Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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Union, but they would not be willing to ﬁght and die to free slaves. Furthermore,

news from the Battle of Gettysburg ( July 1–3, 1863), the bloodiest battle of the

entire war, shocked many New Yorkers as t hey read of the high casualty counts.

Consequently, as the draft went from an abstract notion to a reality in New York,

many people organized to protest what they saw as an injustice.

Ultimately, all federal authorities w an ted was to reﬁll the ranks with ﬁghting

men; however, the draft served as the spark that set off a chain reaction that

unleashed pent-up frustrations and hatred against authority, class, and race. In

New York, there was a huge gap between the rich and poor. The lower classes were

frustrated by the perceived inequality created by the greater ability of the wealthy

to pay for substitutes or commutation. Copperheads, a peace faction, further riled

up the people by accusing the Lincoln administration of waging a “rich man’s war,

poor man’s ﬁght.” Also, Copperheads capitalized on northern raci sm by claiming

that the war would free slaves that woul d then compete for jobs in the North and

drive down wages. The Day Book, Express, Freeman’s Journal,andDaily News

were Copperhead publ ications that continually a ttacked the draft policy. Many

436 New York Draft Riots (1863)

Rioters in New York City lynch an African American in this July 1863 illustration from Harper's

Weekly. The passage of the Union Conscription Act in March to recruit soldiers for the Union

Army was a hugely unpopular act that led to violent riots in New York City. Many Southern

sympathizers focused their attacks on abolitionists and African Americans. (Library of

Congress)

opposed the draft because they saw it as a sign of the federal government’s grow-

ing power. Some Democratic leaders convinced the working class that they were

victims of injustice. Governor Horatio Seymour, for example, publicly denounced

conscription as unconstitutional, and he asked the Lincoln administration to post-

pone conscription in New York.

Short on volunteers, Provost Marshall Colonel Robert Nuge nt began dividing

New York into districts. On Saturday morning July 11, Captain Charles Jenkins

directed the draft lottery at a district ofﬁce on the corner of Third Avenue and

46th Street, and the ﬁrst list of 1,200 names was published in newspapers the next

day. There was no sign of violence on Sunday; however, it soon became apparent

that so me planning was done. On the morning of Monday, July 13, when more

names were scheduled to be drawn, many working-class Irish and German recent

immigrants did not report to work. Instead, they joined together to form a mob.

As they walked through the streets, many more workers left their posts to join

the growing mob of men, women, and children, which gathered on Eighth Avenue,

Ninth Avenue, and near Central Park and then marched to the draft headquarters,

brandishing clubs and stones.

The m ob, which by this time numbered about 5,000 strong (some estimates

range as high as 10,000), waited outside while a group of men went inside to wit-

ness the lottery. After the men created a disturbance by shouting curses at the ofﬁ-

cials, they exited the building and rejoined the large mob outside. Immediately, a

shot rang out, and stones began to rain down on the windows. Rioters hit and seri-

ously injured a draft ofﬁcer in the head with a stone, and injured many other peo-

ple during the attack. A dozen policemen that were present were unable to subdue

the mob. The rioters entered the ofﬁce and destroyed doors, tables, and other fur-

niture. But their primary targets were the records and lists of draftees, which they

tore in pieces and scattered in the street. Ofﬁcials, who had been conducting the

draft, and reporters, who were present to report on the progress of the draft, ﬂed

through a back door for fear of violence. Finally, t he mob set ﬁre to the of ﬁce,

and it soon spread and consumed the entire block. Firemen arrived on the scene,

but were kept from their duty by the rioters.

Next, the rioters turned their violence on the rest of the city. The New York State

Militia had been sent to lend a hand at the Battle of Gettysburg, which left the

defense of the city primarily in the hands of the police force. An attempt to call for

police reinforcements failed, because the telegraph wires had been cut. The commo-

tion at the draft ofﬁce got Police Superintendent John A. Kennedy’s attention, and he

rode to the scene to inv estigate. As soon as rioters recognized him, howe v er, he was

powerless against them as they beat him repeatedly. Greatly outnumbered, the police

were continually forced to retreat. The Invalid Corps (wounded soldiers) tried to help

restore order, but they were also sent running for their lives.

New York Draft Riots (1863) 437

The rioters attacked government institutions or anything associated with author-

ity. They often targeted notable Republican politicians. Draft ofﬁces, a police sta-

tion, the mayor’s house, and the postmaster’shousewerehit.Theriotersalso

struck out against the pro-draft press b y burning the ﬁrst ﬂoor of the New York

Tribune building. Authorities supplied the New York Times staff with t wo crank-

rotated, multibarreled, state-of-the-art Gatling machine guns for their defense.

