A Notable Bully: Colonel Billy Wilson, Masculinity, and the Pursuit of Violence in the Civil War Era

By Robert E. Cray

The definitive biography of a Civil War scoundrel and streetwise politico

Largely forgotten by historians, Billy Wilson (1822–1874) was a giant in his time, a man well known throughout New York City, a man shaped by the city’s immigrant culture, its harsh voting practices, and its efforts to participate in the War for the Union. For decades, Wilson’s name made headlines—for many different reasons—in the city’s major newspapers.

An immigrant who settled in New York in 1842, Wilson found work as a prizefighter, a shoulder hitter, an immigrant runner, and a pawnbroker, before finally entering politics and being elected an alderman. He harnessed his tough persona to good advantage, in 1861 becoming a colonel in command of a regiment of alleged toughs and ex-convicts known as the “Wilson Zouaves.” A poor disciplinarian, however, Wilson exercised little control over his soldiers, and in 1863, unable to maintain order, he was jailed for a number of weeks. Nonetheless, Wilson returned home to a hero’s welcome that year.

Wilson left behind no personal papers, journals, or correspondences, so Robert E. Cray has masterfully woven together a record of Wilson’s life using the only available records: newspaper stories. These accounts present Wilson as a fascinating but highly unlikable man. As Cray demonstrates, Wilson bullied his way into New York, bullied his way into fame and politics, and attempted to bully his way into military greatness. His story depicts the New York City and Civil War experience in bolder, darker hues. As Cray shows us, it was not always a pretty tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781631014536

Book preview

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A Notable Bully

INTERPRETING THE CIVIL WAR

Texts and Contexts

EDITOR

Angela M. Zombek

University of North Carolina, Wilmington

The Interpreting the Civil War series focuses on America’s long Civil War era, from the rise of antebellum sectional tensions through Reconstruction.

These studies, which include both critical monographs and edited compilations, bring new social, political, economic, or cultural perspectives to our understanding of sectional tensions, the war years, Reconstruction, and memory. Studies reflect a broad, national perspective; the vantage point of local history; or the direct experiences of individuals through annotated primary source collections.

Colonel Billy Wilson,

 Masculinity, and the

Pursuit of Violence

 in the Civil War Era

A   

Notable

Bully

Robert E. Cray

  The Kent State University Press Kent, Ohio

© 2021 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Number 2021005739

ISBN 978-1-60635-424-7

Manufactured in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cray, Robert E., author.

Title: A notable bully: Colonel Billy Wilson, masculinity, and the pursuit of violence in the Civil War era / Robert E. Cray.

Other titles: Colonel Billy Wilson, masculinity, and the pursuit of violence in the Civil War era

Description: Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, [2021] | Series: Interpreting the civil war | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021005739 | ISBN 9781606354247 (cloth) | ISBN 9781631014536 (epub) | ISBN 9781631014543 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Wilson, William, 1823-1874. | Politicians--New York (State)-- New York--Biography. | New York (N.Y.)--Politics and government--To 1898. | Boxers (Sports)--New York (State)--New York--Biography. | Political corruption--New York (State)--New York--History--19th century. | United States. Army. New York Infantry Regiment, 6th (1861-1863)--Biography. | United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Regimental histories.

Classification: LCC F128.47 .C885 2021 | DDC 974.7/03092 [B]--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005739

25  24  23  22  21     5  4  3  2  1

To Cindy and Pamela Cray with many thanks,

and to George E. Webb with great thanks

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Immigrant Fighter

2 Wilson Campaigning

3 Defeat and Uncertainty

4 Colonel Billy Wilson and the Zouaves Take Shape

5 Colonel Billy Wilson and the Zouaves at War

6 Colonel Billy Wilson and the Zouaves at Home

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Billy Wilson came to my attention unexpectedly after I finally located a certain ancestor, Stephen Cray, as notorious in his own way as Billy, who happened to serve under him in the Wilson Zouaves. Curiosity compelled me to find out something more about Wilson, and thus began a search through various and sundry locales, unearthing the fact that Wilson was also involved peripherally in a heated campaign to deliver Andrew Jackson’s gold snuff box, an award New York City granted him for wartime military service in 1819, to the bravest man in New York in 1857. That resulted in a journal article The Most Valiant in Defense of his Country: Andrew Jackson’s Bequest and the Politics of Courage, 1819–1857, Journal of the Early Republic 38 (Summer 2018): 231–60, parts of which are reprinted in chapter 3 with permission from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Further searching revealed that Billy Wilson was a character to put it mildly, a bully to put it more forcefully, well known, often for the wrong reasons, to many New Yorkers in the 1840s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Wilson crossed paths with people well known and not known at all, violently carving a niche for himself in Civil War–era New York. That Wilson accomplished what he did, however contemptible, tells us something about this period.

