April 11, 2011 • 24 mins
To recruit troops for the U.S. Civil War, the Federal Congress passed the Union Conscription Act in 1863, which drafted able-bodied men between the ages of 20 and 45. Needless to say, this didn't go over well in New York. Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to playing a chalk reboarding and I'm fair down
and all of you history fans out there have probably
heard a little bit about a certain anniversary that's coming up.
(00:21):
It's the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Civil
War that's kicking off this year, actually this month in fact,
with the anniversary of the attack at Fort Sumter, and
it's such a pivotal era in American history that we're
really still figuring out how we should formally commemorate this
in podcast form. We'd love your ideas, because we don't
want to just do some massive, multi year Civil War series, Yeah,
(00:45):
because something more original than that. Right, people are gonna
be talking about this for the next four years, so
you know, if you have any ideas of how you
would like to hear about it that maybe you aren't
hearing about it in that way other places, let us know.
But the truth is we often touch on topics around
this Party Killer era. We talked about the Craft's escape
a couple of months ago, and very recently we talked
about Victoria Woodhull, who was America's first female presidential candidate,
(01:08):
and that all took place during this era, and the
riots will discuss in this episode were also very much
related to the war, and even though they didn't constitute
a battle per se, they did temporarily turn New York
City into a battleground in what's often called the worst
civil disturbance in American history. Yeah, if you've seen the
movie Gangs of New York, you you know how bloody
(01:29):
and violent these riots really were. Yeah, but what is
it exactly that made them so bad? I mean, there
were smaller draft riots that took place in other areas
of the country. So why did the eighteen sixty three
New York draft riots get so out of control? There
were really a few factors involved, and of course we're
going to go into all of these in more detail,
but just so you have them before we get going.
(01:52):
There was the draft, the issue around that, there were
union wartime policies. There were issues with race relations, socio
economic insecurities, and class struggles. So a lot going on. Yeah,
and so what we're going to talk about here is
how did these issues combine to fuel this kind of
perfect storm of rage in New York's working class and
(02:13):
what exactly happened over those four full days that the
riots lasted, and of course, finally, what did it take
to put a stop to all of it? Right, So,
before we get into all of that that, we're going
to set the scene. A lot of New York's working
class New York Cities working class in the mid eighteen
hundreds was made up of recent immigrants, and a lot
of them were from Germany and Ireland, and it became
(02:38):
a primary destination for the Irish in particular, especially after
the potato famine of the eighteen forties. According to Encyclopedia Britannica,
from eighteen forty one to eighteen fifty, Irish made up
forty nine per cent of the total immigration to the
United States, So huge group of people. Yeah, I think
it's something like one in four New York residents was
(03:00):
an Irish immigrant. And of these they were mostly unskilled
laborers such as doc workers, ditch digger, street pavers, and
mostly poor. So in general, over the first couple of
years of the war, working class, the immigrant community, they
basically supported it in general, and in fact they were
encouraged to almost by Irish by leaders in the Irish
(03:21):
Catholic community, so you know, to support it in some way,
if not by enlisting, then finding another way to the
effort at home. Yeah, to support the union. Um, some
some did participate, but by the time eighteen sixty three
rolled around, that sentiment in general, that sentiment of support
had changed somewhat. For one, the Irish Brigade if the
Union had lost a lot of men in battle um.
(03:43):
President Lincoln also issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January one,
eighteen sixty three, And what that did is it basically
gave the war a new purpose besides the original goal
of preserving the Union, which was freeing slaves. Um. The
new goal that is, Irish Americans didn't like this because
they were afraid that African Americans were gonna come up
(04:04):
once they were free, they were going to come up
north and take their jobs. So that was he with
this low paying job market that they were in, right,
So that was why that sort of decreased their attitude
of support for the war. Yeah, And it's worth mentioning
the relations between working class African Americans and working class
Irish immigrants were pretty similar. You know, they were in
(04:27):
similar similar positions. They shared a lot in common. They
were both poor, both face discrimination, They lived in close
proximity together in the lower half of Manhattan, and they were,
as we mentioned, competing for these same low skill labor jobs.
And that job competition, we should mention, it grew especially
(04:49):
heated during the war. One memorable occasion, for example, was
in spring of eighteen sixty three, during a strike of
Irish dock workers African Americans. They had been called in
a strike akers in this situation, and so the strikers
attacked and beat them until federal troops came around for protection.
So this is what was in the air at the time. Yeah,
(05:09):
the trouble was brewing already, right, And then the final
straw was when Federal Congress passed the Enrollment Act, also
known as this Conscription Act, on March third, eighteen sixty three. Now,
this authorized a draft that required all able bodied men
between the ages of twenty and forty five to serve
unless you furnished an acceptable substitute or paid the government
(05:31):
a three hundred dollar fee. And there was another aspect
to this as well. According to Susannah Eural Bruce's article
Summer of Irish Rage in America, Civil war. This act.
