Brandy for Heroes: A Biography of the Honorable John Morrissey, Champion Heavyweight of America and State Senator

By Jack Kofoed

John Morrissey (1831-1878), also known as Old Smoke, was an Irish-born American who became a prominent figure of the 1850’s. Raised in New York State, Morrissey moved to San Francisco at the time of the California Gold Rush in the early 1850’s. There, he took up bare-knuckle boxing and, on his return to New York, challenged and defeated “Yankee Sullivan”, then recognized as the American boxing champion. Following his boxing career, Morrissey later became a professional gambler, owning gambling houses in New York City in the 1850s and 1860s. He then became a U.S. Congressman between 1867-1871, backed by Tammany Hall, but later fell out with the political machine and became an Anti-Tammany Democratic State Senator for New York between 1876-1878.

Brandy For Heroes, first published in 1938, is sportswriter Jack Kofoed’s biography of John Morrissey. Kofoed draws on his fast-paced journalistic skills and takes the reader on an exciting journey of Old Smoke’s life: from his early years in the slums of Troy, New York, to his prize fights in California, defeating the likes of Hyer, Sullivan and Heenan, and concluding with Morrissey’s political career back in his home state of New York as Senator during the 1850’s-1860’s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789124170

Jack Kofoed

Jack Kofoed (1894-1979) was a New York newspaperman during the 1920’s and 1930’s and a columnist for The Miami Herald for 44 years. Born in Philadelphia on December 17, 1894, he began his career in 1912, at the age of 18, when he joined the sports staff of The Philadelphia Ledger. After serving in the U.S. Army in France during World War I, Kofoed moved to New York in 1923 to join the staff of The Evening Telegram and, six months later, the The Evening Post, where he remained until 1933. He began writing for The Miami Herald in 1935. Over the years, Kofoed went on to have his own radio talk show, wrote 1,200 short stories and articles that appeared in major magazines, and published thirteen books, including Night Clubs (1931, with Jimmy Durante), Thrills in Sports (1932), Leg Man in Seven-League Boots (1946) Front Page Deadline: The Fictional Story of a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Newspaper Crusade (1950) and Moon Over Miami (1955). He passed away in Miami, Florida in 1979 at the age of 85.

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Text originally published in 1938 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

BRANDY FOR HEROES

A BIOGRAPHY OF

THE HONORABLE JOHN MORRISSEY

Champion Heavyweight of America and State Senator

BY

JACK KOFOED

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

PREFACE 6

CHAPTER I 8

CHAPTER II 13

CHAPTER III 19

CHAPTER IV 25

CHAPTER V 29

CHAPTER VI 33

CHAPTER VII 38

CHAPTER VIII 43

CHAPTER IX 48

CHAPTER X 52

CHAPTER XI 57

CHAPTER XII 60

CHAPTER XIII 65

CHAPTER XIV 70

CHAPTER XV 76

CHAPTER XVI 80

CHAPTER XVII 86

CHAPTER XVIII 93

CHAPTER XIX 98

CHAPTER XX 101

CHAPTER XXI 106

CHAPTER XXII 112

CHAPTER XIII 118

CHAPTER XXIV 123

CHAPTER XXV 128

CHAPTER XXVI 133

CHAPTER XXVII 136

CHAPTER XXVIII 140

CHAPTER XXIX 144

CHAPTER XXX 150

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 153

DEDICATION

TO MARIE

PREFACE

ONE of the reasons why John Morrissey stood out so sharply against the horizon of his time was because of his fierce hostility toward life. If, as certain psychologists have pointed out, a man can love no more deeply than he can hate, Morrissey must have been one of the great lovers of history. Certainly the bitterness of his hatreds was a wonderment to the unforgiving men who surrounded him.

Behind his hostility was an ambition that itched him all his life. It was not a fever to be regulated and controlled.

Morrissey could have posed for a portrait of the mid-century period that he graced...young, defiant, full of windblown bombast. He was always unappeased and unapologetic...a swaggering, picturesque figure who might have been a greater pirate than Morgan or Blackbeard had his opportunities been those of the sea-rovers. He deserves more than the footnote that has been accorded him in the history of New York’s most corrupt and violent days.

