CIVIL WAR FREE TRADE MAYOR NEW YORK CITY COPPERHEAD CONGRESSMAN LETTER SIGNED VG

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

CIVIL WAR FREE TRADE MAYOR NEW YORK CITY COPPERHEAD CONGRESSMAN LETTER SIGNED VG:
$23.39

FERNANDO WOOD

(1812 - 1881)

CIVIL WAR MAYOR OF NEWYORK CITY

CIVIL WAR “COPPERHEAD” CONGRESSMAN

WOOD PROPOSED THAT NEW YORK CITY LEAVETHE UNION & BECOME A FREE TRADE ZONE FOR THE UNION & CONFEDERACY!!

Wood was a Democrat andmember of the Tammany Hall Society. He was mayor of New York City in 1854, andhelped establish Central Park but his administration was marked by widespreadgraft and crime. Opposed to the American Civil War, Wood suggested that New YorkCity should also

leave the Union, andbecome a free-trade zone. Wood made several speeches attacking PresidentAbraham Lincoln and was blamed for causing the Draft Riots in the city. Woodalso joined with Clement Vallandigham to form the “Peace Democrats” (“Copperheads”).Unlike Vallandigham, Wood was never charged with treason. Wood also served in the House of Representatives (1863-65 and1867-1881) where he was a staunch opponentof the Radical Republicans.

HERE\'SAN AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED BY WOOD as MAYOR of NEW YORK CITY TO THE HONORABLEM. B. WILSON, 1p., DATELINED AT NEW YORK, NOV. 19, 1858 – REQUESTING THAT HEPROVIDE “…The bearer Samuel Kinnaird ablank form of application for the office of Engineer on one of the steamengines?...”

BOLDLYEXECUTED & SIGNED BY WOOD!

The document measures 5”x 8” and is in very good condition.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OFTHE HONORABLE

FERNANDO WOOD

Wood, Fernando (14 June 1812-14 Feb.1881), mayor of New York City and congressman, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the sonof Benjamin Wood, a merchant, and RebeccaLehmann. His father\'s business failures led to an insecure childhood. In1821 the family moved to New York City,where Wood attended a private academy until age thirteen. Leaving home, he supported himself in New York andelsewhere with a variety of low-paying jobs.In 1831 the tall, handsome, well-mannered young man married Anna W.Taylor, the daughter of a moderatelysuccessful Philadelphia merchant. The following year the couple returned to New York City where, his father havingdied, Wood invested his wife\'s dowry inbusiness ventures to support his wife, mother, and younger siblings.

Although even his most successful venture, a \"grocery\" that solddrinks to longshoremen, made littlemoney, Wood found he could excel in politics. A member of Tammany Hall,the Democratic club, by 1835, Wood roseto prominence locally as the issue of government support for banks divided his party.Switching to the antibank position in the panic of 1837, Wood found in antibank Locofocoism apopular ideology (equal rights, hard money,and antimonopoly), a devoted working class constituency, and anopportunity to lead as he headed themovement that ousted probank Democrats from Tammany. He attended his first national Democratic convention in 1840 andwas elected to the U.S. House ofRepresentatives that fall. Meanwhile, however, his childless marriageended in divorce in 1839.

In Washington, D.C., Wood spoke against Whig banking, tariff, and spendingmeasures (while voting for expendituresthat benefited New York), established friendships with southern politicians such as Henry Wise andJohn C. Calhoun (while simultaneouslyreporting to northern Democrats such as Martin Van Buren the politicalplans of the southerners), and helpedSamuel F. B. Morse to get a subsidy for his telegraph. In 1841 he married Anna D. Richardson, with whom hehad seven children before her death in 1859.Her father, a judge, brought him valuable upstate New York politicalconnections.

Congressional redistricting and a switch to single member districts costWood his congressional seat in 1842.Needing to supplement his income from a chandlery business, he successfully sought from John C. Calhounin 1844 the patronage post of dispatch agentin New York City for the State Department, which he held until 1847. In1848 he used $3,500 of his wife\'s moneyas a down payment on land for a new home in the remote nineteenth ward. The transaction introducedhim to the real estate market, the source ofhis large fortune. Within twenty years his original parcel was worth$650,000 and he was regularly buying, selling, subdividing, and leasingproperty throughout the rapidly growing metropolis. In 1848 Wood also persuadedhis brother-in-law and some of his friends (on the basis of a forged letter) toinvest in a shipload of goods to be sold to gold miners in California. Theexpedition was successful, but Wood exaggerated his costs when dividing up theprofits, causing a lawsuit that eventually resulted in a judgment against Woodas well as useful ammunition for his political enemies.