The New York State Archives, the National Archives in Washington, the Municipal Archives of the City of New York, and the invaluable Fifth Avenue Library all aided in the research on this work. A sabbatical in autumn 2018 enabled me to research certain aspects of Wilson’s career, as well as to write various chapters, and so I am grateful to the Office of the Provost at Montclair State University. As always, the Montclair State University Library came through by fulfilling many interlibrary loan requests. I benefited from an understanding chair, Jeff Strickland, who clued me in to certain resources as well as by listening (more than he should have) to my discourses on Colonel Billy, while busily engaged in his own work. Jeff also read a very early version of chapter 6 and deemed it worthy to follow up before I began my other chapters. Other colleagues played no direct role in this study, yet I would be remiss if I did not cite Ben Lapp, an individual with a moral compass in things academic and otherwise; as well as Dawn Hayes and Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia for their work on unrelated academic matters; naturally enough Susan Goscinski, a peerless administrative assistant who retired midway through this project; and Susan Brunda, the expert new administrative assistant in the history department.

Academic mentors from a long-distant past still guided my path, although all of them would be surprised by the route I took. My graduate work focused on early American history, courtesy of the late Jackson T. Main and Ned C. Landsman, and I generally steered my research course in that direction, with forays into the early nineteenth century. Bill Miller introduced me to the new social history, in particular, the nineteenth century, and it may well be because of him that I dared to think the Civil War era was not insurmountable.

This work clearly benefited from the understanding and talented staff at the Kent State University Press, first with William Underwood and then Susan Wadsworth Booth, my first editors, and those valiant, stalwart but unnamed referees whose careful reading and evaluation of this manuscript saved me from various errors while prompting me to improve the product greatly. The two anonymous readers furnished much food for thought and scholarly tomes to consume! They show me, as an early Americanist, why the Civil War era fascinates. Any errors that remain are clearly my fault, for which they are in no way responsible. And thanks to my copyeditor, Erin Holman, who improved the prose so nicely and tactfully.

Then there is the debt I can never professionally repay: George E. Webb, a friend and colleague from afar, showed what real historians can accomplish while beleaguered in a rather unforgiving academic environment quite unlike the congenial setting of Montclair State University. For over thirty years, we have kept in touch via the post and email. And when George volunteered to look over my chapters, I was deeply touched—he is a crack editor and as a historian of science he applied expertise to the strange world of nineteenth-century Gotham, as well as Florida and Louisiana. He helped make this work possible.

Various people, some of whom knew nothing about this work, nonetheless reminded me about the value of friendship over decades past and even more so as the coronavirus descended upon us. Trying times can be made less so when you have friends, academic and otherwise, and thus Mary Rose Lamb, Gary Haber, Mark Dawidziak, and Michael Dawidziak merit thanks.

Finally, there is my family: Cindy Cray has stayed married to a historian who can never quite understand the scientific instruments she tests and the computer bugs she unearths in software, but that gulf has not prevented her from supporting me in my work. My daughter Pam found this study amusing, since it mentions on several pages that notorious ancestor of ours, the great-great grandfather she christened Stabby Cray. And, I suppose, I should give a certain thanks to Stephen Cray for inspiring me to write a book about his former commander. We all have ancestors from whom we learn in different ways.

