November 25, 1864

The Confederate Army of Manhattan: Or the Day the Flames Went Out on Broadway.

Today we turn back the clock to the American Civil War, and cross the bridge to Manhattan during the rainy November of 1864. At the time, tensions in the North's grandest city were just as volatile as in any field in Georgia or Tennessee. Two summers before, after President Lincoln signed the first conscription act, the city had erupted in riots that took Union troops (fresh from the Battle of Gettysburg) to suppress. Most of New York's immigrant population was more interested in working than fighting, especially if the dying was to be done to aid a potential rival in the workforce.

Since the beginning of the war, there had even been talk of New York City seceding from the Union and declaring Manhattan a free entity. The boiling mood on the island made it a juicy target for Confederate espionage, and they hoped the fires from the draft riots still raged in New Yorkers' hearts. While Billy Sherman was burning his way toward Savannah, Jacob Thompson, former Secretary of the Interior of the United States, hoped to fan a few flames of his own. Thompson had returned to his home in Mississippi after secession and after serving as Inspector General of the Confederate Army, began building a spy cell in Canada.

Jacob Thompson

Late in November, Thompson put his men into action. He had formed a group of eight men that called themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan, who each snuck into the Union and checked himself into a different New York City hotel. At about 8:45pm on November 25, 1864, the city's fledgling fire department began receiving near simultaneous calls at over 20 locations all over town. The Confederate spies had each set fire to their rooms, then hit the streets to start fires at targets throughout the city.

The plan was to start more fires than the department could handle, and the Southerners would of course had been pleased to see the city burned to the ground. But the real hope was that the panic and blame that would ensue would incite New York's population to rebel against city officials. While seemingly an effective plot in theory, Thompson failed to take into account three things: the wet weather; the considerably more calmed mood that had overtaken Manhattan in the last year; and the men who had recently begun calling themselves the New York City Fire Department.

When the calls of fire began streaming in, coordinated teams of units began to each tackle a fire. Soon, all were contained or had burned out before spreading far enough to cause much damage. Thompson had remained in Canada, but all eight members of the Confederate Army of Manhattan were captured. Seven were later executed, the last of which, Captain Robert Cobb Kennedy, was the last solider hanged by either side during the Civil War.







Harper's Weekly published this depiction of a member of the Confederate Army of Manhattan setting a fire.





Sadly, it turned out it was Thompson who the Union really needed to get its hands on. Operating in Canada for the remainder of the war, Thompson continued his efforts against the Federal war effort. Clearly, he had few qualms about burning down New York, and perhaps the plot was a sign of worse things to come. There are some who speculate, and the editors of Lies Agreed Upon are in that camp, that Jacob Thompson should be counted among the conspirators of the assassination of President Lincoln.

Union troops burned Thompson's estate in Oxford, Mississippi in 1864, and after the war the former congressman and cabinet member lived abroad in exile. He was pardoned in 1869, but never returned to public life. Terrorism has always been an unfortunate extension of the horrors of war, whether in 1864 New York or the Middle East today. Fortunately for the City that Never Sleeps, then just as now, her bravest constitute a fire department that doesn't sleep either.