PROGRESS AND THE GENERAL SLOCUM

I lived in Manhattan for a decade. And as I drank my morning coffee and read my Sunday New York Times in Carl Schurz Park above 86th Street and East End Avenue, I was completely oblivious that the East River was not a river.

It is a tidal race, the southern arm of the sound that defines Long Island.  And just to the north of my semi-private sanctuary, was the birthplace of the United States Army Corp of Engineers. Without their skill and brains (and the largest man made planned explosion of the 19th century) New York City would have remained a second class harbor… and a thousand men, women and children might have been spared a terrifying and painful death.

A few minutes after 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday 15 June, 1904 “The General Slocum” -  a 235 foot long, 37 foot wide side paddle wheel steamship built for passenger excursions around New York - , left the  East Third Street dock, carrying 1,300 German Lutheran immigrants (mostly women and children) to a picnic on Long Island.

The “Slocum’s” three decks were barely half full, and the children waved to the people on shore as 68 year old Captain William Van Schaick guided her from atop the pilot house up the East River at 16 knots toward the Hells Gate.

Every high tide that pours into the East River from New York Harbor in the south and Long Island Sound to the north,  swirls between Manhattan  the Bronx and Queens on Long Island where it slams into the delayed tide approaching from the opposite direction. For thousands of years, this titanic struggle occurred unseen by human eyes in a rock garden between Astoria Queens, on the Long Island shore, and Wards Island in mid current,  

Long before, and a hundred years after,  the Royal Navy frigate HMS Hussar was driven onto the rocks near North Brother Island in 1780, fortunes and lives have been smashed on infamous outcrops bearing colorful and deadly names such as  "Frying Pan Rock" and "Bald Headed Billy".

 Eighteenth century New York City resident Washington Irving described the Hells Gate this way; “…as the tide rises it begins to fret; at half tide it roars with might and main, like a bull bellowing for more drink; but when the tide is full, it relapses into quiet, and for a time sleeps as soundly as an alderman after dinner. 

"In fact, it may be compared to a quarrelsome toper, who is a peaceable fellow enough when he has no liquor at all, or when he has a skinful…plays the very devil.” 

But the real danger was the combination of the current and  the rocks which randomly thrust up from the bottom muck, like knives and daggers,  Wrote Irving, "Being at the best of times a very violent and impetuous current, it takes these impediments in mighty dudgeon; boiling in whirlpools; brawling and fretting in ripples; raging and roaring in rapids and breakers; and, in short, indulging in all kinds of wrong-headed paroxysms....woe to any unlucky vessel that ventures within its clutches.” 

And, because of the delay in the tide coming down Long Island Sound, there are four high tides a day at Hells Gate , each pair separated by two hours, keeping the Hells Gate in perpetual motion. That made the glacier scared bottom of the East River a deadly obstacle course.

“Three channels existed…the main ship channel to the north-west of the Heel Tap and Mill Rocks; the middle channel between Mill Rocks and Middle Reef; and the east channel between the Middle Reef and Astoria, from which Halletstts Reef projected; and vessels having traversed one…had to avoid Hogs Back and several smaller reefs…(and avoid) Heel Tap Rock…Rylanders Reef, Gridiron Rock of the Middle Reef .” (p.264. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Leveson Francis Yernok-Hartcourt 1888) By the late 1840’s a thousand ships a year were running aground in the Gate, ten percent of all the ships which entered.

In 1850 Monsieur Benjamin Maillefert was paid $15,000 to remove Pot Rock (above) - “rising like a rhinoceros horn from a depth of thirty feet to within eight feet of the surface...right next to a shipping lane” near the Queens shore. Maillefert lowered a canister of black powder on a rope and the resulting explosion managed to chip four feet off the horn. 

Two hundred and eighty-three similar explosions later and Pot Rock was safely 18 feet below the surface. Similar attacks on the Frying Pan and Ways Reef dismantled the great whirlpool which had spun south of Mills Rock for five thousand years. But the start of the American Civil War in April of 1861 gave the merchants of New York more pressing and profitable places to invest their money. Hells Gate remained closed to all but the bravest and most foolish captains.

