"When disunion has become a fixed and certain fact," wrote New York City's Democratic Mayor Fernando Wood to the city common council 18 days after South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, "why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master—to a people and a party that have plundered her revenues, attempted to ruin her commerce?"
Wood proposed that New York City
1) walk out of the Union along with "our aggrieved brethren of the Slave States"; 2) abstain from joining any trouble-starred...
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