Colonel Billy Wilson (Col. Wm. Wilson, Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War Era Personalities and Scenes, 1921–1940, Record Group 111, National Archives, Washington, DC, online version http://catalog.gov/id/529379, accessed Aug. 24, 2020)

Introduction

William Wilson’s death in New York City on November 13, 1874, prompted journalistic reflection. The fifty-two-year-old Wilson, according to the New York Times, had organized and commanded the Sixth New York Volunteer Regiment, a Civil War unit popularly known as Billy Wilson’s Zouaves, drawn from an assortment of largely Catholic, laboring-class residents of Manhattan’s lower wards. The troop defiantly promised no quarter against the Southern secessionists in 1861. In response, outraged Southerners threatened to kill any captured northern hirelings. Neither side fully acted on these threats, but Colonel Wilson’s regiment did fight Confederates in Florida and Louisiana before returning to New York in 1863. Wilson went on to be appointed colonel in the Sixty-ninth New York State Militia in 1864. After the war, he was employed in the New York City Custom House then resided in Westchester County as a gentleman farmer. The Times obituary concluded by noting that Wilson’s friends considered him a genial and generous man, and gentle in his demeanor to everybody he came in contact with notwithstanding all reports to the contrary.¹

What did notwithstanding all reports to the contrary mean? Most New Yorkers remembered Wilson better as a brawling Tammany Hall tough and the political henchman of Mayor Fernando Wood, a controversial, divisive politico. Intimidating voters and threatening opponents constituted Wilson’s stock in trade. Such skills (along with links to Wood and Tammany) eased Wilson’s entry into the hurly-burly of urban politics, resulting in his election as a First Ward alderman in 1856. George Templeton Strong, a New York City blueblood and inveterate diarist, denigrated Wilson as that notable aldermanic bully. Wilson’s political comeuppance came in 1857, in the wake of the New York State Democratic Party split, when state legislation and redrawn districts helped turn him out of office. Yet Wilson’s two-fisted persona was not easily forgotten, and by April 1861, the now commissioned Colonel Wilson busily recruited a volunteer regiment. Patrician New Yorkers (George Templeton Strong aside) praised the men; well-to-do society ladies presented flags. That Billy Wilson’s Zouaves sported bowie knives underscored the troops’ appeal as engaging toughs, just the sort of men, many New Yorkers thought, to punish southern secessionists.²

The New York Times’ ironic jabs at Wilson fit the paper’s journalistic style and editorial ideals. After all, the Times represented the broad political center, more identified with Republican Party reformers than Tammany Hall roughnecks, and more intent on exposing political corruption than applauding violent political high jinks. Wilson’s oversized reputation furnished an inviting target. Not everyone accepted this portrait, for in its obituary the New York Sun, a tabloid Democratic paper, extolled Wilson as an incorruptible alderman. Wilson’s rejection of an 1857 bribe by a Lexington Avenue stage company had impressed Peter and Gerald Cooper, New York reformers and Lexington Avenue residents. When the two men wished to show their appreciation, the Sun reported, Wilson declined by declaring, My oath of office is my highest consideration. Wilson’s Civil War regiment, drawn from the adventurous, rough and ready class of New Yorkers, won the tabloid’s praise for the judicious leadership the gallant colonel displayed. The Democratic New York Herald’s obituary on Wilson described the regiment’s recruits as a somewhat rough collection of men, yet praised their commander as patriotic and earnest. The Republican New-York Tribune obituary tacked closer to the Times, reporting Wilson had been legislated out of office in 1857. According to the Tribune, when Wilson’s Zouaves engaged the enemy in Florida, Colonel Wilson’s report greatly exaggerated the force of the enemy, while it contradicted itself as to the losses sustained in killed and wounded by the Zouaves. Gallant leader or incompetent commander, honest politico or crooked officeholder, Wilson drew different verdicts.³

Who actually was the man behind the newsprint? Given Manhattan’s partisan journals, most of which valued a good story colored by editorial tint over factual coverage, that question is less easy to answer. Championing particular political creeds and blasting opponents represented accepted journalistic fare. In turn, Gotham residents read newspapers to be informed and to be entertained. And Wilson, exalderman turned colonel, supplied journalists and readers with plenty of material along those lines. In writing Wilson’s obituary, newspapers attempted one last time to delineate Wilson’s character, divided over his flaws and virtues, while offering colorful descriptions.⁴

