The Great Riots of New York: 1712-1873
by Joel Tyler Headley
Introduction by Pete Hamill
From Avalon Publishing Group - Thunder's Mouth Press 2003
The Great Riots of New York presents an illustrated, fast-paced and chilling account of the major players and victims of over ten riots that rocked New York City from 1712–1873. Joel Tyler Headley’s main purpose in writing this account over a century ago was to show his appreciation for the metropolitan police force, for he believed they “saved the city” during the Draft Riots. Using eyewitness testimonies by military authorities, policemen, and those involved, and extracting facts from available archives, pamphlets, and newspapers, Headley discusses with precise detail such uprisings as The Negro Riots of 1712–1741, The Doctors’ Riots of 1788, and the Abolitionist Riots of 1834 and 1835, among many others. Headley creates a gripping narrative and writes with incredible flow, providing us with detailed accounts of these riots without overbearing us too much with his own opinions on the riots, the people who rioted, and the issues that were being rioted against. Out of print for fifteen years, The Great Riots of New York remains a fascinating history of how far nonviolent citizens will go in order to have their voices heard.
Excerpt: from Pete Hamill's intro to The Great Riots of New York: 1712-1873
The fear of disorder was part of the fabric of Anglo-Dutch New York from its beginnings in the 17th century. After the British Crown took over for the last time in TK, the conquered Dutch kept their own cautious, even surly distance from their conquerors. But they were not the primary cause of municipal unease among those who ruled the tiny town at the foot of Manhattan Island. The population of enslaved Africans were. At one point, almost a quarter of the population was made up of human beings who were owned by others, the way horses were owned.
So it’s fitting that Joel Tyler Headley opened this 1873 study of disorder with the revolt of Africans against their owners in 1712. This extraordinary event was not properly a riot. It was a rebellion, with slaves killing whites, and burning symbols of their authority, before retreating into the forests north of today’s Chambers Street. At least two of the African rebels chose to kill themselves rather than return to shackles and certain doom.
That rebellion played under much of what was to come in New York history and in Headley’s study. The bloodshed of 1712 was vivid proof that some human beings would not accept the authority of those who ruled them. They would not accept the power of distant kings, or any claim they might make to divine legitimacy. Now would they accept the authority of their local agents, secular or religious. In revolt they said: we are men, not chattel. We prefer to die on our feet.
Such a declaration (its purposes must be inferred because there are no known documents of rebellious intent) certainly played under the events of 1741. Modern scholars are divided over whether this was a true revolt or an exercise in paranoia similar to the witchcraft trials in Salem. But 1712 surely offered credence to the fears of 1741, with its mysterious fires, and rumors of an alliance of Africans with underclass Irish people. Before it was over, thirteen Africans were burned at the stake and sixteen were hanged, along with four whites (two of the whites were women). More than seventy were banished from New York, the Africans sent to the West Indies for "seasoning."
Much of the fear that ruled New York in 1741 came from the grand jury testimony of a white indentured servant named Mary Burton. Headley is wrong when he describes her as a slave; she was almost certainly Irish, and wanted desperately to be free of her indenture. At the end of her many days of testimony, she was given what the grand jurors had promised in exchange for informing: her freedom, plus a considerable sum of money. She then vanished from history, presumably into a colonial form of the witness protection program.
Headley’s account of the riot at the Astor Place Opera House in 1849 is a reasonably accurate outline of the events, but contains little social or political context. The riot, as Headley tells us, was based on the rivalry of two actors: the Englishman William MacReady and the American Edwin Forrest. Their feud took place on both sides of the Atlantic. Forrest was the darling of crowds in the theaters of the Bowery, who appreciated his vigorous, muscular style of performing Shakespeare. By all accounts, Macready’s style was subtler, more refined, with elocution counting more than vulgar passion. When Forrest brought his acting to London in 1846, he was heckled, and believed that MacReady was one of the instigators. He went to see Macready perform and heckled back. Then MacReady came to tour America in 1849, with a final stop in New York. The stage literally was set for confrontation.
There is an unstated suggestion in Headley’s account that somehow the Irish were the principal players in what then took place at the aristocratic "uptown" Astor Place Opera House. We know that Macready’s performance of Macbeth on May 7th was brought to a halt by heckling and rowdyism, and a second performance three nights later ended up in terrible bloodshed. At the time, the 36-year-old Headley lived in New York. He had worked for a year as a journalist for the New York Tribune, but we don’t know whether he went to the Astor Place scene as a reporter or writer or even curious citizen. Reporting would have revealed that the most passionate enemies of Macready were in fact American nativists. Their intellectual leader was a slightly sinister Tammany leader named Isaiah Rynders. But the nativist commander on the spot was a man named Edward C.Z. Judson, also a writer. In the year or so before the Astor Place riots, he had been using his own publication, Ned Buntline’s Own, to campaign against all British influence in the United States, including influence in literature and the theater. When Macready decided to risk a second performance of Macbeth on May 10 almost 10,000 people showed up on the streets. Some were drawn by a public manifesto urging protest against the "English Aristocratic Opera House". Certainly some Irishmen came up from the Five Points slum to Astor Place, and were there when the militia fired into the crowd. Twenty-two people died, including an eight-year-old boy. Seven of the dead were Irish.
