The Pewter Mug was plain and unadorned inside and spoke more of Knickerbocker New York. Not so much the Ivy Green, another Democratic bar a few blocks away on Elm Street (now Lafayette Street), across from the Tombs—the city’s prison—on the edge of the notorious Five Points, the most dangerous neighborhood in America. If the Pewter Mug was intense, the Ivy Green was free and easy. Founded in 1844 or thereabouts by Malachi Fallon, a former Tombs warden and second-generation Irishman, the bar was famous for its rowdy fun: songs were sung, music was played, there was wrestling, boxing, and general devilment. All of the popular heroes of the 1840s and 1850s hung out there, if they were Irish, anyway. John Morrissey, the fearsome bare-knuckle heavyweight turned politician, was a regular, and so was the fearless middleweight Yankee Sullivan—indeed, once Sullivan had to shoot a man there when the man followed him into the bar and lunged at him with a knife (he survived). The police were frequent visitors. Indeed, one of them, John Stacom, was among the chain of owners who followed in Fallon’s wake after he joined the Gold Rush in 1849.