Yet, beyond the adjectives and conflicting assessments, the man covered by journalists and judged by editors was, simply put, a bully. Violence and intimidation defined much of Wilson’s persona—enough so for the New York Times obituary to offer the tongue-in-cheek conclusion about his personality certain to elicit knowing nods and winks. To attain personal ends, or the political ends of those above him, Wilson embraced any means fair or foul, and if punches needed to be thrown, he was the man to throw them. Wilson had made bullying pay for him. Among the right people, violence played well in nineteenth-century America; with that, you gained extra clout and attention in political circles by displaying an aggressive, strident form of manhood not shy about fighting. Such men were jolly fellows who brawled, drank, gambled, and played practical jokes, their antics tolerated by men outside their cultural orbit. And as a habitué of lower ward Manhattan, Wilson resided in a locale where such behavior flourished. Setbacks and moral comeuppance aside, he garnered public notoriety that seems to have whetted his desire for more, a bully at heart at ease with himself. This meant something different for other New Yorkers, but they, like so many Americans, were aware that violence extended from city streets to rural plains and even extended into the halls of Congress. Episodes of fighting, mobbing, and killing were too common to ignore.⁵

A study of William Wilson, more popularly nicknamed Billy Wilson, cannot follow the normal biographical contours. Great men and great women often left papers and letters that conveyed a sense of both their personalities and their associates’. Others kept diaries or penned memoirs. Even obscure individuals might leave a trail of private records. Wilson did none of these things. Still, his statements and actions won notice in print, turning him into a recognizable figure immersed in the brutal give and take of mid-nineteenth-century political and military life. In that regard, Wilson makes a worthwhile subject to study, with census reports, newspapers, court records, and military accounts to enhance personal details. Wilson also reflected particular cultural norms characteristic of certain New Yorkers: the cagey, grasping, at times violent newcomer, a small-time political operative and habitué of lower ward Gotham streets all too familiar to residents and journalists. Nineteenth-century Manhattan offered him a chance to earn recognition, although perhaps not esteem, from reformed minded citizens and newspaper editors. Stints as a pugilist, ticket agent, and street brawler prepared Wilson for politics. People such as Mayor Fernando Wood took care to employ Wilson, or not, to best political advantage. That Wood and other politicos survived and even flourished was partially due to such men as Billy Wilson, the shoulder-hitters who moved seamlessly from the ranks of pugilists to political toughs, so often forgotten historically yet so essential to winning elections. Their heavy-handed work securing or deterring voters kept mid-nineteenth-century political machines oiled and running.⁶

Looking at Billy Wilson also means acknowledging the men who served him politically and militarily. Wilson not only attached himself to Gotham’s political overlords, but an assortment of Gothamites attached themselves to Wilson: street toughs, alleged criminals, and laboring folk (sometimes one and the same) joined Billy, which enables us to explore themes of urban violence more broadly than a simple biography might allow by touching on aspects of manhood, politics, ethnicity, white identity, and motivations for fighting the Civil War. Some of Billy’s associates were undoubtedly street toughs above all; many others were Irish Catholic immigrants, hard-pressed laboring men whose robust masculinity made them more apt (when challenged) to display anger than restraint. The Democratic Party provided them a political home to assuage their concerns regarding any perceived links to African Americans, cultural or symbolic. Consequently, fighting in the Civil War enabled Wilson and his men to embrace an American or white identity that drowned out any purely ethnic identity colored by scornful nativists. Defending the Union would legitimize violence—something Wilson and comrades embraced—without suggesting that the Zouaves necessarily fought a war of emancipation to free enslaved people. Valor had racial boundaries. Whether such individuals led by ex-pugilist Wilson could become a professional military unit remains an intriguing historical question. Battles in Florida and Louisiana would test these supposed Bowery B’hoys and their colonel far from their usual lower Manhattan haunts. Wilson would learn what command responsibilities entailed; military professionals would discover what furnishing Wilson a regiment meant for the Union war effort. How his Zouaves would respond would prove equally instructive.⁷

