam and Westchester schools. He eventually attained a speed of 330 words per minute and became a public stenographer in Peekskill.
Early in 1907 he was appointed official court stenographer in the Ninth Judicial District of the State Supreme Court and worked there for 47 years until his retirement. During World War I, Chester Smith served with the U.S. Army as a field clerk in Virginia. He was a founding member of Peekskill's American Legion post.

Academic Honors
While working as a court stenographer, he attended Columbia College, graduating with a B.A. and General Honors in 1923. His essay entitled "The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire" won him the Chandler Prize in History. The following year he earned an M.A. His thesis was titled "Church and State in Maryland, 1760 to 1776," a study of the role it played in creating the Constitution's doctrine of the separation of church and state.
Chester Smith was a member of Peekskill's United Methodist Church and, beginning in 1916, represented the church at conferences for almost fifty years. But he could also be combative and a troublesome gadfly. As a believer in the peace movement, he once tried to have the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers" removed from the Methodist hymnal.
Also a lifelong opponent of alcohol and cigarettes, he was years ahead of his time in pointing out the dangers of tobacco and smoking. He would never sell a piece of real estate unless the buyer agreed that it would not be used in the manufacture or sale of alcoholic beverages. In 1933, he was an unsuccessful “Dry” candidate for a place on the New York delegation to ratify the 21st Amendment that repealed Prohibition.
One of his greatest contributions to Peekskill was the support he gave to the Field Library. In 1920 he headed a committee to purchase the former Second Presbyterian Church on South Street for the library, which was then located on Smith Street. He secured a donation of $25,000 from James B. Ford to renovate the building. Later, he gave the library a three-story fireproof addition, the Louis H. Smith Wing, in his father's memory.
Perhaps Chester Smith's most enterprising contribution to Peekskill was his Friendly Town Association, begun in 1920 as the Friendly Town Club. It was a one-man chamber of commerce.
Largely supported by contributions from him, the Association honored Peekskill citizens for outstanding service and marked historic sites with bronze tablets. Chester Smith also encouraged local citizens to donate land to the Association from which seven parks, totaling 20 acres, were created.

Opposition from Cortlandt
The Peekskill officials elected on November 7, 1939, never took office. From the outset, the Republican town board of Cortlandt was antagonistic to the idea of Peekskill becoming a city. The town board sued to invalidate the election.
After the charter and the election were upheld in the state supreme court and the appellate division, the town of Cortlandt stubbornly took the case to the court of appeals. That court overturned both the charter and the 1939 election on the technicality that proper legal notice had not been given before the 1938 vote approving the charter.
Undaunted, Chester Smith announced that he would make an end run by having the State Legislature confirm the charter. Myle J. Holley, Peekskill's village president since 1937, openly opposed the charter. Smith called for him to step down--which he did on January 13, 1940. For eight days Peekskill was without a president or mayor. D. Wiley Travis, Jr., another member of the Peekskill board of trustees, was named President on January 21, 1940.

Victory at Last
In the meantime, the bill that would have validated Peekskill's charter languished in the Legislature, awaiting a special message from Governor Lehman requesting its passage. Taking the bull by the horns, Chester Smith telephoned the governor in Albany and asked him to meet with a delegation from Peekskill. The governor agreed.
At their meeting on February 27, 1940, in the governor's office in Albany, Chester Smith pointed out that Cortlandt was standing in the way of Peekskill becoming a city. He asked Lehman to send a message to the Legislature requesting passage of the legislation that would make this a reality.
Ever the smooth politician, the governor demurred. "Go back and petition the Westchester board of supervisors again," Lehman told them.
Speaking for the group of four from Peekskill, Smith pointedly asked, "And if they deny the petition again, will you stand with us and ask the Legislature to pass the validating act?" The governor, a Democrat, made no reply, but Smith took his subtle smile as evidence of his agreement.
Again the Westchester board of supervisors turned down the Non-Partisan Citizens Committee's petition. Lehman sent his message to the Legislature, and the Legislature acted. Governor Lehman's signature on the bill marked the end of the city's long and painful birthing process. The town of Cortlandt had lost the costly litigious battle.
One hurdle remained: another election--this time on April 9, 1940. Again voters spoke loud and clear. James Mackay and the Democratic slate were again elected, some by impressive margins of two to one. Peekskill officially became a city on April 12, 1940.

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Posted by Notorc @ 1/03/2012 09:00:00 AM 0 comments
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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Chester A. Smith and the Fight to Make Peekskill a City

BIOGRAPHY

When the Southern states decided to leave the Union in 1861, Gen. Winfield Scott, General-in-Chief of the Army, offered this mollifying advice to the North: "Say to the seceding states, wayward sisters, depart in peace." Such concessionary words were not heard in Cortlandt or in Westchester County 71 years ago when Peekskill, a village, wanted to break away and become a city. Town and county both opposed the move bitterly, fighting it every inch of the way.