Men are products of their period. A Mae West would not have bloomed so fulsomely had she lived in the environment of Hester Prynne. A Napoleon might have withered in the peaceful atmosphere of Denmark. John Morrissey would have succeeded in any period...but his success would have been measured in different terms.

Historians of the current scene have rattled the cup and pointed the finger at the Speakeasy Era that followed the World War as the most criminal in American history. They have indicated by innuendo, if not by direct statement, that the Capones and Dillingers and Schultzes, who were bred of that noble experiment, had no counterparts in the past.

This is not entirely true. Even without machine-guns and automatics the hoodlumry of the middle nineteenth century made a charnel house of New York. With the limited armament of fists, clubs, paving stones and pistols at their disposal they did their muscular and inspired best. Officials, who had sworn to uphold the law, looted treasuries and sought bribes with a callous frankness that could not be equalled even by the turbulent twenties. Life was insecure on Manhattan Island—and the police the worst in the world.

There never was a time that New York was such a cauldron of knavery, corruption and thuggery as when John Morrissey strode across its turbulent stage. He was hardened and shaped by its philosophy.

The motivation behind Morrissey was the material one of ambition. He wanted success...and success was spelled in money and power. No man could have done more, since there was no objective that he failed to take.

This, then, is the portrait of a man who had to get on no matter what the consequences...a brutal man, whose brutality is explained by his antecedents and the fact that he lived in an uncompromising age. He had a magnificent body, a cold reasoning mind and an instinct for leadership...generosity, sentiment and courage. That he was popular must not be passed by lightly, either, for popularity is a broad gauge and a lively symbol.

I have written the story of John Morrissey, not because he added an iota to the knowledge or welfare of the human race, but because he was an interesting and exciting man. That seems to me reason enough for any biography.

JACK KOFOED

New York, 1938.

CHAPTER I

MARY MORRISSEY was in labor.

A pair of candles slit thin little wedges of light into the darkness of the room. It was cold. February’s gusty wind clattered outside and blew a frosty breath through the cracks. The fire-place gave out smoky warmth, but not enough for Mary, who huddled under the blankets, feet and legs numb.

The pain made her light-headed. She could see the wide, vague outline of Tim’s shoulders as he heated a basin of water, and Granny Griffin, the mid-wife, fumbling about in her owl-eyed way. But, at moments, Mary was not really in the room at all. She was on the hills, with a summer sun ablaze in the sky, and Tim, her young lover, kissing her on the lips.

Tim was a handsome lad, gay and shiftless and bound to be a good-for-nothing. He had the strongest, tenderest hands in Tipperary, a taste for liquor and not enough education to scrawl his name on a bit of paper. But what does youth care for the future when the wine of spring is in its veins? What woman thinks of wash-tubs and diapers and empty pantry shelves when a man’s arms tighten about her? Not Mary, for one.

She had thought enough not to let him take her. That was because religion dampened her passion. The Church said fornication was sin, and she did not have courage enough to confess such an act. Would it really have been a sin when they loved each other so much, and God could have looked down from His hazy blue-gold throne and seen what they were doing?

Then suddenly the hills were gone...and the sun, too...and she was in her bed of pain, biting her lips until they bled. It was a bad thing to be born in Ireland in 1831, thought Mary, and a worse thing to live there. Taxes for insolent English officials. Tithes for the fat bishop. Potatoes and salt to eat, with meat once a month if you were lucky; boiled wild weeds if you were not...a squalid cabin to sleep in; men and women barefoot and half clad, summer and winter.

To hear the stories you’d think Ireland was paradise. It might be if the English and the priests would let folks alone—ah, yes, a paradise with the green of the grass under foot and the blue of the sky over head. But small chance for lovin’ and livin’ in such beauty with sheriff and bailiff and warden gruntin’ like pigs over one’s last miserable shillin’s.

Her belly felt a monstrous, bloated thing—and the pain ran out of it down her thighs and up to her mind.

She felt the beat and clamor of the son in her womb. Better stay there, little darlin’, and know nothin’ of what’s before ye, if what’s before ye is Ireland.

