Cn. XXI.] THE DRAFT IN NEW YORK CITY 321 speedily quelled,1 and though giving rise to local excitement, were not of such nature as to indicate any extended and violent opposition to the policy of filling the armies of the North by compulsion. July 7 the draft began in Rhode Island, the next day in Massachusetts, and proceeded quietly in various districts until Saturday, July 11, which had been the day appointed for the drawings to commence in New York City. Our attention must be directed to the Ninth Congressional District, which was inhabited mainly by laborers, largely of foreign birth, and had the previous autumn given a Democratic majority of over 3000. The popular dissatisfaction with the draft was known, and there were rumors of trouble; but, although a large crowd assembled at the provost-marshal's office on Saturday, the drawing took place without any disturbance whatever, good humor prevailing, even jocularity. Sunday intervened. The names of the conscripts, who were nearly all mechanics and laborers, were published in the newspapers; and as the meaning of compulsory military service for three years was brought home to them, they fell into despondency, while their wives and mothers abandoned themselves to excitement and rage. As crowds gathered to discuss the provisions of the law, as the opinion of prominent Democrats that it was unconstitutional circulated, the wrath of the common people grew. The provision which allowed a man to buy himself loose for three hundred dollars was the moving cause of the bitterness and hate. Introduced into the act when it was supposed that this amount of money as a bounty would procure a substitute, it now fell short of hiring a soldier, owing to the continued decline in the purchasing power of the paper currency, the demand for labor, the rise of wages, and the cost of living, and was therefore looked upon as a cheap device for the rich to escape by making the poor men bear their burdens. It was a day of busy and seething agitation. The populace 1 J. D. Cox, Reminiscences; Report of the Provost-Marshal-General, p. 19; Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 1863, p. 817. IV. - 21 felt that the draft was unjust; they were on the verge of resistance. Monday1 dawned. Aware of the commotion in the city, the authorities had taken some measures for protection. Shortly after seven the provost-marshal opened the headquarters of the Ninth District, on the corner of Third Avenue and Forty-sixth Street, and made ready to continue the draft. The wheel was placed on the table. Slips of paper, bearing the names of the men liable, rolled tightly and bound with a ring of india-rubber, were put into the wheel. One-fifth of the names were to be drawn, and if the corresponding persons were not rejected as physically or mentally unfit for service or exempted for other reasons under the law, or did not furnish a substitute, or pay three hundred dollars, they must serve in the army for three years or until the end of the war. At ten o'clock the wheel began to turn, and at each revolution a man blindfolded drew out a name which the provost-marshal read to the comparatively orderly crowd of mechanics and laborers who filled the room. For half an hour all proceeded quietly. A hundred names had been drawn when a pistol was fired in the street, and a mass of brickbats and paving-stones came crashing through the windows and doors of the house, hurled by a mob of some thousand, which had been gathering since early in the day. The workmen of the Second and Sixth Avenue street-railroads and of many of the manufactories in the upper part of the city had stopped work and, parading the streets, had persuaded and compelled others to join their ranks. When their force had grown to a little army, they moved with one accord to where the drafting was going on, attacked and took possession of the house, driving the provost-marshal and his deputies away. The furniture was broken up, turpentine poured on the floor, the building set fire to, and soon this and the adjoining houses in the block were ablaze. The superintendent of police came near on a tour of inspection, 1 July 13. CH. XXI.] DRAFT RIOT IN NEW YORK 323 and, though not in uniform, was recognized, set upon, mauled badly, and only through his indomitable spirit escaped with his life. The provost-marshal's guard from the Invalid corps, hurrying to the scene, were stopped and pelted with stones by the dense crowd of rioters which filled the streets for two squares from the burning buildings. The soldiers fired into the mob, but with little effect; they were overpowered, their muskets taken away, and many of them were cruelly beaten. A strong squad of police appeared and received a volley of stones; they drew their clubs and revolvers and charged the mob, but after a fight of a few minutes they were forced by vastly overpowering numbers to retreat. Emboldened by these victories, the mob roamed about the city at will. The cry of the Roman populace, "Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay!" tells the story. The rioters, who were almost all foreign born, with a large preponderance of Irish, marched through the streets of the upper part of the city, still gaining by constraint or sympathy constant