New York Gangsters in Charleston

The 1860 Democratic party convention in Charleston arrayed Southerner Democrats seeking peaceful platform compromises to ensure their State’s sovereign rights and peace within the Union, against Northern Democrats seeking power, influence and spoils at any cost.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
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“Men in the Free Soil faction of New York Democrats were nicknamed “Barnburners,” and compared to the farmer who burned down his barn to get rid of the rats. The conservatives were called “Hunkers,” apparently a Dutch term meaning “conservative.” Undisputed boss of [one faction] and their delegation to Charleston, was Dean Richmond, a tough, portly, broad-shouldered Buffalo businessman. Although he never could write or speak with perfect grammar, the often profane, intimidation chieftain achieved great power in both business and politics.

Richmond consolidated seven upstate railroads into the New York Central system, lobbying the legislature – by fair means and foul – into making it all legal. Against Dean Richmond’s [faction was] arrayed the mayor of New York City, Fernando Wood, and his Mozart Hall boys, Tammany’s rivals, and his mouthpiece, the New York Daily News. [De Alva Alexander said of Wood]: “As a politician he was as false as his capacity would allow him to be, having no hesitation, either from principle or fear, to do anything to serve his purpose.”

Wood arrived early [in Charleston] at the Syracuse hall, bringing along a gang of roughs, headed by John C. Heenan, “the Benecia Boy,” the champion prizefighter. When [Richmond’s faction] came in later, Peter Cagger mounted the platform and declared John Stryker temporary chairman. In the ensuing melee, Stryker was pushed off the platform and “an intimidating array of pistols” appeared.

To make sure that his delegates won all the New York seats at Charleston, Dean Richmond played a double game. He agreed to vote with the [Stephen] Douglas forces…At the same time he made a solemn promise to [Louisiana] Senator [John] Slidell and the Southerners that he would go along with them in nominating an acceptable presidential candidate who would unite the party.

By his double-dealing, he persuaded the Southerners to go along with seating all of his delegates instead of letting half of them go to the forces of Mayor Wood, who promised to vote with the South. Some credentials committee members proposed dividing the New York seats evenly between the Hards and the Softs. But in the end, Dean Richmond got them all. The Southerners, who went along with the decision, found too late that they had been tricked.

Douglas would hold New York. Also working for Douglas, and speaking up for him in the hotels and barrooms of Charleston, were numerous friends eager to share in the spoils of the next Democratic administration in Washington. A hostile South Carolinian, writing from Charleston, sniffed that the Douglas men “came here like a gang of wolves, or a flock of vultures, bent on spoil, without compromise or alternative; their howlings are for blood.”

[The] premier orator…William Lowndes Yancey, took the stage amid a storm of applause, cheers, “hi-hi’s and cock-crows.”

He appealed to the Northerners to understand why the Southerners must have a platform that recognized their rights. “Ours,” he said, “is the property invaded; ours are the institutions which are at stake; ours is the peace that is to be destroyed; ours is the honor at stake – the honor of children, the honor of families, the lives, perhaps of all – all of which your course may ultimately make a great heaving volcano of passion and crime.”

By “the great heaving volcano of passion and crime,” Yancey referred to the Southerners’ nightmare that the abolition of slavery would mean turning loose four million blacks to roam about in idleness and crime, and to threaten white peoples’ lives. The prospect of a social revolution, even a race war, was no idle fancy; it filled the Southerners’ minds with horror.”

Richmond favored “a platform to suit the North so as to make a great Northern Democratic party and gain a majority of the representatives in Congress and let the South go to the devil.” “What the hell do we care about the South?” Richmond shouted. “What we want, by God, is a Democratic party at the North. Damn the South!....”

(Lincoln: The Road to War, Frank van der Linden, Fulcrum Publishing, 1998, (excerpts), pp. 29-38)

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New York Gangsters in Charleston