The New York City Draft Riots
July, 1863
“The enemy has driven every able-bodied man into his ranks, as a butcher drives cattle into a slaughter-pen.”
Abraham Lincoln
Introduction and Background
The working class population of the Union was subject to deplorable living conditions during the Civil War (and many years beforehand and afterward, for that matter). One needs only visualize the photographs of the neighborhoods during the era in order to acquire a taste of what these people were subject to, especially in New York: clusters of shoddy homes, pressed so closely together that there is scarcely room on the frayed cobblestone streets to walk; raw sewage scattered on the cobblestones, breeding diseases whose treatments either do not exist or are too expensive to acquire. The disillusionment and desperation of the people in these neighborhoods had supplemented its crime rate, which was, hands down, the highest in the Western World. Now add onto that a 43 percent increase in inflation since 1860 with a 14 percent increase in wages to hold it away. The Union had just suffered a crushing defeat at Gettysburg. With a large Democratic party operating in the city, dramatic shows of dissent had been long in the making. The state's popular governor, Democrat Horatio Seymour, openly despised Lincoln and his policies. In short: New York was a clump of tinder awaiting the correct spark to set it ablaze.
Then Lincoln passed the Conscription Act in early March of 1863. It had been clear by that January that the Union forces would soon be in need of over 30,000 new troops; the only issue at hand was when the extra troops would find their way into the ranks, and how.
The populace, already sick with two years of war, did not receive the new measure well. It called for enlistment into the war effort by virtually all able bodied men, which the draft divided into two classes: the first of single men from 20-45 years of age, the second of married men from 20-35. Exemptions included conscientious objectors that refused to fight for religious reasons, men disabled mentally or physically, men whose absence would have posed an insurmountable economic obstacle to their families, and men who could provide a substitute or a three-hundred-dollar commutation fee.
Obviously, the unfair provisions in the draft sparked heated resentment among the potential draftees whose circumstances were less than favorable. The poor, comprised largely of Irish immigrants, were livid. They blamed the rich for upping the danger to themselves in their evasion of the fight, and resented the blacks, feeling obligated to fight on their behalf. Lincoln, they grumbled, was sacrificing their lives to keep the Emancipation Proclomation from becoming an embarrassment.
The obscurity of the New York City Draft Riots is a betrayal of the tragedy and mayhem thrown up in its wake; what occurred that June was possibly the bloodiest riot in American History. The muskets and cannons blasting their way through the backdrop of the Civil War gave way to bricks and rocks sailing from the arms of the poor men who refused to become soldiers. Eventually came the degeneration of the raging masses into the sad, irony-branded image of just what they were trying to avoid; They were in a war zone, created in their defiance of soldierhood.
"...a poor man's fight but a rich man's war..."
Four Days of Terror
On July 11, 1863, the first draft was held in Lower Manhattan, in the Ninth District Draft Office at Third Avenue and Forty-sixth Street. The affair transpired with relative peace; a crowd gathered outside the office and shouted and cursed, but took no action against the draft itself. The police received a threat from the Knights of the Golden Circle, a quasi-military secret society, that threatened to seize the U.S. Arsenal located at Seventh Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street. The threat was not carried out. The Ninth District Draft Office pulled 1236 names that day, and published a list of the names in the next morning's papers.
The day after the draft was a Sunday; this meant that the laborers who made up the great bulk of the potential draftees had no employer to whom to answer, and were free to mull and stew over the events of the previous day. While cooling off in the taverns, the people who would soon become rioters collectively brainstormed the logistics of their strikes. Resentful masses and alcohol do not yield a pleasing result. The attack commenced within hours of the announcement of the draftees; some fifty-thousand looters started to terrorize New York. The muscle behind it was embodied in virtually every manifestation of human development--men, women, children. Many joined the riot from their labor stations.
The riot began with a march to the draft office that had drawn the twelve-hundred names. Along the way, rioters made their first impressions on the city: they tore down telegraph lines and poles, and looted stores for broadboxes. Irish women--women, okay-- tore up railroad tracks with crowbars before joining the growing group of rioters. Upon reaching the draft office, the mob destroyed the contents inside and set the structure ablaze. The violence didn't end there, however; bloated with zeal for their cause, the rioters turned their attentions upon almost everything that antagonized itself to them.
The riot atmosphere and bloodlust coupled with long-harbored resentments became a justification for atrocities against those the rioters saw as enemies. The well-dressed were targeted for attack; police and other uniformed officials, of which there were meager numbers in the city, were quickly overwhelmed and rendered ineffective. The mob itself divided, grouping according to motives and sentiments--some rioters focused on the well-to-do while others concentrated on looting or attacking members of the black community. The first noteworthy instance of bloodletting occurred on the behalf of Colonel Henry O'Brien of the 11th volunteers, who, in an admittedly unorthodox move, tried to remove rioters from Second Avenue with a Howitzer Cannon. In firing the howitzer, he killed a woman and child; his home was subsequently ransacked, and when the mob found him later, women beat his face until he was no longer recognizable and dragged him to his own backyard, where they stripped away his uniform and mutilated him. A young girl who protested against the violence against O'Brien was beaten by the mob and her house was destroyed. The superintendent of the police was also murdered; John A. Kennedy was (while presumably innocent of any wrongdoing) also beaten beyond recognition and dragged through the streets.
Elsewhere, along the West Side Docks, rioters focused upon destroying brothels. They did not harm the prostitutes who resided within--this suggests perhaps a love-hate relationship with the prostitutes.
The mob's focus upon New York's black community was perhaps the bloodiest aspect of the riot. Attacks were focused primarily upon black males, but soon whole families found themselves the victims of mob hunts and beatings. Boarding houses who protected blacks were looted and destroyed, and anyone found in contempt of the mob's ideals was in danger of a hanging. Rioters set fire to a black orphanage, the residents of which barely escaped with their lives; black man Abraham Franklin lost his fingers and toes to a surly laborer and was dragged through the streets like Kennedy and O'Brien.
The riot finally died at the hands of troops returning from, strangely enough, Gettysburg. The troops actually had to fight the rioters, as they were prepared to do anything in their power to keep on rioting, but New York returned to normal in another exhibition of tragic irony. . .
Numbers and Results
- 443 arrests
- 19 convictions
- 128 wounded
- more than 50 killed
- 100 buildings burned to the ground
- 200 other structures damaged as a result of fire, etc.
- Property damage estimated somewhere between one and five million dollars
- Estimated 50,000 to 70,000 participants in the riot
- http://www.civilwarhome.com/draftriots.htm
- http://www.nyhistory.org/teachers/40.html
- http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0816049.html
- http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USACWdraft.htm
- http://www.civilwarmusical.com/riots.htm
- http://civilwar.bluegrass.net/HomeFront/newyorkdraftriots.html
- http://members.tripod.com/~Chesnutmorgan/draft.html
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