April 20, 1861. |
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great meeting at Union Square, already mentioned,1 was held on the 20th of April, when a Committee of Safety was appointed.
It was composed of some of the most distinguished citizens of New York, of all parties.
They organized that evening, with the title of the Union defense Committee.2
Intelligence had already gone over the land of the attack on the Massachusetts troops in the streets of Baltimore, and the isolation and perils of the Capital; and the first business of the Committee was to facilitate the equipment and outfit of regiments of volunteer militia, and their dispatch to the seat of Government.
So zealously and efficiently did they work, that within ten days from the time when the President made his call for troops, no less than eight thousand well-equipped and fully armed men had gone to the field from the city of New York.
Already, before the organization of the Committee, the celebrated Seventh Regiment of the National Guard of New York, Colonel Marshall Lefferts, had left for Washington City; and on the day after the great meeting (Sunday, the 21st), three other regiments had followed, namely, the Sixth, Colonel Pinckney; the Twelfth, Colonel Butter-field; and the Seventy-first, Colonel Vosburg.
Major-General Wool, next in rank to the General-in-chief, and the Commander of the Eastern Department, which comprised the whole country eastward of the Mississippi River, was then at his home and Headquarters at Troy, New York.
When he heard of the affair at Baltimore, he hastened to Albany, the State capital, to confer with Governor Morgan.
While he was there, the Governor received an electrograph, urging him to send troops forward to Washington as speedily as possible.
At the same time he received an offer of the regiment of Colonel Ellsworth, whose skillfully executed and picturesque Zouave tactics had lately excited the attention and admiration of the country.
These volunteers were accepted, and the Governor determined to push forward troops as fast as possible.
General Wool at once issued orders
to Colonel Tompkins, the United States Quartermaster at New York, to furnish all needful transportation; and Major Eaton, the Commissary of Subsistence, was directed to issue thirty days rations to each soldier that might be ordered to Washington.
Governor Morgan went to New York on the evening of the 20th, and was followed by General Wool on the 22d.
The veteran made his Headquarters at the St. Nicholas Hotel, and there he was waited upon by the Union Defense Committee on the 23d, when a plan of operations for the
1 See page 854.
2 The Committee was composed of the following citizens:--John A. Dix, Chairman; Simeon Draper, Vice-Chairman; William M. Evarts, Secretary; Theodore Dehon, Treasurer; Moses Taylor, Richard M. Blatchford, Edwards Pierrepont, Alexander T. Stewart, Samuel Sloane, John Jacob Astor, Jr., John J. Cisco, James S. Wadsworth, Isaac Bell, James Boorman, Charles H. Marshall, Robert H. McCurdy, Moses H. Grinnell, Royal Phelps, William E. Dodge, Greene C. Bronson, Hamilton Fish, William F. Havemeyer, Charles H. Russell, James T. Brady, Rudolph A. Witthaus, Abiel A. Low, Prosper M. Wetmore, A. C. Richards, and the Mayor, Controller, and Presidents of the two Boards of the Common Council of the City of New York. The Committee had rooms at No. 80 Pine Street, open all day, and at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, open in the evening. The original and specific duties assigned to the Committee, by the great meeting that created it, were, “to represent the citizens in the collection of funds, and the transaction of such other business, in aid of the movements of the Government, as the public interests may require.”
During the existence of this Committee, which continued about a year, it disbursed almost a million of dollars, which the Corporation of New York had appropriated for war purposes, and placed at its disposal. It assisted in the organization, equipment, &c., of forty-nine regiments, or about forty thousand men. For military purposes, it spent, of the city fund, nearly seven hundred and fifty-nine thousand dollars, and for the relief of soldiers' families, two hundred and thirty thousand dollars.
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