Peekskill's struggle to get out from under Cortlandt's thumb and become a city was as bitter as any quarrel between Balkan factions. Surprising the pundits, Peekskill voters crossed party lines and switched loyalties to accomplish the change, underscoring the adage that politics makes strange bedfellows.

Sentiment for Separation
The movement for independence from the town began in 1934 at a meeting at Peekskill High School. Citizens gathered to protest the high salaries Cortlandt officials had voted themselves when the country was just beginning to emerge from the Depression.

Stephen D. Horton had planted seeds of separation as early as 1894, when the village of Peekskill had a population of less than ten thousand. Horton was Peekskill's president. ["President" was an archaic title used because villages were incorporated. It was later dropped by Westchester villages and replaced by the title of "mayor."] Little was done about promoting the idea of independence, however, for four decades. In 1936, James Mackay, a Democrat and the village president, appointed a committee to draw up a city charter.

A year later the committee presented its proposed charter. Following an unsuccessful attempt to amend it, the village trustees sent the charter to Albany, where the Legislature passed it. Gov. Herbert H. Lehman signed it, subject to its approval by the people of Peekskill. At a special vote held in 1938, 71% percent of Peekskill's voters approved the charter.

Opposition quickly surfaced. In a surprising about-face, Peekskill's Republican board of trustees now demanded sweeping changes in the charter. One amendment would take away voters' right to approve the annual city budget. Although school budget approval by voters is common today, voter approval of a municipal budget, a holdover from colonial days, was an unusual arrangement in the 1930's. Surprisingly, too, most members of the original charter committee caved in and came out for the amendments. So, too, did all of Peekskill's trustees. Even the influential Peekskill Evening Star, originally a charter proponent, now supported the amendments.

A few stalwarts formed an Advisory Committee to Protect the Charter, and continued to fight for the charter as written. A Committee for a New Charter opposed them. From this contest emerged the Citizens Non-Partisan Committee, with Chester A. Smith as its self-proclaimed head. In July 1939, Peekskill held a referendum on the proposed amendments. Only a third of those who voted so overwhelmingly the year before turned out. Nevertheless, 56% of those who voted were for leaving the charter as written.

In the municipal election campaign of 1939, the pro-charter Democrats and the anti-charter Republicans went head to head. Smith, a registered Republican, and his Non-Partisan Citizens Committee backed the Democratic slate, which won handily on November 7. Among the winners were 58-year-old James Mackay, former village president and now mayor-elect, and five Democratic candidates for the Common Council. With the defeat of the Republicans, the opponents of the charter, Chester A. Smith and his Non-Partisan Citizens Committee, became a political force to be reckoned with for a decade.

The Remarkable Chester Smith
Chester Allen Smith would have welcomed the title of "Mr. Peekskill"--if anyone had been enterprising enough to bestow it on him. Without question, he deserved it. His life was a latter-day Horatio Alger story. A Peekskill native, he was born on November 15, 1884, the son of Louis H. and Abbie Lent Smith. His father was a descendant of John Howell, who arrived in America on the Mayflower in 1620. His mother's great grandfather was Isaac Lent, who fought in the Revolution.

Chester Smith learned shorthand from his father, a teacher in Putnam and Westchester schools. He eventually attained a speed of 330 words per minute and became a public stenographer in Peekskill. Early in 1907 he was appointed official court stenographer in the Ninth Judicial District of the State Supreme Court, working there for 47 years until his retirement. During World War I, Chester Smith served with the U.S. Army as a field clerk in Virginia. He was a founding member of Peekskill's American Legion post.

Academic Honors
While working as a court stenographer, he attended Columbia College, graduating with a B.A. and General Honors in 1923. His essay entitled "The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire" won him the Chandler Prize in History. The following year he earned an M.A. His thesis was titled "Church and State in Maryland, 1760 to 1776," a study of the role it played in creating the Constitution's doctrine of the separation of church and state.

He was a member of Peekskill's United Methodist Church and, beginning in 1916, represented the church at conferences across America for almost fifty years. But he could also be combative and a troublesome gadfly. As a believer in the peace movement, he once tried to have the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers" removed from the Methodist hymnal. Also a lifelong opponent of alcohol and cigarettes, he was years ahead of his time in pointing out the dangers of tobacco and smoking. He would never sell a piece of real estate unless the buyer agreed that it would not be used in the manufacture or sale of alcoholic beverages. In 1933, he was an unsuccessful “Dry” candidate for a place on the New York delegation to ratify the 21st Ammendment that repealed Prohibition..

