It's NOT a New Thing. It's a New York Thing: my trip to NYC.

Welcome And Today’s Book

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Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

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Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. As usual, let's go to our book of the day.

Fort Sumter News Hits Manhattan

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Go on to the book. The Civil War started in darkness at 4 30 a.m. on Friday, April 12th, 1861. Batteries of the newly formed Confederate States of America commenced shelling the federal installation at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Telegraph news of the bombardment began reaching New York City's newspaper offices late Friday afternoon. The night that night, a little before midnight, Walt Whitman strolled out of the Academy of Music on 14th Street, where he'd enjoyed a performance of Dazetti's Linda de Chemin. He was walking down Broadway, heading for Fulton Street, where he would catch a ferry home to Brooklyn. Quote, when I heard in the distance the loud cries of the newsboys who came presently tearing and yelling up the street, rushing from side to side even more furiously than usual. They were hawking late additions. War begun, the New York Tribune cried. Fort Sumter attacked, the sun chimed in. Nearby, a group of prominent businessmen were meeting. No one in the country feared a war between the states more than these New York business between the states more than New York's business community. They did a tremendous amount of trade with the South since the previous December when South Carolina was the first state to secede after Lincoln's election. They had been studying, quote, with intense solicitude, the means of preserving the peace. They had held numerous meetings and rallies, petitioned their politicians, pleaded with their southern partners, war, they knew, would not only mean the end of their highly profitable trade with the southern states, it would leave the business leaders holding more than a hundred and fifty million in southern debt. That's the equivalent of about four point five billion with a B in today's currency. A messenger burst into the meeting and breathlessly delivered the news from Fort Sumter. The persons whom he thus addressed remained a while in dead silence, looking at each other's pale faces. Then one of them, with uplifted hands, cried in a voice of anguish, My God, we are ruined. And that is the opening quote from a fantastic book I am reading, City of Sedition, The History of New York City during the Civil War by John Strauss Baugh. And how it ended. That quote, it is My God, we are ruined. What a line. What a line to capture the moment. The country had just gone to war. And the first thing that the room of businessmen thought about was the money. Not the union. Not the soldiers. Just the money.

New York’s Slow Orbit And Identity

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And all of this is relevant because I just got back from New York City itself, the Big Apple. It was my first time being there since age five or six. It was fascinating to see everything in person as an adult. Just the sheer number of people in that small area, the various nuances of each of the neighborhoods from each of the sections of town, the different demographics of the people who settled, where and who didn't, and who moved in and who moved out. The whole history of New York City is fascinating. And here's what struck me after the trip. New York City just doesn't move fast. It moves its own way. And that night in 1861 shows you how long that's been true. The city reads news through its own eyes. Sometimes it's a beautiful thing. Sometimes it means the city is marching in one direction while the rest of the country is marching in the other. Certainly see this now with Mayor Zoran Mandami being elected. Probably just as shocking as when Mayor Fernando Wood was elected in 1854. Probably at the time he was considered a Southern sympathizer or a fire-breathing radical. And here's what I want you to understand today: this isn't a new thing. It's a New York thing. So again, today's book is City of Sedition: The History of New York City during the Civil War by John Strauss Ball. Strauss Ball is a longtime New York journalist and historian, spent his career writing about the city, about its neighborhoods, its characters, its strange and stubborn soul. He wrote The Village, which was a deep history about Greenwich Village. He wrote, he later wrote a book called Victory City about New York during World War II, which looks interesting to me. And then this book, City of Sedition, won Best Book Honors in 2016 from both Civil War Roundtable of New York Writers and the New York Military Affairs Symposium. So again, I'm very eager to dig further into this book.

The Myth Of A United North

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And most of us grew up with a very simple picture of the Civil War. The North stood on one side, United behind Lincoln. The South stood on the other side. The Mason-Dixon line, we learned, was the big line between the country geographically. And Strauss Ball takes that picture and cracks it right down the middle. And that crack runs straight through Manhattan. And that's why this history matters. Here's a nugget of wisdom. New York City was Lincoln's greatest asset and his biggest headache at the very same time. You see, before the war, New York and the South were business partners. Big business. Cotton grew in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama. But a huge share of that money behind it ran through New York. New York banks lent the money to the planters. New York ships carried the bales of cotton. New York firms insured that cargo, and that cargo was sold overseas. So when Southern states started talking about leaving the Union, a lot of New York businessmen didn't ask, is that right? They asked, who's going to pay what they owe us? That's why when those men went pale on that night, Fort Sumter fell. And that's why the city went hard, very hard against Lincoln, in 1860. Roughly two out of three New York City voters cast their ballots against the prevailing winner, Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln’s Numbers And New York Power