On that warm and lovely Wednesday morning, 15 June, 1904, the General Sherman (above), plowed her way northward, her 31 foot great paddle wheel pushing the river  behind her . She glided past the tenements of the lower East Side, her single coal powered boiler trailing brown smoke behind. Few of the 3 1/2 million residents of New York bothered to take notice of the commonplace passage she made that day, as he had for the last 13 years.  

At 14 knots she was soon approaching the Hell's Gate, at the southern tip of Ward's Island. Here the Harlem River branched off to the right, while the East Channel of the East River turned east, and headed for Long Island Sound.

 In 1871  General John Newton of the United States Army Corps of Engineers took over the work of finally rendering Hells Gate a safe passage. 

His first target was Hallet’s Point Reef, “, a three-hundred-foot rocky promontory that reached out from Astoria…” And this time General Newton intended to perform the entire task by a process he described as “subaqueous tunneling”.  A cofferdam was constructed extending the Astoria shore, and digging with pick and axe and shovel from this extension the reef was under-mined with four miles of tunnels.

It took seven years. Then, 30,000 lbs of nitroglycerine – the most powerful explosive available at the time – was set off on 24 September, 1876. The explosion threw up a 123 foot plume of water. And the reef was gone.

In 1877,  General Newton built a another sea wall around Flood Rock and sunk another 70 foot deep shaft. was dug.

What followed was the now standard shafts and galleries reaching out below the East River bed. At the same time a similar process was underway at Mill Rock (above). 

It took nine years to undermine these obstacles, but on 10 October, 1885 General Newton’s daughter, Mary, pressed a key that simultaneously set off both sets of the charges. It was, “The greatest single explosion ever produced by man (intentionally)”. 

Nine acres of East River bottom were pulverized. Columns of water rose 150 feet into the air. In that instant the Hells Gate became a safe passage for commercial  ships -  even excursion boats for children's picnics.

Just before ten o'clock , on 15 June of 1904., a boy told deck hand John Coakley, that he had seen smoke in a forward stairwell. Coakley, who had worked on the General Slocum for all of 17 days, found the source of the smoke to be a storage room. He then made two crucial mistakes. He opened the door, which fed air to the smoldering fire. And when he ran for help, he left the door wide open behind him.

 The fifteen crew members rushed to pull down a fire hose, but none of the hoses on board had been inspected since the Slocum had been built, 13 years before. At the first surge of  pressure the fire hose split apart. The crewmen then ran for a second hose ,  but they had to search, since they had never had a fire drill. Meanwhile the fire was drawn through the open door and sucked up the chimney of the three-deck stairwell.

Captain Van Schaick (above) was informed of the fire seven minutes after crewman Coakley had discovered it.

Van Schaick had never lost a passenger and he now decided now to add steam and head for North Brother Island, three miles ahead. There was a hospital on the island, and a gentle shoreline where the passengers could safely wade ashore. 

However, as he rang up for more power from the engine room, Van Schaick could not see he was fanning the hungry flames behind him, trapping the terrified passengers at the stern. 

When they reached for life jackets (above), visible in racks all over the boat, passengers found them tied down with wires to prevent theft. Those who managed to break the wires and free the preservers found they crumbled in their hands.  They had not been inspected for a decade. “The hard blocks of cork inside them were reduced to find dust with the buoyancy of dirt. 

...Most people jumped (over board) without them, but some people actually put them on, (and) plunged over the side and went straight to the bottom.” Some of those who managed to stay afloat were mauled by the paddle wheel, still driving the General Slocum through the Hells Gate at 16 to 18 knots - full power.

A witness at 138th street told the “Brooklyn Eagle” the General Slocum appeared in a cloud of smoke and fire, its whistles screaming, trailed by tugs, launches and even rowboats, all trying to help. “The stern seemed black with people…some were climbing over the railings…the shrieks of the dying and panic stricken reached us in an awful chorus…One by one, it seemed to me, they dropped into the water. As the Slocum preceded, a blazing mass, I lost sight of her around the bend, at the head of North Brother Island”

Captain Van Schaick failed in his attempt to run the General Slocum onshore on North Brother Island, instead grounding on a rock in eight to ten feet of water. 

To people who did not know how to swim, and who were wearing layers of heavy Victorian wool clothing, anything over six feet of water was a near certain death sentence. 