It took Wilson some effort to reach this plateau. His early life, although revealing hints of the pugnacious alderman to come, remains obscure and his parentage uncertain. The New York Times claimed Wilson was a young English-born immigrant who landed on Manhattan’s shores while a minor. English migrants assimilated more easily than their more numerous Irish or German counterparts; indeed, language and religion gave them an advantage over foreign speakers, leading one historian to label them invisible immigrants. Other newspapers stated Wilson had been born in Ireland. Given their sheer numbers, Irish immigrants were far from invisible. We do know that Wilson was Catholic; we just cannot be certain whether he was born in England or in Ireland. Whatever his origins, young Wilson soon became visible: the Times reported that the future alderman employed his great physical strength to become a professional fighter. Pugilists won notice for mastery of the manly arts, going round after round in bloody contests. When not fighting, Wilson seconded Yankee Sullivan, a heavy weight champion and crowd favorite, in a big 1853 money fight, a vital part of the champ’s entourage.⁸

None of the cited obituaries, however, commented on Billy Wilson having taken the fight game to another venue or level during the bloody Astor Place Riots of 1849. The arrival of a British actor, William Charles Macready, set class-divided New Yorkers on edge. The Astor Place Opera House hosted Macready in Macbeth, with partisans of American-born actor Edwin Forrest, a rival, intent on disrupting the performance. Many of Forrest’s laboring-class backers filled the theater, much to the dismay of the affluent Macready supporters. Violence spilled out into the streets, resulting in more than twenty deaths. What was Wilson’s role in the fracas? Wilson threw a chair from the balcony, prompting several other patrons to follow suit. An English immigrant who supported an American actor over a former countryman, or an Irish immigrant disdainful of English actors? What can be said is that Wilson identified more closely with laboring-class Americans than imported British thespians, a loyal Democratic party slugger to the core.⁹

Out of the ring, Wilson worked as a steamship-line ticket agent who employed immigrant runners to drum up trade. These individuals foisted outrageously priced tickets on unsuspecting newcomers, part and parcel of steamship-line tactics to garner customers. In the 1840s and 1850s, ticket agents often relied on unscrupulous operatives, their cronies in the racket, to fleece new arrivals. Cheating immigrants became so pronounced that in 1855 New York City set aside Castle Garden, on the southern tip of Manhattan, as a secure immigrant landing place, off limits to immigrant runners. For Wilson, steamship ticket agent aka immigrant runner employer, runins with authorities continued, underscoring the sharp practices of ticket agents and runners.¹⁰

Such shenanigans, if deplorable to reform-minded Gotham residents, gave Wilson entre to municipal politics. In their various incarnations, antebellum New York political parties at times resembled rival camps of fighters, featuring political heavyweights atop an undercard of assorted political lightweights; there were those who campaigned openly for office, those who seconded candidates by working the streets and watching the ballot box, and a select few wire-pullers, or managers, who recruited candidates behind the scenes. That some of these individuals were indeed pugilists made the boxing analogy all the more accurate. At times, competing candidates and their followers clashed with their opposition numbers. Wilson could throw a punch—or a chair—with the best of them, hence Democratic Party power brokers employed him as a street tough, a shoulder-hitter, in the parlance of the times, before he became a candidate. Corralling voters to ensure they went to the polls did not necessarily require fisticuffs; keeping contrary voters from the ballot box might. Naturalized citizens and native-born Americans competed for dominance, and Tammany Hall Democrats fought Whigs, Nativists, Free-Soilers, Republicans, and other Democrats to ensure their candidates’ election. Wilson’s connection to Mayor Fernando Wood prompted the reform-bent New-York Tribune to label him Wood’s fugleman, a ringleader or military person who demonstrates the drill.¹¹

Yet, when their opponents secured state legislative control, Wilson and Wood found New York Republicans too big to topple. The Municipal Police force loyal to Wood, eliminated by the state-created Republican-controlled Metropolitan Police force, signaled the changes in store for Wood and Wilson in 1857. State Democratic Party divisions added to the political uncertainty, and, after losing their offices that year, both men endured a spate of political exile. Ex-alderman Wilson’s attempted comeback as a Mozart Hall Democrat loyal to Fernando Wood fell short. Instead, Wilson turned to real estate, becoming a First Ward businessman. Ex-mayor Wood later enjoyed a second act by narrowly winning election as mayor in 1859. Wilson failed in his attempt to win state office the same year, finding himself politically marginalized—until war erupted in 1861, delivering Billy Wilson new employment and renewed status.¹²

