Ninth's new colonel, The

Military Images, Mar/Apr 2000 by Mulligan, Robert E Jr

A humorous tale of Old New York

With great pleasure we reprint this piece from MI Volume IV, Number 5, March-April 1983 --perhaps the funniest article ever to appear in these pages. Author Robert E. Mulligan, Jr. recently retired as Curator of History at the New York State Museum in Albany and now has better things to do with his time, such as serving as Guest Editor for this all-New York issue of the magazine. We thank him for a splendid effort. Huzzah!

Few officers of the National Guard, State of New York, loomed larger in their own day than the distinguished looking gentleman depicted here. "Jubilee Jim" Fisk was known to every newspaper reader in New York City as Jay Gould's Wall Street crony, "Boss" Tweed's political ally, "Admiral" of the Narragansett Steamship Company, and impresario of ihe Grand Opera House with its bevy of French ballet dancers in pink tights. Today we are more likely to remember him as vice president of the oft times plundered Erie Railroad, and the man who tried to comer the gold market on "Black Friday" of 1869 by implying that President U.S. Grant was in on the scheme.

One of Jim's well-bred (and perhaps jealous) opponents described him as "Illiterate, vulgar, unprincipled, profligate, always making himself conspicuously ridiculous by some piece of flagrant ostentation." On April 9, 1870 this man was elected Colonel of the Ninth Regiment of Infantry, National Guard, State of New York. How had the "Mushroom Mars" arrived at the honor and glory of a $2,000 Colonel's uniform?

Early in 1870, Colonel Charles Brame of the 9th met with his officers to point out that the regiment mustered only 250 men and was facing disbandment. Brame, a combat veteran of the Civil War, proposed a bitter medicine to save his beloved regiment: make a rich man the colonel. Once agreed to by the officers, Fisk's election was assured.

Fisk had no military experience and had spent the Civil War buying and selling contraband cotton. But he wanted the best regiment in New York, he had the money to make it happen, and he was a hard worker. His first act as Colonel was to offer a $500 prize to the company which recruited the most new men. Actually, recruiting proved easy. A canvas of Fisk's employees at the Erie Railroad headquarters turned up 200 men who could carry a gun down Fifth Avenue. And Fisk took the Regiment to the resort at Long Branch, New Jersey for target practice. They traveled free on Fisk's own steamboat, with kegs of cool beer awaiting their disembarkation. The duties of the 9th included military balls, torchlight parades, and a free evening viewing the beauties, both architectural and female, of the Grand Opera House. Other regiments sneered and said that the 9th had bartered its soul for gold. Perhaps they were just envious of a regiment which could so easily make its band the best in the city overnight (Fisk had asked a dozen of his Opera House orchestra members to help him out by enlisting!)

But alas, even the best of military careers sometimes include a Waterloo, and Jim Fisk would meet his on July 12, 18 71. Mark the date, for July 12th was the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, and New York City's Orangemen were determined to march despite every green Irish brickbat thrown at them. The governor, rightly fearing a riot, called out five regiments of infantry and 600 police to surround and escort the 94 hardy Protestant marchers in the parade. Fisk's 9th Infantry was one of the regiments called up.

At two in the afternoon, the parade stepped off down 8th Avenue through a shower of curses, garbage and bricks. At 23rd Street, a shot wounded a soldier of the 84th Regiment. His shaken comrades fired back. Three men of the 9th Infantry were killed and four wounded.

This did not include the Colonel, who stood shirtsleeved and perspiring at the head of his men. When the shots rang out from muskets of the 84th, the mob fled --- right through the gap between the 9th and the regiment ahead of it. Poor Jim was pummeled, knocked down, trampled upon and run over. Bruised and dirty, Jim lay in the street groaning that his ankle was broken. He was carried upstairs to a doctor's office while the parade continued without him.

The doctor, finding that Jim's ankle was not broken but only dislocated, jerked it back into place, bound it up, and loaned Jim a cane. He needed the cane, for the mob was back, howling outside the windows for the life of the wounded and abandoned soldier. The portly colonel decided upon a strategic withdrawal out the back door, down the alley and across several fences. After hiding in a cellar a while and acquiring an old hat and coat by way of disguise, Jim ventured on to an almost empty 9th Avenue and stopped one of the few carriages. Who was inside but Jay Gould, president of the Erie Railroad and Jim's partner in crime.

Colonel Jim, still in disguise, continued his retrograde advance to his resort hotel at Long Branch, where his wound required the attention of a "bevy of females" and copious draughts of lemonade, according to a reporter for the New York Sun. Meanwhile, New York City was congratulating itself that not a single Orangeman was scratched. The escorting troops lost four dead and twenty-four wounded, while the citizenry lost 41 dead and 61 wounded of both sexes and all ages, but that was all by the by. Just another parade.