The Shakespeare Riot

What's Past is Prologue?

William Shakespeare wrote that line more than 400 years ago for his play, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1.

People have said it on stage and off for nearly half a millennia.

It means that the events of the past always set the stage for the future.

It's an enduring statement that grows more relevant by the day.

Back in the mid-1800s, New York City was not the international hub of commerce, arts, media, and finance that it is today.

It was a a place where violent gangs and corrupt political figures ran the city out in the open with no fear of the law.

This is the story of a time when New York City was a powder keg ready to blow, and a simple performance of Shakespeare was all it took to light the fuse and blow up the power dynamics of America.

On today's episode, The Shakespeare Riot.

This is a twist of history.

It's March of 1849 in the Five Points neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York, one of the most notorious slums in the United States.

An Irish immigrant in his early 20s named John Moore walks down the street as the sun sets, and he feels his boots sinking into the ground.

Five Points was built on a drained pond, but something must have gone wrong along the way because water and waste bubble up through the ground constantly.

The streets are wet and muddy and the stench is crippling to anyone who isn't used to it.

John lives here though, so he continues down the street oblivious to the smell.

As he walks, everyone he passes nervously smiles and nods because John's a known member of the 40 Thieves, one of the oldest and most powerful Irish street gangs in Five Points.

John tips his cap to them and walks past a row of tenement houses, wooden or brick buildings that offer cheap apartments.

But most of these apartments are windowless, dirt-floor rooms packed tight with entire families of Irish immigrants.

Five Points got its name because it sprung up around a spot where several streets intersect to form Five Points in the road.

But outsiders who visit, including famous writers like Charles Dickens and Walt Whitman, don't talk about this intersection like it's just the center of a poor New York neighborhood.

Instead, they describe it like it's the gate to hell.

And they decry politicians and wealthy business leaders in the city for allowing fellow New Yorkers to live in such terrible conditions.

But for John and many other young people, Five Points is home, and as run down as it might be, they think it has plenty to offer.

John hears shouts and laughter coming from a building on the street, and his face lights up.

This is his favorite saloon that sells cheap liquor.

He's been working all day, digging roads and ditches in wealthier parts of the city.

The The work is brutal, but it puts a little money in his pocket and tonight, he's ready to spend it.

John walks into the saloon and amidst the shouting and laughing, he hears a few older men speaking Irish and someone playing the fiddle in a dark corner.

The saloon is a place where Irish immigrants can get together and experience a small taste of the home they had to leave behind.

A few years earlier, the potato famine began in Ireland.

Crops have been wiped out and food is scarce.

The famine has already killed close to a million people and left far more starving and destitute.

Many Irish natives blame the mass casualties of the famine on neglect and poor leadership from the British government that still rules over Ireland at the time.

Regardless of the causes, the famine has led tens of thousands of people, mostly poor Irish Catholics, to flee to America, desperately searching for a better life.

But they came without money or formal education and they've faced mass discrimination because of their heritage and their religion.

So many have ended up living in the cheapest, most dangerous American neighborhoods like Five Points.

Inside the saloon, John slaps down a coin on the bar and orders a whiskey.

The bartender slides him a glass, and he drinks while he listens to the music and talks to some other young 40 Thieves members who are already there.

Five Points is home to a diverse group of residents, including German immigrants, the first small wave of Italian immigrants, and a substantial black population, many of whom escaped slavery in the South.

But the neighborhood's Irish Catholic population is growing fastest, and they've remained a tight-knit group.

The Irish have taken over entire tenements and started a number of street gangs.

Young Irish men and women see these gangs as the only way they can protect themselves against violent anti-Irish, anti-Catholic groups who want them to get out of New York and sail back across the Atlantic.

John finishes his whiskey and orders another.

But before he can take a swig, a loud sound pierces through the noise of the saloon.

The fiddle player stops playing and everyone listens.

There's no mistaking the sound.

People on the street are ringing the firebells.

Something is burning.

John slams his drink and he and the other 40 thieves run out of the saloon.

Because along with starting gangs, the Irish immigrants in Five Points have also formed volunteer fire brigades.

In fact, almost every volunteer fire unit in Five Points in the surrounding area is run by a street gang.

And more than that, the gangs function as shadow governments in these neighborhoods.