The Civil War afforded New Yorkers ample opportunities to display patriotism. Too few regular troops meant volunteer regiments were required to answer President Lincoln’s April 1861 call for seventyfive thousand men, to crush the insurrection. And Billy Wilson’s White Street lower Manhattan recruitment station, a well-known gaming site featuring dog and rat fights, drew recruits. New York City had many volunteer regiments, identified by occupation, ethnicity, or class, but Wilson’s Zouaves fascinated New Yorkers as much as their newly commissioned colonel did, deemed among the most notorious raised and journalistically depicted as such—a sentiment that many southerners would come to second. People flocked to the troops’ Staten Island training camp to see Colonel Wilson and his boys; the sight of reputed pickpockets, burglars, and street toughs preparing to fight for the Union was too good to miss. Newspapers detailed their sendoff. When Wilson’s men balked at the steamship departure to Florida, hoping for promised pay and one more day of liberty, discipline fell apart, and Wilson fell from the ship’s bridge vainly trying to restore order.¹³

Harper’s Weekly proudly featured Colonel Wilson in an engraving based on a Mathew Brady photo. The story emphasized the troops’ rough qualities and their recently heralded commander. Even so, the regiment’s first taste of battle, in October, showed men still learning to fight, a commander still learning to lead. Courts-martial had taken place before the engagement at Santa Rosa Island (the site of Fort Pickens), indicating a regiment in need of discipline. Billy survived the Confederate attack, enjoying the Union occupation of Pensacola in 1862, until his regiment’s transfer to Louisiana that year offered new challenges, illustrating the Zouaves’ penchant for violence and ingrained racial attitudes. At one point in 1863, Wilson lost command of the regiment, arrested without being charged, until the unit finished its term of service. Nevertheless, New York City welcomed both Wilson and the Zouaves home in June 1863, and officials turned to the regiment in July when the Draft Riots upended Manhattan.¹⁴

Wilson lived more quietly over the next few years. His appointment to the colonelcy of the Sixty-ninth New York State Regiment involved no campaigning, since Federal officials nixed the appointment. Wilson survived courtesy of his political connections and the New York City Custom House, a repository of bribery and overall corruption. As a custom house inspector entitled to four dollars a day, Wilson drew a modest sum; those interested in graft could garner much greater actual amounts. How much Billy Wilson might have pocketed cannot be guessed, yet a man who owned a Westchester farm, in Chappaqua, near Horace Greeley’s and sponsored racehorses had done rather well.¹⁵

This book provides a microhistory on certain aspects of violence, urban politics, manhood, ethnicity, race, and the Civil War—themes and topics already richly covered but perhaps less commonly explored from the perspective of such people as Billy Wilson and his Zouaves. It also qualifies as a biography of sorts, a subset of history often embraced gingerly by academics, fearful about either loving or hating their subjects too much. The would-be biographer must blend intimacy with distance, in Jill Lepore’s words, to maintain historical perspective. Historians have not been unaware of Billy Wilson: Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, in their Pulitzer Prize–winning tome, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, discuss Wilson and his men, briefly depicting both as part of Gotham’s patriotic surge in the spring of 1861. In The Civil War and New York City, Ernest A. McKay furnishes four pages, two dealing with Wilson’s departure to war in 1861, and two with his 1863 Manhattan return. Adrian Cooke supplies a footnote about the Wilson Zouaves in his treatment of the 1863 draft riots. And John Strausbaugh gives several pages on Wilson and the Zouaves in his book on Gotham and the Civil War. Civil War historians typically reference the colonel and the regiment at Fort Pickens. Left uncovered, and understandably so, has been Wilson the individual; the street tough’s evolution to alderman and regimental colonel has gone unnoticed, just as the war time and postwar lives of the Wilson Zouaves remain unexplored. Wilson does embody a small player on a large stage peopled by better-known historical actors, except that he casts a disproportionate shadow in a Civil War–era drama, active, along with his Zouaves, in such varied settings as New York, Florida, and Louisiana. Both commander and soldiers elicited popular interest and disdain that merited and made news among both Northerners and Southerners.¹⁶

What follows, then, is an attempt to keep Billy Wilson close to the reader, but not so close that his flaws overwhelm any consideration for the challenges he faced. Nor should Billy be seen as a lovable rogue, whose high spirits and brutal tendencies just happened to define his actions. Billy Wilson embodied a larger-than-life persona, at once colorful and contemptible—not unlike other Gotham residents striving to push ahead regardless of means. The Zouaves were not mere extensions of their commander, although many New Yorkers preferred to see them as such, but people who made choices as to how they lived and fought. Together, commander and recruits depict the New York City and Civil War experience in bold, dark hues. It was not always a pretty tale.