One of his greatest contributions to Peekskill was the support he gave to the Field Library. In 1920 he headed a committee to purchase the former Second Presbyterian Church on South Street for the library, then located on Smith Street. He secured a donation of $25,000 from James B. Ford to renovate the building. Later, he gave the library a three-story fireproof addition, the Louis H. Smith Wing, in his father's memory.

Perhaps Chester Smith's most enterprising contribution to Peekskill was his Friendly Town Association, begun in 1920 as the Friendly Town Club. It was a one-man chamber of commerce. Largely supported by contributions from him, the Association honored Peekskill citizens for outstanding service and marked historic sites with bronze tablets. Chester Smith also encouraged local citizens to donate land to the Association and from which seven parks were created, totaling 20 acres.

Opposition from Cortlandt
The Peekskill officials elected on November 7, 1939, never took office. From the outset, the Republican town board of Cortlandt was antagonistic to the idea of Peekskill becoming a city. The town board sued to invalidate the election. After the charter and the election were upheld in the state supreme court and the appellate division, the town stubbornly took the case to the court of appeals. That court overturned both the charter and the 1939 election on the technicality that proper legal notice had not been given before the 1938 vote that approved the charter.

Undaunted, Chester Smith announced that he would make an end run by having the State Legislature confirm the charter. Myle J. Holley, Peekskill's village president since 1937, openly opposed the charter. Smith called for him to step down--which he did on January 13, 1940. For eight days Peekskill was without a president or mayor. D. Wiley Thomas, another member of the Peekskill board of trustees, was named President on January 21, 1940.

In the meantime, the bill that would have validated Peekskill's charter languished in the Legislature, awaiting a special message from Governor Lehman requesting passage. Taking the bull by the horns, Chester Smith telephoned the governor in Albany and asked him to meet with a delegation from Peekskill. The governor agreed.

At their meeting on February 27, 1940, in the governor's office, Chester Smith pointed out that Cortlandt was standing in the way of Peekskill becoming a city. He asked Lehman to send a message to the Legislature requesting passage of the legislation that would make this a reality. Ever the smooth politician, the governor demurred. "Go back and petition the Westchester board of supervisors again," Lehman told them.

Speaking for the group of four from Peekskill, Smith pointedly asked, "And if they deny the petition again, will you stand with us and ask the Legislature to pass the validating act?" The governor, a Democrat, made no reply, but Smith took his subtle smile as evidence of his agreement.

Again the Westchester board of supervisors turned down the Non-Partisan Citizens Committee's petition. Lehman sent his message to the Legislature, and the Legislature acted. Governor Lehman's signature on the bill marked the end of the city's long and painful birthing process. Cortlandt had lost the costly litigious battle.

Peekskill a City at Last
One hurdle remained: another election--this time on April 9, 1940. Again voters spoke loud and clear. James Mackay and the Democratic slate were again elected, some by margins of two to one. After a century and a quarter of existence as a village, the board of trustees met for the last time in an emotional session on July 29, 1940. Former trustee Harry B. Foshay led board members and audience in singing "Auld Lang Syne.” With a population of more than seventeen thousand, Peekskill officially became a city that evening, with James Mackay as mayor.

The honeymoon of Chester Smith and the new Mackay administration, however, was short-lived. As in many marriages, the split came over money. During the campaign, Mackay and his Common Council candidates had promised economies in government. Once in office, however, they surprised Smith and other supporters by proposing a 1941 Peekskill budget that called for spending a whopping $766,777.06.

Moreover, they proposed hefty raises for city officials: a 43% jump in salary for the city judge (from $2,800 to $4,000), a 33% boost for the corporation counsel (from $3,000 to $4,000), and a 20% increase for the city clerk (from $2,500 to $3,000). The administration also proposed to create the post of deputy comptroller with a salary of $3,600 to aid newly elected comptroller Albert E. Cruger.

Democratic council members made another tactical mistake; this one fatal. Chester Smith tended to monopolize and even dominate council meetings. Council members began to ignore him and disregard his suggestions and requests. Smith's Non-Partisan Citizens Committee immediately declared its opposition to the new administration's proposed budget, bought newspaper advertising and mounted a direct-mail campaign that reached all 2,671 eligible voters.

Roadblocks
The council countered with a series of high-handed tactics. Instead of scheduling the budget vote at the traditional location, the Peekskill High School gymnasium, they stirred up a hornet's nest by choosing the inappropriate and much smaller three-year-old Municipal Building.

To further discourage voter turnout, the council set the time of the voting for the brief 90-minute period between 7:30 and 9 p.m., Tuesday, December 3, 1940. Only two voting machines were installed. The new administration was obviously making it difficult for voters to show their feelings about the budget.