The fire still raged, the upper decks collapsing into the hull, as police and firemen fought to save those who could be saved. ,

But eventually the circle of boats which had followed as the Slocum ran upstream, got smaller and smaller, as the would be rescuers came to realize the cries for help from the water had gone still.

Only the crackle of flames and the lapping of bodies against the shore of North Brother Island could be heard. New York City would run out of coffins for the 1,021 dead, mostly women and children.

In the final insult to the 321 survivors, the Captain jumped to a tugboat as soon as his ship grounded. He did not even get wet.

Seven people were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury. Officers of the Knickerbocker Steamship Company were indicted but never charged. The company paid a small fine for falsifying inspection records. Shortly there after the owner sold off his ships and walked away very wealthy. 

Trials for the inspectors who had failed at their jobs, all resulted in mistrials. 

Only Captain Van Schaick was convicted of criminal negligence. Two years after the disaster - in 1906 -  he was sentenced to ten years in Sing Sing prison. But he was paroled by President Howard Taft in December of 1911. Captain Van Schaick died in 1927, at the age of 91.

The burned out hulk of the General Slocum was converted into a coal barge and renamed the "Maryland".  She sank in a squall south of Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1911. 

In 1997, ninety years after the Slocum disaster, 104 year old survivor Catherine Connelly told a reporter, “If I close my eyes, I can still see the whole thing.”

“Yes, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand causalities. And most heart rending scenes…Not a single life boat would float and the fire hose all burst…Graft, my dear sir. ..Where there’s money going there’s always someone to pick it up.” James Joyce, “Ulysses”.

- 30 -

ELEPHANT DIAPHRAGMS

I want to begin by stating the facts. Frisbie Pies had been in business since 1924. When Joe Frisbie died in 1940, his widow, Marina, inherited the family bakery. She ran the ovens on Kossuth Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut for the next 18 years, baking up to 80,000 pies a day.  As was the industry standard, each of the tin pie plates was stamped with the company name, and carried a 5 cent deposit -  to be repaid for every pie tin returned.

In 1958 Marina sold the family business to Table Talk Pies out of Worcester, Massachusetts (above)   - 10 cent deposit on their tin pie plates. Table Talk was not interested in supporting the  competition and Frisbie Pies ceased to exist.  In the 1960's Table Talk was sold to baby food maker "Beach Nut", which 2 years later, closed company. But Table Talk came back in 1986,  baking 10,000 pies an hour,  220,000 pies a day, ever since. Those are the facts. Now, somehow the legend has been perpetrated that students at Yale University began throwing the pie tins, and thus invented the Frisbee.

The first problem with this legend is that Yale University is not in Bridgeport. Yale is in New Haven, which is 20 miles further to the north. And that is a very long way to throw a Frisbee. There are other problems with the legend, all of which give me the feeling that the Yale alumni were throwing something around besides pie plates. But despite these facts, an original Frisbie Pie tin still sells on Ebay for about $25 – a 25,000% increase in value, primarily because of its mythical connection to a plastic toy. The non-immaculate conception of the Frisbee is a much more interesting story than the myth.

According to the tale as related by Fred Morrison (above, right)  to writer Ben Van Heuvelen a few years before Fred’ death, back in 1937,  the then 17 year old Fred and his fiancé Lucile Nay (above, left)  were in her back yard tossing around the lid from a can of popcorn, because they didn’t have a football. The lid’s flight was horribly erratic, and the teenagers made a game of trying to predict which direction the lid would take on each toss. Over the California winter, the pair began playing the game with various lids and plates, looking for a better “spin”. One spring afternoon, while they were tossing a five cent pie plate around on the beach, a man approached Fred and asked where he could buy the toy. Fred immediately sold him the lid for a quarter – a 500% profit.

Having been slapped in the face by opportunity, the couple bought pie tins in bulk from a local hardware store and every weekend took them to the beach where they tossed the tins back and forth, to attract a crowd. The resultant sales did not make anybody rich, but this was still the depression, and every quarter helped. Then World War Two changed the world. Nineteen Forty - Six found the couple living in an Army surplus tent in San Luis Obispo.  Fred was pouring concrete slabs for home fuel tanks, and Lucy was working at a Lockheed plant. But Fred couldn’t get the profitable spinning pie plate idea out of his head, and eventually mentioned it to his boss, Warren Franscioni. Warren had been a pilot in the war, like Fred, and he also saw the potential in the product, like Fred. But, it seems that unlike Fred, Warren had been paying attention in ground school, and was familiar with the work of Daniel Bernoulli.