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So again, in 1860, the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln did win the whole state of New York with about 54% of the vote, obscuring all the 35 of its electoral votes. But New York, and New York was crucial. Very crucial. Without it, his national toll would have fallen to 180 or from 180 to 145. And that was below the 152 electoral votes needed to win. So with other results unchanged, the election would have gone to the House of Representatives. And who knows what would have happened then. Now his opponents in 1860, Lincoln's opponents, recognized the stakes. They united behind a fusion ticket supporting Douglas, Breckenridge, and Bell. Lincoln nevertheless defeated their combined opposition, aided by a strong upstate support and campaigning by his former nomination rival, the New York Senator William Seward, a fascinating biography in and of himself. And Lincoln's statewide victory contrasted sharply with his performance around today's New York City. You see, in Manhattan, essentially in New York City at the time, he received just 34.8%, losing nearly 2 to 1 in Manhattan, in New York City at the time. He also lost Kings County, largely Brooklyn now, with 43.6% of the votes. Richmond County, which is now Staten Island, at 37.3%, and then the larger Queens County, which is still predominantly Queens itself, with 46%. Those last figures require the boundary caution. Like I said, Queens included a territory now that was in Nassau County, while today's Bronx was part of Westchester. So there's no real separate result in those county returns. And then just as an FYI for New York City historians, you don't get the modern five-borough city. It doesn't unite all the way like it is today until 1898. So a little bit different geographically, but here's the twist. New York City, even though it voted against them dramatically in 1860, it also made Lincoln. But he had to introduce himself to the Eastern Power Brokers. He does that at Cooper Union, which is a speech hall. People, major figures, give speeches on various topics, kind of like a TED Talk, but a lot more glamorous. A lot of people going there, not just specific nuances or niches like we have with today's TED Talks. But there's a fascinating book all about the speech, Lincoln at Cooper Union, written by Harold Holzer. And great book. Be sure to check that out. I read it five or six years ago. Fantastic book. Gives you all the nuances, all the history behind it. So back to our book, City of Sedition, Strauss Ball argues that without New York supporters, Lincoln very likely never reaches the White House. And I'd have to agree with him, especially after reading that book from Holzer. So the same New York City that votes against him is also the same New York City that essentially gives him the national notoriety and name recognition. So Lincoln views New York City as hammering him on both sides. They put him on a pedestal, give him the national voice, national name recognition, and then they hammer him at the

Fernando Wood’s Breakaway City Plan

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same time. So what gets even more wild is in January of 1861, after Lincoln's elected, New York City's mayor, Fernando Wood, floated an idea to the city council. In fact, let's let's back up to understand even who Fernando Wood is. Most people don't know who he was. Fernando Wood was the Democratic mayor of New York City when Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860. He is a wealthy merchant and influential political operator. Wood was first elected mayor in 1854. He's re-elected in 1856, and then he returned to office after winning again in 1859. His mayoral service covers 1855 to 57 and 1860 to 61, variety of reasons why it wasn't continuous like we would assume in today's day and age, but we're not going to get in the weeds there. He's strongly sympathetic to the South. He led a pro-Southern delegation to the Democratic National Convention in 1860. Now, Wood is a radical at the time, but he was not the radical anti-slavery Republican in that sense, but he advocated for an extraordinary response to the secession crisis. He was tied closely and sympathetically to the Fire Breathers from the South, which we covered in America's Story and a variety of book briefs, Academy book briefs, check those out. And the fire breathers from the South again as the most militant pro-slavery advocates for secession. Now, on January 7th, 19 or 1861, Fernando would propose this crazy idea that New York become an independent free city, partly to preserve its profitable commercial ties with the South, particularly the cotton trade. And although he briefly supported the Union War effort, he later became a leading peace democrat, or what they called at the time a fire-breathing copperhead. He advocated an end to the Civil War, a negotiated end. And so he was pro-Southern and anti-war Democrat. So that that describes his politics with more preciseness than really anything. So to Wood, if the Union broke apart, New York City should break away too. Not just to form, not just from the union, but like from New York State itself. It should become its own entity. So picture that. He called it the Triinsula. Triinsula. Now, thankfully, the plan didn't go anywhere. Everybody thought it was absolutely ludicrous. But think about that. What it tells you, the mayor of America's biggest city in 1860, 1861, rather, he's looked at the nation coming apart, and his first instinct was, hey, we're gonna go neutral, we're gonna go Switzerland, and we want to go our own way. That's certainly the New York instinct, it seems. And that's why this book is just started reading it, but this book has the potential to be very, very good. So now speaking of books, we got some other book briefs that