The strategy backfired. Despite these roadblocks, 622 taxpayers turned out on a cold winter night. A line three-deep snaked its way out of the Municipal Building's rotunda and down the curved staircase onto Main Street. Many waited for hours to vote; some gave up and returned home. To accommodate the waiting crowd, voting continued until after midnight. In the final tally, an overwhelming 80% said no. The actual numbers were 499 against the budget and only 123 for it.

"Last night's election was a definite repudiation of the present city administration," opined a Peekskill Evening Star editorial the next day. The paper followed this with another strong editorial pointing out that selfish political maneuvering must stop.

Fighting City Hall
Immediately after the vote, Chester Smith called upon Mayor James Mackay and council member Horton, who had both defended the budget, to resign. Mackay was no newcomer to politics--he had been Peekskill's president in the mid-1930s when it was still a village. An executive with the Campbell-Ewald advertising agency at 10 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, Mackay decided the game wasn't worth the candle and stepped aside. In January of 1941, the weekly Highland Democrat hailed Chester Smith as its "Man of the Year." Editor George E. Briggs praised him as both a "king maker" and a "king toppler."

The Common Council named a council member, 65-year-old banker William T. Horton, to serve out the remainder of Mackay's term. Horton was the retired manager of the Fifth Avenue branch of the Corn Exchange Bank in New York City. He had chaired the committee that framed Peekskill's city charter, had served on the Peekskill Board of Education and would later become Peekskill's city historian in 1946.

The resounding defeat of the 1941 budget had an instant salutary effect. A chastened Common Council suddenly found $19,010.90 that could be lobbed from the budget, reducing it to $747,766.16. Chester Smith and the Non-Partisan Citizens Committee quickly gave their blessing to the new budget. A second budget vote was scheduled for Monday, December 30, 1940.

This time the high school gymnasium would be the polling place, and would remain open an ample eleven hours--from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Surprisingly, exactly the same number of voters--622--turned out. Equally surprising, the split was again 499 to 123--only this time the majority approved the budget. The taxpayers had made their point.

Budgets, of course, are an annual chore. In 1941, a 1942 budget totaling $705,280 was proposed by the Democrats. Again an unhappy Smith went into action, mounting an anti-budget campaign that called for a reduction of $65,772.80, cutting expenditures to $639,507.20. (Chester Smith did not believe in rounding numbers.) Non-Partisan Citizens Committee advertising included a sample ballot pointedly showing voters which lever to pull down to vote against the proposed budget. The council stubbornly refused to reduce the budget.

The Voters Speak
But more than the budget was at stake. Each party also had a slate of candidates running for mayor, council members and other city offices. On Tuesday, November 4, 1,357 Peekskill residents went to the polls. A convincing 71% rejected the budget. Voters also voiced their displeasure with the Democrats. The entire Republican slate was swept into office, including 53-year-old Ralph F. Hopkins, a well-known local architect, as mayor, and six Republican council members. In addition to many local residences, Mayor-elect Hopkins had designed the village's Colonial Revival-style Municipal Building in 1936, and such landmarks as the Masonic Temple, gutted by a disastrous fire on January 20, 2001, and the Guardian Annex. In 1950, he would design Genung's department store, which later became the Howland department store and now houses offices.

Before a new 1942 budget was put to a vote, Chester Smith reiterated his demand that $65,772.80 be cut. Knowing that the new administration would have to live within any budget approved by taxpayers, the lame-duck Common Council outdid themselves. They cut items totaling $77,838--18% more than Smith had demanded.

Smith and his committee gave the reduced budget of $627,442 their blessing. Voting was set for Tuesday, December 23, 1941. Only 385 voters showed up at the polls, but 73% of them approved the budget. He was also instrumental in securing the 13-room Victorian house at 124 Union Avenue for the Field Library. That building, the former Dwight Stiles Herrick residence, is now the Peekskill Museum.

Completed in 1878, the house was designed by William Rutherford Mead, acting independently of his partners in the firm of McKim, Mead and Bigelow. (The firm of McKim, Mead and White came into existence a year later, when William B. Bigelow resigned and flamboyant Stanford White joined them.) Herrick, a prominent Peekskill attorney, had been a classmate of Mead's at Amherst College. An early example of the Queen Anne style in the United States, it is different from most other Queen Anne buildings in that no curved forms are used--neither in the windows, projecting bays or substantial octagonal tower at the rear corner. A veranda running along the south side of the building and accessible from the floor-length, ground-floor windows was later removed.

By 1944, the house had fallen into disrepair, and taxes owed by the owner, Mrs. Ida M. Adams, were in arrears. When Peekskill began an action because of nonpayment of taxes, Chester Smith raised the money to pay them by selling a portion of the property. He also raised $10,000 to renovate it and an additional $13,500 as an endowment fund. After extensive repairs, the house was opened to the public on May 17, 1946.

