Amsterdam Vallon (1834-) was an Irish-American criminal from the Five Points slum of New York City who, from 1862 to 1863, resurrected the Irish Catholic "Dead Rabbits" gang which his late father Priest Vallon had once led, leading them to a final victory over William Cutting's Protestant Natives gang during the New York draft riots. After avenging his father by killing Cutting, Vallon moved to San Francisco with his lover, Jenny Everdeane.
Biography[]
Early life[]
A young Vallon, 1846
Amsterdam Vallon was born in the Five Points slum of Manhattan, New York City, New York in 1834, the son of Irish immigrant parents from County Kerry. His mother died when he was young, and his father Priest Vallon, the leader of the Dead Rabbits gang, was killed before his son's eyes during the 1846 Battle of the Five Points against William Cutting's Protestant Natives gang. His father entrusted him with his St. Michael pendant before heading off to battle, and, as his father lay dying in the snowy Paradise Square, he urged Amsterdam to "never look away" and to remember him. Cutting, who hated the Irish yet respected Priest, ordered that Priest's body be left untouched. He then left Priest's knife in his hands so that he could use it in the afterlife, and he ordered Amsterdam to be handed over to the law and given a proper education. However, Amsterdam stole the knife, warded off the Natives gangsters, and fled into the Old Brewery, where fellow Irish boy Johnny Sirocco helped him evade the gangsters and brought him into the vast cellars, where Vallon buried his father's possessions. He was then taken to the Hellgate House of Reform orphanage on Blackwell's Island, where he was raised by Reverend Francis Nickle and other Protestant moral reformers.
Return to the Five Points[]
Vallon at Hellgate, 1862
In September 1862, Vallon, now a grown man, left the orphanage with his few belongings, and he threw away the Bible which Nickle had given him and instead decided to return to the Five Points. He stopped in the Old Brewery, whose residents were being evicted by Reverend Alexander Raleigh, and he retrieved his father's knife and his St. Michael pendant. He was ambushed by Jimmy Spoils and Johnny Sirocco (neither recognizing the other), but he managed to beat down both of them and leave with his father's possessions.
Amsterdam being given a tour of the Five Points by Johnny Sirocco, September 1862
Johnny caught up to Vallon as he walked through Paradise Square, and he revealed to Vallon that he recognized him as "the Priest's son"; Vallon then remembered Sirocco as the boy who had helped him back in 1846. Vallon quickly befriended Sirocco, who gave him a tour of the new Five Points and told him about the various gangs which roamed the streets, although he informed him that the Dead Rabbits had died with his father and that their name was not to be spoken anymore. That night, Sirocco took Vallon to the scene of a fire, where they took advantage of the brawl between William M. Tweed and Peter Masterson's rival fire companies to rush into the burning building and loot a few items. Sirocco then took Vallon to his fence, Stephen Shang, where he gave up his loot so that it could be sold and the earnings divided. When Shang called him "Hellgate" and mocked Vallon, Vallon insulted him back, and they almost fought each other before a policeman walked in. Vallon recognized him as former Dead Rabbit "Happy Jack Mulraney", and he was forced to give a part of his loot to Mulraney as a bribe.
Working for Cutting[]
Vallon and McGloin's fight
The next day, Sirocco took Vallon to meet William Cutting at Sparrow's Chinese Pagoda on Mott Street, where they would pay tribute to Cutting out of their stolen loot. Cutting tipped off Sirocco about a Portuguese ship which would be under quarantine in New York Harbor for three weeks, and he sent him to steal its shipment that night. He then called Vallon over, asking for his name, and, impressed at his nickname of "Amsterdam", Cutting joked by saying, "I'm New York". He then told him to never show up without a tribute payment again, and he told him to accompany Sirocco on the ship heist. Along with Jimmy Spoils, they killed the captain Linus Hair and sold his body to a local mortician, causing a stir in the newspapers. When he returned to Cutting with the money, Cutting congratulated him on making The Police Gazette with his theft. However, Cutting's minion Gary McGloin, another former Dead Rabbit, insulted Vallon and Sirocco as a couple of fidlam bens (Irish thieves without morals). While Cutting tried to defuse the situation by saying that they were Irishmen like McGloin but without the religious scruples, Vallon escalated by asking if McGloin meant to call him a "chiseler". When McGloin asked what it would mean if he called him such, Vallon said that they then had business, and they engaged in a fistfight which several other customers at Cutting's butcher shop placed bets on. Vallon beat McGloin down, earning Cutting's favor. Not long after, his medallion was stolen by the pickpocket Jenny Everdeane, whom he tailed to a wealthy mansion uptown and stole his medal back after she returned from robbing the mansion while dressed as a maid. The two of them walked together for a moment, and she revealed that she and Cutting has a special arrangement whereby she did not have to pay tribute to him. As Vallon eyed her, she said that she never wanted to see him again, and they parted ways.
