"A Vast and Fiendish Plot": The Confederate Attack on New York City

by Clint Johnson

Overview

New York City, November 25, 1864. Confederate officers attempt to destroy the city with a series of lethal fires that will forever diminish it to a mere speck of an island. What fueled these Southern patriots' rage? And what if they had succeeded? This terrifying scenario almost became a reality following what the New York Herald declared "a vast and fiendish plot." Infuriated by the Union's killing of their beloved General John Hunt Morgan and the burning of the Shenandoah Valley, eight Confederate officers swore revenge. Their method: Greek fire. Their target: Manhattan's commercial district. The daring mission could have changed the course of American history. In the first book to bring to life this bold conspiracy in full detail, Civil War expert Clint Johnson reveals shocking facts about the treacherous alliances and rivalries that threatened nineteenth-century America. Here is the truth about this stunning event, the spirit that fueled it, and the near destruction of the world's most influential city. "A fresh and intriguing addition to Civil War literature.... Johnson dispels myths and shows how Southerners sought to take revenge on a 'sister city' they felt betrayed them." -Brion McClanahan, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers "Insightful analysis of an amazing turn of events that nearly set New York City ablaze during the Civil War." - David J. Eicher, author of The Longest Night

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806531311
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	03/01/2010
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Prologue: "A Born Gentleman to the Tips of His Fingers" 1

Part I The South's Secessionist Sister City

Chapter 1 "Decayed Is Here" 15

Chapter 2 "A Traffic in Enslaved Africans" 22

Chapter 3 "A Great Distribution Point for Cotton" 31

Chapter 4 "Money Is Plenty, Business Is Brisk" 41

Chapter 5 "The Meetings of These Madmen" 53

Chapter 6 "The City of New York Belongs to the South" 62

Chapter 7 "That Which Comes Easy Goes Easy" 73

Part II The South Seethes

Chapter 8 "How Sad Is This Life" 89

Chapter 9 "A Fire in the Rear Will Be Opened" 99

Chapter 10 "State Governments Will Be Seized" 109

Chapter 11 "The People Have Lost All Confidence in Lincoln" 122

Part III The Plan

Chapter 12 "Organize Only in 'the Territory of the Enemy'" 137

Chapter 13 "New York Is Worth Twenty Richmonds" 149

Chapter 14 "Set Fire to Cities on Election Day" 161

Chapter 15 "Rebel Agents in Canada" 174

Part IV Burn New York

Chapter 16 "Something Dead in That Valise" 189

Chapter 17 "Do the Greatest Damage in the Business District" 196

Chapter 18 "It Blazed Up Instantly" 207

Chapter 19 "A Vast and Fiendish Plot" 219

Part V The Aftermath

Chapter 20 "If Convicted, They Will Be Executed" 233

Chapter 21 "Trust to Luck" 242

Chapter 22 "A Terror for Our Citizens" 253

Chapter 23 "They Sacrificed Everything" 263

Epilogue: What Happened to the Principal Characters 272

Acknowledgments 276

Source Notes 278

Selected Bibliography 293

Index 297

Editorial Reviews

One of the Civil War's more alarming might-have-beens is reconstructed in this absorbing if padded history. Johnson (Civil War Blunders) recounts the attempt by Confederate secret agents to burn down Manhattan on the night of November 25, 1864, using what they called “Greek fire”—an incendiary concoction that ignited spontaneously on contact with air. The conspiracy went up in a puff of ineptitude—the fires, set in rooms at various hotels around the city, fizzled from lack of oxygen because the arsonists left the windows closed—but the author's meticulous study of Manhattan's 19th-century flammability shows how easily it could have launched a citywide inferno. Johnson makes the incident an index of the war's soaring intensity, setting it in the context of the Union Army's burnings of rebel cities and farms, the bumbling efforts of Confederate agents in Canada to foment insurrection in the North, and the pro-Southern sympathies of prominent New Yorkers who connived at the arson plot. The laxly edited narrative also shovels in extraneous material, including a flashback to Pickett's Charge, to make the story hotter still. Johnson's comprehensive account of this usually footnoted episode shows how close it came to becoming a major tragedy. Photos. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Civil War Times contributor Johnson (Pursuit: The Chase, Capture, Persecution, and Surprising Release of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, 2008, etc.) examines an overlooked episode of the Civil War. The author spends much of the narrative working up to the attack by members of the Confederate Secret Service in November 1864. Many of the raiders had a history with John Hunt Morgan's cavalry unit, a Kentucky-based band that had raided Indiana and Ohio with devastating effect in 1863. Morgan's death during a Union raid on his headquarters made many of his men vow revenge. Several of these men ended up in Canada as part of the Secret Service. New York was a center of commerce, specializing in the shipment of cotton and tobacco from Southern plantations to markets in Europe and New England, with hefty profits remaining in Yankee hands. Many New Yorkers also carried on the slave trade, even after it became illegal. As a result, many in the city's financial elite strongly favored the Southern cause, even after the war broke out. The vicious draft riots that erupted in 1863 were only the most violent expression of the city's sympathies. It was against this background that the Secret Service operatives planned an attack on New York, as a measure of revenge for Union burnings of Southern cities. Eight men were chosen to carry out the mission. Armed with an incendiary chemical called Greek fire, they planned to burn several hotels and the Hudson River docks. The attacks fizzled; most of the fires were discovered before they caused serious damage, and none spread beyond their initial sites. Johnson chronicles the raiders' escape, the public reaction and the subsequent fates of the participants.The author's Southern sympathies are on full display, especially in his emphasis on the New York merchants' complicity with the slave trade, but the historical material is largely novel and clearly presented. An interesting addendum to the Civil War library, but should be read with a couple of grains of salt.

Kirkus Reviews