There were riots that Headley did not describe, most of them listed in an appendix to this book. Many were riots between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, re-fighting that part of the late 17th century (including the Battle of the Boyne) that continued killing human beings in Northern Ireland in the 20th century. The New York culmination of this ancient quarrel came in the two "Orange" riots of 1870 and 1871, which would leave almost seventy dead. To his credit, Headley describes them in a properly appalled way. In the aftermath, marches by the Orange Order in New York were essentially banned (through deprivation of marching permits) and most members found their way into Masonic Orders. After 1871, there were no more riots between Catholics and Protestants.
In our own time, race has often been a factor in riots, but the New York death tolls have been comparatively low. Harlem erupted in 1935, 1943 (during the Second World War), 1964, 1965, again with the murder of Martin Luther King in 1968, and most recently in Crown Heights in 1991. With the exception of Crown Heights, they were not riots against people – with white corpses littering the streets – but riots against property. That is to say, they were primarily about class. Unlike the violent urban outbursts in Watts, Detroit, Miami and other American cities during the 1960s and 1970s, the combined New York death toll was less than a dozen. That was no consolation to the dead, or their families, of course, and these deaths contributed to enduring mistrust of the police by African-Americans.
But they also showed that across the centuries New Yorkers had learned something valuable about the dangers of chaos, the techniques of containing it, and the absolute duty of intelligent people to perceive and attack its root causes. In this book, Joel Tyler Headley showed clearly that the Shining City on the Hill envisioned by so many early Americans (both aristocrats and republicans) was not a complete illusion, but needed to be seen as a whole, with the certainty that some dangers might forever lurk in the shadows. He does not suggest that violent disorder was about to vanish from human activity. Anyone today who believes that it is forever behind us is almost certain to be disappointed, and in a city like New York prophecy is always a fool’s game. Still, we have learned something, and for all of its lack of a wider context, Headley’s book has been one of our instructors.
The Great Riots of New York presents an illustrated, fast-paced and chilling account of the major players and victims of over ten riots that rocked New York City from 1712–1873. Joel Tyler Headley’s main purpose in writing this account over a century ago was to show his appreciation for the metropolitan police force, for he believed they “saved the city” during the Draft Riots. Using eyewitness testimonies by military authorities, policemen, and those involved, and extracting facts from available archives, pamphlets, and newspapers, Headley discusses with precise detail such uprisings as The Negro Riots of 1712–1741, The Doctors’ Riots of 1788, and the Abolitionist Riots of 1834 and 1835, among many others. Headley creates a gripping narrative and writes with incredible flow, providing us with detailed accounts of these riots without overbearing us too much with his own opinions on the riots, the people who rioted, and the issues that were being rioted against. Out of print for fifteen years, The Great Riots of New York remains a fascinating history of how far nonviolent citizens will go in order to have their voices heard.
Excerpt: from Pete Hamill's intro to The Great Riots of New York: 1712-1873
The fear of disorder was part of the fabric of Anglo-Dutch New York from its beginnings in the 17th century. After the British Crown took over for the last time in TK, the conquered Dutch kept their own cautious, even surly distance from their conquerors. But they were not the primary cause of municipal unease among those who ruled the tiny town at the foot of Manhattan Island. The population of enslaved Africans were. At one point, almost a quarter of the population was made up of human beings who were owned by others, the way horses were owned.
So it’s fitting that Joel Tyler Headley opened this 1873 study of disorder with the revolt of Africans against their owners in 1712. This extraordinary event was not properly a riot. It was a rebellion, with slaves killing whites, and burning symbols of their authority, before retreating into the forests north of today’s Chambers Street. At least two of the African rebels chose to kill themselves rather than return to shackles and certain doom.
That rebellion played under much of what was to come in New York history and in Headley’s study. The bloodshed of 1712 was vivid proof that some human beings would not accept the authority of those who ruled them. They would not accept the power of distant kings, or any claim they might make to divine legitimacy. Now would they accept the authority of their local agents, secular or religious. In revolt they said: we are men, not chattel. We prefer to die on our feet.
