The Orphan Asylum for Colored Children was visited by
the mob about four o'clock. This Institution is situated
on Fifth Avenue, and the building, with the grounds and
gardens adjoining, extended from Forty-third to
Forty-fourth Street. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands of
the rioters, the majority of whom were women and
children, entered the premises, and in the
most excited and violent manner they ransacked and
plundered the building from cellar to garret. The
building was located in the most pleasant and healthy
portion of the city. It was purely a charitable
institution. In it there are on an average 600 or 800
homeless colored orphans. The building was a large
four-story one, with two wings of three stories each.
When it became evident that the crowd designed to
destroy it, a flag of truce appeared on the walk
opposite, and the principals of the establishment made
an appeal to the excited populace, but in vain.
Here it was that Chief-Engineer Decker showed himself
one of the bravest among the brave. After the entire
building had been ransacked, and every article deemed
worth carrying away had been taken -- and this included
even the little garments for the orphans, which were
contributed by the benevolent ladies of this city -- the
premises were fired on the first floor. Mr. Decker did
all he could to prevent the flames from being kindled,
but when he was overpowered by superior numbers, with
his own hands he scattered the brands, and effectually
extinguished the flames. A second attempt was made, and
this time in three different parts of the house. Again
he succeeded, with the aid of half a dozen of his men,
in defeating the incendiaries. The mob became highly
exasperated at his conduct, and threatened to take his
life if he repeated the act. On the front steps of the
building he stood up amidst an infuriated and
half-drunken mob of two thousand, and begged of them to
do nothing so disgraceful to humanity as to burn a
benevolent institution, which had for its object nothing
but good. He said it would be a lasting disgrace to them
and to the city of New York.
These remarks seemed to have no good effect upon them,
and meantime the premises were again fired -- this time
in all parts of the house. Mr. Decker, with his few
brave men, again extinguished the flames. This last act
brought down upon him the vengeance of all who were bent
on the destruction of the asylum, and but for the fact
that some firemen surrounded him, and boldly said that
Mr. Decker could not be taken except over their bodies,
he would have been dispatched on the spot. The
institution was destined to be burned, and after an hour
and a half of labor on the part of the mob it was in
flames in all parts. Three or four persons were horribly
bruised by the falling walls, but the names we could not
ascertain. There is now scarcely one brick left upon
another of the Orphan Asylum.
Another reporter of the Times says: "During the burning
of the Colored Orphan Asylum a young Irishman, named
Paddy M'Caffrey, with four stage-drivers of the
Forty-second Street line and
the members of Engine Company No. 18, rescued some
twenty of the orphan children who were surrounded by the
mob, and in defiance of the threats of the rioters,
escorted them to the Thirty-fifth Precinct
Station-house. It hardly seems credible, yet it is
nevertheless true, that there were dozens of men, or
rather fiends, among the crowd who gathered around the
poor
children and cried out, "Murder the d -- d monkeys,"
"Wring the necks of the d -- d Lincolnites," etc. Had it
not been for the courageous conduct of the parties
mentioned, there is little doubt that many, and perhaps
all of those helpless children, would have been murdered
in cold blood.
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