Civil War and Secession: "First South Carolina. Then New York?"

Eshlemon · Jan 7, 2011

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/first-south-carolina-then-new-york/?ref=opinion

In the wake of South Carolina’s vote to secession in late December 1860, Americans both North and South anxiously wondered which state would be next to leave the Union. Little did they realize that the next call for secession would come not from a Southern state, but from a Northern city — New York City.

On Jan. 7, 1861, two days before Mississippi became the second state to secede, Mayor Fernando Wood delivered a message to the Common Council, the city’s governing body, proposing that New York assert its independence as a “free city” by “disrupt[ing] the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master” — that is, the Union. Wood wanted the city, then comprised only of Manhattan Island, to become an independent city-state, akin to the seaport free cities of northern Germany. Indeed, he suggested that New York City’s founding charter — which established that “New York be, and from henceforth forever hereafter shall be and remain, a free city of itself” — already guaranteed its independence.
Click to expand...

But all dreams of Wood’s free and independent city collapsed when the first South Carolina cannon was fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. The tidal wave of support for the Union overwhelmed secessionist sentiment in the city. New York, alongside the rest of the North that April, proclaimed its loyalty to the United States. On April 20, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers gathered in a massive patriotic rally in Union Square, by which time New York had already begun to provide vast amounts of money, men and supplies that would save the Union over the next four years.

The South, meanwhile, fumed. “New-York will be remembered with especial hatred by the South to the end of time,” raged the Richmond Whig on April 22. “Boston we have always known where to find; but this New-York, which has never turned against us till the hour of trial, and is now moving heaven and earth for our destruction.”
Click to expand...

Interesting story on something I never heard about before.

Log in / Register

Forums

Civil War and Secession: "First South Carolina. Then New York?"

Eshlemon Well-Known Member

Share This Page

Log in / Register

Useful Searches

Civil War and Secession: "First South Carolina. Then New York?"

Eshlemon Well-Known Member

Share This Page