It also provided that any immigrant who had declared his
intent to become a citizen could now be drafted unless
he left the country within sixty five days, so totally
(05:52):
changing the game here. Yeah, in New York's working class
immigrant community is consequently enraged over this new act. And
are a few reasons behind That military service used to
be optional. You mentioned earlier that it was encouraged at
least in the beginning of the war, but it was
still optional. Now it's required, so they felt like they
were being forced to fight to free slaves who they
(06:15):
thought might just come to New York City and take
their low paying jobs. And then the other thing that
enraged immigrants over this act was that it obviously favored
the wealthy, who could get out of service by dropping
that three hundred dollars and paying somebody else to do
it right, So it made an already tense situation even worse,
(06:36):
much worse. And then another thing that kind of helped,
you know, set the scene for this was the thousands
of New York troops traveled south in late June to
help out with the Gettysburg campaign, so left the city
virtually undefended. So that is the situation in New York
City when on Saturday, July eighteen sixty three, the first
(06:59):
day of the city first draft lottery begin since the
new law. So the next night after after that very
first draft, working class New Yorkers met up in streets
and saloons and went over the names of the men
who had been drawn for the draft already and and
started to make a plan, started to talk about ways
(07:19):
that they could fight back and stop this from getting
any further out of control. Yeah, And then in the
morning on Monday July, when more names were to be drawn,
a bunch of them began working their way uptown, headed
towards the Provost Marshal's office on Mass and they picked
up some more workers from workshops and factories on their way.
(07:40):
Now we should mention that at this point the group
also included German speaking artisans and native born Protestant journeyman.
Many of them were even volunteer fireman, which was a
really powerful political and organizational force in the city at
the time. And this was in addition to the working
class Irish laborers. And we just want to mention that
because a lot of times you' seen sources that oh
it's it's the Irish. It's all the Irish. And there
(08:01):
were other people involved at least on this first day
at well as well. And there were women in the
group as well as men that should be noted too.
So in her article, Bruce paints this kind of scary picture.
I mean, imagine this coming towards you achieve people. Yeah.
She refers to New York attorney George Templeton Strong's description
of the day, in which she describes a growing crowd
(08:22):
of quote gaunt looking, savage men and women and even
little children, armed with brick bats, stone poker, shovels and dogs,
coal scuttles, and even tin pans and a bit of iron. Okay,
so they sound a little rag tag, I mean, kind
of scary, but don't be fooled because even though they're
carrying little bits of iron and they have kids hanging
(08:46):
out with them, the crowd meant business, and there were
enough of them to to accomplish some So as the
draft selection began around ten thirty in the morning, thousands
of these protesters began to gather around the building and
they interrupted the lottery and then they torched the building. So,
I mean, I think that was the first really big
(09:06):
signal that this is something major. Unfortunately, though, they didn't
stop there. The protesters had several targets over the next
few days which were related to some of the tensions
that we discussed in the intro to this podcast. For example,
major target African Americans, perhaps the most visible target of
the entire four days. We're going to discuss people and
(09:29):
institutions related to the Republican Party. That was another big
target of theirs um. They chose this party as a
target because it was the party that had started the war,
that had instituted the draft, that wanted to abolish slavery,
all of those things that they saw as a threat
to their you know, their lives or security. Merchants and
stores were also a target, particularly for looting, but also
(09:51):
partially for their associations with wealth. And policemen and union
soldiers who attempted to defend the government property were also
another big target. Yeah, so we're going to go through
the day by day destruction tally and cover some of
the individual stories. But by the end of that first day,
it's pretty crucial that some of the writers switched their allegiance,
(10:13):
including the group of firefighters that we mentioned who began
to help the police instead, some people saw that this
was not the fight they wanted and that it was
getting out of hand. So the majority of the mob
that kept on rioting through the week was working class,
and they were mostly working class Irish. So, starting with
some of the damage done on day one, after setting
(10:35):
fire to the Provost Marshal's office, writers seized and burned
the armory at Second Avenue in twenty one, which contained
rifles and guns, and it was generally just a symbol
of war. But the writers then they moved on. They
attacked homes of policemen and businessmen. They also attacked and
torched the Colored Orphan asylum at Fifth Avenue and thirty
fourth Street, which is one that you hear about a lot,
(10:57):
and sometimes you see accounts that described two seven children
barely escaping, though some other sources say that that's a
little bit of an exaggeration. They were actually evacuated prior
to the attack. But I mean, regardless, hundreds of kids
were left homeless well, and African Americans were increasingly targeted
throughout the day too, and so was their property, and
so were whites that helped them, even prostitutes who catered
(11:20):
to interracial clientele were targeted. UM, really pretty far reaching
with who they were going after and African Americans. The
whites who helped them were chased, assaulted, lynched in some cases,
and a lot of them just got out of the
city because they didn't really have any other choice and
it was the safest thing to do. And kind of
(11:41):
the last major point of Day one was the attack
on the New York Daily Tribune newspaper offices. UM. The
confrontation between the police and the writers had really escalated,
and the newspaper editor, Horace Greeley, was considered an ardent Republican,
and protesters thought that the paper not only represented Republican
(12:03):
ideals but was kind of a mouthpiece for them and
decided to go after it. Yeah, so we could see
Day one pretty much reached out to all those socio economic, racial,
all those issues that we talked about in the beginning
that they had political, um, everything came into play even
on that first day, and Day two was kind of
more the same, right, I mean, writers continued to attack
(12:27):
wealthy people, their homes, their businesses, They closed down factories,
they took weapons from munitions plants, they burned bridges, literally
and figuratively, I assume, um, they wrecked telegraph and railroad lines. Um.
