America's Corporal: James Tanner in War and Peace

THREE. Brooklyn Days: Becoming Corporal Tanner

CHAPTER THREE Brooklyn Days Becoming Corporal Tanner James Tanner took to the rough-and-tumble politics of Brooklyn like a native. He thrived in the rising economic might and political influence of his new home and embraced the veterans’ culture that offered another kind of support and attention. With the same determination he had demonstrated in overcoming his physical disability, he built a reputation for honesty in one of the most politically corrupt cities in America, carved out niches in the movements that addressed veterans’ needs and promoted sectional reconciliation, and began traveling the country as a public speaker and crusader for the Republican Party and the Grand Army of the Republic (gar).The time and the place were perfectly suited to Tanner’s ambitions. Growing with the City Although a cholera outbreak that year would kill over five hundred residents , Brooklyn was one of the great cities in the United States when the Tanners arrived in 1869. Called the “City of Churches” in the late nineteenth century, Brooklyn dominated Kings County, which occupied the western end of largely rural Long Island, across the East River from Manhattan , and was the third largest city in the United States. It would remain independent until 1898, when it became one of the five boroughs of modern New York City (the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, and Manhattan are the others). Brooklyn was also just recovering from the Civil War, when an unsettled economy and the absence of thousands of husbands and fathers forced the Kings County government to extend nearly half a million dollars in aid to the poor and to house about 5,500 of the worst off in the county almshouse. By the late 1860s, the hard times were starting to fade, and the Tanners came to Brooklyn at the beginning of a period of dramatic growth. The Brooklyn Days 51 population of Brooklyn would soar from 396,099 in 1870 to 566,663 in 1880. James, Mero, and the children would also witness a startling economic expansion during the twenty years they lived in Brooklyn. Construction finished on a massive dry-dock complex to maintain giant ocean-going vessels shortly after their arrival, and dockside warehouses filled with tobacco, hides, wool, coffee, molasses, sugar, and other products represented the city’s role in the national and global economies. Brooklyn businesses refined sugar, distilled liquor, constructed machinery, baked bread, brewed beer, bound books, and refined petroleum. In 1865 there were about five hundred factories in Brooklyn; by 1880 that number had increased more than tenfold. There was also constant construction of streets, businesses, and homes, with nearly twenty thousand buildings going up between 1864 and 1874 alone. As in most American cities, Brooklyn’s residents were deeply divided by money and geography. A third of them were immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and England. Middle-class and well-to-do Brooklynites lived in Brooklyn Heights and on “The Hill.” They patronized the countless shops and stores along Fulton Street that Tanner had marched past with his regiment eight years earlier. But at least for the first decade or two after the Civil War, most residents lived in squalid neighborhoods filled with ramshackle tenements and shacks; on streets polluted with manure, garbage , and dead animals and barely lit at night; and with little access to clean water or sanitation services. Although slums like these would resist change, the Tanners also witnessed the beginning of the construction of massive Prospect Park—still one of New York’s great parks—which eventually covered more than five hundred acres, contained over five miles of lanes and eight miles of walking paths, a playground, several lakes, and fine views of Manhattan. The Prospect Park development was part of a massive expansion of cultural institutions and government services, including the Brooklyn Theater, the sanitary system, and the fire and police departments. Finally, shortly after Tanner’s arrival, one of the most impressive engineering feats of its time, the Brooklyn Bridge, began to rise from opposite banks of the East River. It would be completed in 1883. Tanner never explicitly explained why he ended up in Brooklyn,although it is entirely possible that he had received the appointment before deciding to move. As a disabled veteran, experienced state government appointee, and enthusiastic Republican, he was a likely candidate for an appointment 52 chapter three to the highly politicized customs office in...