Read The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie MAnsfield: A Tragedy of the Gilded Age for Free Online Page A

and declares that his enemies are trying to upstage him.
    The curtain rises and the scheduled performance begins. Fisk watches the opening act and then repairs to the lobby to greet late arrivals and, at intermission, the rest of the house. He issues directions to the waiters who circulate among the crowd dispensing champagne. He shakes hands with the gentlemen, bows to the ladies, and slaps the backs of his men. At the conclusion of the performance he leads the officers of the regiment into one of the private rooms for a late supper. More champagne mingles with stronger spirits. The officers toast their colonel’s health and generosity; ribald references are made to Messrs. McBride and Williams and the unredeemed butter.

In the summer of 1871 Bill Tweed finds himself in a quandary. New York’s battling clans of the Irish are at it again, and the Tammany boss is caught in the middle. Protestant Orangemen from Northern Ireland want to parade: to commemorate the victory of William of Orange over Catholic Irish nationalists in the 1690 Battle of the Boyne and to insult the descendants of those Catholic nationalists here in New York. Last year’s Orange parade produced a murderous confrontation between the Orangemen and the Catholic Irish in which eight people died and many were injured. Tweed has tried to avert a reprise by ordering Mayor A. Oakey Hall and police superintendent James Kelso to deny the Orangemen a parade permit for this year.
    But the ban evokes angry protests. A meeting of merchants at the Produce Exchange approves a resolution decrying the “imperious and illegal order” and deprecating “this utter violation of the rights of the people.” The New York Herald declares the ban a fateful step down a slippery road to the kind of repression currently manifested by the radical Commune in Paris, where blood has flowed in the streets and much more seems likely to flow. The Times taunts Tweed, Hall, and Kelso for bowing to the Irish: “City Authorities Overawed by the Roman Catholics.” The same paper prints a letter to the editor demanding, “It is Pope or President for this country,” and “Have Americans any rights now?” The letter’s author signs himself “Old Vet of 1812” and gives his place of residence as “Ireland (late New York).”
    The outcry compels Tweed to reconsider. He confers with Governor John Hoffman, who has come down from Albany, and they direct Mayor Hall and Superintendent Kelso to rescind the ban. The government will not prevent the Orangemen from marching. On the contrary, Hoffman says, the government will enforce the Protestants’ right to assemble and march: “They will be protected to the fullest extent possible by the military and police authorities.”
    Now the Catholic Irish protest, in their own, direct fashion. In the early morning of Wednesday, July 12—Orange Day—police discover an effigy hanging from a telegraph pole in front of the liquor store of Owen Finney at 14 Spring Street, not far from Hibernian Hall, the headquarters of New York’s militant Irish. The figure is made to look like a man dressed in orange. The police cut the figure down and inquire among the neighbors as to who might have hoisted it. No one offers any information, with most seeming sullen and others fearful.
    Inside Hibernian Hall a large crowd of Catholics gathers to denounce Tweed and the authorities for reversing the no-parade policy. An undercover journalist has infiltrated the meeting and records the angry oaths. “This is the governor we elected,” one protester sneers of Hoffman. The crowd plots a countermarch of its own. Someone suggests demanding a police escort, lest the marchers be attacked. Another person, more attuned to the spirit in the hall, retorts, “We got arms enough and can do our own fighting.” This elicits loud applause, and a question: “Where are the arms?” The man chairing the meeting, a Mr. Doyle, answers: “There will be enough arms here in half an