Sunday, January 6, 2019

New York's Pro-Confederate, Pro-Slavery Mayor

On Jan. 6 and 7 1861, New York Mayor Fernando Wood proposed to the City Council that the city secede from the Union in sympathy with the southern states (of which only South Carolina had yet voted to leave the United States).
That didn't happen, and New Yorkers rallied to the Union cause after the attack on Fort Sumter in April. But two years later, they stabbed the Union in the back in the murderous anti-black draft riots.
By then, Wood was a Copperhead Democrat member of Congress, in which capacity he would go on to oppose the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, as recounted in Steven Spielberg's fine movie, Lincoln
Wood is mentioned in the novel, but even if he hadn't died in 1881, there is no way he could have been part of The Last Circle of Ulysses Grant.


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