Even other non rioting Irish Catholics weren't safe from them.
According to an article by Ivan Bernstein and Civil War
(12:48):
Times and Derrickson, an Irish woman with a black husband
died of injury she got while trying to protect her
son from rioters. I mean, they basically would have killed
her son if she hadn't shielded him with her own body.
Another example that's that you hear a lot Colonel Henry O'Brien,
commander of the eleventh New York Volunteers. He tried to
support policemen by having his men fire a cannon over
(13:11):
the raging crowds of rioters settle him down a bit. Yeah. Um,
But rumors later circulated that at least one woman and
a child had died because of this. So rioters ended
up going to O'Brien's home, destroying it, and then when
he came back to check on the damage, they captured him,
and men and women rioters alike beat him with their
fists and clubs, and they took turns pounding his face
(13:34):
beyond recognition. So so yeah, violence extends to the Irish
as well. It also extends to retail. A Brooks Brothers
store in the downtown at seventh Ward is attacked. So
we're probably wondering why Brooks brother The store was a
contractor for the US government and also still today a
(13:54):
retailer catering to wealthy people, and they'd had some recent
labor bubbles of their own. Hundreds of tailors had gone
strike for higher wages only four months earlier, so the
rioters were seeing, well, Bricks Brothers, We've got our eyes
on YouTube. Yeah, And by that afternoon, rioters had also
erected barricades. And this is an interesting point because they
(14:16):
basically just use the debris resulting from the riots to
put put it around their own waterfront neighborhoods and various
locations around the city to to use a shields from
police who were trying to kind of get at them
and keep them down, to kind of make their own
little city to write like a little fort. So these
were kind of, um, I don't know, I guess they
(14:37):
were sort of a double edged short. They were easy
for police to find, so they know knew exactly where
to go look for the riders go where the barricades are,
but they were also really tough for them to breach,
so it just made battles I think a little more intense, definitely.
So as we get into day three, we start to
see the police and the politicians really taking more action finally,
(14:59):
But throughout all of this, the violence on African Americans
had continued, and Day three was really no different. They
were hanged, oil poured into their wounds, burned. One terrible
example is that of Abraham Franklin, who was a disabled
African American coachman. He was hanged, his body was pulled
down by US troops and then it was strung up
(15:19):
again by the rioters. Finally he was cut down by
a sixteen year old butcher named Patrick Butler and dragged
through the streets. His corpse was dragged through the streets
by the genitals. So really horrific things that the rioters
are doing. Yeah, and I mean this wasn't just being
ignored local authorities and politicians. They'd been trying new strategies
(15:43):
or at least debating and thinking about what to do
to get the situation under control kind of all week
long since Monday and uh on d three, the New
York National Guard and the police. They finally decided to
join forces and focus on a few key areas around
the city. So put out the biggest fires. Yeah, put
out the biggest fires, um kind of keep the people
in the wealthier neighborhoods contained and safe and then target
(16:06):
certain areas where these barricades were. And this made for
more violent encounters between the rioters and the police, but
it also helped, as we said, contain that violence more
around the barricaded areas and those working class neighborhoods where
a lot of the stuff was going on. And the politicians,
for their part, they were basically at opposite ends of
the spectrum. The Republicans, they basically viewed this as a
(16:28):
straight up violent uprising. They had been urging Mayor George
Optic all week to declare martial law and just take
care of it, put a stop to it. Yeah. The Democrats, though,
both in the state and Tammany Hall, saw the riots
as something that was somewhat legit. You know, there was
a there was a legitimate complaint behind it all, and
(16:48):
it was a working class political protests. So they were
looking for other solutions. They didn't want to go for
martial law. So on the third day, they hoped that
they might curb some of the rioters anger by proposing
a relief act to help alleviate the quote unequal operation
of conscription by appropriating two point five million dollars through
(17:10):
the sale of conscription exemption bonds. And this is Tammy
Hall Democrats, and they had been saying all along that
the draft was unconstitutional and they hope that just by
coming out with this relief act maybe people would calm
down a little bit and realized that the politicians were
trying to figure out a solution for them. Yeah. Unfortunately, though,
(17:32):
it didn't have the desired result. The violence just spread
to Staten Island into Brooklyn, and there were federal orders
to delay implementation of the draft. Um they were published
in the papers the next day. So, I mean, it
really looked kind of hopeless at this point that they
were going to be able to settle it peacefully. And
then dayfour we have a new introduction of players and
(17:54):
this whole thing. More than four thousand troops returned from
Gettysburg and they were called back specifically for this purpose
to occupy the city to face the rioters and working
with the police and militia, naval forces, and even West
Point cadets who were already involved try to get things
back under control. And the increased military presence did let
(18:17):
the city restore some of its normal activities. They could
reopen the street car and the stage service, but there
were still outbursts of violence and soldiers were attacked, and
troops started fighting back and even took some rioters prisoner um.
