New York Draft Riots

TIMELINES: What triggered the worst rioting in American history in New York on ...

On July 13, 1863, the New York City draft riots break out, unleashing days of unbridled mob rule and bloodshed. On January 1, 1863, when President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect, New York is a hotbed of tensions between the abolitionists and the pro-slavery camp. In March, Lincoln institutes a stricter draft law to assist with the Civil War effort stipulating that men 20 to 35, and all unmarried men up to age 45, would be entered into a lottery for military service. However, for $300, a princely sum in those days, a draftee can hire a substitute to fight in his stead. Since blacks are not considered citizens, they are exempt enraging the city’s struggling blue-collar laborers, mainly Irish and German, who cannot afford $300 and are already angry about the competition from black workers the Emancipation Proclamation would visit upon them. Government and military buildings are ransacked, fires rage, an orphanage for black children is attacked, and mobs lynch at least 11 former slaves. The rampage ends when Lincoln sends in the militia to restore order, in what’s been called the largest uprising in American history, apart from the Civil War itself. The draft then proceeds as planned.

Last week, a poll released by Rasmussen Reports found that only 18 percent of Americans surveyed support the idea of the United States reinstituting a military draft. As recently as 2007, that figure was 24 percent. However, 30 percent of the 1,000 voters polled in telephone interviews, did support the idea of requiring citizens to spend one year in public service. Conscription was officially discontinued in the United States in 1973, however, the option is still available to the government in a time of need. To ensure it could happen quickly if needed, American males ages of 18 to 25 still must register for Selective Service.

The Bowery Boys: New York City History: The other Draft Riots ...

People revolted violently when the drafts were held in New York on July 13. There were also seismic reactions in the surrounding counties as well, chain reactions of the anger quelling in New York. In the surrounding regions, local law enforcement were often better prepared to handle disruptions amongst their less concentrated populations. Even still, the horror of New York's draft riots did spread. The homes of many black residents on Staten Island were torched. According to historian Richard Bayles , "From its proximity to New York City this county could not help but feel every pulsation of popular emotion that disturbed the bosom of the city." Mobs attacked black shopowners in Factoryville , surrounded a black church in Stapleton and threatened parishioners inside, and burned down a railroad station owned by Republican and Union supporter  Cornelius Vanderbilt . Residents from the village of Astoria and the farmlands of Sunnyside and Ravenswood could see New York burning across the water. But Queens County caught the loathsome riot fever when the draft commenced in nearby Jamaica , on July 14. Riled crowds gathered at dusk and nearly torched the village but for the intervention of a few Democratic community leaders. The draft office in Jamaica was eventually destroyed and number of buildings filled with government property were vandalized. Rioters stormed one building and stole piles of garments intended for the battlefield. According to an 1882 history of Queens County, it was an apparel Armageddon, the rioters "taking out some boxes of clothing which they broke open, piled in heaps and set on fire. The largest pile, which they derisively called 'Mount Vesuvius' was about ten feet high." In Westchester County, towns along the Bronx River reacted similarly to their own draft lotteries, with rioters in Morrisania and West Farms destroying telegraph offices and yanking railroad ties from the ground. However, other local towns, like Yonkers, were successfully insulated from violence, due to better living conditions and the entreaties of an especially popular local leader, the Rev. Edward Lynch.

The New York City Draft Riots, Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War

In the Shadow of Slavery, African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863

The draft riots in New York, July, 1863, the metropolitan police, their services during riot week, their honorable record

Lincoln in The times, the life of Abraham Lincoln, as originally reported in the New York times

The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1789-1878