Mayor Ralph F. Hopkins would serve three two-year terms. The Hopkins administration eventually alienated Chester Smith. One reason for the rift was the bitter dispute that arose over the Friendly Town Association's parks. In the 1947 election campaign, Chester Smith and his Non-Partisan Citizens Committee retaliated by backing the Democrats. Peekskill voters roundly rejected the Republicans in November. The Democrats, under Mayor John N. Schneider, were returned to power.

Golden Years
Chester Smith had always been a lover of books. A prolific author in his own right, Chester Smith created dozens of pamphlets and brochures on a variety of subjects ranging from narrow local issues to the question of Prohibition. He began his writing career with a novel published in 1913. The American Comedy, about Putnam County’s politically minded families, is now a collector's item. Many of his books were about Peekskill and its history, including the self-laudatory Peekskill, A Friendly Town, Its Historic Sites and Shrines: A Pictorial History of the City from 1564 to 1952 and Who’s Who in Peekskill, published in 1955.

To everyone's surprise, in the mid-1950s, Chester Smith decided to become a lawyer. At the age of 74, he graduated from the New York Law School on June 18, 1959, with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. Following graduation, he was injured in an automobile accident, suffered a heart attack and twice failed to pass the bar examination.

Failing Health
A lifelong bachelor, in his later years, Chester Smith lived alone after the death of his mother and later his sister, Edith M. Smith, in 1950. On July 24, 1968, he fell in the basement of his home at 730 Hudson Avenue, after suffering what may have been a mild heart attack. Four years later, he died in the morning of September 29, 1972, at the Westledge Extended Care Facility on East Main Street in Peekskill, less than two months short of his 88th birthday. His obituary made the front page of that day’s edition of the Peekskill Evening Star. It revealed that there were no immediate survivors, and burial would be in Hillside Cemetery in Peekskill.

Peekskill owes much to him. Without his untiring efforts, it would not have come into existence as a city when it did. He left his mark on Peekskill in the form of numerous plaques and memorials to its famous citizens that dot the city. Future biographers will have an easier task recording his life. Chester Smith's voluminous papers were deposited with the Special Collections Research Center at the Syracuse University Library. If anyone could take satisfaction from a life spent in service to a community, it was Chester Allen Smith.

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Sunday, February 08, 2009

The Two Journeys of Abraham Lincoln

LOWER HUDSON VALLEY


Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, made two railroad journeys between his home in Illinois and Washington, D.C. One in 1861 as the President-elect and the other, in the opposite direction, as the victim of the bullet of assassin John Wilkes Booth. The second trip has been extensively covered; details of the first trip are less well known.

Lincoln was elected in November of 1860 after a bruising presidential campaign involving four candidates. He won, but with less than 40 percent of the vote he was hardly the people's choice. Of a total of some 4.7 million votes, the three candidates opposing Lincoln rolled up nearly a million more votes than he did. Until the 20th Amendment took effect in 1936 and changed the inauguration date to January 20, every four years there was a long delay between the election in November and the inauguration in March. With slavery a bitter issue, the four-month interval after the 1860 election changed history. While Lincoln waited to take office, Southern states made good on their threat to secede. The country began to fall apart.

An Affectionate Farewell
The journey that would take him to Washington began on February 11, 1861, at Springfield, Illinois. A somber crowd gathered in a cold drizzle to see Abraham Lincoln off to Washington. He told them, prophetically, "I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return." He concluded with, "I bid you an affectionate farewell." For the next twelve days the presidential train moved from city to city across the country in an itinerary designed to showcase the President-elect and his family. He met the governors and legislators of five states; he delivered more that 20 speeches in key cities and shook the hands of thousands. The grueling journey had a larger purpose: to encourage support for the Union and strengthen the loyalty of the people of the northern states.

Lincoln's route covered 1,904 miles over eighteen different railroads. His train of three, sometimes four, cars went from Springfield to Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus. After a detour to Pittsburgh, it headed for Cleveland and then Albany, N.Y. In the town of Westfield, south of Buffalo, Lincoln told the crowd, "I have a correspondent in this place, and if she is present I would like to see her. Her name is Grace Bedell." A young girl was brought to the platform. Lincoln explained, "She wrote me that she thought I would be better looking if I wore whiskers." Lincoln, who had been letting his beard grow for a month, said to the little girl, "You see, I let these whiskers grow for you, Grace." Then he kissed her. The crowd loved it, and The New York Tribune story was headlined, "Old Abe Kissed by Pretty Girl." He would continue to wear a beard, with only the upper lip shaved, for the few years remaining to him.

South Carolina had left the Union the day before Christmas in 1860. Six other "cotton states" of the Deep South followed. After stops at Rochester, Syracuse and Utica, as the Presidential train neared Albany on February 18, ominous news came over the wires to Lincoln: Jefferson Davis had taken the oath of office as President of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama.

