Macready was determined to call off the whole run of performances, but New York’s literary elite were horrified at the damage to the city’s cultural reputation. A delegation including John Jacob Astor, Herman Melville, and Washington Irving persuaded him to go on for a second night, assuring him that additional safety precautions would be taken. Meanwhile, anonymous posters appeared around town demanding to know “shall Americans or English rule in this city!” By the time the curtain opened, a crowd of 15,000 people had surrounded the theater. Held back from the doors by a line of policemen, they started ripping up the cobblestones from the street and hurling them at the Opera House, while staging repeated charges on the police lines in a Shakespeare-based frenzy.
By the time Macready went on, the building was fully under siege, as stones rattled through the broken windows and the elegant audience dived for cover. Cops charged into the galleries, brawling with a group of Forrest fans who had managed to purchase tickets. They were dragged away and locked in a small room, which they promptly set on fire. Fortunately, the barrage of stones had broken several of the water pipes in the building, which began to flood. The water damage was worsened by the cops in the lobby, who had hooked a fire hose up to the building’s mains and were blasting rioters away from the doors.
Meanwhile, Macready was insisting that the cast complete their performance of Macbeth, saying that the audience had paid to see a play and deserved to get one. Since they were now trapped in a burning, flooding building surrounded by 15,000 enraged New Yorkers, it’s possible that the audience weren’t entirely focused on Macduff’s final duel with Macbeth, but they managed to crawl out of their hiding places for a brief round of applause at the end.
Outside, looting had broken out and the state militia had been called out to subdue the rioters, only to be forced to retreat as the crowd hurled stones and staged charges on the lines of soldiers. As the cavalry frantically retreated, a group of 70 infantry guys got stranded and found themselves surrounded by thousands of rioters. After firing into the air failed to disperse the crowd, they were ordered to shoot to kill, while reinforcements deployed cannons against the Macbeth mob. Twenty-two people were killed before the riot ended, although groups of Bowery Boys continued to hunt for Macready, who hid in a friend’s house until he could be smuggled out of the city several days later. To no one’s surprise, he never returned to America and ultimately retired two years later.
Forrest escaped blame, but was caught cheating on his wife and ended up in a high-profile divorce case, although he managed to avoid paying any alimony by cunningly dying of gout. In fact, the most lasting consequence of the riot was the closure of the Astor Place Opera House, which was unable to escape its new nickname of the “DisAstor Opera House.” Because if you can’t quite manage to burn a place down, a mean pun will finish the job just as well.