Daniel is one of those little known people who should be more famous, for a number of reasons. I remember Daniel because his father, Johann Bernouli, was the biggest heel in the history of mathematics. Despite Daniel’s love of numbers Johann forced the boy into medical school. But Daniel refused to give up on numbers. At one point, father and son tied for a first prize in physics. Johann was so consumed by jealousy that he kicked Daniel out of the house. Johann then waited until Daniel published the work he had won the prize for, and then Johann rewrote the same material, backdating it, so it looked like the son had stolen from the father. What a heel. Father and son never spoke again.

Of course what most people remember about Daniel Bernouli is that before he was 30 he had laid out the mathematics of flight, two hundred years before they would be put to use; one half the pressure of a fluid, times the velocity of the fluid squared, plus the density of the fluid, equals the Bernouli Constant. And that may mean nothing to you, (it confuses the heck out of me) but it keeps airplanes in the air.  And, with the spin imparted by a flick of the wrist, it also keeps a Frisbee floating on the air.

Warren explained the Bernouli laws to Fred, and Fred diagramed the basic pie plate shape, except he added a thick outer edge to mimic an airplane’s wing. He called the angle toward the center of the plate “The Morrison Slope”. The pair then drove down to Glendale, California, and showed their drawings to the Southern California Plastic Company. The manager saw the potential and invested eight cylinders of a new plastic from St. Louis, Tennite,,  which he handed over to the pair.  Fred then drew eight variations on his original drawing. But before they handed the plastic over to a machinist to carve the drawings into reality, he changed the title on the plans, to disguise the product. He labeled the schematics “Diaphragms for Elephants”. I guess he figured that title would not arouse any curiosity.

Fred and Warren tested the diaphragms, and delivered the one that flew the best to Glendale. In 1948 the first production run of 3,000 Whirlo-Ways (patent #183626) were squeezed out of the injection molds in just two colors, black and blue. Lucile wrote the copy for the packaging, instructing customers to “Play catch – invent games. Experiment!” In 1951 Warren reenlisted in the Air Force for the Korean War, and Fred and Lucy continued to develop the Whirlo-Ways by themselves.

Marketing now took over. The Whirlo-Ways became Whirloways, which became Flyin-Saucers, and  Flying Saucers became Pluto Platters. But the basics of the device did not change; it was a thing that, when you threw it, it floated and bobbed and weaved with a grace that a ball can only dream of.

In 1955, while Fred and Lucile were displaying their Pluto Platters in Los Angeles, they were spotted by two falcon hunters, who had formed a company to market their plastic sling shot, intended to propel meat into the air for training birds of prey. They named their company “Wham-O” after the shout they made when firing their sling shots. But Arthur "Spud" Melin and Richard Knerr were smart enough to realize that most of their slingshots were not being bought by falconers. The problem was they weren’t sure who was buying them.

So they decided to change products, and jumped at the chance to use their meager sling shot profits to buy the North American rights to a Australian bamboo exercise tool which, duplicated in plastic, became the Hula Hoop. Wham-O sold 25 million Hula Hoops in four months, 100 million in two years. In 1956 the pair used their profits from the Hula Hoops to pay Fred and Lucille one million dollars for the patent and the molds of Pluto Platters.

Wham-O’s designers made some improvements on the platters, and in 1958, the year after Frisbie Pies had shut down, they renamed the Pluto Platter as the Frisbee. Why they chose that name I have never been able to discover to my satisfaction. But I suspect somebody in the Wham-O marketing department was a Yale Alumni. Ivy League gets the credit for everything, you know, even the stuff they had nothing to do with. The rest is Frisbee history.