Vallon and Everdeane dancing
However, Vallon saw Everdeane again at the Five Points Mission's dance, held by Reverend Alexander Raleigh as a fundraiser for the poor, and Everdeane rejected several potential dance partners (including Sirocco, who was infatuated with her), shocking Vallon by choosing him. They danced for a while before heading to the East River docks and making out, although Vallon decided not to have sex with her after discovering a locket given to her by Cutting; he said that he was not interested in "the Butcher's leavings".
Vallon became more deeply involved with Cutting, making Sirocco suspicious; Sirocco decided that, no matther what Vallon's ulterior motive was, he did not want any part in it. One day, as Vallon was collecting bets for a crowded boxing match hosted by P.T. Barnum, Tweed announced that the police were raiding the match; Cutting discovered that, while Tweed had bribed the Municipal Police, the rival Metropolitan Police were raiding the event. Vallon came up with a solution: rather than cancel the match and go for a "no decision" result, he asked Tweed about the law, which stipulated that no boxing was allowed "in the city". Vallon and Tweed cleverly arranged for the boxing match to be continued on a barge in the river, making it perfectly legal.
Vallon in late 1862
One night, at a performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harry Watkins, Vallon saved Cutting from an Irish assassin, Cillian Keevan, who shot Cutting in the side before Vallon mortally wounded Keevan with his own gun. Cutting publicly tipped his hat to Vallon, who did the same for Cutting before leaving and crying due to his anguish and guilt about saving his father's murderer. He was then confronted by his father's old lieutenant Walter McGinn, who reminded him how great his father was, causing Vallon even more pain.
Cutting confronting a wounded Vallon
Cutting celebrated his survival by bringing Vallon and his other close lieutenants to a whorehouse, where Vallon encountered Jenny again and brought her into another room, where he sought to interrogate her after seeing her tend to Cutting's wounds. After a struggle, they passionately kissed and made love, and a jealous Sirocco saw the act through the slightly-opened door. The next day, as Cutting celebrated the anniversary of the Battle of the Five Points, Sirocco informed Cutting that Amsterdam was Vallon's son, and Cutting decided to bait Vallon by performing a knife-throwing act with Jenny on the Chinese pagoda's stage, destroying the locket that he gave to her and even wounding her neck. After the show, Vallon waded through the huge crowd and watched as Cutting prepared to drink a flaming glass of liquor in honor of those who died in the battle, and, after Cutting toasted to Priest Vallon, Amsterdam threw a knife at him. However, Cutting smacked the knife out of the way and threw a knife into Vallon's chest before he could shoot him with a pistol. Cutting then introduced the son of Priest Vallon to the crowd, and he shamed him before comparing him to a piece of meat and "tenderizing" him by savagely headbutting his head. He then threw a butcher's knife next to his head and asked the crowd which part he should chop off; when one man suggested that he cut out his heart, Cutting said that Vallon had no heart. He also decided that he hadn't earned a death, and decided that he should be marked with shame, taking a flaming iron to his face to scar him.