But finally the battles were dying down. Yeah, once the
military presence was there and they started fighting back that
(18:39):
these were kind of the last battles of the week.
But I don't know, just going back to the movie there,
if you have seen Gangs of New York and me
and when they're fighting against the Rioters and the troops
show up and then all of a sudden, the Navy
starts bombing the city. Well, Bruce actually says that Scorsese
took some license here where that happens, because that never happened.
(19:01):
The Navy ships never bombed to the city. So just
a little fun fact there if you're a fan of
the movie. Bombing cities always pretty bad politics. Yeah, it
would have been pretty bad for a Lincoln. Sources say
if he had if he had actually done that would
have been bad for reelection. Yeah, but just just in
real life, with the introduction of the four thousand troops.
By Friday, there was this sort of uneasy piece finally
(19:25):
in New York City. But it was estimated that the
city had suffered one point five million to two million
dollars in property damage and somewhere around one d nineteen
people are known for sure to have been killed sometimes,
so you see figures going up to a thousand people,
although those might have been based on unsubstantiated reports. Regardless, though,
(19:48):
thousands of people were injured or displaced throughout this entire thing,
and according to Bruce, for a lot of native born
New Yorkers, the riots just confirmed their prejudices about Irish immigrants. However,
it's worth pointing out that although they initially blamed Lincoln
and his administration for what had happened, the Irish Catholic
community did express a lot of regret for the violence,
(20:08):
and in the aftermath of the riots pretty much as
soon as it was over, you know, leaders of the
Irish community and people and it they were they felt
bad about what had happened. Um. And it's also worth
pointing out that there were irishmen on both sides of
the situation. There were many who were off fighting for
the war and who condemned what had happened as soon
as they had heard about it. Yeah, and the eventual
(20:29):
outcome of the draft, because you know, that's what this
whole thing started over, it is pretty bizarre. It was
eventually enforced that August, and since there was a heavy
military presence there to oversee it and a county loan
ordinance to pay the three waiver fee for poor conscripts,
it went off without incident. You know, it seemed like
(20:51):
it was going okay. Um. But according to Bruce, over
the next couple of years, the Tammany Hall Democrats raised
enough money to buy the exemption of nearly every drafted
man who didn't want to serve. So, I mean, I'm
sure this is a major simplification, but it kind of
seems pointless. It does, I guess me, make the whole
(21:12):
draft seem kind of ineffective. But I think it may
have gone at least a little ways in making the
Irish working class, working class in general feel a little
less hopeless about the whole war situation. Um. And it's
worth pointing out also that many New York are still
fought in the war after that. They still joined up
with some local militia and immigrants included, so there were
(21:35):
still people who took part in part in the war effort,
even if the draft didn't necessarily get them there. Well,
and Bruce even even has a good quote about that,
you know, feeling less like rioting and more like protesting
politically and and trying to get political rights. Yes, she
says that the working class became increasingly skilled at hunching
(21:57):
their protests with ballots rather than their fists, So it's
a positive development. Yeah, I think that's a positive note
to end to kind of uh riote us and gory
episode on UM. And from there we can move on
to happier listener mail, uplifting listener mail. Yes, we have
(22:18):
a letter here from Rebecca and Los Angeles, and she says,
hello there, missed in history ladies. I just wanted to
send a quick thanks for your fantastic podcast about Hetty Lamar.
Before this year, I'm sad to say I had no
idea who Hetty Lamar was, let alone what she contributed
to science. I'm an actor in Los Angeles and a
member of a theater company called Theater of Note. Coincidentally,
(22:39):
we are doing a play this year called Hetty Lamar
Nazi Killer. It's a farcical interpretation of history, but based
in the facts. I've wanted to audition for the role
of Hetty since I read the play, and just imagine
likely when your podcast how did a Hollywood starlet Invent
Cellular Technology? Popped up in my iTunes library right before
the audition. Quite the stroke of serendipity. Good, I mean, ladies,
(23:01):
thanks to your comprehensive portrait of Hetty, I landed the role,
so I will have the honor of portraying miss Lamar
the Spring, and I'd like to think it's all thanks
to you, ladies. If you find yourself in Los Angeles
and April or May, you've got two complimentary tickets with
your names on them. Awesome, awesome, pretty cool, thanks to Rebecca.
Thank you so much. I don't know if we can
totally take credit for your acting talent. I'm sure you've
(23:23):
got the role on your own, but we definitely like
to think that our podcast at least gave you some
good background to go into your audition. And that's the
play bill or something. Please do, we'd love to have
it and use it as a decoration on our cubicles.
So if you have also secured the lead role in
a play due to one of the podcasts, definitely let
us know. We would love to hear another story like that,
(23:45):
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(24:07):
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today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to playing a chalk reboarding and I'm fair down
and all of you history fans out there have probably
heard a little bit about a certain anniversary that's coming up.