Such a declaration (its purposes must be inferred because there are no known documents of rebellious intent) certainly played under the events of 1741. Modern scholars are divided over whether this was a true revolt or an exercise in paranoia similar to the witchcraft trials in Salem. But 1712 surely offered credence to the fears of 1741, with its mysterious fires, and rumors of an alliance of Africans with underclass Irish people. Before it was over, thirteen Africans were burned at the stake and sixteen were hanged, along with four whites (two of the whites were women). More than seventy were banished from New York, the Africans sent to the West Indies for "seasoning."
Much of the fear that ruled New York in 1741 came from the grand jury testimony of a white indentured servant named Mary Burton. Headley is wrong when he describes her as a slave; she was almost certainly Irish, and wanted desperately to be free of her indenture. At the end of her many days of testimony, she was given what the grand jurors had promised in exchange for informing: her freedom, plus a considerable sum of money. She then vanished from history, presumably into a colonial form of the witness protection program.
Headley’s account of the riot at the Astor Place Opera House in 1849 is a reasonably accurate outline of the events, but contains little social or political context. The riot, as Headley tells us, was based on the rivalry of two actors: the Englishman William MacReady and the American Edwin Forrest. Their feud took place on both sides of the Atlantic. Forrest was the darling of crowds in the theaters of the Bowery, who appreciated his vigorous, muscular style of performing Shakespeare. By all accounts, Macready’s style was subtler, more refined, with elocution counting more than vulgar passion. When Forrest brought his acting to London in 1846, he was heckled, and believed that MacReady was one of the instigators. He went to see Macready perform and heckled back. Then MacReady came to tour America in 1849, with a final stop in New York. The stage literally was set for confrontation.
There is an unstated suggestion in Headley’s account that somehow the Irish were the principal players in what then took place at the aristocratic "uptown" Astor Place Opera House. We know that Macready’s performance of Macbeth on May 7th was brought to a halt by heckling and rowdyism, and a second performance three nights later ended up in terrible bloodshed. At the time, the 36-year-old Headley lived in New York. He had worked for a year as a journalist for the New York Tribune, but we don’t know whether he went to the Astor Place scene as a reporter or writer or even curious citizen. Reporting would have revealed that the most passionate enemies of Macready were in fact American nativists. Their intellectual leader was a slightly sinister Tammany leader named Isaiah Rynders. But the nativist commander on the spot was a man named Edward C.Z. Judson, also a writer. In the year or so before the Astor Place riots, he had been using his own publication, Ned Buntline’s Own, to campaign against all British influence in the United States, including influence in literature and the theater. When Macready decided to risk a second performance of Macbeth on May 10 almost 10,000 people showed up on the streets. Some were drawn by a public manifesto urging protest against the "English Aristocratic Opera House". Certainly some Irishmen came up from the Five Points slum to Astor Place, and were there when the militia fired into the crowd. Twenty-two people died, including an eight-year-old boy. Seven of the dead were Irish.
There were riots that Headley did not describe, most of them listed in an appendix to this book. Many were riots between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, re-fighting that part of the late 17th century (including the Battle of the Boyne) that continued killing human beings in Northern Ireland in the 20th century. The New York culmination of this ancient quarrel came in the two "Orange" riots of 1870 and 1871, which would leave almost seventy dead. To his credit, Headley describes them in a properly appalled way. In the aftermath, marches by the Orange Order in New York were essentially banned (through deprivation of marching permits) and most members found their way into Masonic Orders. After 1871, there were no more riots between Catholics and Protestants.
In our own time, race has often been a factor in riots, but the New York death tolls have been comparatively low. Harlem erupted in 1935, 1943 (during the Second World War), 1964, 1965, again with the murder of Martin Luther King in 1968, and most recently in Crown Heights in 1991. With the exception of Crown Heights, they were not riots against people – with white corpses littering the streets – but riots against property. That is to say, they were primarily about class. Unlike the violent urban outbursts in Watts, Detroit, Miami and other American cities during the 1960s and 1970s, the combined New York death toll was less than a dozen. That was no consolation to the dead, or their families, of course, and these deaths contributed to enduring mistrust of the police by African-Americans.
But they also showed that across the centuries New Yorkers had learned something valuable about the dangers of chaos, the techniques of containing it, and the absolute duty of intelligent people to perceive and attack its root causes. In this book, Joel Tyler Headley showed clearly that the Shining City on the Hill envisioned by so many early Americans (both aristocrats and republicans) was not a complete illusion, but needed to be seen as a whole, with the certainty that some dangers might forever lurk in the shadows. He does not suggest that violent disorder was about to vanish from human activity. Anyone today who believes that it is forever behind us is almost certain to be disappointed, and in a city like New York prophecy is always a fool’s game. Still, we have learned something, and for all of its lack of a wider context, Headley’s book has been one of our instructors.