- 30 -

DUER CONSIQUENCES

I can't seem to find anyone who was not certain that William Duer (above) was destined to die broke. and even a few who told him so, some even while helping him bankrupt them. Because that is what William Duer did for a living, he bankrupted everyone around himself.  At forty-five Duer was a slight man with “sharp features and a receding hairline”, a man of “...dashing personality...with both talent and wit...”, a gregarious individual of boundless energy and imagination,  “Making schemes every hour and abandoning them as instantaneously”. In 1792  his fortune, was between $250,000 and $375,000 - over $4 billion in today's  money .  But more, William Duer was the founding father who put the manic in America's economic depressions. Thomas Jefferson called him “The King of the alley”, meaning both the back alley, and "The Street", as in Wall Street before it was even "The" street of American finance. He suckled at the breast of that most unfair American midwife, Madam Laissez Fair.  His bipolar greed added the purge to American gluttony. He was the American fingers on Adam Smith's invisible hand, always reaching for his partner's wallet. Let me give you an example.

The United States officially came into existence on 1 March, 1781, when the Articles of Confederation were finally ratified after four years of bitter debate. But economically America would not be a nation until all thirteen states shared a currency. Paper money was considered too risky to be legal tender, but coins had intrinsic value. In 1786 the Treasury Board accepted a bid from the firm of Jarvis and Parker to supply copper “Fugio” pennies (above), named for the Latin word meaning “I fly” stamped on their obverse.

Winning bidder, James Jarvis (above),  suggested speeding up the process of issuing the coins by melting down the 30 tons of British copper pennies the Treasury already had on hand, and proposed paying for the copper out of his profits. And that little bit of economic legerdemain was the opening that William Duer needed to grab a little something for himself. You see, Duer was the head of the Treasury Board, appointed by his friend and business partner, Alexander Hamilton.

According to James Jarvis, when they met in William Duer's New York City mansion to discuss the copper trade, Duer bluntly demanded a share of the business as a bribe. Jarvis says he was offended and ready to walk out, but then agreed so long as Duer remained a silent partner. Duer countered with a demand for a straight $10,000 bribe. Jarvis agreed to that too, but only if the business was successful. And that was what Jarvis thought he had agreed to, “relying on his (Duer's) honor”. Unfortunately Duer had no honor. Only few hundred “Fugio”'s were ever minted. Jarvis returned the unused copper, and that should have been the end of it. . But like a bad penny, William Duer turned up again, still demanding his $10,000 bribe.

Jarvis insisted he was not bound to pay Duer so much as “ten pence”. He insisted, Duer's “share... was conditioned on the success of the contract.” Duer simply ignored Jarvis' arguments and relentlessly demanded to be paid. And Jarvis simply refused. Finally, at the end of September, 1788 Duer turned up the pressure, using his friends in Congress to demand Jarvis pay for the copper used in minting the few hundred “Fugio” pennies. The government already had the pennies. Now they wanted to be paid for the copper that was in them. Given the criminal treatment for debtors in those days, Jarvis was looking at some unpleasant jail time.

And just at this moment, Duer suggested that Jarvis might want to invest in another one of his schemes, an Ohio land speculation called the Scioto Company.  Two shares were available, at $5,000 each. Anxious to be rid of the Duer, and reasoning this way he at least got land that might some day be worth something, Jarvis gritted his teeth and sold off his coin stamping equipment, using the cash to pay a premium price for two sections of land in the “Scioto Company” Ohio reserve. Finally free from the villain (he thought), Jarvis left on a business trip to Europe.

A year later Jarvis returned and found he had no shares and no cash. He wrote to Duer's lawyers, “I demanded of Mr. Duer, the Ohio rights he was to have purchased for my account....He told me they were in the name of Doctor. J. Ledyard, and should be transferred to mine, in the company's books. I applied to...the treasurer, who informed me there were two shares in the name of Doctor Ledyard, but that he could not transfer them to me.....I have more than ten times applied to Mr. Duer, and...I could get no satisfaction....” It was a favorite tactic of Duer, to stubbornly refuse to admit he had stolen money, no matter the evidence or the law or common sense. Poor Mr Jarvis was so worn down by now, and so confused by Duer's shifting arguments, he seems to have forgotten they were arguing over the payment of an illegal  bribe! Jarvis complained, “I have been three years amused in this business, it appears that he (Duer) should at least allow me interest (on his $10,000)..." 