The division of the Democratic party over slavery extension into theterritories brought Wood back to politics after 1848 as a prospectivepeacemaker between factions. Winning the mayoral nomination in 1850, he wasdefeated in a general Whig sweep. In 1854,however, he won the office, was reelected in 1856, defeated in 1857,reelected in 1859, and defeated again in1861. Facing a city bitterly divided along ethnic, class, religious, and raciallines, Wood prefigured later political bosses by striving to address urban problems by assuming personalcontrol of municipal affairs.

Power, however, was not easily centralized. Wood himself headed afactionalized party in a state in which hostility toward urban immigrantpopulations was growing. His own limited powers were further constricted by afactionalized city council and an often Republican state legislature.Attempting to appeal to businessmen and reformers in his first term, Woodappeared to crack down on prostitution, gambling, and saloons and pushed forthe building of Central Park and a municipal university. Responding toworking-class Irish immigrants, however, he found ways to avoid enforcing stateliquor laws, and during the panic of 1857 he recommended putting the unemployedto work for the city building and repairing public structures. Bridging class linesproved impossible. Wood\'s desire to control patronage and his ambitions for thegovernorship frightened similarly ambitious politicians in his own party whoengineered his defeat in 1857. Wood responded by forming his own organization,Mozart Hall, in September 1858. Through this society, which he funded anddirected, Wood asserted that his followers represented traditional Democraticprinciples abandoned by Tammany.

Republicans also feared Wood as a demagogue and sought to divert municipalpatronage to their own hands by usingtheir power in the state legislature to form metropolitan commissions to control New York City\'spolice, supervise the wharves and piers, and even oversee the construction of a new city hall.Wood created his own municipal police force in opposition to the Metropolitans,and for a time both battled in the streets before the courts ruled against Wood and his force wasdisbanded. Wood\'s frustration with state government provides the context tounderstand his proposal in 1861 that New York City secede from the state andbecome a free city.

While never fully trusting him, prosouthern Democratic leaders at thenational level, such as James Buchanan,angled for Wood\'s support in the 1850s. His prosouthern and proslaveryassociations identified him in many minds as a treasonous Copperheadduring the Civil War, although afterFort Sumter he proposed a million dollar tax levy to raise troops for the war. Shortly before hismayorship ended in 1861, Wood married Alice F.Mills, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a wealthy retired merchant. Theyhad nine children.

With enthusiasm for the war dwindling in heavily Democratic New York City,Wood became a Peace Democrat and wonelection to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1862. Failing to be reelected in 1864, he was returned in 1866and served until his death in Hot Springs,Arkansas. Despite his lengthy congressional service, the minority statusof his party during most of the sessionsand his own uncompromising stands on low tariffs and hard currency limited his leadership role inCongress. He was chair of the Ways and MeansCommittee after 1877 but faced more defeats than victories in thatposition. Although a gadfly toRepublicans in Congress and a hard worker on budget and tax bills, hisreal political contributions lay in hisearlier organization of New York\'s immigrantpopulation and experimentation with ways to address urban problems.

Bibliography

Wood\'s papers are at the New York Historical Society and New York PublicLibrary. The best biography is JeromeMushkat, Fernando Wood: A Political Biography (1990). See also Samuel A. Pleasants, Fernando Wood of NewYork (1948). On specific episodes in Wood\'slife see James F. Richardson, \"Mayor Fernando Wood and the New YorkPolice Force, 1855-1857,\" New YorkHistorical Society Quarterly 40 (1966): 5-40, and Tyler G. Anbinder, \"Fernando Wood and New York City\'sSecession from the Union: A Political Reappraisal,\" New York History 68 (1987): 67-92. On Tammanysee Leonard Chalmers, \"Fernando Wood andTammany Hall: The First Phase,\" New York Historical SocietyQuarterly 52 (1968): 379-402, andChalmers, \"Tammany Hall, Fernando Wood, and the Struggle to Control NewYork City, 1857-1860,\" New YorkHistorical Society Quarterly 53 (1969): 7-33. An obituary is in the New York Times, 15 Feb. 1881. [Source:American National Biography]

I am a proud member of the Universal Autograph Collectors Club(UACC), The Ephemera Society of America, the Manuscript Society and theAmerican Political Items Collectors (APIC) (member name: John Lissandrello). Isubscribe to each organizations\' code of ethics and authenticity is guaranteed.~Providing quality service and historical memorabilia online for over tenyears.~WE ONLY SELL GENUINE ITEMS, i.e., NO REPRODUCTIONS, FAKES OR COPIES!