A surprising number of New Yorkers, indeed, sympathized with this hostility to coercion. A meeting of disciples of Mayor Fernando Wood held at Brooke’s Hall on Dec. 15 gives us the key to much of this sentiment. Its chairman said that the city had lost $20,000,000 a month in Southern orders, an estimate which merchants applauded; while the rougher element that later engaged in the Draft Riots adopted with a roar the resolution that, “believing our Southern brethren to be now engaged in the holy cause of American liberty, and trying to roll back the avalanche of Britishism, we extend to them our heartfelt sympathy.” The _Herald_ the same day computed the loss of the North from the “national convulsion” at $478,620,000, explaining that flour had fallen a dollar a barrel, wheat twenty cents a bushel, and many manufactories had suspended, since Lincoln’s election. Mayor Fernando Wood, in his message published Jan. 8, proposed that if disunion took place, New York should declare itself a free city, clinging to its commerce with both sections. Wood was a Philadelphia Quaker by birth, who began life as a cigar-maker, and made his way in politics by a physique so handsome, a personality so fascinating, and a character so unscrupulous that he has been well called the successor of Aaron Burr. The _Evening Post_ remarked that it had always known he was a knave, but it had not before suspected him of being so egregious a fool, and asked whether the city in seceding would take the Hudson River, Long Island Sound, New York Central, and Erie Canal with it--it couldn’t do without them. Even the _Herald_ sneered at his proposal. But William H. Russell, visiting the city, as late as March was shocked by the indifference which prominent citizens showed to the impending catastrophe. This indifference the _Evening Post_, _Times_, and _Tribune_ were loyally trying to dispel. On Feb. 2, when five States had seceded, the _Evening Post_ warned them that the act meant war. “No one doubts that if the people of those States should transfer them back to Spain or France, the United States would be prepared to recover them at all the hazards of war; and, for the same reason, she will recover them from the hands of any other ‘foreign powers’ under any other names.” A fortnight later Bryant reiterated: ... Our government means no war, and will not, if it can be avoided, shed a drop of blood; if war comes, it must be made by the South; but let the South understand, when it does come, that eighty years of enterprise, of accumulation, and of progress in all the arts of warfare have not been lost upon the North. Cool in temperament, peaceful in its pursuits, loving industry and trade more than fighting, it has yet the old blood of the Saxon in its veins, and will go to battle with the same ponderous and irresistible energy with which it has reared its massive civilization out of the primitive wilderness.