Abstract
The violence of a single day in 1849 captivated the country. A contest of manly wills on American soil pitted a younger native (a massive physical presence) against a more experienced foreigner, a dozen years his senior, who earned his reputation as the best in the world. Each man exhibited a successful, yet entirely different, style of artistry. Both acted as surrogates for nationalistic tensions, and their competition dramatized larger social conflicts. The grudge between the two, one that was personal as well as professional, publicly escalated, with each publishing “cards” in the papers. For months, newspapers throughout the country intentionally built up the anticipation and animosity of this rivalry, capitalizing on patriotism and xenophobia. Despite the best efforts of authorities, the contest ended in bloodshed. In the sixteenth round, American Tom Hyer defeated Irishman Yankee Sullivan in the fight of the century—February 7, 1849. The Spirit of the Times (1860) captured the national hysteria surrounding the fight:
Thus ended a contest which had excited more interest than any other pugilistic encounter that ever took place in this country; but which, though it engaged thousands of minds for a period of six long months, was done up, when once begun, in seventeen minutes and eighteen seconds…. There never was, perhaps, a battle in which there was so much fighting in so short a space of time; none, certainly, in which more resolute punishment was given and taken, without flinching on either side.”2
It is really singular that, deriving all, or nearly all, the acting plays from England, applauding and constantly in association with the best English actors, there should exist, behind the scenes of the American theatres, such an inveterate hatred to the foreign artist, that every little word uttered should be construed into an intentional national insult.
Francis Wemyss, 18471
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Notes
Francis Courtney Wemyss, Twenty-six Years in the Life of an Actor and Manager (New York: Burgess, Stringer and Company, 1847), 117. For the evolving relationship between the United States and England, see Britain and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, ed. Will Kaufman and Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005).
Beecher, Yale Lectures on Preaching (New York: J. B. Ford, 1872–1874), 6.
David Humphreys, quoted in Francis Hodge, Yankee Theatre: The Image of America on the Stage, 1825–1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 54. As David Grimsted suggests, “This Jonathan was largely an Americanization of the Irishmen and Yorkshireman of the English stage, and clearly … a descendant of the Jonathan in The Contrast” (Melodrama Unveiled: American Theater and Culture, 1800–1850 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987], 186).
Benjamin A. Baker, A Glance at New York: A Local Drama in Two Acts (New York: Samuel French, 1857). Pierce Egan, Life in London, or, the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq.: And His Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom: Accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in Their Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis (London: Printed for Sherwood, Nealy, and Jones, 1821).
Charles Gayler, “Early Struggles of Prominent Actors,” reprinted in Famous Actors and Actresses on the American Stage: Documents of American Theatre History, vol. 1, ed. William C. Young (New York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1975), 174–75. Gayler (1820–1892) also composed a series of articles on actors for the New York Dramatic Mirror in the 1870s.
The most thorough treatment of America’s mob behavior during this period is David Grimsted’s American Mobbing, 1828–1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
For an exploration of the differing modes of communication at work in the events leading up to the Astor Place Riot, see Gretchen Sween, “Rituals, Riots, Rules, and Rights: The Astor Place Theater Riot of 1849 and the Evolving Limits of Free Speech,” in Texas Law Review 81 (2002), 679–713.
Sometimes conflicting accounts of the riot are presented in the following: Nigel Cliff, The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Random House, 2007);
Richard Moody, The Astor Place Riot (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958); Account of the Terrific and Fatal Riot at the New York Astor Place Opera House, on the Night of May 10th, 1849 (New York: H. M. Ranney, 1849); A Rejoinder to “The Replies From England, etc. to Certain Statements Circulated in this Country Respecting Mr. Macready.” Together with an Impartial History and Review of the Lamentable Occurrences at the Astor Place Opera House, on the 10th of May, 1849. By an American Citizen (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1849).
Unidentified newsclip, 1825, quoted in Alan S. Downer, The Eminent Tragedian: William Charles Macready (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 72.
Henry James, quoted in Montrose J. Moses, Fabulous Forrest: The Record of an American Actor (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1929), 245–46.
For the growing class separation of opera audiences, see the following: Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 101;
Bruce McConachie, “New York Opera-going, 1825–1850,” in American Music 6 (Summer 1988), 184.
George Foster, New York by Gaslight (New York: Dewitt and Davenport, 1850), 90–91.
William Charles Macready, Macready’s Reminiscences and Selections from His Diaries and Letters, ed. Frederick Pollock (New York: Harper, 1875), 230–231.
Quoted in Joseph Norton Ireland, Record of the New York Stage, From1780 to 1860, vol 1. (New York: T. H. Morrell, 1867), 479.
William Charles Macready, The Diaries of William Charles Macready, vol. 2, ed. William Thompson (New York: Putnam’s, 1912), 230, 405.
. Edwin Forrest, quoted in William Rounseville Alger, Life of Edwin Forrest: The American Tragedian, (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1877), 317.
Charlotte Cushman quoted in Joseph Leach, Bright Particular Star: The Life and Times of Charlotte Cushman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), 150.
“Behavior, in a word, is an ultimately democratic criterion for gentility that had aristocratic origins…, the essence of the definition is contained in the reference cited from The Tatler: ‘The Appellation of Gentleman is never to be affixed to a Man’s Circumstances but to his behaviour in them’” (David Castronovo, The English Gentleman: Images and Ideals in Literature and Society [New York: Ungar, 1987], 31).
New York Herald, May 9, 1849. For the nationalistic tensions surrounding Charles Dickens, see Sidney P. Moss, Charles Dickens’ Quarrel with America (New York: Whitstone, 1984).
Philip Hone, The Diary of Philip Hone, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1927), 876. Phillip Hone (1780–1852) was mayor of New York 1826–1827.
See Jay Monaghan, The Great Rascal: The Life and Adventures of Ned Buntline (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1952).
Robert Montgomery Bird, The Gladiator, in Early American Drama, ed. Jeffrey H. Richards (New York: Penguin, 1997), 198.
For an exploration of the Draft Riots and their impact on society, see Barnet Schecter, The Devil’s Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America (New York: Walker, 2003).
“Mr. Forrest’s Second Reception in England,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 16 (April 1845): 385. For more on the development of urban police, see James Richardson, The New York Police: Colonial Times to 1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970);
Roger Lane, Policing the City: Boston, 1822–1885 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). David Grimsted argues that the actions of the elite represented “the first precedent to set bounds to the sovereignty of the theatrical audience” (Grimsted, Melodrama Unveiled, 68).
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© 2012 Karl M. Kippola
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Kippola, K.M. (2012). A Masculine Identity Worth Dying For: The Astor Place Riot. In: Acts of Manhood. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137068774_4
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