It was like speaking Greek to an Italian donkey. Duer (above) insisted he had sold two shares of the Scioto Company to Doctor Issac J. Ledyard. He (Duer) had been paid. He no longer had the shares. The company was supposed to transfer the shares to Mr. James Jarvis. So if Jarvis had a problem, it was with the company, not with Duer. It was perfectly logical as long as you forgot that the Scioto Company treasurer took his orders from William Duer.  If you did remember that, Duer's arguments would eventually drive you insane. When the Scioto Company finally failed some years later, two shares were still on the companies' books as belonging to Doctor Isaac J. Ledyard. And there is no hint how many times Duer used Dr. Ledyard's two shares to bilk other partners. But for William Duer all this was a mere distraction to his tour de fraud with the Bank of New York.

The BNY was America's only private bank large enough to have its shares traded on the brand new New York Stock Exchange. Many people expected Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury Department, to eventually take over the BNY. And that was what William Duer assured his neighbor and new partner, Alexander Macomb. Blindly following Duer's instructions, Macomb bought 290 shares of the BNY, expecting to make a tidy profit as soon as Hamilton announced the Federalists were taking over the bank.

Of course, word that Alexander Macomb (above)  was buying BNY stock sent the price climbing, which so impressed Macomb he wrote to a friend in London praising his partner. “Duer's genius assures him it can be done without any further capital farther than can be raised beyond our joint credit at the bank.” Of course, “joint capital” meant Alexander Macomb had co-signed Duer's loans, which meant the money had been raised on Macomb's reputation, not Duer's. By 1792 a growing number of people no longer  trusted William Duer enough to do that . Macomb was one, and Walter Livingston, of the large and wealthy and powerful Livingston family, was another.

While in New York City, Alexander Macomb and William Duer continued borrowing and buying BNY stock (eventually $100,000 worth), in Philadelphia Walter Livingston (above)  and William Duer were buying $160,000 shares of BNY futures, and buying them short. In other words Walter and William were betting against Alexander and William. Of course, Walter Livingston had also co-signed William Duer's Philadelphia loans. So without risking a penny of his own money, William Duer had bet both sides of the coin - heads he won and tails at least one of partners lost. It was predictable. .

Other members of the Livingston clan certainly predicted it, and Duer's involvement made them nervous. They began to withdraw the gold and silver they had on account at the BNY. That forced the directors of the bank to tighten their loan levels, and to raise the interest rates as high as 1% per day on just the sort of risky loans that Alexander Macomb and Walter Livingstson had recently made. William Duer (above)  tried to calm his New York partner, assuring Macomb, “I am now secure from my enemies, and feeling the purity of my heart, I defy the world.”

The world did not share the feeling. First Macomb and then Walter Livingston defaulted on their loans and were confined in the Manhattan debtors prison (above) . The financial panic spread and quickly caught up Duer as well.  By the summer, William Duer was also in debtors prison, partly for his own protection, flat broke but not broken, claiming he could save his fortune if the banks would just let him free to repeat his old mistakes. The American economy teetered briefly on the edge of its first collapse, the recession of 1792, or what was called "Duer's Panic". 

Five hundred of Duer's victims laid siege to the jail, chanting, “We have Mister Duer. He has our money.” Benjamin Rush, Congressional gadfly and gossip, went down to take a look, and described the victims as,  “merchants and tradesmen, dray men, widows, orphans, oyster men, market women, churches, and even common prostitutes.” A lively trade developed on the streets around the jail in Mr. Duer's IOU's, and fights even broke out. One night a man broke into the jail, and confronted Duer with a pair of dueling pistols, demanding he pay what was owed or choose a weapon right there. Duer handed over what he had on him and the would be duelist left..

The end, when it came, was long and drawn out. Confined in jail for seven years for debts he could never pay,  William Duer died, probably of kidney failure, in April of 1799. He was only 57 years old. He left behind a widow unprepared for a life without wealth, and eight children. Alexander Hamilton wrote the first   epitaph for William Duer,  when he insisted, “There must be a line of separation between honest men and knaves, between respectable stockholders and dealers in the funds, and mere unprincipled gamblers.”.

The second, more permanent epitaph to William Duer was delivered on Thursday, 17 May, 1792 when 24 traders signed an agreement under a Buttonwood tree in front of 68 Wall Street. The two regulations they committed themselves to were, one, the signers would only trade with each other, and two, they would charge a ¼ of 1 % fee on each transaction. Like all practical market systems the New York Stock and Exchange Board was created by and survived because of regulations, designed by and for the majority of "respectable stockholders and dealers in funds",  and not the manic gamblers flaming across the horizon.  