In Albany, the carriages carrying the Lincoln party to the Capitol passed a theater where 22-year-old tragedian John Wilkes Booth and a stock company were acting in a play, "The Apostate." The paths of Lincoln and Booth would cross again four fateful years later. From the steps of the old Capitol building, for the first time since he had begun the trip, Lincoln admitted he was weary. He ended his brief speech with, "I have neither the voice nor the strength to address you at any greater length."

A Stop at Peekskill
With Joseph Hudson of Peekskill serving as conductor, Lincoln's train traveled down the Hudson Valley on February 19, making scheduled stops at large cities. Peekskill was only a small village, but it was home to an old friend, attorney William Nelson, for whom the city's Nelson Avenue is named. The two had met in Washington in 1847 as freshman congressmen in the 30th Congress. A veteran member of that Congress was a florid-faced little man with delicate sideburns, 80-year-old John Quincy Adams, from 1825 to 1829 the nation's President. After he left the White House, his Massachusetts district repeatedly elected him to the House of Representatives.

When first elected to Congress in 1846, William Nelson, 62, was already a well-seasoned political veteran; Lincoln was a 34-year-old neophyte. Whig party politics kept Lincoln from running again, and his replacement was defeated in 1848. Locally popular, Nelson was re-elected to a second term. At Peekskill, the President-elect mounted a baggage wagon from which to speak and was joined by William Nelson. Cadets from the Peekskill Military Academy formed a hollow square around the impromptu platform. The Highland Democrat, a local newspaper that had not supported Lincoln, estimated the crowd at about 1,500.

On the bluff above the station, the Jefferson Guards had placed a cannon and fired a Presidential salute of 21 guns. Nelson's welcoming speech closed with, "You have our hopes and prayers that your administration will prove as prosperous and happy to our beloved country, and as honorable to yourself as the difficulties and dangers which now threaten you are great." The tall bearded man in a black suit thanked the citizens of Peekskill for their warm reception. His response was extemporaneous and short--only 137 words in all:

"Ladies and gentlemen: I have but a moment to stand before you, to listen and return your kind greeting. I thank you for this reception and for the pleasant manner in which it is tendered to me by our mutual friend [William Nelson]. I will say in a single sentence, in regard to the difficulties which lie before me and our beloved country, that if I can only be as generously and unanimously sustained as the demonstrations I have witnessed indicate I shall be, I shall not fail; but without your sustaining hands I am sure that neither I, nor any other man, can hope to surmount these difficulties. I trust that in the course I shall pursue I shall be sustained not only by the party that elected me, but by the patriotic people of the whole country."

The village of Peekskill and the town of Cortlandt responded generously throughout the protracted years of the war that followed; 690 of their citizens served in the Union forces. Among those who watched the Lincoln train fade into the distance were two Yale graduates, newly minted lawyers James W. Husted (Class of 1854) and Chauncey M. Depew (Class of 1856). Both would become active in Republican politics, Depew as a United States senator and Husted as a longtime speaker of the N.Y. State Assembly.

A Cool Reception in New York City
Lincoln's train reached New York and the Hudson River Railroad's depot at 30th Street and Tenth Avenue at three p.m. His waiting carriage--an open barouche that had transported the visiting Prince of Wales only a few months before--was escorted to the Astor House, opposite City Hall Park, by a mounted platoon of the newly formed Metropolitan Police.

New Yorkers, largely Democratic in their sentiments, had cast 62 percent of their votes for candidates other than Lincoln, but streets and buildings were crowded with spectators. Across from the Astor House, Barnum's Museum, at the corner of Chatham Street (now called Park Row) and Broadway, was decked out in bright welcoming banners and flags. Atop a horse-drawn Broadway omnibus mired in gridlocked traffic, 41-year-old Walt Whitman, freelance journalist and former editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, watched as Lincoln alighted from the coach and looked out over a crowd of some 40,000.

Whitman was struck by the "sulky, unbroken silence," he remembered. "I had, I say, a capital view of it all, and especially of Mr. Lincoln, his look and gait--his perfect composure and coolness--his unusual and uncouth height, his dress of complete black, stovepipe hat push'd back on his head, dark-brown complexion, seam'd and wrinkled yet canny-looking face, black, bushy head of hair, disproportionately long neck, and his hands held behind him as he stood observing the people. He look'd with curiosity upon that immense sea of faces, and the sea of faces return'd the look with similar curiosity."

At eight the next morning, Lincoln was driven to a Fifth Avenue mansion for breakfast with a hundred supporters, the city's most prosperous merchants. One guest remarked to Lincoln about the number of millionaires present. "Oh, indeed, is that so?" Lincoln responded. "Well, that's quite right. I'm a millionaire myself. I got a minority of a million in the votes last November."