(00:21):
It's the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Civil
War that's kicking off this year, actually this month in fact,
with the anniversary of the attack at Fort Sumter, and
it's such a pivotal era in American history that we're
really still figuring out how we should formally commemorate this
in podcast form. We'd love your ideas, because we don't
want to just do some massive, multi year Civil War series, Yeah,
(00:45):
because something more original than that. Right, people are gonna
be talking about this for the next four years, so
you know, if you have any ideas of how you
would like to hear about it that maybe you aren't
hearing about it in that way other places, let us know.
But the truth is we often touch on topics around
this Party Killer era. We talked about the Craft's escape
a couple of months ago, and very recently we talked
about Victoria Woodhull, who was America's first female presidential candidate,
(01:08):
and that all took place during this era, and the
riots will discuss in this episode were also very much
related to the war, and even though they didn't constitute
a battle per se, they did temporarily turn New York
City into a battleground in what's often called the worst
civil disturbance in American history. Yeah, if you've seen the
movie Gangs of New York, you you know how bloody
(01:29):
and violent these riots really were. Yeah, but what is
it exactly that made them so bad? I mean, there
were smaller draft riots that took place in other areas
of the country. So why did the eighteen sixty three
New York draft riots get so out of control? There
were really a few factors involved, and of course we're
going to go into all of these in more detail,
but just so you have them before we get going.
(01:52):
There was the draft, the issue around that, there were
union wartime policies. There were issues with race relations, socio
economic insecurities, and class struggles. So a lot going on. Yeah,
and so what we're going to talk about here is
how did these issues combine to fuel this kind of
perfect storm of rage in New York's working class and
(02:13):
what exactly happened over those four full days that the
riots lasted, and of course, finally, what did it take
to put a stop to all of it? Right, So,
before we get into all of that that, we're going
to set the scene. A lot of New York's working
class New York Cities working class in the mid eighteen
hundreds was made up of recent immigrants, and a lot
of them were from Germany and Ireland, and it became
(02:38):
a primary destination for the Irish in particular, especially after
the potato famine of the eighteen forties. According to Encyclopedia Britannica,
from eighteen forty one to eighteen fifty, Irish made up
forty nine per cent of the total immigration to the
United States, So huge group of people. Yeah, I think
it's something like one in four New York residents was
(03:00):
an Irish immigrant. And of these they were mostly unskilled
laborers such as doc workers, ditch digger, street pavers, and
mostly poor. So in general, over the first couple of
years of the war, working class, the immigrant community, they
basically supported it in general, and in fact they were
encouraged to almost by Irish by leaders in the Irish
(03:21):
Catholic community, so you know, to support it in some way,
if not by enlisting, then finding another way to the
effort at home. Yeah, to support the union. Um, some
some did participate, but by the time eighteen sixty three
rolled around, that sentiment in general, that sentiment of support
had changed somewhat. For one, the Irish Brigade if the
Union had lost a lot of men in battle um.
(03:43):
President Lincoln also issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January one,
eighteen sixty three, And what that did is it basically
gave the war a new purpose besides the original goal
of preserving the Union, which was freeing slaves. Um. The
new goal that is, Irish Americans didn't like this because
they were afraid that African Americans were gonna come up
(04:04):
once they were free, they were going to come up
north and take their jobs. So that was he with
this low paying job market that they were in, right,
So that was why that sort of decreased their attitude
of support for the war. Yeah, And it's worth mentioning
the relations between working class African Americans and working class
Irish immigrants were pretty similar. You know, they were in
(04:27):
similar similar positions. They shared a lot in common. They
were both poor, both face discrimination, They lived in close
proximity together in the lower half of Manhattan, and they were,
as we mentioned, competing for these same low skill labor jobs.
And that job competition, we should mention, it grew especially
(04:49):
heated during the war. One memorable occasion, for example, was
in spring of eighteen sixty three, during a strike of
Irish dock workers African Americans. They had been called in
a strike akers in this situation, and so the strikers
attacked and beat them until federal troops came around for protection.
So this is what was in the air at the time. Yeah,
(05:09):
the trouble was brewing already, right, And then the final
straw was when Federal Congress passed the Enrollment Act, also
known as this Conscription Act, on March third, eighteen sixty three. Now,
this authorized a draft that required all able bodied men
between the ages of twenty and forty five to serve
unless you furnished an acceptable substitute or paid the government
(05:31):
a three hundred dollar fee. And there was another aspect
to this as well. According to Susannah Eural Bruce's article
Summer of Irish Rage in America, Civil war. This act.