Despite having only the Bank of New York and 4 other stocks to trade, a year after it was founded the New York Stock Exchange was successful enough to build itself a home, The Tontine Coffee House (above, left) on the corner of Wall and Water Streets. John Lambert would describe the Tontine as “filled with underwriters, brokers, merchants, traders, and politicians; selling, purchasing, trafficking, or insuring...Everything was in motion; all was life, bustle and activity...”  But the attraction of the dramatic manic was there as well, even with  the wreckage of William Duer still scattered about.  Noted an observer in June of 1793, “There was an affray at the Tontine...(a fight) between...aristocrat and democrat.” A few months later the newspaper “Columbian Gazetteer” would complain, “only persons of the same party” remained at the Tontine."   Wall Street, on its way to the panic of 1798, was again becoming addicted to the dramatic manic depressives in its nature, and likely always will..    

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Five

In mid May the new commander of the Trans-Mississippi – just 3 months on the job - 39 year old General Edmund Kirby “Seminole” Smith (above) , faced a mounting crises with shrinking resources. 

Two years before, in March, the Confederacy had lost its most populous city, New Orleans. In April of 1862 the Yankees of had driven the government of Louisiana from Baton Rouge - in January of 1863, from Oposlusa – and in early May, from Alexandria on the Red River. Since March the government of the richest state in the Confederacy had been isolated 124 miles northwest of Alexandria, in the small town of Shreveport - half a mile to the east of Smith's headquarters at Fort Johnston, and just 40 miles from the Texas border.

The little capital of Shreveport (above) -   between hills and the Red River -  was jammed with about 6,000 whites and 3,000 slaves – almost double it's antebellum population. The Shreveport Arsenal, under Captain Frederick Peabody Leavenworth, was busily producing ammunition and repairing weapons, now with additional workers evacuated from the Arkadelphia, Arkansas Ordnance Works. But the only way to get that production to the armies was by horse drawn wagon. The Red River supply line was now blocked at Alexandria. The closest railroad to Shreveport was the line from Marshal, Texas - which stopped 5 miles short of town. The rest of the Vicksburg line came no nearer than Monroe, 100 miles to the east.

Almost 200,000 men from the Trans Mississippi were serving in Confederate armies - 60,000 from Arkansas, almost 60,000 from Texas, 50,000 from Louisiana, 30,000 from Missouri and 2,500 from New Mexico Territory. But by mid-May all those men were beyond reach. Kirby Smith could muster barely 30,000 men in the Trans Mississippi. And those few were short of training, uniforms, food, ammunition and medicine because the “gray back” Confederate currency used to buy supplies was almost worthless. The view from Fort Johnson was so depressing, Smith began to consider resigning from the army and retreating into a Jesuit monastery.

Seventy miles southeast of Shreveport, at Natchitoches, commanding about 4,000 scattered men, was 36 year old Major General Richard Scott "Dick" Taylor. He had spent the spring being pushed up the Bayou Teche, even suffering the insult of having his own plantation burned to the ground. Even after Yankee Major General Nathaniel Banks withdrew 3 divisions down the Red River to attack Port Hudson, Taylor's army was still too small to confront the 10,000 Yankees as they backtracked down Teche Bayou to Brashear City, the western terminus of the railroad out of New Orleans. Never the less, the ex – President's son had a plan.

General Taylor would write after the war that as he re-entered Alexandria, he received word that, “...Major-General Walker, with a division of infantry (Walker's Greyhounds)...would reach me within the next few days”. Taylor had no doubt how best to use 4,000 fresh soldiers. “I was confident that, with Walker's force, Brashear City could be captured...Banks's communication with New Orleans...threatened....(which) would raise such a storm as to bring General Banks from Port Hudson, the garrison of which could then unite with General Joseph Johnston in the rear of General Grant.”

Major General John George Walker (above)  was another of the qualified field officers in the Army of Northern Virginia who were transferred west in June of 1862, after Robert E. Lee took over. So, in November, Walker took command of 12 Texas regiments in 3 training camps in Lonoke County, central Arkansas. The staging posts had originally been called Camp Hope, but in the fall 1862 measles and typhoid swept through the 20,000 recruits, killing 1,500 of them, including newly promoted Brigadier General Allison Nelson. Thereafter the soldiers referred to the place as Camp Death, but the War Department preferred Camp Nelson. Walker earned his men's respect by paying attention to camp hygiene, which cut the death rate by two thirds.