During the rest of the day, Lincoln met at City Hall with Mayor Fernando Wood, a Democrat, who gave him a chilly reception. Fearing the interruption of the lucrative trade in dry goods that would come with a conflict, the Mayor had already suggested that New York become a free city, separate from the Union and able to trade with every section of the country. Mrs. Lincoln visited Barnum's Museum and received ladies at the nearby Astor House.

That night Lincoln attended a reception, followed by an elaborate dinner and a performance of "Un Ballo in Maschera" ("A Masked Ball"). Giuseppe Verdi's new opera of love, murder and betrayal in high society was performed at the Academy of Music on 14th Street. Lincoln wore black kid gloves--instead of the white gloves then in style for wear at the opera. Newspapers the next day poked fun at the only pair of black gloves in a packed auditorium filled with white gloves.

The following day he traveled to New Jersey by ferry to catch a train for Washington. In Philadelphia, he was warned by Allan Pinkerton, a railroad detective who would later create and head up Lincoln's Secret Service, "Beyond the shadow of a doubt there exists a plot to assassinate you." Like New York, Baltimore was a largely unfriendly city, and much of Maryland was sympathetic to the South. From Harrisburg, Lincoln was spirited back to Philadelphia and on to Washington in a berth in a sleeping car.

Through superhuman effort, for four years Lincoln managed to pilot the states loyal to the union to a hard-fought victory. But he made bitter enemies in the process. Following his second inauguration on March 4, 1865, Lincoln would serve only one month and eleven days of his next term. With the bloody Civil War behind him, he and his wife had decided to attend the theater on April 14, five days after Lee's surrender. The play, "Our American Cousin," a comedy on tour after its successful New York run, starred actress Laura Keene. In the middle of the performance, Lincoln was struck by a .44 caliber lead bullet from the single-shot derringer of disgruntled actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Fate intervened, however. When Booth attempted to leap to the stage from the Presidential box, he caught one of his spurs in the decorative bunting and broke his leg in the fall, hobbling him.

Black-bordered newspapers all over the country the next day carried the word that Lincoln had been shot the night before at Ford's Theater on 14th Street in Washington and had died in Petersen's boarding house across the street. The first doctor to attend Lincoln in the theater was young-looking 23-year-old Charles A. Leale, of New York, assistant surgeon, U.S. Volunteers, who had been in the audience. Graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical College only two months before, Dr. Leale was the surgeon in charge of the commissioned officers' ward of the Army General Hospital in Washington. He quickly recognized that Lincoln's wound was mortal and did everything to make the dying President comfortable in his final hours. A nearly forgotten player in the Lincoln drama, Dr. Leale later practiced medicine in New York City, not retiring until he was 86. He died in 1932 at the age of 90 and is buried in Oakland Cemetery in Yonkers, N.Y.

Another Journey Through a Valley in Mourning
More widely documented is Lincoln's second passage through the Hudson Valley. Exactly four years, two months and six days after his Peekskill speech, the special funeral train bearing the body of the murdered President paused at Peekskill.

The outpouring of grief by the nation was of monumental proportions. On Friday, April 21, Lincoln's embalmed body left Washington in a nine-coach funeral train. Also on board for the trip back to Illinois was the exhumed casket of his son Willie, dead in the White House of typhoid fever only three years before at the age of eleven. Except for the omission of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and the addition of Chicago, the journey would duplicate in reverse Lincoln's trip east in 1861. A ferry brought the funeral party from New Jersey to Manhattan, passing ships in the harbor draped in black muslin. The ferry docked at Desbrosses Street, and Lincoln's casket was placed in a glass-sided hearse drawn by six gunmetal-gray horses.

Brooklynite Walt Whitman, changed by his three-year stint as a volunteer worker in Washington military hospitals, had crossed the East River by ferry to Manhattan. Walking up Broadway past shuttered stores draped in black, he recorded the mood of Gotham. It began to rain toward noon, he recalled. "Black clouds driving overhead. Lincoln's death--black, black, black--as you look toward the sky--long broad black like great serpents."

At the head of the procession was General John Adams Dix (for whom Fort Dix in New Jersey was later named) and troops of the Seventh Regiment. A German choral society marched, singing a funeral ode. The line of march was across Canal Street and down Broadway to City Hall, where the body lay in state. City businesses closed for the day; the courts adjourned. At the 19th Street Synagogue, the Rev. J.J. Lyons led the Jewish prayer for the dead, the first time such a ceremony was held in the United States for a non-Jew. On the following day, Tuesday, April 25, a 16-horse funeral car followed 18 bands as they marched slowly up Broadway from City Hall to 14th Street and Union Square, then up Fifth Avenue to 30th Street and across to the Hudson River Railroad depot.

