e
use of the Jockey Club, but was leased to the Union League for a term of
ten years. Among the early honorary members of the Union League were
Abraham Lincoln, General U.S. Grant, General W.T. Sherman,
Lieutenant-General "Phil" Sheridan, Major-Generals Burnside, Wright, and
Hancock, Admiral David G. Porter, and Rear-Admiral Bailey. The active
membership of 1870 included such names as William Cullen Bryant, William
M. Evarts, Whitelaw Reid, Parke Godwin, Horace Greeley, Chester A.
Arthur, Thomas Nast, Joseph H. Choate, Eastman Johnson, George P.
Putnam, Daniel P. Appleton, Dr. Samuel Osgood, George Griswold, E.D.
Stanton.

To the name of the Union League is inevitably linked that of the
Manhattan Club, for, the Civil War once at an end, the latter became the
expression of the political aims and aspirations of the Democratic Party
as the former was of the Republican. The Manhattan had its origin in the
turmoil of the election of 1864, and the defeat of the Democratic
candidate, General McClellan. The first movers in its foundation were
Douglass Taylor, then secretary of the Tammany society, Street
Commissioner George W. McLean, S.L.M. Barlow of the "World," Judge
Hilton, the Hon. A. Schell, A.L. Robertson, and John T. Hoffman, later
Governor of New York State from 1869 till 1872. The earlier meetings
were held in the old Delmonico's, at the corner of Fourteenth Street and
Fifth Avenue, and then the Manhattan moved into its first real home at
No. 96 Fifth Avenue, just a block above the famous restaurant, where
many of the meetings continued to be held. John Van Buren was the first
president, with Augustus Schell first vice-president, A.L. Robertson
second vice-president, Manton Marble secretary, and W. Butler Duncan
treasurer.

In the winter of 1867-8 the club was enlivened by a bout of fisticuffs
that was a "celebrated case" of its day. There was then a strict club
rule forbidding the introduction of a guest. Manager Bateman, the
father of Miss Bateman the actress, saw fit to violate this law. A
member of the House Committee, perhaps overzealous in the idea of his
duties, carried his protest to the point of forbidding the servants of
the club to serve the unwelcome guest. Mr. Bateman's resentment of the
action took the form of a personal assault, which became the sensation
of the hour and the topic of the newspapers. "Evidently," remarked the
"Herald" (those were the days of the elder Bennett, who in his vast
experien