It also provided that any immigrant who had declared his
intent to become a citizen could now be drafted unless
he left the country within sixty five days, so totally
(05:52):
changing the game here. Yeah, in New York's working class
immigrant community is consequently enraged over this new act. And
are a few reasons behind That military service used to
be optional. You mentioned earlier that it was encouraged at
least in the beginning of the war, but it was
still optional. Now it's required, so they felt like they
were being forced to fight to free slaves who they
(06:15):
thought might just come to New York City and take
their low paying jobs. And then the other thing that
enraged immigrants over this act was that it obviously favored
the wealthy, who could get out of service by dropping
that three hundred dollars and paying somebody else to do
it right, So it made an already tense situation even worse,
(06:36):
much worse. And then another thing that kind of helped,
you know, set the scene for this was the thousands
of New York troops traveled south in late June to
help out with the Gettysburg campaign, so left the city
virtually undefended. So that is the situation in New York
City when on Saturday, July eighteen sixty three, the first
(06:59):
day of the city first draft lottery begin since the
new law. So the next night after after that very
first draft, working class New Yorkers met up in streets
and saloons and went over the names of the men
who had been drawn for the draft already and and
started to make a plan, started to talk about ways
(07:19):
that they could fight back and stop this from getting
any further out of control. Yeah, And then in the
morning on Monday July, when more names were to be drawn,
a bunch of them began working their way uptown, headed
towards the Provost Marshal's office on Mass and they picked
up some more workers from workshops and factories on their way.
(07:40):
Now we should mention that at this point the group
also included German speaking artisans and native born Protestant journeyman.
Many of them were even volunteer fireman, which was a
really powerful political and organizational force in the city at
the time. And this was in addition to the working
class Irish laborers. And we just want to mention that
because a lot of times you' seen sources that oh
it's it's the Irish. It's all the Irish. And there
(08:01):
were other people involved at least on this first day
at well as well. And there were women in the
group as well as men that should be noted too.
So in her article, Bruce paints this kind of scary picture.
I mean, imagine this coming towards you achieve people. Yeah.
She refers to New York attorney George Templeton Strong's description
of the day, in which she describes a growing crowd
(08:22):
of quote gaunt looking, savage men and women and even
little children, armed with brick bats, stone poker, shovels and dogs,
coal scuttles, and even tin pans and a bit of iron. Okay,
so they sound a little rag tag, I mean, kind
of scary, but don't be fooled because even though they're
carrying little bits of iron and they have kids hanging
(08:46):
out with them, the crowd meant business, and there were
enough of them to to accomplish some So as the
draft selection began around ten thirty in the morning, thousands
of these protesters began to gather around the building and
they interrupted the lottery and then they torched the building. So,
I mean, I think that was the first really big
(09:06):
signal that this is something major. Unfortunately, though, they didn't
stop there. The protesters had several targets over the next
few days which were related to some of the tensions
that we discussed in the intro to this podcast. For example,
major target African Americans, perhaps the most visible target of
the entire four days. We're going to discuss people and
(09:29):
institutions related to the Republican Party. That was another big
target of theirs um. They chose this party as a
target because it was the party that had started the war,
that had instituted the draft, that wanted to abolish slavery,
all of those things that they saw as a threat
to their you know, their lives or security. Merchants and
stores were also a target, particularly for looting, but also
(09:51):
partially for their associations with wealth. And policemen and union
soldiers who attempted to defend the government property were also
another big target. Yeah, so we're going to go through
the day by day destruction tally and cover some of
the individual stories. But by the end of that first day,
it's pretty crucial that some of the writers switched their allegiance,
(10:13):
including the group of firefighters that we mentioned who began
to help the police instead, some people saw that this
was not the fight they wanted and that it was
getting out of hand. So the majority of the mob
that kept on rioting through the week was working class,
and they were mostly working class Irish. So, starting with
some of the damage done on day one, after setting
(10:35):
fire to the Provost Marshal's office, writers seized and burned
the armory at Second Avenue in twenty one, which contained
rifles and guns, and it was generally just a symbol
of war. But the writers then they moved on. They
attacked homes of policemen and businessmen. They also attacked and
torched the Colored Orphan asylum at Fifth Avenue and thirty
fourth Street, which is one that you hear about a lot,
(10:57):
and sometimes you see accounts that described two seven children
barely escaping, though some other sources say that that's a
little bit of an exaggeration. They were actually evacuated prior
to the attack. But I mean, regardless, hundreds of kids
were left homeless well, and African Americans were increasingly targeted
throughout the day too, and so was their property, and
so were whites that helped them, even prostitutes who catered
(11:20):
to interracial clientele were targeted. UM, really pretty far reaching
with who they were going after and African Americans. The
whites who helped them were chased, assaulted, lynched in some cases,
and a lot of them just got out of the
city because they didn't really have any other choice and
it was the safest thing to do. And kind of
(11:41):
the last major point of Day one was the attack
on the New York Daily Tribune newspaper offices. UM. The
confrontation between the police and the writers had really escalated,
and the newspaper editor, Horace Greeley, was considered an ardent Republican,
and protesters thought that the paper not only represented Republican
(12:03):
ideals but was kind of a mouthpiece for them and
decided to go after it. Yeah, so we could see
Day one pretty much reached out to all those socio economic, racial,
all those issues that we talked about in the beginning
that they had political, um, everything came into play even
on that first day, and Day two was kind of
more the same, right, I mean, writers continued to attack
(12:27):
wealthy people, their homes, their businesses, They closed down factories,
they took weapons from munitions plants, they burned bridges, literally
and figuratively, I assume, um, they wrecked telegraph and railroad lines. Um.