Book Pairing On A Fragile Union

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might interest you. So please go to Substack, check these out. Book brief 35. I'd recommend that. That's Ted Widmer's Lincoln on the Verge, 13 Days to Washington. Wittenmer follows Lincoln on his train ride from Springfield, his home, to Washington, D.C., in February 1861. So this is post Fernando Wood wanting to create his own separate Switzerland type insular city, the Tri-Insular. And then what is great is one of those stops on the ride was New York City, where Abraham Lincoln stopped and talked with folks. I believe he overnighted there too. So if you put these two books aside, Lincoln on the verge, you get President elect Lincoln as he rolls into a city whose own mayor has just flowed to leaving the Union. So Whitmer shows you the man on the train, and Strauss Baugh shows you the city that's waiting at the station for him. So if you read that together, that's going to show you how fragile the Union really was before even a single shot was fired. February 1861.

War Money Shoddy Aristocracy Copperheads

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Now what we know at the 50,000 foot level is once the shooting starts, New York City did give. And it did give big. So it's not like they're just absolutely pro-Southern. They gave men, we know they sent regiments, regiment after regiment, into the New York Army. New York City did, including thousands of Irish and German immigrants. They also gave money. Wall Street helped finance the U.S. Civil War in large measure. They also built machines. The Ironclad USS Monitor was built in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. But the war also made some New Yorkers very rich in very ugly ways. So I hope this book goes into more detail into that respect. We know that contractors sold army cheap uniforms and blankets that fell apart in the rain. These new millionaires, with these deals, they got a nickname called the shoddy aristocracy. City was crawling with anti-war Democrats. Already talked about them, Copperheads, and some of the most racist, most anti-war newspapers in the country were printed right there in New York City. You can just think of the modern New York, the modern day New York Times and the radical left-wing digital outlets of our own current day who spout that venom. Ironically, as a side note, the New York Daily. Let me find this. Just found this research. The New York Daily News. Yeah, yeah, here it is. Here it is. The New York Daily News was edited and owned by Benjamin Wood, Mayor Fernando Wood's brother. He became fiercely anti-Lincoln, anti-war voice for Peace Democrats. Yeah, he defended Southern interest. He attacked Lincoln, promoted the Peace Democrats' opposition to the war. Its rhetoric was frequently openly racist. There's some other ones. The Journal of Commerce, that was a pro-Southern commercial newspaper. The New York Day Book was another newspaper with strong Southern sympathies. The Freeman's Journal was Southern sympathizing. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was very Southern sympathetic. Now, interestingly, again, total side note. On August 22nd, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair ordered New York Postmasters not to carry these five newspapers. Now, this was a serious financial weapon. Newspapers depended heavily on the postal system to reach readers outside their home cities. Benjamin Wood tried distributing the New York Daily News on the Railway Express, but federal intervention obstructed that alternative new two. So the paper ceased publication in September 1861. It returns in May of 1863, again, becoming an outspoken anti-war voice. So fascinating nuances there just in the just in the newspaper industry in New York City and all its pro-Southern rhetoric.

