SYMHC Classics: How the New York Draft Riots Worked

We're revisiting an episode from 2011 featuring previous hosts Sarah and Deblina. 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. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey everybody, it is Saturday, which means it's time to
go back into the archive for one of our previous episodes,
and today it's our April eleven episode on the New
York Draft Riots from previous hosts Sarah and Bublina. We're
coming up on the hundred and fifty fifth anniversary of
these riots. They started on July eight, sixty three, so
it seemed like a good time to return to it.

(00:24):
And while it is known as the Draft Riots, it
was about a lot more than the Civil War draft. Immigration,
class struggles, and labor issues all played a part as well,
and it remains a horrifying example of racist violence. Also,
the New York Draft Riots will be making an appearance
in our brand new sister podcast, This Day in History Class,

(00:45):
which launched on July one, So you can tune in
to the end of today's episode to hear a trailer
for This Day in History Class, and you can hear
a different take on the Draft Riots on that show
on July. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class
from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to

(01:12):
the podcast I'm to Blame a chalk reboarding and and
all of you history fans out there have probably heard
a little bit about a certain anniversary that's coming up.
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

(01:34):
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,
because something more original than that. Right, people are going
to 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

(01:55):
us know. But the truth is we often touch on
topics around this particular 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,
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

(02:15):
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, you've seen the movie
Gangs of New York. You you know how bloody 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

(02:38):
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. There
was the draft, the issue around that, there were union
wartime policies. There were issues with race relations, socio economic securities,

(03:01):
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 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? All? Right, So, before

(03:22):
we get into all of that that we're going to
set the scene. A lot of New York's working class.
New York City's 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 a
primary destination for the Irish in particular, especially after the
Potato famine of the eighteen forties. According to Encyclopedia Britannica,

(03:46):
from eighteen forty one to eighteen fifty, Irish made up
forty nine per cent of the total immigration to the
United States, So a huge group of people. Yeah, I
think it's something like one in four New York residents
was an Irish immigran. And of these they were mostly
unskilled laborers such as doc workers, ditch digger, street pavers,

(04:06):
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 Catholic community. So you know, to support it in
some way, if not by enlisting, then finding another way

(04:26):
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 off
the Union had lost a lot of men in battle Um.
President Lincoln also issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January one,

(04:47):
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 American didn't like this because
they were afraid that African Americans were gonna come up
once they were free, they were going to come up
north and take their jobs. So that was with this

(05:08):
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 in working class Irish
immigrants were pretty similar. You know, they were in similar,
similar positions. They shared a lot in common. They were

(05:31):
both poor, both faced 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
heated during the war. One memorable occasion, for example, was

(05:51):
in spring of eighteen sixty three during a strike of
Irish stock workers African Americans. They had been called in
a strike breakers in the city suation 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, so trouble was brewing already, right,
And then the final straw was when Federal Congress passed

(06:14):
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 a three hundred dollar fee.
And there was another aspect to this as well, according

(06:36):
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 changing the game here. Yeah,
in New York's working class immigrant community is consequently enraged

(06:57):
over this new act. And there were a few reads
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 thought might just come to
New York City and take their low paying jobs. And

(07:19):
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, much worse. And then
another thing that kind of helped, you know, set the

(07:39):
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 day of the city's
first draft lottery begin since the new law. So the

(08:03):
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 that they could fight back
and stop this from getting any further out of control. Yeah,

(08:24):
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. Now we should mention
that at this point the group also included German speaking
artisans and native born Protestant journeyman. Many of them were

(08:46):
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've seen sources that, oh, it's it's the Irish,
it's all the Irish. And there were other people involved
at least on this first day at well as well.
And there were women in the group as well as

(09:06):
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 he describes a growing crowd of quote gaunt
looking savage men and women and even little children, armed

(09:27):
with brick bats, stone poker, shovels and togs, coal scuttles,
and even tin pans and a bit of iron. Okay,
so they found 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
out with them, the crowd meant business, and there were

(09:48):
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
signal that this was something major. Unfortunately, though they didn't

(10:10):
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
institutions related to the Republican Party that was another big

(10:32):
target of their's 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, their security. Merchants and
stores were also a target, particularly for looting, but also
partially for their associations with wealth. And policemen and union

(10:54):
soldiers who attempted to defend the government property were also
another big target. 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,

(11:15):
it's it's pretty crucial that some of the writers switched
their allegiance, 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 hands. So the majority of
the mob that kept on rioting through the week was
working class and they were mostly working class Irish. So

(11:38):
starting with some of the damage done on day one,
after setting 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 asylument fifth Avenue and thirty

(12:01):
fourth Street, which is one that you hear about a lot,
and sometimes you see accounts that described two thirty 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 in African Americans were increasingly
targeted throughout the day too, and so was their property,

(12:22):
and so were whites that helped them. Even prostitutes who
catered 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

(12:44):
choice and it was the safest thing to do. And
kind of 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,

(13:04):
and protesters thought that the paper not only represented Republican
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

(13:27):
on that first day, and Day two was kind of
more the same, right. I mean, writers continued to attack
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.