Arrangements for the funeral were blemished by the decision of the Democrat-controlled Common Council to exclude blacks from the march. Despite the snub, the city's blacks held their own tribute featuring Frederick Douglass at the Cooper Institute. The Republican Union League Club protested the exclusion of black mourners to Secretary of War Stanton. A small token contingent of "freedmen," some in blue Union uniforms, was finally allowed to march at the rear of the procession.More widely documented was Lincoln's second passage through the Hudson Valley. The official timetable for the Lincoln funeral train shows only three stops in the Hudson Valley: Peekskill (3 minutes), Poughkeepsie (15 minutes) and Hudson (3 minutes)--although other stops may have been made to take on water or fuel. A "pilot engine" ran ten minutes ahead of the funeral train, which consisted of a locomotive named "Union" and seven coaches.

The train left at 4 p.m. and headed for Albany at a slow speed. As the train passed, bells and cannon and guns sounded. From the windows of the train, the funeral party could see an endless tapestry of bonfires and flickering torches held by clustered mourners.Exactly four years, two months and six days after his Peekskill speech, the special funeral train bearing the body of the murdered President paused briefly at Peekskill.

Towns and villages in the Hudson Valley outdid themselves in paying tribute to the fallen President. "Yonkers mourns with the Nation" read a banner decorated with crepe, women nearby waved their handkerchiefs while tears streamed down their cheeks. Seven thousand persons assembled at the station in Irvington with its draped inscriptions, "The Honored Dead" and "We Mourn the Nation's Loss." At Tarrytown, American flags arched over the railroad tracks. Under a flowered dome of black velvet stood two dozen young women in white gowns.

The Lincoln funeral train with its coffin passed under Sing Sing's impressively tall memorial arch of draped flags spanning the tracks of the Hudson River Railroad. Thirty-six stars ranged across the arch marked the states of the Union. Amid dark-clothed ranks of mourners stood a woman impersonating the white-robed Goddess of Liberty, with a garland of evergreens around her neck. According to the Sing Sing Republican, dated April 27, 1865, "Detective James Jackson, connected with the Sing Sing Prison, was allowed to get on the funeral train and see the body of Lincoln when the train stopped for water."

Exactly four years, two months and six days after his Peekskill speech, the special funeral train bearing the body of the murdered President paused briefly at Peekskill. The village displayed a large portrait of Lincoln encircled with roses, and red, white and blue tassels. Firemen and a company of Highland Grays with drooped flags paraded before a large crowd. Almost 87 years later, Mrs. Alida Hutchinson, the last survivor of those who heard Abraham Lincoln speak and who saw the funeral train, died in Peekskill January 26, 1952. She was in her 96th year.

The entire student body and professors of the United States Military Academy at West Point crossed the river and assembled at Garrison's Landing on the opposite shore. A thousand gray-caped cadets stood at present arms with guns reversed, their muzzles pointing down. At Cold Spring a young woman stood, her face black-veiled; at her right, a kneeling boy soldier; at her left, a kneeling sailor boy. Fishkill decorated the motto "In God We Trust" with evergreen boughss. Also crowding both sides of the track were delegations from Newburgh, New Paltz, and other parts of the apple country across the river. At Poughkeepsie the throng stretched far from the depot and railroad tracks. Thousands stood, the men with uncovered heads, hundreds of women and children with miniature mourning flags, and a cornet band from the National Business College. Minute guns fired at each of the fifteen minutes during which the train had stopped. A committee of women was granted permission to enter the funeral car and lay a wreath of roses on the coffin.

As the funeral train chugged northward through the darkness, another drama was being played out in rural Virginia. Federal troops were closing in on John Wilkes Booth, hampered in his flight by the telltale broken leg he sustained at Ford's Theater. Near the village of Bowling Green, he was cornered in a burning tobacco shed and shot through the neck by Union Sgt. Boston Corbett. Dragged from the shed before the flames reached him, he asked for a glass of water. "Tell my mother I died for my country," he begged. He was carried to a nearby house and placed on the porch, where he muttered, "I thought I did for the best." Booth asked his captors to raise his hands so he could look at them. Staring at his hands, he spoke his last words, "Useless! Useless!" and expired.

At other stations north to Albany were crowds and mourning displays: at Staatsburgh, an ingenious circle of light; at Rhinebeck and Barrytown, torch formations; at Tivoli, lighted lamps; across the river at Catskill, huge bonfires and naval vessels on the river with flags at half-mast; at Hudson, booming guns at one-minute intervals and two hotels with all windows illuminated and draped in black. The train arrived at East Albany at 10:55 p.m. It was a journey the Hudson Valley would long remember.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on February 9, 2007.

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Posted by Notorc @ 2/08/2009 12:15:00 AM 0 comments
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