Yet in her travail, Mary smiled. He should not live in Ireland, this boy of hers. Ever since she was a little girl she had seen jails filled and gibbets rotten with human fruit. She had known nothing but poverty and the yearning to have things that would never be hers. Toward the end of escaping Ireland she had saved...pennies until they were shillings; shillings until they were a few painful pounds. No matter what happened she had enough in the cracked tea-pot on the mantel to take them to America.

America! In that magic land her son would have his chance...the chance that no Catholic boy could have in the Ireland of the Protestant Ascendency. On the far side of the Atlantic there was no poverty. The leprechauns and fairies had fled from Erin to pave those foreign streets with pound notes.

Incredible tales about the States became accepted facts to her people. Irish men and women set foot on the magic soil penniless, in rags. Within a year they were on their way to riches. Everyone had what he wanted. The Church could not take away a family’s only pig in lieu of tithes—and the English doffed their hats when they passed an Irishman.

Mary’s mouth twisted in agony. A groan forced itself through her white lips. The mid-wife glanced around, the candle-light deepening her wrinkles into ancient furrows. Tim came quickly, and took Mary’s hand.

Is it bad? he asked anxiously.

His wife shook her brown head.

Not whin I think we’ll soon be across the ocean, she said. Look in the pot and see if our money is still there.

He looked. The precious pounds were safe.

She sighed. Don’t worry. It won’t be long.

But it was long. The hours dragged heavy heels through the night. Tim drowsed fitfully in his corner, worrying when he could shake off the drug of sleep. Child-bed fever killed so many women. Children were born blind and crippled. He was afraid, and started into wakefulness at each cry of pain. Then he would swig from a bottle and come to Mary to blow his whisky breath on her and murmur inarticulate sympathy.

Even in the short period of their marriage he had lost some of his fine, free touch. There was a grossness about his chin she did not like to see. But in spite of that he still loved her. She could watch it glow in his eyes like a torch. And she loved him. He was the father of her pain and the child that would follow it. Perhaps in America he would become a fine man again.

Dawn came and the cocks crowed lustily. Pigs began grunting their sonorous discontent. The girl twisted and writhed, trying to lock her moans behind clenched teeth.

The child was born at six o’clock on February 5th. It cried loudly as the mid-wife washed it and bundled it in wool. Mary smiled through grimy tears.

It’s a b’y, said the mid-wife, a fine broth of a lad.

We’ll call him John, said Mary, closing her eyes.

*****

So John Morrissey came into the world...a corner of the world that housed the most abject population in Europe. His time was the dreariest in Irish history. Except for Robert Emmet’s abortive insurrection some years before and the demagogic crying of O’Connell, the country had fallen into a state of decrepitude. All life seemed to have passed out of her. From a land conscious of her dignity and importance she had sunk to the level of a starved province. Famine, that ever constant scourge, stalked through the counties, and in its wake came typhus mowing down peasants by the thousands.

Even the most optimistic of Irishmen had given up hope that one day their land would be free. There is always a chance for a people with hope, but for a hopeless people there can be nothing but purgatory.

Behind John Morrissey was a line of ancestors who had starved and stolen and hated all things English since the Revolution of 1688. They were rugged and narrow of thought. They fought for nothing more than the right to live, and survived when living was the hardest task of all. They passed on to John their hardness and strength and intolerance. He was a lusty baby, healthy and hard to manage.

Mary recovered quickly. Irish women could not afford the luxury of rest. Two days after labor she was working as usual. While the boy was still at breast she sold their pigs and sticks of furniture and sacks of potatoes and added another pound or two to the little hoard. It was a pitifully small sum on which to erect the foundation of a new life, but Mary was sure it would be enough. Her eves glowed at the mention of America.

Tim lacked her hope and confidence. He knew nothing but his little corner of Ireland and was afraid of what might lie beyond it. But Mary nurtured a fierce determination that John should have his chance where men were equal. She talked Tim down with her quick tongue, and in the summer of 1832 the little family stood on the Belfast quay, waiting to board an immigrant ship.

The ship was a taste of hell that had not entered into Mary’s calculations. They slept in a breathless, stifling hold that stank of human filth. They ate rotten potatoes and scummy salt pork, and their stomachs rebelled from bad food and seasickness.

