New York Draft Riots Began - July 13, 1863

The New York Draft Riots began on this day in 1863.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to this day in history class. It's July. The
New York Draft riots began on this day in eighteen
sixty three, and as that name suggests, this was about
the draft, but it was also about racism and a
range of socioeconomic conditions. In the eighteen sixties, recent immigrants
from Germany and Ireland made up a lot of New

(00:24):
York Cities working class, and this was particularly true of
Irish immigrants. After the Great Famine in Ireland, people had
moved to the United States and other places and really
large numbers. Close to a quarter of New York City
residents at this time were from Ireland. These people were
mostly very poor. Most of them were making a living
doing manual labor things like digging ditches and paving roads.

(00:48):
They were not making a lot of money. They didn't
necessarily have a very secure job. And this was happening
during the Civil War, and at first most of these
people supported the war. But that's it to shift as
the war progressed, as people started to lose friends and
family members who were killed in battle. Also, the Emancipation
Proclamation shifted people's opinions. That was the proclamation that freed

(01:13):
all enslaved people in the rebelling States, and so these
workers in New York became really fearful that people who
had been liberated in the South were going to move
to New York and basically take their jobs, or at
least be competing for the same jobs. Then Congress passed
the Enrollment Act on March third of eighteen sixty three,

(01:33):
and this set up a wartime draft for the Civil War.
Unless you could find a substitute to go in your place,
or pay a three hundred dollar fee if you were
a man between the ages of twenty and forty five,
you were subject to the draft. These working class immigrants
were outraged. Now they were going to be forced to
go to war before it had been voluntary. And by

(01:56):
this point in the war, one of the outcomes that
the Union was working towards was the abolition of slavery.
So if slavery were abolished, that would mean even more
liberated people coming to New York City and fighting for
the same jobs. So people who were barely making a
living doing manual labor, they also could not afford to

(02:18):
pay three hundred dollars to get out of being drafted.
When troops left New York City to go fight at Gettysburg.
That left the city pretty much undefended. And then on
July eleven of eighteen sixty three, the draft lottery took
place for the first time. People who were drafted that
day or who knew people that were drafted that day,
met up in saloons and taverns and meeting houses and

(02:41):
started talking about how they could fight back. Another lottery
was supposed to take place a couple of days later,
on Monday thirteen, and they started talking about how they
could stop the lottery from happening. One they went to
the Prost Marshal's office, and the people who went to
there to evan straight included German speaking artisans. There were

(03:04):
volunteer firemen. Most of them were not actually immigrants, most
of them had been born in the United States. A
lot of Irish laborers were part of this group, and
there were women in the group as well. The draft
lottery was to start at ten thirty, and they interrupted
the lottery and they actually set fire to the building.
The riots spread from there. It started explicitly targeting black

(03:27):
people and Republicans. The Republican Party had been founded to
abolish slavery. They started looting merchants and stores. Part of
this was just to loot, but part of it was
also to try to get revenge on the wealthy, those
wealthy people who could afford that three hundred dollars to
get out of fighting in the war. This riot went
on for four days. There were some groups who switched sides,

(03:51):
like the volunteer fireman started trying to quell the raid.
The people riding for most of it were primarily Irish immigrants.
Among the looting and the targeting of of the black
population and of Republicans. They burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum.
They targeted black residents and their homes and their property.

(04:12):
They also kept targeting businesses to try to get revenge
on the wealthy. A man named Abraham Franklin, who was
a disabled black coachman, was hanged. Eventually, both the New
York National Guard and the police were involved, and those
troops that had been sent from New York City to
fight in Gettysburg were called back to try to stop
the violence. It was only after that happened that the

(04:34):
riot subsided. This cause between one point five million and
two million dollars in property damage, and it was August
before the draft was really being enforced in New York City.
You can learn more about the New York Draft Riots
in the April eleven eleven episode of Stuffy Miss and
History Class, and you can subscribe to the Stay in
History Class on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and whoever else

(04:55):
you get your podcasts. And tomorrow's show, we have somebody
who's often referred to as a queen, although she was
not actually royalty h