A brigade of the Texas Division, under Brigadier General Thomas J. Churchill, was detached to occupy Fort Hindman at the Arkansas Post in January of 1863, but was lost when that position was captured by Major General John Alexander McClernand. Until late April, Walker's men remained in central Arkansas, in case the Yankees made another strike toward the capital of Little Rock. But once General Smith could confirm that Grant had crossed the Mississippi to attack Vicksburg, he decided he could risk 6,000 of Walker's men to cut the Yankee supply line.

They set out on foot the morning of Friday, 24 April, 1863. Eight days and 78 miles later they crossed the border into Louisiana. They made 16 miles on Saturday, 2 May, and another 16 on Sunday, 3 May, camping that night on the banks of Bayou Bartholomew. Following that tributary south for 2 more days, and 15 miles, brought Walker's division to Washita, Arkansas, where they were met by a dozen steam boats, which carried them to the town of Trenton, opposite the town of Monroe, western terminus of the Vicksburg railroad. The 6,000 rebels camped that night, 2 miles south of Trenton.

It was in Trenton where they received word that Alexandria, Louisiana had fallen to the Yankees.

While General Smith reconsidered what to do with Walker's Texas division, local commander, and Texan, 44 year old Brigadier General Paul Octave Hébert, tried to pilfer a brigade for his own needs. But Walker was able to fall back on his orders from General Smith, to keep his division together.

Eventually, Smith decided it would be better to send the Texans back to Arkansas, where they would be safe from both the Yankees and sticky fingered Confederate generals. So at 8:00 a.m., on Saturday, 9 May, the 6,000 Texas soldiers re-boarded transports (above)  for a return voyage to Washita. But as the boats headed north, General Taylor would re-direct Walker and his men to his join his southern assault on Brashear City.

The Texans waited until Friday, 15 May, for their supply wagons to arrive from Washita. The next day, Saturday, 16 May, as Grant's Yankees were driving Pemberton's rebels back behind the forts at Vicksburg, the Texas Division retraced their steps 17 miles southward. Over the next 8 days General Walker's Greyhounds marched 150 miles, finally reaching Alexandria, on Wednesday 27 May –which is when General Smith in Shreveport finally learned of Taylor's revival of his proposed advance down Bayou Teche.

Taylor would claim that both Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon and President Jefferson Davis had approved his fantastic, almost fantasy, plan to threaten New Orleans. But Taylor's boss, General Kirby Smith (above), did not.  As they retreated from Alexandria, the Yankees had burned and destroyed everything in Cajun Country which might support an advancing rebel army.  So Taylor's plan depended upon capturing Yankee supply depots to feed and arm his 8,000 men, and that, at lest in the opinion of General Smith, was not likely to happen. And even if it did, it would leave half of the Trans Mississippi army isolated in the far south west corner of the theater. Besides, Smith had been receiving an almost endless stream of orders from President Davis to do something directly to rescue Vicksburg – under cutting the claim Davis supported Taylor's fantasy.

General Taylor (above) whined, “ I was informed that...public opinion would condemn us if we did not try to do something.” So Smith's original orders stood. On Thursday, 28 May the Texans changed their line of march, now heading 40 miles over 3 days toward the port called Little River. There they prepared 2 day's rations before again boarding steamboats, this time heading north up the Tenas River.

Taylor and Walker were to advance toward Richmond, Louisiana, on the Shreveport and Vicksburg railroad, and strike from there to capture Young's Point and Milliken’s Bend, thus cutting Grant's supply line down the western bank of the Mississippi. Taylor remained skeptical. “The problem was to withdraw the garrison (of Vicksburg), not to re- enforce it”, he wrote.  But in all fairness, that was not Smith's plan, either. He wanted to force Grant to withdraw from his positions in central Mississippi, by cutting his supply line. 

The problem was that the week earlier,  Grant had shifted his supply base to the Yazoo River at Chickasaw Bayou and Snyder's Bluff.  General Smith's plan had failed before it had ever been launched.

- 30 -