Along with fighting fires, they provide security for business owners and merchants in lieu of the police, and they serve as de facto city councils.

This is because New York City is rapidly growing into a major domestic and international trade hub, the beginnings of what will one day make it the center of American finance, commerce, and entertainment.

But at the time, the city government has limited resources and manpower to deal with all the issues that growth brings, like rising crime rates and a need for increased infrastructure.

And the city doesn't spend the resources they do have on poor immigrant neighborhoods.

And that's been a financial boon for the gangs.

Running neighborhoods like Five Points gets them kickbacks from business owners they protect and local politicians who hire gangs as muscle to help carry out their agendas.

Outside, John feels a blast of heat and chokes as smoke billows into the road.

He sees flames leaping from one of the nearby wooden tenements and families rushing out of the burning building.

Because of how poorly the tenements are built, with cheap materials and little ventilation, they're known as fire traps and blazes like this happen a lot.

John and about 25 other members of the gang who've quickly shown up rush down the street to their volunteer fire station.

Once inside, they quickly load up a small wagon with empty wooden buckets and barrels.

They pull the wagon out of the the station and head back down the street towards the closest fire pump where they can fill the buckets and barrels with water.

But when they get about halfway to the blaze they stop cold.

Because moving towards the fire from the other end of the street, they see a group of men who all wear red shirts and tall stovepipe hats.

This is another volunteer fire brigade.

But with one look at those red shirts, John knows they're not from Five Points.

They're from a neighborhood about a mile away called the Bowery.

They call themselves the Washington Street Gang, but everybody else calls all the well-dressed young men like these from their neighborhood by the same name, the Bowery Boys.

And John can tell the Bowery Boys are looking for a fight.

In 1849, the United States doesn't have government-run fire departments.

Instead, big cities like New York have a number of volunteer fire brigades, but there's a major catch.

These groups only get paid by insurance companies or building owners if they're the first ones who arrive at the fire.

So it's common for rival firemen, who are also in rival gangs, to fight over who gets to put out a fire, even if that means letting the building burn.

On the street, John hears one of the 40 thieves' leaders shout that they won't back down.

John and the others scream out a war cry.

On the Bowery boy's side, one voice bellows above the rest, and John feels a rush of fear come over him.

There, lit by the flames, he sees one Bowery boy with a reputation that matches his size.

At a time when the average American male is 5'7, this man stands over 6 feet tall and weighs at least 200 pounds.

This is their leader and John and his gang know this man's a skilled fighter and that he and his gang hate Irish Catholics.

The Bowery boys let out a war cry of their own and the two gangs rush toward each other.

John grabs a young man in a red shirt and throws a punch while the others do the same, and a massive brawl breaks out.

Both gangs fight hard and they fight dirty, but nobody's a match for the massive leader of the Bowery boys.

His hands are like hammers, drawing blood on every strike.

Suddenly, the fight comes to an abrupt halt as the sound of wooden police rattles rings out.

But when the gangs see the police approaching, all they do is smile.

If the firefighters are ill-equipped, the police are even worse off.

because there are only a few officers wearing their own clothes and armed with nothing but lightweight wooden clubs.

The police quickly realize they're no match for the gangs and retreat.

The brawl and the fire rage on.

Out of nowhere, John feels a fist crack against his face and he crumples to the ground.

He tries to get up, but there's no escape.

The leader of the Bowery boys is now on top of him.

The man jabs his fingers into John's eyes and starts gouging.

John screams and tries to get free as blood runs down his cheeks.

But the leader isn't done.

He opens his mouth and rips off part of John's nose with his teeth.

Then he moves on to someone else.

John cries and shakes.

The pain is unbearable.

And he already knows, even if he makes it through this, his fighting days are over.

He hears one of the 40 Thieves members shouting to retreat.

A fellow gang member picks him up and he stumbles down the street.

John's vision is blurred.

But as his gang flees to the safety of their firehouse, he sees the leader of the Bowery Boys' face splattered with blood, shouting commands to his gangs as they fill their barrels and put out the fire.

The Bowery Boys have badly beaten their rivals, and now they'll get paid for doing it.

It's an evening in March of 1849, a few weeks after the gang fight at a seedy bar just south of Five Points.