Draft Riots And Civic Collapse

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Now let's get back to this book because just days after the Union won in Gettysburg in July of 1863, Washington put out notice to start drafting men into the Army. New York City, as always, was a powder keg, and boy did it explode. Mobs took over the streets for days, four days to be exact. They burned the draft office. They attacked Police. They hunted down black New Yorkers, murdering them in the streets. They even set fire to the colored orphan asylum on Fifth Avenue. It was an orphanage for black children. By God's grace, the children got out of the live. But it was the deadliest rioting in American history. Still this day, the New York City draft riot is the deadliest riot in American history. It took Union troops, some of them, marching from the Gettysburg campaign back to New York City to put it down. So stop and hold those two pictures together. The same city that built the USS monitor is the same folks that might have burned down an orphanage. So this book is going to be fascinating to be able to capture all of this history of New York City. Now we do have a book brief we've got to advertise for. It is Edward Bone Kemper's Myth of the Lost Cause. Bone Kemper takes apart the story of the noble United South fighting for honor. And we know that's not true. It's the myth of the lost cause. I'm hoping this book, City of Sedition, does something similar for the other side. It takes apart that myth of a pure and united North. We know the truth is often messier on both sides. And that's not bad news. Real history is more useful than a cartoon. A cartoon's going to flatter you. Real history will teach you. It teaches all of us to look at the nuances, the differences, where the real truth lies in the real narrative. And then one more book I want to share with you a book brief. Because many will say, well, why does New York keep doing this? Why does it keep going its own way? And I'd direct you to book brief number 15, John Steele, Gordon's The Empire of Wealth. Gordon shows you how the Erie Canal and Wall Street turned New York into the money capital of the country in the early 1800s. Fascinating story. And here's the connection: when a city holds that much wealth, it starts to believe it doesn't need anybody else. And that is where you get New York City arrogance. Often happens, even to this day. Money gives a place its own gravity, and New York has been pulling on its own orbit for some 200 plus years. Sometimes it pulls towards good in building the USS monitor, and sometimes it pulls against the country itself, like the New York City draft riots. So walking around those streets when I was there, you feel it. If you haven't been to New York City, I highly encourage you to go, even though it's run by an absolute radical, but it's New York City. You feel walking on the street, the energy, the hustle, and the bustle, the ambition, the sense that the city just answers to itself. I found this myself. And then you go to the Upper East Side or Hell's Kitchen. We had lunch at Hell's Kitchen, and things slow down a bit. And I can see where that might be charming for some folks. So it's just not tons of people everywhere all the time. It is, but it isn't. You do get a sense of independence and a sense of they're just doing it their own way in New York City. It's it's it's that unique of a city. It's unlike Chicago. It's unlike LA. It's unlike Houston. It's unlike Atlanta. So I so I now have a better understanding of where that feeling comes from for New Yorkers. And we certainly know it didn't just start, you know, last year with the new mayor. It certainly didn't start in my lifetime. It was there in 1861. It was there before. We know in 1861 a mayor wanted to split off, like we just talked about. And then it was there in 1863 when the streets caught fire because of a draft riot.

Read History Before You React

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So here's what we want to impart to you on giving you some nuggets of wisdom. Places have character, just like men and women do. And that character gets formed over years and years, and in fact, generations. It's not formed overnight. So when something surprises you, you gotta look deeper. What looks like a brand new problem usually has some very old roots. People ranting and raving about the current mayor, but they don't look in the past. New York City has had crazy mayors before. And I'm not saying it's all going to work out for the best, because sometimes it doesn't. 1861 and 1863 didn't work out for the best for New York. And I'm sure some New Yorkers wish they had a better mayor today. Frankly, they might have had a better mayor back then, and they might have not had Tammany Hall, which, you know, at the time was stealing elections for 20, 30, 40 years. So that could have all been better. But this is why we read history. And why we read history before we judge the headlines. Because if you do, you're going to be a lot more calmer, you'll be sharper, you'll know the history, you will be harder to fool, and most importantly, you will be living a flourishing life and not a roller coaster life.

NYC Cruise Recommendation And Reading List

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So in today's mojo minute, next time you travel, New York City or anywhere else, try and read a book that gives you the history before you go. I wish I had done that on my trip to New York City. I wasn't able to. I wish I had this City of Sedition already read before I went there. That all said, if you do go to New York City, highly, highly recommend. There's a fantastic cruise that you can get on. It goes all the way around New York City. So you're on a cruise boat, come out on the Hudson, go down west side of Manhattan, get the Statue of Liberty, very close. Great pictures. It won't be choppy water. Don't worry anything about that. Then you come up the East River. The whole time, this tour guide is giving you through Loudspeaker just a wonderful history of everything. Everything you're looking at. Two and a half hours. Our tour guide was incredibly good. Hope you get the same one. I think they're all pretty good, but I don't know. I've only been on one. And he just doesn't tell you about the buildings and everything else. He tells you the story behind the buildings and the neighborhoods and who's moving in, who's moving out. He's kind of snarky, so there's some good humor there. But I highly, highly recommend it. It was recommended to me by a local, so I'm very thankful for that. And if you're going to New York City, pick up City of Sedition, because this book is fantastic so far. You will go in with a wealth of history that most people won't know. And I will probably likely finish the book pretty soon. But then if you do read City of Sedition, you can pick up and check out Lincoln on the Verge, because I read that book, and you'll never look at Lincoln's train ride or Manhattan the same way again. And all those book briefs will be linked in our show notes.

Where To Find Links And Closing

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And as always, let's keep fighting the good fight.

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Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojocademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo.