The Great Sumter Rally in Union Square

April 20, 1861

The capture of Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861, by Confederate troops was as decisive a moment for Americans as were the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The loss of life was not comparable, but this brazen assault on a federal installation caused Northerners, despite their many differences, to unite against the rebels. Public displays of loyalty to the Union were common in the days following the loss of the fort — the most significant taking place in New York City’s Union Square on April 20.

Known as the Great Sumter Rally, it was the largest public meeting Americans had ever witnessed. Of the many resolutions approved by the crowd’s thunderous applause, mostly related to affirmations of loyalty, the creation of the Union Defense Committee (UDC) had the greatest effect. In the early days of the war, the UDC, led by the city’s leading businessmen, helped enthusiastic New Yorkers create regimental units to defend vital territory around Washington, D.C.

Only a few days before the Sumter rally, New Yorkers were vigorously debating how conciliatory the federal government should be toward the Southern states. Many believed that the states that had seceded should be brought back into the Union at any cost. On the other hand, some of the city’s businessmen, terrified that the Northern economy would collapse if Southerners stopped paying their debts and started selling a larger portion of their cotton directly to Europe, met on April 14 to plan a rally in City Hall Park to call for a peaceful reconciliation (even if it meant allowing the continuation of slavery). The New York Herald predicted that the City Hall rally would be “one of the greatest meetings ever held in the city, and its effect on the government at Washington and the government at Montgomery [would] be very decided.”

On April 15, before the rally was to take place, Lincoln officially declared an insurrection in the South and called for the recruitment of 75,000 troops. The rally planners reversed course and started supporting speedy retaliation. The president of the Chamber of Commerce publicly declared, “We are either for the country or for its enemies.” Working-class New Yorkers added additional pressure by roaming the city’s streets to demand that American flags be hung outside all homes and offices.

Wealthy Democrats and Republicans gathered at the Chamber of Commerce on April 17 to organize a “monster meeting” to demonstrate that they, and all New Yorkers, were loyal to the Union. As they debated venues, Simeon B. Chittenden, a Republican dry goods merchant, said, “Let it be Union Square — the name is significant — with the statue of the Father of our Country looking over the meeting.”

The space had been named Union Square because of its location at the union of Bloomingdale and the Bowery (now Broadway and Fourth Avenue), and it was not yet a popular space for public meetings, yet the organizers agreed to hold the rally there because its name would serve to reinforce their message of loyalty. The statue that Chittenden referred to was that of George Washington sitting atop a horse, the first equestrian statue erected in New York since the colonists destroyed a statue of King George III during the Revolutionary War. The Washington statue was then located where 14th Street intersected with Fourth Avenue, just off the park’s southeast corner — not in the southern end of the park, where it stands today.

On the morning of April 20, over 100,000 men, including millionaire merchants, brokers, tradesmen, mechanics, artisans and laborers, poured into Union Square. Native New Yorkers, Irishmen, Germans and eastern Europeans made up the bulk of the crowd, as African Americans were unwelcome at such public events. Women and children, who were relegated to the windows, balconies and rooftops above, waved flags and cheered. Jane Stuart Woolsey, who would become an active member of the Sanitary Commission, observed the rally from her family’s balcony in the southeast corner of the square. She described the scene as a “huge sea of men” who “overflowed the quadrangle of streets.” Although unable to hear the speakers, she knew when “‘points’ were made by the thousands of hats lifted and swung in the air and by the roar of the cheering.”

Major Robert Anderson, the valiant defender of Fort Sumter, was the celebrated guest of honor. Distinguished men spoke from five stands set up around the square. Mayor Fernando Wood’s speech, more than any other, captured the spirit of the day. Although a few months before he had suggested that the city might secede, he now stood upon a platform and announced his unwavering loyalty:

It is not only my duty, as it is consistent with my principles and sense of right, to support the Constitution, but the Union, the government, the laws and the flag. [Loud cheers.] And, in the discharge of that duty, I care not what past political associations may be severed. I am willing to give up all past prejudices and sympathies, if in conflict with the honor and interest of my country in this great crisis.

Within a few months he would return to declaring the Lincoln administration illegitimate, but for this brief moment (likely for political gain) he set aside his partisanship. A popular phrase heard around the rally was, “We are all Democrats. We are all Republicans.”

Newspapers throughout the North covered the Sumter rally. The Chicago Tribune called it “The greatest popular demonstration even known in America.” The Boston Daily Evening Transcript printed a letter from a “patriotic lady in New York City” that read: “I wish you could have stood on a balcony with us looking down upon Union square on Saturday. Your heart would have leaped to see the statue of Washington holding the flag of Fort Sumter, and to have heard the peals of patriotic enthusiasm from the immense throng who witnessed the spectacle.”

In the days following the rally — with New York’s Irish Sixty-ninth and well-heeled Seventh regiments already heading to Washington — Irishmen, Germans, Poles and other New Yorkers formed volunteer regiments organized around ethnicity. African Americans were eager to fight, but were barred from forming regiments. Women gathered to prepare supplies to ship to the South. Despite the enthusiasm, the early days of the war were extremely chaotic. Many of the men volunteering to fight lacked discipline and training. Arms and supplies were scarce and the makeshift barracks set up in parks around the city were unsanitary. New York was ill prepared.

The Union Defense Committee stepped in and added some order to the chaos. Led by businessmen from both political parties, the mayor, comptroller and leaders of the Common Council, the UDC raised millions of dollars to furnish arms and supplies for volunteers and their families. After the rally, Lincoln ordered his treasury secretary to transfer two million dollars to the leaders of the UDC. Over the next few months the city of New York appropriated almost the same amount.

By early May, nearly half of the 16,000 troops defending Washington, D.C., were from New York City and surrounding areas. By year’s end, mostly through private contributions, the UDC helped create 66 regiments, provided relief to thousands of military families and sent millions of dollars worth of supplies to the front. Were it not for the enthusiasm generated by the Sumter rally, converted into action by the UDC, the Confederates might have gained a greater advantage in the early days of the war — changing its outcome decidedly.

Sources: Ernest A. McKay, “The Civil War and New York City”; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, “Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898”; Edward K. Spann, “Gotham at War”; New York Herald, April, 14, 18 and 22, 1861; New York Times, April 18 and 21, 1861; Jane Stuart Woolsey to Margaret Hodge, April 1861, “Letters of a Family During the War For the Union 1861-1865, vol. 1”; “The Union Defence Committee of the City of New York: Minutes, Reports, and Correspondence, 1885”; “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 5.”

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Michael Shapiro is a research associate at the University of Virginia at work on “The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Volume 8.” He recently completed his manuscript “Becoming Union Square: Struggles for Legitimacy in Nineteenth-Century New York.”