(13:48):
Even other non rioting Irish Catholics weren't safe from them.
According to an article by Ivan Bernstein and Civil War
Times and Derrickson. An Irish woman with a black husband
died of injury she got will try 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,

(14:10):
commander of the eleventh New York Volunteers. He tried to
support policemen by having his men fire a cannon over
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,

(14:33):
and men and women rioters alike beat him with their
fists and clubs, and they took turns pounding his face
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
you're probably wondering why Brooks Brothers the store was a

(14:56):
contractor for the U. S Government and also still today
a retailer catering to wealthy people, and they had had
some recent labor troubles of their own. Hundreds of tailors
had gone on strike for higher wages only four months earlier.
So the riders were seeing well bricks, brothers, we've got
our eyes on YouTube. Yeah, And by that afternoon, rioters

(15:19):
had also erected barricades. And this is an interesting point
because they basically just use the debris resulting from the
riots to put put it around their own waterfront neighborhoods
in 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, kind of make their
own little city to write like a little fort. So

(15:41):
these were kind of, um, I don't know, I guess
they were sort of a double edged sort. 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

(16:03):
taking more action finally, 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

(16:25):
strung up 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 had been

(16:48):
trying new strategies 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 and 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

(17:11):
target 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

(17:33):
as a 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,

(17:54):
and it was a working class political protests. So they
were looking for other solutions they and 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

(18:16):
through 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,

(18:38):
though 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 day four we have a new introduction of

(19:00):
players in 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 and naval forces
and even West Point Cadets who were already involved try
to get things back under control. And the increased military

(19:22):
presence did let 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,

(19:43):
once the military presence was there and they started fighting back,
that 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 the
end when they're fighting against the rioters and the troops
show up and then all of a sudden, the Navy
star bombing the city, well, Bruce actually says that Scorsese

(20:03):
took some license here where that happens, because that never happened.
The Navy ships never bombed to the city. So just
a little fun fact there if you're a fan of
the movie. Bombing city is 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

(20:25):
in real life, with the introduction of the four thousand
troops by Friday, there was this sort of uneasy piece
finally 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.

(20:45):
Sometimes though you see figures going up to a thousand people,
although those might have been based on unsubstantiated reports. Regardless,
though thousands of people were injured or displaced throughout this
entire thing, and according to Bruce, for a lot of
Native New Yorkers, the riots just confirmed their prejudices about
Irish immigrants. However, it's worth pointing out that although they

(21:07):
initially blamed Lincoln and his administration for what had happened,
the Irish Catholic community did express a lot of regret
for the violence, and in the aftermath of the riots,
pretty much as soon as it was over, you know,
leaders of the Irish community and people in it, they
were they felt bad about what had happened. It's also

(21:31):
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 outcome of the draft, because you know, that's what
this whole thing started over, is pretty bizarre. It was
eventually enforced that August, and since there was a heavy

(21:51):
military presence there to oversee it and a county loan
ordinance to pay the three waiver fee for poor on scripts,
it went off without incident. You know, it seemed like
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

(22:13):
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
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

(22:34):
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
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,

(22:57):
you know, feeling less like rioting and more like protesting
politically and trying to get political rights. Yes, she says
that the working class became increasingly skilled at hunching their
protests with balance 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 Gry episode.

(23:22):
Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic.
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(23:43):
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(24:06):
podcast stuff You Missed in History Class with my friend
and colleague Holly Fry over the past few years. Every
day on our social media, we've been talking about what
happened on this day in history. So buyard rest in
pacifist and activists who helped plan that marched on Washington
for jobs and freedom was born on this day in
nineteen twelve, or on this day in seventeen eighty nine,

(24:27):
women marched on Verside to demand a solution to an
enormous food shortage. Those things that not happen on the
same day, but you get the picture. So for years
we've been doing that, and it suddenly dawned on us,
what if this was its own podcast. So that's what
we're doing. Starting July one, we're launching kind of a
little sister podcast to stuff you missed in history class.
It's called This Day in History Class. It's about five

(24:50):
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