New York, July 19th, '63.
On Tuesday evening, upon an intimation from a man who had
heard the plot arranged in the city to come down and visit me that night, and
find Horace Greeley and Wendell Phillips, “who were concealed in my house,” I
took the babies out of bed and departed to an unsuspected neighbor's. On
Wednesday a dozen persons informed me and Mr. Shaw that our houses were to be
burned; and as there was no police or military force upon the island, and my
only defensive weapon was a large family umbrella, I carried Anna and the two babies
to James Sturgis's in Roxbury. Frank was with Mrs. Shaw at Susie Minturn's up
the river. Today I am going with him to Roxbury, but shall return immediately,
so that I cannot see you. We have now organized ourselves in the neighborhood
for mutual defense, and I do not fear any serious trouble.
The good cause gains greatly by all this trouble. The
government is strong enough to hold New York, if necessary, as it holds New
Orleans, Baltimore, and St. Louis. There must be a great deal more excitement,
and if Seymour can bring the State, under a form of law, against the national
government, he will do it. It will be done by a state decision of the
unconstitutionality of the conscription act. But as a riot it has been
suppressed, as an insurrection it has failed. No Northern conspiracy for the
rebellion can ever have so fair a chance again as it had in this city last
week, without soldiers, with a governor friendly to the mob, and with only a
splendid police which did its duty as well as Grant's army.
SOURCE: Edward Cary, George William Curtis, p.
165-6
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