28-year-old Ned Buntline puffs on a cigar, throws back a drink, and listens to a local political leader give an an impassioned speech in front of a small crowd about escalating gang violence and five points in the Bowery.

Ned's a lot of things, a writer, an adventurer, and owner of a self-published newspaper called Ned Buntline's Own.

Ned's also what he would call a myth-maker.

He loves creating myths about America and himself.

According to one version of his life story, Ned once survived a gunshot wound, a leap from a three-story window, and getting strung up by a noose, all in the same day, when he'd run afoul of the father of a teenage girl he'd taken an interest in.

Of course, it's difficult to tell if a single part of that story or any story Ned tells is true, because even the name Ned Buntline is a creation.

He was born Edward Judson, and Ned Buntline has become more than a pen name.

It's a character.

an alter ego who can have any past he wants.

But right now, above everything else, Ned's just angry.

The man speaking in the bar is Isaiah Rinders, a leader of Tammany Hall, which is the name people use for the executive committee of the Democratic Party of New York City, and also a political machine that has dominated the city for 60 years, almost as long as the United States has been a country.

These aren't just any political influencers.

Rinders and the men of Tammany Hall are known to exploit the mass corruption running rampant in the city for their own gain, paying off powerful people when they need to.

They also employ gang members from the Bowery who can win elections with a knife or gun when they can't be won with a bribe.

Ned has been associated with Tammany Hall for years, but he's finding that association hard to swallow because he's listening to Reinders talk about recruiting Irish Catholic immigrants to support Tammany Hall's candidates in upcoming elections.

And Ned cannot stand Irish Catholics, or any immigrants for that matter.

Like the Bowery boys, Ned is what's called a nativist, a man who believes America is for Americans and that foreigners have no business living and working in the United States.

He thought members of Tammany Hall felt the same way.

When they first dabbled in gaining Irish support for elections a few years earlier, it just seemed like another tactic to bully people into voting how Tammany Hall won it.

But now, with this speech, Reinders is actively recruiting members of the 40 Thieves and other Irish gangs to provide muscle for Tammany Hall in five points.

To Ned, that's borderline treason.

Rinders finishes his speech and the men in the bar applaud.

Ned takes another drag of his cigar, stands up and goes and shakes Rinders' hand.

Ned might be angry, but he's not stupid.

Rinders is a powerful man who's always been good to Ned, and Ned has no intention of making him an enemy.

But when Ned steps outside and heads down the street, He feels dirty just having listened to that speech.

He tries to shake it off and he tells himself, soon, he won't have to deal with this anymore.

Because Ned and some like-minded men have political plans of their own, and those plans have nothing to do with Tammany Hall.

Ned is one of the leaders of the growing American Party, a party that stands up for what he calls real Americans.

According to Ned, somebody can only be a real American if they're white, Protestant, born in the United States, and working class.

Because Ned doesn't just want to fight against immigrants, he also also wants to destroy wealthy New Yorkers who he believes still have deep ties to the British.

In 1849, America and Britain aren't the close allies they'd one day become.

It's only been 66 years since the American Revolutionary War ended in 1783 and the American colonies split from Britain to form the United States.

And it's just a little over 30 years since the two nations fought on American soil in the War of 1812.

Some political leaders still see Britain as a threat, if not militarily, then socially and economically.

They believe the British and their rich American counterparts are just an extension of the old aristocracy and the monarchy, who want to rule over everyone they see as below them.

And for Ned, the fact that the British even still have a connection to the United States flies in the face of everything Americans revolted against.

Of course, when Ned spouts his populist, pro-worker, anti-wealth rhetoric in public or in his newspaper, he leaves out the fact that he owns several properties and a yacht, and that his wife is British.

Later that night, after spending some time working on his paper, Ned makes his way to the Bowery Theater less than a mile from Five Points.

The moment he walks in, the anger he's felt since hearing the Tammany Hall recruiting speech disappears.

Ned likes seeing theater, especially in venues like the Bowery.

that cater to young, working-class nativist audiences.

As Ned heads down the aisle, he spots a group of young, well-dressed nativist men he'd hope to see.

These are classic Bowery boys.

They come here to enjoy music, dancing, and plays, but they also know theaters like this are great places to drink and to meet prostitutes.