Happy Jack on display
Everdeane nursed Vallon to health over the next three months, proposing that they flee to San Francisco, California and become rich from prospecting gold. However, Monk McGinn visited Vallon in the Old Brewery and gave him his father's old razor, which he had taken from his body back in 1846 for safekeeping. Vallon was inspired to stay and continue his quest for revenge, starting it off by hanging a dead rabbit from a fence in Paradise Square. When Officer Mulraney was sent by Cutting to track down Vallon, Vallon ambushed him in the church next to the Old Brewery, choking him to death before displaying his body on a cross in the sqaure. This infuriated Cutting and Boss Tweed, and it encouraged Stephen Shang, Sirocco, and other Irishmen to approach Vallon to recreate the Dead Rabbits. Noting that 15,000 Irish came off the ships each week, Vallon told his fellow gang members that they would have an army if they could recruit them.
Sirocco's death
After the meeting, Sirocco confessed to Vallon that he was the one who betrayed him, and Vallon told Johnny that he would have to kill him. However, Vallon ultimately told Sirocco to leave the Five Points and never come back, and Sirocco left him. However, Sirocco was accosted by McGloin and taken to Cutting, who had him impaled with a pike and placed on a fence in Paradise Square. Jenny noticed Sirocco suffering and called over Vallon, who hugged Sirocco before acquiescing to Sirocco's plea to shoot him and end his misery, shooting him in the head. Vallon and his gang then ambushed McGloin as he was in the church, with Jimmy Spoils knocking him to the ground after protesting that there was a "n***er in the church"; McGloin then rose and asked Father Maxwell O'Hurley if he knew that there was a "n***er in the church", only for the priest to hit him across the face and have him expelled from the church.
Vallon standing by Hughes
When, on 12 July 1863, Cutting led a nativist mob equipped with torches to burn down the Catholic church in the Five Points (which the Dead Rabbits had converted into their base), the Dead Rabbits stood by Archbishop John Joseph Hughes and his parishioners as they blocked the entrance. Cutting and his army of nativists stopped in their tracks, and they told Vallon that they would return once they were ready to fight. Not long after, Archbishop Hughes threatened to turn New York City into a scorched-earth "second Moscow" if a single Catholic church was attacked by nativists. At the same time, the Irish residents of the city began to be targeted by Union Army officials who were forcing young men to register for the draft, stirring anger among the neglected Irishmen.
Vallon in July 1863
Soon, Tammany Hall boss William M. Tweed approached Vallon about securing the Irish vote for Tammany Hall in exchange for paying him for each Irish voter who turned up at the polls. Vallon wanted more, however, demanding that an Irishman be elected to office. While Tweed said that an Irishman could never rise above alderman, Vallon decided that he would agree to the deal if he could run a candidate of his choosing for Sheriff of the City and County of New York. Ultimately, he chose Walter McGinn, who was widely popular and commended by Tweed. On election day, the Dead Rabbits dragged people out of their homes and off of street corners to force them to vote, even forcing people to vote multiple times and having dead people vote.
The war council
McGinn won the election in a landslide, but Cutting publicly murdered McGinn at his favorite barbershop. Vallon took part in McGinn's funeral procession, and, when he came across Cutting, he challenged him to a gang battle, and Cutting quickly agreed. Vallon and his allied Irish gangs met with the nativist gangs in a war council, agreeing to meet at daybreak on 16 July 1863, fighting in Paradise Square with melee weapons. At the same time, the New York draft riots broke out after the draft office in Uptown Manhattan was attacked by a mob of draft resisters, and the violence soon spread across the city as the urban poor attacked the rich, looted homes, set fires, and fought back against the police and the state militia.
Cutting's death
When the two gangs met in battle at Paradise Square, their battle was interrupted by the US Navy's bombardment of the Five Points in retaliation for the community's support for the ongoing riots. Vallon and Cutting were both wounded, but Cutting was mortally wounded by shrapnel. He proclaimed "At least I die a true American", and Vallon then stabbed him in the chest with his knife, killing him. Vallon was later recovered by Jenny, and the two of them paid their respects to their fallen comrades such as Shang, Jimmy Spoils, and Hell-Cat Maggie before seeing to it that Cutting was buried in a makeshift grave in Brooklyn next to Priest Vallon. Amsterdam and Jenny then travelled to California to start fresh, far away from the violence.