accessions to their numbers, and shouting, "How are you, Old Abe?" "Down with the rich men," and "We'll hang Horace Greeley to a sour-apple tree." Excitement and drink inflamed them to frenzy. Because the proprietor of the Bull's Head hotel on Forty-fourth Street refused to furnish them liquor, the torch was applied. The residence of the mayor on Fifth Avenue was attacked. Houses of other obnoxious men were sacked and set afire. The headquarters of the Eighth District on Broadway, where two hundred and sixteen names had been drawn from the wheel that morning, were burned to the ground, as were also those of the Fifth, both districts being strongly Democratic. The fire-engine companies responded to the alarms, but some of the firemen had been drafted on Saturday and their sympathies ran with the mob. Between their lukewarmness and the interference of the rioters nothing was done to check the flames in the odious buildings, but the chief engineer, by ardent pleading, gained permission to 1 Julius Cæsar, act iii. scene 2. 2 Near Twenty-ninth Street. turn the hose on the fire where it had spread to the houses of owners who were innocent according to the ethics of the tumultuous crowd. The prejudice of the Irish against the negroes, the feeling of the populace that they were being drafted for an abolition war, broke out into wrath that vented itself in cruel assaults on blacks found in the streets. Hotels and restaurants where they were employed were invaded, and the fleeing servants pursued with unbridled fury. A number of negroes were beaten to death, hanged to trees and lamp-posts, and burned as they hung. Towards evening the mob attacked the fine building of the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue,1 a benevolent institution giving shelter to several hundred children; the few policemen present were able to defend it long enough for the inmates to escape, were then overpowered, whereupon the rioters wreaked their rage by sacking the building and deliberately firing it. Next to negroes, the rioters hated abolitionists and radical Republicans, and attacked some of their houses; they hunted for Horace Greeley, and failing in their search, assailed with brickbats the Tribune office, rushed into the counting-room, seized the newspapers, tore them and trampled them in the street, gutted the office, and were about to set it afire when a strong police force coming across the Park on the run charged and dispersed the mob. A despatch to Stanton at 9.30 represents well the state of affairs at the close of the first day of the riot: "The situation is not improved since dark. Small mobs [are] chasing isolated negroes as hounds would chase a fox. . . . In brief, the city of New York is to-night at the mercy of a mob."2 The police in the main had been able to act only on the defensive, but by their efficiency had saved the town from utter pillage. The Seventh Regiment, whose mere presence would have been a restraint on tumult, was in Maryland, while nearly all the other militia companies of the city and the State had been sent to Pennsyl 1 Between Forty-third and Forty-fourth streets. 2 O. R., vol. xxvii. part ii. p. 886. CH. XXI.] DRAFT RIOT IN NEW YORK 325 vania to aid in repelling the invasion of Lee. At midnight mischief was still afoot, and the sky was aflame with the lurid glow of burning buildings; but a heavy rain fell, quenching the fires and driving the rioters to their homes. Tuesday, July 14, witnessed depredations of a larger, bolder, and more frantic mob. Perceiving their opportunity, the thieves and ruffians of the city who on Monday had swelled the crowd now almost dominated it, and went about plundering as the laborers and mechanics strove against the draft. The rioters, who had no leader, were armed with pistols, guns, bludgeons, clubs, pieces of iron rails, and pitchforks, and while making few demonstrations down town, had complete possession of the city from Union Square to Central Park. The sacking and burning of houses, the outrages on negroes, continued. Gentlemen were robbed in the streets. The street cars and omnibuses ceased to run, and the tracks of the Hudson River and of the Harlem railroads were torn up. All business stopped. Shopkeepers shut and barred their doors and windows, while the mob compelled the closing of warehouses. Laborers on new buildings, in the manufactories, on the docks, left off work and augmented the mass of people, part of whom were actors in the mob and part only spectators. One report stated that the women were more excited than the men. The city fell into a tremor of fear. Governor Seymour hastened from Long Branch to New York, and at noon on Tuesday made from the steps of the City Hall to a crowd of men and boys a speech for which he and his supporters have since made many apologies. Addressing the rioters as "My friends," he coaxed, pleaded, and promised. In his agitation he truckled to them, evidently thinking for the moment that honeyed words would assuage the tumult which had run wild for thirty hours, and persuade the mob to stay its destroying hand. The same day, how 1 The Public Record of H. Seymour, pp. 127, 128, gives four reports of this speech. My description is warranted by those of the Tribune, Herald and Times. |