Fernando Wood: The Would-Be Imperial Mayor of the Free City?
Fernando Wood was, if nothing, ambitious. Born to a family of poor Philadelphia Quakers, he had commenced his business career in the 1830s with a string of failed businesses, including a tobacconist’s shop in downtown Manhattan, and served an somewhat uneventful term in Congress from 1841 to 1843. Returning to New York, he became a shipping merchant, and profited from the Gold Rush trade. He used those profits to speculate in land, and reinvested those profits into investments in banks, railroads, and insurance companies. By the end of the 1850s, he had become a millionaire. He was also a product of the powerful Tammany Hall political machine, whose ranks he scaled quickly. He was also deeply sympathetic to the South.
He first ran for mayor in 1850, but his bid faltered, in part due to allegations of dishonesty in his business dealings. His 1854 bid, however, succeeded, with strong support especially in working-class Irish districts, but his political enemies still controlled the Common Council. He initially seemed to be a harbinger of evil to the city, but on his inauguration day, he announced a set of reformist-minded programs. He wanted frugal government and public order above all, with the mayor’s office at the apex. Some of he programs he sought to uptake included a crackdown on prostitution, enforcement of Sunday closing laws, cleaning the streets, new docks, metering and expanding the Croton water system, uptown development, a brand new City Hall, a full-size Central Park, and unifying the police department.
However, it became apparent to his skeptics that his approach to the mayor’s office was imperial in nature, especially when it came to his attempt to rewrite the city charter and seize control over the city police department. Wood was also not completely sincere with his crusade against vice. If you voted the right way, your saloon could remain open on Sunday. Brothels were left alone, the seedier gambling dens were busted but the fashionable establishments stayed open, and he tried to monopolize patronage. On top of this, he enhanced the power of the substantial Irish immigrant community in the city, appointing them to plum policemen positions, and strong-armed voters at the polls, leading to fears that he had imported Napoleonic tactics to America. But what alarmed his skeptics most of all is, as an economic panic set in during 1854 and 1855, Wood called for supporting the unemployed with assistance and public jobs.
Wood pressed on with his reform program, and when opponents sought to curtail his program, he was able to call upon the wealthy to push back, but he could never secure the full powers he sought, leading him to rely on private interests for some of his pet projects that couldn't win the support of the Common Council. While he won re-election solidly in 1856, the nascent Republican Party also secured control of the governor’s mansion and the state legislature, and they were determined to rein in the mayor.
1857 was a year of bad news for the mayor. First, a set of rulings issued by the New York Court of Appeals that stated city property was held entirely in the trust of the public, and so the corporation of Manhattan had no authority other than whatever powers Albany saw fit to provide the city. The state legislature immediately declared its intent to interfere in Manhattan’s internal affairs, and soon after forced a new city charter. The changes weakened the city’s Common Council, forced Fernando Wood to stand for re-election a year early, and wrested control over 3/4ths of the city’s budget into Albany’s hands. Further, in April 1857, Republicans passed a Liquor Excise Law which imposed new restrictions on saloons, paired with a Metropolitan Police Act that removed control over the policemen in New York, Westchester, Richmond, and Kings Counties to a new state agency, the Metropolitan Police Commission, controlled by Republicans. Furthermore, they seized control of the election machinery in New York City and Brooklyn. This produced outrage, and Mayor Wood quickly reacted by re-establishing New York’s police department. Chaos ensued as two different police departments claimed the authority to patrol the city. Policemen chose one side or the other, with the state agency preferred by Anglos and the new city department preferred by the Irish. The conflicting forces promoted lawlessness. One climax came when the Metropolitan Police Commission sought to serve an arrest warrant on Mayor Wood; they were resisted before the Seventh Regiment was able to subdue the city police and serve the warrant. The reformers then won a victory in state court, with the state police being upheld in court. This was a shaky win, as this led to the city descending into anarchy in July and August at the hands of the pro-Wood Dead Rabbits gang rioting against the Bowery Boys and the Metropolitans.
As if the headache could not get any worse for the mayor, the Panic of 1857 and his reaction to it seemed to seal his doom. He proposed to the Common Council in October 1857 that the city government should undertake an extensive public works program to give laborers work to do, in exchange for in-kind payments of food. The entire program would be financed with a long-term bond at 7% interest, to be paid back in 50 years. He sought to obtain support for this program from the city’s wealthy, but they had turned on Wood and did not support the program. The Common Council would also not act on the program, aside from appropriating $250,000 to begin construction on Central Park. Republicans, former Know-Nothings, and disaffected Tammanities rallied behind Daniel F. Tiemann, a wealthy paint manufacturer, who would narrowly win the December 1857 election. To be sure, this was in part because Republican election inspectors engaged in some electoral inference, closing the polls in some strongly pro-Wood wards before working-class men could vote for him.
Fernando Wood now seemed to be in the political woods, but luckily for him, the political environment had shifted enough that a comeback became possible. His enemies were divided, and although Wood had lost the support of Tammany Hall, he formed his organization (nicknamed “Mozart Hall”) in 1858, and won the mayor’s office once again, beating out the Tammany Hall candidate, William Havemeyer, and George Opdyke, the Republican candidate. Fernando Wood’s victory was celebrated in the South, whose faith in New York’s merchants in turning a blind eye to slavery was growing ever more shaky.
The 1860 presidential campaign changed the calculus irrevocably towards war. Given the city’s strong lean towards the Democratic Party, the Republican Party chose instead to use anti-urban rhetoric to juice margins in rural areas. Meanwhile, prominent New York businessmen sought to unify the Democratic ticket and promote it to voters. The Union ticket polled 62% in New York City, but the Republicans once again dominated upstate New York, thus winning New York’s electoral votes for the Republican Party, helping secure Abraham Lincoln the presidency. After that point, secessionism picked up steam. South Carolina left before Christmas, with other Deep South states following suit. By early February, the Confederate government had been formed.
Some New Yorkers believed that if the Union could not be saved, that the South should leave, and New York should go with it. In January 1861, Mayor Wood had proposed to the Common Council that if the Union dissolved, New York should consider, quoting from its charter, declaring that “New York, be, and from henceforth forever hereafter shall be and remain, a free city of itself.” The Republican attacks on slavery and the state Republicans’ attacks on the home rule status of the city itself were considered by Mayor Wood to be an affront to the concept of local self-government. If the city could declare its independence, Wood said, the city would be free of upstate malfeasance and federal tariffs. Mayor Wood's dream was for a duty-free port, aside from a minimal levy on imports to pay for city operations and allow for local taxation to be abolished, and free trade with both the Union and the Confederacy.
This suggestion was taken seriously by the council. An initial draft of the city’s declaration of independence was quickly written, loosely based on the U.S. Declaration of Independence and that of South Carolina.
The die had been cast, or had it been?
The events around the Declaration of Independence of the Free City of New York would induce much confusion. Worse, they would ultimately have no effect, as the declaration of independence turned the people of New York City against the mayor. By the end of April, he was out of office and the city was under martial law, declared by the Governor of New York, Edwin Morgan.
Manhattan had now acquired a new nickname: “Rebel City”. It would stick to the present day.