In fact, that's one of the reasons Ned comes here too.

But tonight, he's not looking for women.

He's at the theater to network.

Before the show starts, Ned mingles with some of the Bowery boys, getting the latest details of their escalating feud with the Irish gangs in Five Points.

These young men know and respect Ned because he uses his platform as a writer and publisher to speak up for their cause, the nativist cause, and to argue that Americans are being overrun by immigrants.

For his part, Ned understands that if the American party is going to become a force to be reckoned with, he'll need gangs from the Bowery on his side.

Some of the boys tell him how useless the police were in their latest battle.

They tell Ned that the Bowery boys pay the police off, so they should have done more.

Ned bursts bursts out laughing.

He says the New York police are nothing but glorified night watchmen who couldn't break up a dogfight, let alone a gang war.

If some officers will take a bribe and help them out when they need it, that's fine.

But he says they don't have any real power.

At the time, Ned isn't the only one who feels this way, because the New York Police Department is still a fledgling organization, just four years old.

There are only about 900 officers in a city with a population of roughly 500,000, and there's frequent turnover, so there are constantly new officers who don't have any real experience.

The department doesn't even have uniforms and the only weapons officers carry are wooden clubs.

Music comes from the stage and the gaslights in the theater dim.

Ned grabs a seat and the play starts.

But Ned's more interested in the audience than what's happening on stage.

The Bowery boys and other working class men and women shout at the actors and cheer and hiss to show their approval or disdain for certain parts of the play.

This behavior is common in places like the Bowery Theater and most of the actors love it.

But Ned knows the well-mannered audiences at New York's expensive theaters and opera houses would be appalled by this scene.

Ned doesn't really care either way.

But watching the Bowery boys yell and cheer, he knows he can exploit this kind of energy to increase anti-immigrant sentiments in New York City and to bolster the American party.

It's like he's staring at a powder keg that's already primed.

He just needs to figure out how and when to light the fuse.

It's April 1849, a few weeks after Ned Buntline's night at the theater with the Bowery boys.

Today he's walking down Broadway with his friend in New York City.

His friend is an aspiring politician.

and Ned really wants to win him over to the American Party.

Ned tells his friend it's clear that immigrants are stealing jobs from American workers, and many wealthy people are helping this happen.

Maybe the rich want to appear charitable, or maybe they just want cheap immigrant labor.

Either way, Ned says it's up to hard-working, honest men like the two of them to make sure the American Party gains steam across the country so they can stop the immigrant takeover.

His friend listens as Ned continues his pitch.

But in the middle of the conversation, they both hear the wheels of a carriage rolling across the cobblestones, and this carriage is moving fast.

They stop talking and they see the horses pulling the carriage coming right at them.

The men rush out of the way as the carriage comes to a stop.

The door flies open.

A woman wearing an expensive-looking dress steps out.

Ned recognizes her immediately.

Her name is Kate Hastings, and she runs a brothel on Leonard Street that Ned frequently visits.

Recently, after going to that brothel, Ned blackmailed Kate, threatening to write about her illegal prostitution business in his newspaper if she didn't pay him a large sum of money.

Blackmail is a tactic Ned uses a lot with brothels and gambling dens in town, and it usually works.

But Kate refused to pay, so Ned followed through with his threat, printing a story about the brothel, listing its address, and calling out Kate by name.

Before Ned can say a word on the street, Kate grabs him by the collar and yells at him.

How dare he write about her in his paper?

In a flash, she pulls a bull whip out from under her skirt and begins beating Ned over the head with the handle.

Ned throws his hands up to protect himself, but he doesn't fight back.

And Kate keeps hitting him with her whip as Ned's friends look on in shock and people stop to watch and jeer.

Ned hears the laughter of the onlookers.

He's livid, but more than that, he's embarrassed.

He shouts, breaks free from Kate, and takes off running down Broadway.

Ned doesn't wait long to strike back.

In the following weeks, he sues Kate and goes after her for what she did in the street and for running an illegal brothel.

But it blows up in his face, because Kate exposes him as a blackmailer and a hypocrite in court.

The judge chastises Ned and only finds Kate six cents.

It's clear Ned's little blackmailing scheme has come to an end.