Chapter 1 introduces Billy Wilson immigrant, fighter, and ticket agent, a man who used associations and personal violence as a stepladder to political office. Much of the information about Wilson presented here comes from scattered accounts, occasional mention in newspapers, and some early census records. When buttressed with material about the urban immigrant and sporting experience, a background of sorts develops, providing insight into the actions behind the man. The chapter creates a platform for understanding the public man Wilson became and the sort of stage antebellum New York City presented to such individuals. What Billy did in the ring or the streets eased his entry into politics.

Violence provided Wilson’s modus operandi, as revealed in the second chapter. The man with the muscle could enforce rough justice at a moment’s notice, but it took a political machine to harness that energy for electoral ends. And Tammany Hall party bigwigs relied on scores of minor figures to connect them to the voters in the street. Those who proved themselves especially loyal (or popular) might reach political office. What Billy Wilson accomplished was not unusual; however, as a political henchman loyal to the bosses, he reveals a new meaning in understanding the operations of antebellum urban politics through the street-level prism of his actions.

Billy Wilson’s political career received a surprising setback in the municipal election of 1857. As described in chapter 3, Wilson found that connection to Mayor Fernando Wood failed to guarantee reelection in the wake of a Tammany Hall split. Both mayor and alderman went down to defeat. For Wood, there would in time be a return to office; for Wilson, no elective political office proved forthcoming. Indeed, despite business interests promising a steady stream of revenue, Wilson had reached a career low point. He abandoned his political overlord, Fernando Wood, in 1859, backed a Tammany candidate for mayor, and lost the electoral gamble. With Wood restored to power and the Tammany Society left reeling, where would Wilson fit in the political order? That Wilson pulled an opponent’s nose in front of City Hall in 1860, a particularly insulting assault, did not restore his political career.

The secession of the eleven southern states returned Wilson to public favor. His recruitment efforts as the colonel of a volunteer regiment showed that New Yorkers appreciated street-tough brawlers and rough-hewed recruits. The Civil War commands both scholarly and popular attention, distinguished by scores of books each year on men and women, white and black, commanders, soldiers, nurses, and enslaved people, not to mention those concerned with politics, diplomacy, and the economy. What a study of Billy Wilson adds is the political street fighter turned commander, a relatively unstudied historical topic that nevertheless fascinated the national press. Chapter 4 underscores how Billy Wilson and his Zouaves garnered state and national attention: Wilson’s recruits drew Northerners and Southerners to comment about alleged Bowery B’hoys under arms, especially with their colorful commander supplying quotable moments before they even faced an adversary.

Chapter 5 shows the colonel and the Zouaves fighting and occupying the Confederate Gulf States. Their baptism by fire began on October 9, 1861, the consequence of a nighttime raid by nearby Pensacola Confederates on the troops’ Santa Rosa encampment. The men lost their tents and supplies. Wilson lost a measure of respect—official reports and certain newspapers detailed professional ineptitude. Others continued to defend Wilson. Nevertheless, entering Pensacola in the spring of 1862, commander and troopers did a stint of relatively placid occupation duty. The regiment’s embarkation to Louisiana later that year guaranteed future fighting—and not all of it with Confederates. The Zouaves began to show signs of professionalism while retaining a rascally aura. However, Colonel Wilson’s command deficiencies were too glaring to overlook and led to his arrest in 1863. Wilson returned to orchestrate the troop’s June departure for New York—their two-year service done—and most Northern papers kept Wilson’s disgrace quiet.

