Reference

The Draft Riots of 1863 were a tumultuous moment in New York City history. In just four days, rioters destroyed a multitude of federal and private property, killed and injured hundreds of people, perpetrated and committed horrifying acts of racial violence, and provoked many African Americans into fleeing the city.

Minor riots occurred in several cities, and when the drawing of names began in New York on July 11, 1863, mobs (mostly of foreign-born, especially Irish, workers) surged onto the streets, assaulting residents, defying police, attacking draft headquarters, and burning buildings. Draft Riot of 1863, major four-day eruption of violence in New York City resulting from deep worker discontent with the inequities of conscription during the U.S. Civil War. Thus, the white rioters eventually vented their wrath on the homes and businesses of innocent African Americans, and Civil War freedmen’s associations were forced to send aid to their brethren in New York. The four-day draft riot was finally quelled by police cooperating with the 7th N.Y. Regiment, which had been hastily recalled from Gettysburg, and the drawing of names proceeded on August 19 without incident. Because of their low wages, often less than $500 a year, they were particularly antagonized by the federal provision allowing more affluent draftees to buy their way out of the Federal Army for $300.

White dockworkers, long opposed to the Black men working on the docks alongside them—a demonstration against employers hiring Black workers on the docks had turned violent earlier in 1863—took the opportunity to destroy many of the businesses near the docks that catered to Black workers, and attack their owners, as part of their effort to erase the Black working class from the city. Stunned by the riots, the abolitionist movement in New York City revived itself slowly, and in March 1864, less than a year after the draft riots, New York City saw its first all-Black volunteer regiment in the Union Army march with pomp and circumstance through the streets before boarding their ship in the Hudson River. Original: October 27, 2009 Table of Contents The New York Draft Riots occurred in July 1863, when the anger of working-class New Yorkers over a new federal draft law during the Civil War sparked five days of some of the bloodiest and most destructive rioting in U.S. history. New York City Divided Pre-Civil War As the business capital of the nation, New York City had not welcomed the onset of the Civil War, as it meant losing the South as an important trading partner. Leslie M. Harris, The New York City Draft Riots of 1863.John Strausbaugh, City of Sedition: The History of New York City During the Civil War (Grand Central Publishing, 2016).John Strausbaugh, White Riot: Why the New York Draft Riots of 1863 Matter Today.