But the greatest indignity Ned suffers comes when the publisher of the major New York newspaper, The Herald, A man named James Gordon Bennett, runs a story mocking Ned for what happened on Broadway and in court.

Now, people all over the city know his shame.

Ned already can't stand Bennett.

He sees him as a pretentious, arrogant member of the upper class.

But Ned also despises Bennett because he's British.

As a leader of the American Party, Ned never hides his anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner beliefs.

And even though his wife is from England, Ned particularly hates the British.

Like many other Americans, he still considers the British a threat.

The United States is a young democracy, and he believes connections with Britain could cause the U.S.

to slide back into rule by a small group of wealthy men.

He even delights in calling the British Redcoats, the name given to British soldiers during the Revolutionary War, as if that war that ended over 60 years ago is still being fought.

Now, Ned really wants to get even.

Not just at Bennett for printing his article, but at the whole of Great Britain.

And as he gets angrier, he decides he wants to do something big.

Something that in one fell swoop will deal a blow to the British, as well as New York's rich and powerful, and make the American Party a force in national politics.

It's May 1st, 1849, at the office of Ned Buntline's newspaper near Broadway in New York City.

Ned sits at his desk, poring over a stack of national newspapers and scribbling notes.

Ned is still focused on revenge, but he also has a paper to get out.

He needs stories that will excite his nativist readers.

He scans the papers and one story immediately grabs his attention.

It's from a publication out of Cincinnati, Ohio.

As Ned reads it, he can't stop laughing.

The story is about a famous British Shakespearean actor named William McCready.

He's been touring the United States for a few months, performing some of Shakespeare's most famous roles like Hamlet and Macbeth.

But on McCready's opening night in Cincinnati, his performance got completely derailed because some people in the audience threw half of a sheep carcass onto the stage.

As a theatergoer, Ned's familiar with McCready.

The man's a legend when it comes to Shakespeare and Ned enjoys Shakespeare's plays.

In fact, in the 1840s, Shakespeare's plays, which were written in the late 1500s and early 1600s, are wildly popular on both sides of the Atlantic.

They're like the Hollywood blockbusters of the time, and some Shakespearean actors like McCready are celebrities both at home and abroad.

Ned also knows that McCready is in the middle of an ongoing feud with another famous Shakespearean actor, an American named Edwin Forrest.

This feud began years earlier when Forrest went to see McCready perform Hamlet in Scotland.

At some point during the play, Forrest stood up in his private box above the audience and hissed at McCready.

Forrest went on to say publicly that he hated what he called a fancy dance that McCready had added to Hamlet for no reason.

Forrest grew up poor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He made his bones as an actor performing in places like New York's Bowery Theater, where working-class audiences hissed and shouted all the time.

So his reaction to McCready's fancy dance didn't seem out of line to him.

But McCready, a refined English actor, was so appalled that he compared Forrest's hiss to murder.

And a transatlantic Shakespeare rivalry was born.

Ned is fully aware that this actor feud has escalated over the years.

More than that, McCready and Forrest have come to symbolize two totally different approaches to Shakespearean acting, and their two acting styles are seen by many theater critics as English and American.

McCready, the Englishman, is known for taking a cerebral approach to Shakespeare.

He prizes the thoughts of his characters and believes full attention should be given to Shakespeare's poetic language.

Forrest, the American, finds that approach to be academic and arrogant.

He believes action on stage should outweigh thought.

Performances should be athletic and filled with big emotions.

Because of their opposing views, the two actors have cultivated very different audiences.

McCready mainly performs for highly educated, wealthy people, while Forrest has become a champion of the working class.

Back at his desk, Ned finds more newspaper stories highlighting the growing theatrical feud.

And he quickly realizes that if people hurled half of a dead sheep at McCready, it must mean audiences who support Forrest are infiltrating McCready's performances.

These working-class Americans want to show how much they hate him and his whole English style of acting.

Ned picks up a New York paper, and all of a sudden, everything starts to come together.

Because he reads that in just a few days, William McCready will arrive in New York to close out his American tour with several performances at the famous Astor Place Opera House.

Ned wants to fan the flames.

He grabs a steel pen and a piece of paper and quickly writes an article on the superiority of Edwin Forrest's American approach to Shakespeare.

