The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South
Alexander Kelly McClure, Ed.

[303] at the very moment of his and their triumph. The orders in both cases were dated the 15th, and, doubtless, had their origin in a supposition at the War Office that so extensive an outbreak must, in some degree, be attributed to the inefficiency of the commanding officers. To a certain extent such an impression was correct. The strong contrast presented throughout the riots by the conduct of the three generals between whom the command was nominally divided enabled observers, even during the height of the excitement, to recognize the difference between capacity and titled incompetency. General Wool, in his temporary office at the St. Nicholas Hotel, unconscious of the real condition of things, and issuing orders contrary to reason and to military precedent, and General Sanford, in citizens' dress, jealously locking himself up for three days in the arsenal, collecting about him eagerly every soldier he could lay his hands upon, and in no single instance initiating a movement against the rioters of sufficient consequence to receive mention in the daily journals, were types of prejudiced inefficiency; while General Brown, on duty without intermission through four days and nights, covering the entire city of New York with a military force whose aggregate number was far smaller than the bodies of rioters with which any one of its detachments came into collision, co-operating generously with the sturdy Police Commissioners, and bending his whole energies to the single task of carrying out their plans for saving the city, was emphatically the man for the occasion. I have before me, as I write, General Brown's order-book, in which are transcribed the orders he issued during these four eventful July days. They cover nearly all the movements I have referred to above, beside many that I have not alluded to-such as sending troops to protect the down town wharves, to the aid of Brooklyn, of Harlem, and of Jersey City, to guard private residences, providing ordnance material and subsistence supplies, and the innumerable incidents of a campaign. Yet General Wool, in a letter written July 20th to Governor Seymour, asserted to himself the credit of all these precautions, and made a special boast of having, at the first outbreak, ordered to New York all the troops in the harbor, “leaving only small guards to protect the forts.” I have already shown how General Brown was compelled to exert himself in order to accomplish this very thing which General Wool's order practically forbade.

A similar spirit was displayed by General Sanford in his report of July 25th to the Governor, in which he claims to have sent detachments “to all parts of the city, and the rioters were everywhere beaten and dispersed on Monday afternoon, Monday night, ”