Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

1 This was William Howard Russell, Ll. D., whom we have mentioned in note 2, page 91. He had acquired much reputation by his graphic pictures of the war in the Crimea. He was instructed to keep the readers of the Times advised of the progress of events in the United States during the civil war that then seemed inevitable. Dr. Russell arrived in the city of New York at the middle of March, 1861, while the ground was covered with snow. The center of the society into which he was invited and retained during his stay in that city was an eminent banker, whom he speaks of as “an American by theory, an Englishman in instincts and tastes — educated in Europe, and sprung from British stock. His friends,” he said, “all men of position in New York society, had the same dilettanti tone, and were as little anxious for the future. or excited by the present, as a party of savas, chronicling the movements of a ‘magnetic storm.’ ” He mentions the names of some of the gentlemen whom he met there, among whom were some who were distinguished throughout the war as the most persistent opposers of their Government in its efforts to save the nation from ruin. The impression their conversation and arguments made on the mind of Dr. Russell was, he said, “that, according to the Constitution, the Government could not employ force to prevent secession, or to compel States which had seceded by the will of the people to acknowledge the Federal power. In fact, according to them, the Federal Government was a mere machine put forward by a society of sovereign States, as a common instrument for certain ministerial acts, more particularly those which affected the external relations of the Confederation. . . . There was not a man who maintained the Government had any power to coerce the people of a State, or to force a State to remain in the Union, or under the action of the Federal Government; in other words, the symbol of power at Washington is not at all analogous to that which represents an established government in other countries. Although they admitted the Southern leaders had meditated ‘ the treason against the Union’ years ago, they could not bring themselves to allow their old opponents, the Republicans now in power, to dispose of the armed force of the Union against their brother Democrats of the Southern States.”

The conclusion at which Dr. Russell arrived, in consequence of the expressed opinions of these “men of position in New York,” among whom he associated while there, was, that “there was neither army nor navy available, and the ministers had no machinery of rewards, and means of intrigue, or modes of gaining adherents known to European Governments. The Democrats,” he said, “behold, with silent satisfaction, the troubles into which the Republican triumph has plunged the country, and are not at all disposed to extricate them. The most notable way of impeding their efforts is to knock them down with the Constitution every time they rise to the surface, and begin to swim out. New York society, however, is easy in its mind just now, and the upper world of millionaire merchants, bankers, contractors, and great traders, are glad that the vulgar Republicans are suffering for their success.” --My Diary North and South: by William Howard Russell, Chapters III. and IV. Harper & Brothers, 1863.

2 Alluding to the meeting, the Richmond Despatch (April 25) said:--“New York will be remembered with special hatred by the South, to the end of time. Boston we have always known where to find; but this New York, which has never turned against us until this hour of trial, and is now moving heaven and earth for our destruction, shall be a marked city to the end of time.” That special hatred, not of “the South,” but of the conspirators, was evinced in attempts to lay the city in ashes, and, it is said, to poison the Croton water with which the city is supplied from forty miles in the interior.

This exasperation of those who had been greatly deceived was very natural. The disloyal official proposition of Mayor Wood, only three or four months before; the intimate and extensive commercial relations of New York with the Slave-labor States; the known financial complicity of some of its citizens in the African Slave-trade, and the daily utterances of some of its politicians, gave assurance that in a crisis. such as had arrived, it would “stand by the South.” While the writer was at the St. Charles Hotel, in New Orleans, on the day when the President's call for troops reached that city, he heard a gentleman (Colonel Hiram Fuller), who had been prominently connected with the newspaper press of New York, say to a group of bystanders: “Our city will never countenance the Black Republicans in making war. I belong to a secret society [Knights of the Golden Circle?] in that city, fifty thousand strong, who will sooner fight for the South than for the Abolition North.” This was less than a week before the great meeting at Union Square.