But Ned knows publishing the story in a small paper won't have a widespread impact, and Ned wants to make an impact.

He needs to do something that'll shock the entire city and accomplish all of his goals.

He stands up and paces.

He hasn't felt this excited in a long time.

He feels like he's on the brink of getting what he wants.

But he knows that if he really wants to go after the British and the New York upper class, he can't do it on his own.

He needs Isaiah Reinders, the political leader who angered Ned by recruiting the Irish to work with him.

It's a week later on the morning of May 10, 1849 in Lower Manhattan.

Ned steps off his small horse-drawn wagon on Lafayette Street, holding a stack of handbills or small printed posters.

He adjusts his long blue frock coat, straightens his top hat, and starts walking down the street.

It's early, but Ned has already spent hours riding around, putting up handbills and talking to as many people as he can in the Bowery, Five Points, and all across the city.

It turns out that Isaiah Rinders was also inspired by stories about the growing actor feud between William McCready and Edwin Forrest.

And together, Ned and Reinders have spent the last several days putting a plan in place that they hope will strike a huge blow for working-class New Yorkers.

While Ned doesn't see eye to eye with Rinders and Tammany Hall on issues like Irish immigration, this is something they agree on.

Power in America shouldn't just reside with the wealthy, and sometimes, the wealthy need to be reminded of that.

After a short walk, Ned arrives at his destination, the Astor Place Opera House.

Named after one of the wealthiest families in the world, the Astors, who own a vast number of properties across the city, the Opera House is known for attracting rich business magnates, literary giants, and politicians.

And right now, it's where English actor William McCready has come to finish his American tour.

Since McCready arrived in New York a few days earlier, Ned and others have continued publishing articles about the great Shakespearean feud, stoking the fire and causing tensions between the upper and lower classes to rise across the city.

Ned spots a wood wall near the theater that's covered with notices for local events.

He reaches into his pocket, takes out a hammer and nails, and hangs multiple copies of his handbill.

At the top, in huge bold letters, it reads, Working men, shall Americans or English rule in this city?

It goes on to declare that Astor Place is an aristocratic English opera house, and that the Brits involved with the performance taking place there have threatened all Americans who dare to express their opinions.

Ned knows that with tensions rising and with all the handbills he's hung and people he's talked to, there's a good chance New York City's leaders have taken notice.

This means they might get the police involved to some kind of precaution.

But as Ned walks back down the street and climbs into his wagon, the thought of the police doesn't worry him at all.

Even if they know he's planning something, they have no idea what it is.

And without any real training or weapons, Ned's sure there's no way they can stop his plan from coming to fruition.

Ned smiles, and he has a thought that would usually never cross his mind.

He can't wait for that English actor William McCready to step on stage.

It's just after 7 p.m.

on May 10, 1849, several hours after Ned Buntline finished hanging up his handbills.

Backstage at the Astor Place Opera House, William McCready sits in front of a mirror in his dressing room, putting the final touches on his stage makeup.

He spent almost 40 of his 56 years as an actor and has long since gotten over any sense of stage fright.

But tonight, he's nervous.

He only arrived in New York a few days earlier, but things have already gotten out of control.

Publications across the city have made headline news out of his feud with American actor Edwin Forrest.

A few political figures in New York have made public statements against McCready and apparently anyone born in Britain.

Through no fault of his own, McCready's performances have become the target of working-class New Yorkers who want to stand up to the rich.

All of this boiled over three nights ago, when McCready performed as Macbeth at the Astor Place Opera House, because at the same time, less than two miles away, at the Broadway Theater, a venue catering to working-class audiences, Edwin Forrest also took the stage as Macbeth.

It was like a head-to-head Shakespeare battle in the heart of America's theater capital.

And people who opposed McCready and the British made sure his performance suffered in comparison to his American rivals.

Some audience members shouted at McCready throughout the place, screaming things like, down with the codfish aristocracy, while they shook their fists at him.

Things got bad enough that tonight, for McCready's performance of Macbeth, the New York police have stationed 325 of the city's 900 total officers inside and around the opera house in case there's more trouble.

Now, backstage, McCready walks to the wings and gets ready to make his first entrance.

And to his relief, from the moment he steps on stage, the crowd cheers in support and the play begins with no interruptions.