Even other non rioting Irish Catholics weren't safe from them.
According to an article by Ivan Bernstein and Civil War
(12:48):
Times and Derrickson, an Irish woman with a black husband
died of injury she got while trying to protect her
son from rioters. I mean, they basically would have killed
her son if she hadn't shielded him with her own body.
Another example that's that you hear a lot Colonel Henry O'Brien,
commander of the eleventh New York Volunteers. He tried to
support policemen by having his men fire a cannon over
(13:11):
the raging crowds of rioters settle him down a bit. Yeah. Um,
But rumors later circulated that at least one woman and
a child had died because of this. So rioters ended
up going to O'Brien's home, destroying it, and then when
he came back to check on the damage, they captured him,
and men and women rioters alike beat him with their
fists and clubs, and they took turns pounding his face
(13:34):
beyond recognition. So so yeah, violence extends to the Irish
as well. It also extends to retail. A Brooks Brothers
store in the downtown at seventh Ward is attacked. So
we're probably wondering why Brooks brother The store was a
contractor for the US government and also still today a
(13:54):
retailer catering to wealthy people, and they'd had some recent
labor bubbles of their own. Hundreds of tailors had gone
strike for higher wages only four months earlier, so the
rioters were seeing, well, Bricks Brothers, We've got our eyes
on YouTube. Yeah, And by that afternoon, rioters had also
erected barricades. And this is an interesting point because they
(14:16):
basically just use the debris resulting from the riots to
put put it around their own waterfront neighborhoods and various
locations around the city to to use a shields from
police who were trying to kind of get at them
and keep them down, to kind of make their own
little city to write like a little fort. So these
were kind of, um, I don't know, I guess they
(14:37):
were sort of a double edged short. They were easy
for police to find, so they know knew exactly where
to go look for the riders go where the barricades are,
but they were also really tough for them to breach,
so it just made battles I think a little more intense, definitely.
So as we get into day three, we start to
see the police and the politicians really taking more action finally,
(14:59):
But throughout all of this, the violence on African Americans
had continued, and Day three was really no different. They
were hanged, oil poured into their wounds, burned. One terrible
example is that of Abraham Franklin, who was a disabled
African American coachman. He was hanged, his body was pulled
down by US troops and then it was strung up
(15:19):
again by the rioters. Finally he was cut down by
a sixteen year old butcher named Patrick Butler and dragged
through the streets. His corpse was dragged through the streets
by the genitals. So really horrific things that the rioters
are doing. Yeah, and I mean this wasn't just being
ignored local authorities and politicians. They'd been trying new strategies
(15:43):
or at least debating and thinking about what to do
to get the situation under control kind of all week
long since Monday and uh on d three, the New
York National Guard and the police. They finally decided to
join forces and focus on a few key areas around
the city. So put out the biggest fires. Yeah, put
out the biggest fires, um kind of keep the people
in the wealthier neighborhoods contained and safe and then target
(16:06):
certain areas where these barricades were. And this made for
more violent encounters between the rioters and the police, but
it also helped, as we said, contain that violence more
around the barricaded areas and those working class neighborhoods where
a lot of the stuff was going on. And the politicians,
for their part, they were basically at opposite ends of
the spectrum. The Republicans, they basically viewed this as a
(16:28):
straight up violent uprising. They had been urging Mayor George
Optic all week to declare martial law and just take
care of it, put a stop to it. Yeah. The Democrats, though,
both in the state and Tammany Hall, saw the riots
as something that was somewhat legit. You know, there was
a there was a legitimate complaint behind it all, and
(16:48):
it was a working class political protests. So they were
looking for other solutions. They didn't want to go for
martial law. So on the third day, they hoped that
they might curb some of the rioters anger by proposing
a relief act to help alleviate the quote unequal operation
of conscription by appropriating two point five million dollars through
(17:10):
the sale of conscription exemption bonds. And this is Tammy
Hall Democrats, and they had been saying all along that
the draft was unconstitutional and they hope that just by
coming out with this relief act maybe people would calm
down a little bit and realized that the politicians were
trying to figure out a solution for them. Yeah. Unfortunately, though,
(17:32):
it didn't have the desired result. The violence just spread
to Staten Island into Brooklyn, and there were federal orders
to delay implementation of the draft. Um they were published
in the papers the next day. So, I mean, it
really looked kind of hopeless at this point that they
were going to be able to settle it peacefully. And
then dayfour we have a new introduction of players and
(17:54):
this whole thing. More than four thousand troops returned from
Gettysburg and they were called back specifically for this purpose
to occupy the city to face the rioters and working
with the police and militia, naval forces, and even West
Point cadets who were already involved try to get things
back under control. And the increased military presence did let
(18:17):
the city restore some of its normal activities. They could
reopen the street car and the stage service, but there
were still outbursts of violence and soldiers were attacked, and
troops started fighting back and even took some rioters prisoner um.
