137 years ago: The plot to burn New York

By Edward T. O’Donnell

One hundred thirty-seven years ago this week, on Nov. 25, 1864, seven Confederate agents fanned out across Manhattan. Their ringleader, Robert C. Kennedy, had hatched an ingenious plot to destroy the North’s will to continue the Civil War by burning New York City. Jefferson Davis and the rest of the Confederate leadership certainly hoped so. For with the Lincoln reelected three weeks earlier and Grant and Sherman rolling up Confederate lines, Kennedy’s plot represented a last-ditch effort to secure southern independence.

The details of Kennedy’s life before the Civil War are rather sketchy. What is known is that he hailed from Louisiana and attended West Point. When the war broke out in 1861, he joined the Confederate army, eventually rising to the rank of captain. Early on he was assigned to the Confederate army’s corps of spies and secret agents, most of whom operated out of Canada. Kennedy earned a reputation as a daring and very reliable agent — just the sort to be entrusted to carry out an outlandish scheme to burn the Union’s largest city.

The plan called for Kennedy and his fellow spies to check into more than a dozen Manhattan hotels. Once inside their rooms, they were to open bottles of “Greek fire” — an incendiary made from phosphorus and bisulfide that burst into flames when exposed to air — set the bed afire, and slip out undetected. Ideally, the blazes would overwhelm the city’s volunteer fire department, leading to a massive conflagration.

Initially, the arson attack was to occur on the eve of the 1864 presidential election. Confederates hoped the planned inferno would terrorize and demoralize the Union, leading voters to elect Democrat George B. McClellan over Abraham Lincoln. McClellan, the former Union Army general, was believed to be in favor of a cease-fire followed by a negotiated separation of North and South. At the very least, a massive fire in New York City would seriously impair the Union war effort, as New York was the North’s financial center and a major military post. As one Confederate strategist put it, “New York is worth 20 Richmonds.”

There was also a certain element of revenge at work, for both Atlanta and Virginia’s fertile Shenandoah Valley had been put to the torch during the Union Army onslaught. The fact that Atlanta was most likely burned by Confederates mattered little to Kennedy and his fellow conspirators.

Rumors of a Confederate plot against New York on election day reached the White House in October. Having seen Gotham go up in flames in the Draft Riots of 1863, Lincoln took no chances. The War Department dispatched several thousand troops to New York under the command of Gen. Ben Butler. The flamboyant Butler made a great show of force and Kennedy and his men opted to postpone their arson spree. Lincoln won the election (though he lost New York City in a landslide) and on Nov. 15 Butler left the city a hero.

The plot had been delayed, but not canceled. Three weeks after the election, on Nov, 25, 1864, Kennedy and six others checked into separate hotels. At a pre-arranged time they set their rooms on fire. They also ignited blazes in stores and theaters — including P.T. Barnum’s Museum, which burned to the ground.

The fires caused a panic and $400,000 in damage, but they were quickly put out. One of the reasons for the plot’s failure was a serious logistical flaw. To allow the fires in the hotels to progress without detection, the men were instructed to close the windows and doors of their rooms. Instead, it slowed the fires down by limiting their supply of oxygen.

Kennedy and his coconspirators escaped to Canada. But in March 1865 he received orders to deliver a covert message to Confederate authorities in Richmond, Va. By now Canada was crawling with Union counterintelligence agents and Kennedy was followed. Not long after his train entered the U.S., he was seized at gunpoint and sent to Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor.

As a spy and terrorist, Kennedy stood to receive the full brunt of the military’s summary justice. Gen. John A. Dix, commander of the Department of the East for the Union Army, set the tone. “The attempt to set fire to the city of New York,” he wrote, “is one of the greatest atrocities of the age. There is nothing in the annals of barbarism which evinces greater vindictiveness. It was not a mere attempt to destroy the city, but to set fire to crowded hotels and places of public resort, in order to secure the greatest possible destruction of human life.”

The military court found him guilty and sentenced him to death. On March 25, 1865, Kennedy was executed by hanging at Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor. With the war’s end only two weeks off, Kennedy’s was the last execution of a Confederate soldier by the Union government.

Note: for more on this story, read “Nat Brandt, The Man Who Tried to Burn New York.”

HIBERNIAN HISTORY WEEK

Nov. 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Nov. 23, 1867: Three Fenians, the “Manchester Martyrs,” are executed for their alleged role in a prison escape that resulted in the death of a guard.

Nov. 25, 1952: George Meany becomes president of the American Federation of Labor.

HIBERNIAN BIRTHDATES

Nov. 23, 1841: Tammany Hall “Boss” Richard Croker is born in Clonakilty, Co. Cork.

Nov. 23, 1859: Outlaw William H. “Billy the Kid” Bonney is born in New York City.

Nov. 25, 1925: Leader of American conservatives William F. Buckley is born in New York City.

Readers may contact Edward T. O’Donnell at odonnell@EdwardTODonnell.com.