Then, after a few scenes, McCready hears some audience members hissing and shouting as loud as they can to drown out his voice.

McCready doesn't know it, but these are people who Ned and Isaiah Rinders have supplied tickets for and planted in the audience.

But as these people yell, something unheard of happens.

Many of McCready's supporters, the upper-class patrons who pride themselves on being quiet, refined audience members, stand up and shout down as detractors.

The noise grows, the two groups push in on each other, and it looks like a fight might break out.

Before things can get too out of hand, police officers swoop in and drag the original offenders out of the audience.

McCready's supporters cheer and the play goes on.

But what nobody sees is that one of the men who hissed and yelled is running towards an open window on the second floor.

He sticks his head out the window and shouts.

And at that moment, on the street outside the Astor Place Opera House, Ned Buntline stands in front of a group of hundreds of young men standing at the ready.

But this group is unlike anything the city has witnessed.

because Ned Buntline and Isaiah Reiners have pulled off something that most people never believed could happen.

This army of young men is made up of the nativist Bowery Boys and the Irish Catholic immigrant gang, the 40 Thieves, the two warring gangs who are beating each other bloody in five points.

Because as much as Ned can't stand immigrants, he hates the British the most, and he realized that these young Irishmen blamed the British for the Great Famine, and they despised the British and the New York ruling class, as much if not more than anyone.

Ned sees the man shouting from the second floor window of the opera house and he signals to the gangs.

Up until this point, they've just looked like organized protesters who aren't causing any real trouble, but now they drop that act.

The young men, who are usually locked in battle against each other, work together to fight a common enemy.

They reach into their pockets and pull out rocks and broken pieces of cobblestone.

They run towards the opera house and start hurling their projectiles into the windows.

Glass shatters on the first and second floors of the opera house and the boys cheer.

Ned parades in front of the gang like a general, shouting that they cannot give up their liberty.

In Ned's mind or in the tall tales he spins, this attack on the opera house, its rich patrons, and the English actor on stage inside is all about freedom for American working men.

It's a bold show of violence that those in power have to pay attention to.

A revolt that demonstrates Americans will not be subservient to its own aristocracy like the British.

But the mythmaker in him knows this will elevate the name Ned Buntline across the country as a political force, a writer, and a leader, and get him press coverage in newspapers far bigger than his own.

Ned spurs his troops on.

The boys scream and launch another volley of stones at the windows.

Soon, over a hundred police officers rush out of the theater and take up positions in front of the building.

But Ned's makeshift army doesn't stand down.

Instead, they turn their aim from the windows to the police and throw their rocks right into the line of officers.

Ned hears some of the officers scream and he sees others fall to the ground, bleeding.

The rocks keep flying as a few officers run off down Lafayette Street and disappear into the darkness.

Ned continues to rally the gangs.

The onslaught continues and they have the police pinned down.

Ned knows the police are disorganized and only armed with their lightweight wooden batons so they can't stage a counter-attack to get control of the situation.

In fact, many of them have to flee inside to deal with serious wounds.

But then, a hush falls over the scene.

Ned strains his ears to listen, and he's shocked by what he hears.

It's the sound of hooves pounding on the cobblestone.

Ned looks down the streets and sees a mounted regiment of the United States military riding towards the opera house.

It's only a small group of soldiers on horseback, but they're followed by what looks like at least 300 militiamen armed with rifles.

So far, Ned has been proven right not to be afraid of the New York police, but he wasn't prepared for the arrival of the military.

He had no idea that city leaders asked them to be ready if things got out of hand, or the police officers fled the scene to call on them for help.

Still, Ned's boys refuse to back down, and when the mounted troops and militia arrive, they get pelted with rocks just like the police did.

One of the military leaders shouts from atop his horse for his men not to fire, but as the rocks keep flying, horses rear up, soldiers get thrown to the ground, and the noise and confusion escalates.

Then one shot rings out.

Then another.

And another.

For a second, the gangs stand there in shock.

They didn't expect the soldiers to open fire.

But it doesn't look like anyone's been hit, and they refuse to be intimidated, even by the U.S.

military.

Some of the rioters push in closer.

They fight through the smoke and gunfire, hurling their rocks at the military.

