American Civil War: A group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan starts fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City.
The Confederate Army of Manhattan was a group of eight Southern operatives who attempted to burn New York City on or after Evacuation Day, November 25, 1864, during the final stages of the American Civil War.In a plot orchestrated by Jacob Thompson, the operatives infiltrated Union territory by way of Canada and made their way to New York City. On Friday night, November 25, beginning around 8:45pm, the group attempted to simultaneously start fires in 19 hotels, a theater, and P. T. Barnum's American Museum. The objective was to overwhelm the city's firefighting resources by distributing the fires around the city. The hotels included the primary hotels of the day, including the 5th Ward Museum Hotel, Astor House, the Belmont Hotel, the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the Howard Hotel, La Farge House, Lovejoy's Hotel, the Metropolitan Hotel, the St. James Hotel, the St. Nicholas Hotel, the Tammany Hotel, and the United States Hotel.Most of the fires either failed to start or were contained quickly. All the operatives escaped prosecution except Robert Cobb Kennedy, who was apprehended in January 1865 while trying to travel from Canada to the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia.