In October 1864, New York City Copperheads (northern Confederate sympathizers) met with Confederate secret agents to plan uprisings in several northern cities on the upcoming election day. Rumors of the plan prompted the federal government to dispatch troops to the cities to insure an undisrupted national election. The Copperheads, sensing that the Confederates were destined to lose the war, withdrew from the scheme, but the Confederate agents decided to set New York City on fire at the end of November anyway, in order to avenge Union destruction of Confederate land and property. On the night of November 25th, the conspirators set fires in ten downtown hotels and in the American Museum, Niblo's Theater, and the Winter Garden. In each case the fires were quickly extinguished and the culprits escaped to Canada. Only one of the conspirators, Robert Cobb Kennedy, was subsequently caught after re-entering the United States; he was later tried and executed.
Cartoons and illustrations from contemporary newspapers, magazines, and observers.
Press coverage and other contemporary observations about the 1864 fire plot.
Barnum's
letter to the Editor of the New York Times, November 27, 1864
"The
Plot," The New York Times, November 27, 1864
Historical views of the Confederate plan to burn down New York City in 1864.
Nat Brandt, The Man Who Tried to Burn New York (Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 1986).
Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City
to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).