Ned hears screams above the sound of the guns.

He sees blood spew as musketballs rip into flesh, and he watches an innocent bystander fall to the ground, dead.

When it's clear that they're no match for the soldiers and militiamen, the gang members fall back and many of them flee the scene.

Ned stands there, taking in his work.

The violence has gone beyond anything he imagined.

Members of the police and military round up the rioters who didn't get away, including Ned, and hold him in custody in front of the opera house.

The place looks like a war zone.

Smoke still rises, the opera house windows are all shattered, and the glass mixes with the blood on the street.

32 people died, and hundreds were wounded during what would come to be known as the Astor Place riot.

Many were innocent bystanders caught in the line of fire.

Ned Buntline was right, at least in part, about the riot getting national press.

Newspapers across the country ran with tabloid-style headlines like Sudden Death and Mutilation, Terrific and Fatal Riot, and Let Justice Be Done Though Heavens Fall.

But the focus of most stories was on the Shakespearean actor feud, not Ned's role in the conflict.

Still, the police and courts kept their focus on Ned and he was sentenced to one year in prison for instigating the riot.

Following the arrest, arrest, in pure Ned Buntline fashion, he penned an article in his paper saying that he hadn't even been at the opera house, despite multiple eyewitness accounts to the contrary.

But Ned served his jail sentence, and that did help elevate him as a martyr and hero in nativist circles.

After getting released, Ned uses his growing notoriety to help him become an extremely popular novelist and playwright.

and he continued to push his political agenda and support nativist candidates.

The Astor Place Opera House reopened but never recovered from the event and the press started to refer to it as the Massacre Opera House.

The day after the riot, when members of the U.S.

military and armed militiamen had opened fire in the city, New Yorkers took to the streets in protest.

The idea that American troops shot American citizens angered people of all classes and brought the city together in unison to decry this action.

Isaiah Rinders even gave a rousing speech.

New York City's leaders knew that relying on the military to handle city violence wasn't a viable long-term solution, but they also saw another major problem.

Police had rarely gotten involved when nativists and Irish gangs fought each other in Five Points of the Bowery.

But if opposing gangs could come together to strike at New York's rich and powerful, something had to be done.

So city leaders devised a plan to limit reliance on the United States military and to ensure that gangs could be crushed.

Their solution?

Make the police stronger and more intimidating.

Following the Astor Place riot, New York decided to expand the police force and institute pay and training policies that would encourage officers to stay on the job longer.

But they knew that would take time, so growth wasn't the key point of their new plans for the police.

Instead, following the riots, The city put officers in uniform and gave them badges.

These badges were made of copper, and some suggest that's where the term coppers or the shorter version cops comes from.

But the most significant changes to the force came in the way the police armed themselves.

For the first time, cops would carry metal batons that could inflict far more damage than their wooden ones, and soon, some officers would carry firearms.

For years, officials had looked the other way while gangs performed a range of civic duties in slums like Five Points.

But now, the police would take that power back.

And to that end, a select group of New York police would undergo special training, where they would learn how to control and combat violent mobs.

The techniques employed in New York were quickly adopted by cities across the country, and America would soon have riot police.

Despite joining forces at the Astor Place riot, the Bowery Boys and the Irish gangs in Five Points continued to do battle for years, and the violence between them would erupt in another riot in July of 1857.

But New York cops were now far better prepared to deal with the ongoing gang war.

Because American policing had changed forever after a rivalry between two actors fueled violence, hubris, and political manipulation on an epic scale.

Like something right out of a Shakespeare play.

From Ballin Studios, this is a twist of history.

A quick note about our stories.

They're all heavily researched, but some details and scenes are dramatized.

A Twist of History is hosted by me, Joel Blackwell.

Executive produced by Mr.

Balin and Zach Levin.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

Produced by Perry Kroll.

This episode was written by Mike Federico.

Story editing by Mike Federico.

Sound design and audio mixing by Colin Lester Fleming.

Post-production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Lacasio.

Research and fact-checking by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, Alex Paul, Patricia Nicole Florentino, Calvin Riley-Holgate, Matt Gilligan.

Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel.

Artwork by Jessica Klogston-Kiner and Robin Vane.

Thank you for listening to A Twist of History.