Finally, there are Colonel Wilson and the men at home, the focus of chapter 6. Billy’s Lambs, as he called them, had captured newspaper readers’ imagination, fascinated by the streetwise brawlers and convicts depicted. Broad-brush labels such as Bowery B’hoys do an injustice to their identities, despite what newspapers readers wished to believe. Not all were maulers or thieves, although some embodied a burly Manhattan street scene distinguished by drinking, fisticuffs, and theft; others were rough-looking laboring-class individuals or middle-class, white-collar folk intent on a fighting brand of patriotism. What did two years of service as volunteers mean to these veterans? What did they mean for Colonel Billy? Newspapers provide a glimpse into the subsequent lives of Billy and his Lambs, as well as the public remembrance of them and their commander.

William Wilson, immigrant, fighter, operative, politician, soldier, and, above all, New Yorker—this is his story and indeed a story familiar to many Gothamites and Americans. Wilson’s odyssey across the city streets took him from the boxing ring to the political arena and then the battlefield. Many Manhattan residents, especially immigrants, made similar journeys, exposed to violence and striving to survive, working for political parties, and enlisting when the Civil War erupted. But few had been successful prizefighters linked to noted heavyweights such as Yankee Sullivan; few pugilists won election to the Common Council, although many naturalized and nativeborn citizens threw their votes behind such men. And, naturally, few striving individuals became so closely tied to a New York City mayor before commanding a volunteer Civil War regiment of the rougher element, reinventing themselves (or not) among their fellow New Yorkers. Billy Wilson’s journey reflected and transcended the mid-nineteenth-century New York experience, drawing shoulderhitters, pugilists, and working-class Americans to fight alongside him. The challenges newcomers to Gotham faced were Wilson’s challenges too. He just pushed harder, more violently, to achieve his goals, praised or condemned by New York’s partisan press, a figure of public and, dare it be said, historical interest. His Zouaves would certainly have agreed.

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Immigrant Fighter

Colonel Wilson was a native of England, stated the man’s New York Times obituary, who came to this country as a minor. This short, emphatic statement left unanswered whether young William Wilson arrived at age eighteen or twenty-one, but a youth landing at Manhattan wharves was commonplace: thousands of young men arrived annually before the Civil War, pushed by adversity, drawn by hope of opportunity. Nevertheless, the New York Sun’s obituary begged to differ, asserting Wilson was Irish-born. That the Republican Times and Democratic Sun disagreed hardly surprises. Everyone knew Wilson to be an immigrant and onetime staunch Democrat; his uncertain ancestry simply provided an air of mystery beyond the normal journalistic partisanship. In antebellum America, immigrants might assume new identities, create distinct personae, and in so doing sometimes obscure their ethnic backgrounds. That Billy Wilson left people guessing should come as no surprise.¹

Was Wilson Irish or English? That simple question creates a puzzle not easily resolved. Surname analysis, admittedly imperfect, reveals Wilson a solidly English name dating back to the fourteenth century. Ireland contained people of English and Scottish heritage, just as England contained Irish and Scottish immigrants, which may explain some of the confusion surrounding Wilson’s background. So, too, an Irish mother and English father might be responsible for William Wilson’s uncertain ancestry. The Irish Sea was both bridge and barrier. In any event, antebellum New Yorkers often defined people by ethnicity. Immigrants jostled with native-born Americans (nonindigenous individuals, that is), some of whom were also newcomers to Manhattan from rural New York or surrounding states. Opportunity or necessity beckoned to both groups, and identification by ethnicity (as much as religion, class, and race) labeled people in early republic Manhattan.²

For William Wilson, ethnic identity also depended on an official designation. For a small class of people, discerning heritage was a job: census marshals employed in gathering federal and state tallies often inquired about a householder’s birthplace and asked a host of other questions about age, family size, and occupation. As required by law, marshals could directly ask William Wilson, or someone in his household, about his background. Failing to find anyone at home, they might turn to a neighbor to volunteer information. Census marshals in 1850 listed William Wilson as a pawnbroker born in England in 1822, corroborating the Times account that he had been a native of England. His wife, Anne, age twenty-five, was also English born, as was Wilson’s sister (or sister-in-law) Sarah, age twenty-four, her three young children New York–born. In 1855, New York State census marshals declared Wilson Irish-born and Anne Wilson a native New Yorker. Sarah