The sailors on the lurching tub sought to seduce the apple-cheeked country girls. Some of the girls were willing, and half a dozen became pregnant before the voyage was over. Those who had men folk aboard were the cause of battles between the peasants and rovers of salt waters. Tim engaged in several fights, for Mary had fine, firm breasts and a smiling mouth and was coveted by every man on board.

Morning after morning she rose and went on deck to find herself still in the vast blue bowl of the sea, and hungered for the hills she had known, and wept for the evils they might still have to face. Days turned into terrible weeks and weeks stretched themselves to an almost impossible month before a green shoreline etched itself across the edge of the ocean.

So Hell had its end. The immigrant ship took its untidy way into New York harbor and dropped anchor. Here was the country where little John would have advantages denied him in Ireland...where Tim would get work and they would be gay and comfortable together.

They did not linger in Manhattan. Irish folk are clannish. It is hard enough to pull up roots and settle in a strange land, but to settle where they know no one is unthinkable. There were Templemore people in Troy...the Heenans and the Sheadys and others...so to Troy they went.

The nesting place the Morrisseys found was a disappointment. The city was shabby and dull and poor. Tim moved his little brood into a house that, while an improvement over their shanty and squealing pigs, was not what Mary had dreamed. There was work and poverty in the promised land...but heaven be praised, no English tax-collectors and no tithes.

Tim worked as a laborer for a dollar and six drinks of whisky a day. Children came, year after year, for he was young and passionate and frequently inflamed with drink...girls, all of them, four, five, six.

Hope began to die in Mary’s heart and the laughter went out of her brown eyes. She knew they had done no more than trade the slavery of Ireland for the slavery of America. She was chained to cook-stove and wash-tub and child-bed just as Tim was to his pick.

There was little to expect of or for the girls, God help them. Women of their class had no chance. They married early and had babies and were unhappy year after year. But John...John kept the heart alive in her body. He must be a great man some day.

He was a big child—strong for his years, quick-tempered and demanding—good-looking, too, in an insolent way. There would be no stopping him.

Perhaps they had been wrong in not settling in New York City. It was said the Irish ran the town from the Mayor’s office to the stores on Broadway. Mary shook her head wonderingly when she thought of it. How her people changed when they left their island behind! If those others succeeded, her little Irishman could not fail. He had vigor and sureness of purpose. He had Mary’s soul in his body.

The boy was always wanting things. He would not humbly thank God for the little favors that came his way. He meant to get what he wanted when he wanted it, and he did, briskly and efficiently. When he had the need, he stole fruit or sweetmeats. Several times he felt the hand of the roundsman on his shoulder, and was roughly hailed to the police station. Nothing came of these arrests, for it occurred to nobody that juvenile delinquency should be treated as a disease. There was a heavy Irish vote in Troy, and since Tim, who was popular among his mates, voted the right way, a politician always came to John’s rescue.

The boy had an inherited hate for police and authority that had come down through his forbears along with their strength and romance. These little victories were magnified in his sharp young mind.

Mary worried more about her boy’s wildness than she did about her drudging days or the shortage of money and food or the future of her girls. She had hoped John might become a priest, but soon realized this was impossible. After all, they could afford him no education and a man of God must know everything. Just why omnipotent knowledge is necessary to a wearer of the cloth she did not understand...but it seemed natural to her that this should be so.

There was only one answer to the problems of John’s scalawaggery and the financial necessity of the household. The boy must go to work. He was only twelve years old, but was as big and strong as a lad of fifteen. Compulsory education had not been written into the statute books, nor was child labor considered onerous. So young Morrissey went to work in Orr’s wall paper factory, sixty hours a week for two dollars in hand every seventh day. He did as much labor as a man, though he was still a child in years, and in his immature mind was formulated a disgust for manual labor.

No one who swinked and sweated through his days could ever do more than swink and sweat until he was old and useless. It was not theory, but fact borne out by the procession of life. Young Morrissey had to endure what could not then be changed—but some day he meant to change the pattern.

A year later he left his job for the harder work of