But finally the battles were dying down. Yeah, once the
military presence was there and they started fighting back that
(18:39):
these were kind of the last battles of the week.
But I don't know, just going back to the movie there,
if you have seen Gangs of New York and me
and when they're fighting against the Rioters and the troops
show up and then all of a sudden, the Navy
starts bombing the city. Well, Bruce actually says that Scorsese
took some license here where that happens, because that never happened.
(19:01):
The Navy ships never bombed to the city. So just
a little fun fact there if you're a fan of
the movie. Bombing cities always pretty bad politics. Yeah, it
would have been pretty bad for a Lincoln. Sources say
if he had if he had actually done that would
have been bad for reelection. Yeah, but just just in
real life, with the introduction of the four thousand troops.
By Friday, there was this sort of uneasy piece finally
(19:25):
in New York City. But it was estimated that the
city had suffered one point five million to two million
dollars in property damage and somewhere around one d nineteen
people are known for sure to have been killed sometimes,
so you see figures going up to a thousand people,
although those might have been based on unsubstantiated reports. Regardless, though,
(19:48):
thousands of people were injured or displaced throughout this entire thing,
and according to Bruce, for a lot of native born
New Yorkers, the riots just confirmed their prejudices about Irish immigrants. However,
it's worth pointing out that although they initially blamed Lincoln
and his administration for what had happened, the Irish Catholic
community did express a lot of regret for the violence,
(20:08):
and in the aftermath of the riots pretty much as
soon as it was over, you know, leaders of the
Irish community and people and it they were they felt
bad about what had happened. Um. And it's also worth
pointing out that there were irishmen on both sides of
the situation. There were many who were off fighting for
the war and who condemned what had happened as soon
as they had heard about it. Yeah, and the eventual
(20:29):
outcome of the draft, because you know, that's what this
whole thing started over, it is pretty bizarre. It was
eventually enforced that August, and since there was a heavy
military presence there to oversee it and a county loan
ordinance to pay the three waiver fee for poor conscripts,
it went off without incident. You know, it seemed like
(20:51):
it was going okay. Um. But according to Bruce, over
the next couple of years, the Tammany Hall Democrats raised
enough money to buy the exemption of nearly every drafted
man who didn't want to serve. So, I mean, I'm
sure this is a major simplification, but it kind of
seems pointless. It does, I guess me, make the whole
(21:12):
draft seem kind of ineffective. But I think it may
have gone at least a little ways in making the
Irish working class, working class in general feel a little
less hopeless about the whole war situation. Um. And it's
worth pointing out also that many New York are still
fought in the war after that. They still joined up
with some local militia and immigrants included, so there were
(21:35):
still people who took part in part in the war effort,
even if the draft didn't necessarily get them there. Well,
and Bruce even even has a good quote about that,
you know, feeling less like rioting and more like protesting
politically and and trying to get political rights. Yes, she
says that the working class became increasingly skilled at hunching
(21:57):
their protests with ballots rather than their fists, So it's
a positive development. Yeah, I think that's a positive note
to end to kind of uh riote us and gory
episode on UM. And from there we can move on
to happier listener mail, uplifting listener mail. Yes, we have
(22:18):
a letter here from Rebecca and Los Angeles, and she says,
hello there, missed in history ladies. I just wanted to
send a quick thanks for your fantastic podcast about Hetty Lamar.
Before this year, I'm sad to say I had no
idea who Hetty Lamar was, let alone what she contributed
to science. I'm an actor in Los Angeles and a
member of a theater company called Theater of Note. Coincidentally,
(22:39):
we are doing a play this year called Hetty Lamar
Nazi Killer. It's a farcical interpretation of history, but based
in the facts. I've wanted to audition for the role
of Hetty since I read the play, and just imagine
likely when your podcast how did a Hollywood starlet Invent
Cellular Technology? Popped up in my iTunes library right before
the audition. Quite the stroke of serendipity. Good, I mean, ladies,
(23:01):
thanks to your comprehensive portrait of Hetty, I landed the role,
so I will have the honor of portraying miss Lamar
the Spring, and I'd like to think it's all thanks
to you, ladies. If you find yourself in Los Angeles
and April or May, you've got two complimentary tickets with
your names on them. Awesome, awesome, pretty cool, thanks to Rebecca.
Thank you so much. I don't know if we can
totally take credit for your acting talent. I'm sure you've
(23:23):
got the role on your own, but we definitely like
to think that our podcast at least gave you some
good background to go into your audition. And that's the
play bill or something. Please do, we'd love to have
it and use it as a decoration on our cubicles.
So if you have also secured the lead role in
a play due to one of the podcasts, definitely let
us know. We would love to hear another story like that,
(23:45):
or you know, if you just want to make a
suggestion for a podcast to cover, or make a suggestion
on a podcast we've already covered, definitely feel free to
email us History podcast at how stuffworks dot com. We're
also on Twitter at Misston History, and we're on face
book bill. Lots of way is to contact us. Yeah,
and if you want to learn a little bit more
about how the US draft works now, you can find
(24:07):
an article about it by visiting our homepage at www
dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
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