Meanwhile, the mob continued to grow in size and became better equipped, secur-

ing swords and guns. It has been estimated that the mob numbered as high as

50,000 at its peak. Therefore, instead of sending policemen in a suicide frontal

attack against the mob, the men were deployed in defensive positions at City Hall,

police headquarters, banks, and other strategic locations. Furthermore, Mayor

George Opdyke called for a temporary volunteer force to supplement the existing

800 policemen , and more than 1,200 men responded to the call and were quickly

sworn in. The fact that most of the rioters were Irish and most of the police

force was also Irish has prompted some historians to analyze the riots as an Irish

civil war.

The city was gripped by terror. Rioters attacked well-dressed wealthy men on

the street. They raped wealthy women in their homes. They raided, looted, and

burned afﬂuent neighborhoods and businesses. During the riots, people stayed

home for safety. Factories, stores, schools, and hotels were closed. Public transpor-

tation was at a standstill. Entire blocks of the city were burned. Rioters attacked an

armory, and the police did everything in its power to try to keep them from getting

possession of it. During the struggle, both rioters and policema n were killed and

wounded, but, eventually, the policemen were ordered t o retreat, and the mob

secured weapons and set the armory on ﬁre.

In most cases, however, the mobs targeted African Americans. The mob

attacked the Orphan Asylum for Colored Children that housed between 600 and

800 children. Aided by ﬁremen, most of the children escaped unharmed, but the

orphanage was burned to the ground an d hundreds of African A merican children

were left homeless. Rioters burned and looted African American homes and

churches, and they terrorized African Americans by beating, lynching, and killing

any that they saw. Rioters also attacked abolitionists or anyone who aided African

American during the riots. Consequently, even though the exact death toll of the

riots is unknown, the majority of dead and injured were African Americans.

It has been estimated that 40 percent of the African American population (about

5,000) ﬂed the city during the riots. This African American exodus was a new

trend that continued during the next decade in New York and other large cities.

Before t he riots, African American neighborhoods were integrated in the city.

However, after the riots, African Americans were pushed to the suburbs, which

later became ghettos. Some moved voluntarily for fear of violence. Many more

438 New York Draft Riots (1863)

were for ced out, because former employer s refused to hire them in an effort to

avoid future troubles. After the war, Reconstruction efforts were hampered by rac-

ism. Furthermore, because of hatred and racism in both the North and the South,

the lynching of African Americans continued well into the 1940s.

Possibly in an effort to downplay the chaos and better deal with the public

embarrassment that the city government faced due to the fact that they were

powerless to quell the riots, many ofﬁcial city documents recorded very

conservative numbers of dead, inju red, and p roperty damages. Consequently,

although deaths were actually much higher, the ofﬁcial documents conﬁrm only

105 deaths, which included only six soldiers and three policemen. The documents

state that the death toll increased to 119 shortly after the riots, because of untreated

injuries and building hazards. The documents also record that 18 African Amer i-

cans were lynched, ﬁve were drowned in rivers, a nd 70 were reported missing.

Property damages were also underestimated, because very often city ofﬁcials

reduced and even denied damage claims made by African Americans.

In contrast to the ofﬁcial city do cuments, the contemporary press a nd police

reports stated that the riots caused more than 1,200 people to lose their lives and

thousands of injurie s. C ontemporaries also calcu lated the damages at more than

$2 million. But, throughout the years, scholars have continually reduced the ﬁgure

to less than $1 million in damages. Also, although some modern historians still

quote the larger contemporary press and p olice ﬁgures, other notable historians

have relied heavily on the overly conservative city government reports. However,

although very conservative, even the low estimates of death and destruction have

remained larger than any other contemporary or future American riot.

Late that Monday evening, heavy rain served to disperse most of the rioters and

put out some of the ﬁres. However, the riot resumed in full force the next morning.

The police force was supplemented by 800 troops from forts in the New York har-

bor and West Point cadets, but the riots continued unabated. However, Wednesday

was a turning point in the riots for several reasons. First, the draft was suspended,

and the announcement convinced many rioters to go home. Also, as the size of the

mobs began to decrease, the size of the military continued to grow as the New

York Militia began to arrive. On Thursday, more troops arrived, and general order,

for the ﬁrst time, began to be restored. By the end of the day, there were thousands

of troops in the city, including the 152nd New York Volunteers, the 26th Michigan

Volunteers, the 27th Indiana Volunteers, the 74th New York Militia, the 65th New

York Militia, and the 7th Regiment New York Stat e Militia. A ﬁnal battle took

place on Thursday evening near Gramercy Park, where many rioters lost their

lives, but by Friday morning, order was completely restored.

On Friday, John Hughes, Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York and Lincoln

supporter, delivered an address aimed at stopping any further hostilities. Governor

New York Draft Riots (1863) 439

Seymour, however, continued to argue with Lincoln about the draft. Seymour

claimed that the quotas set for the city were too h igh. He accused draft ofﬁcials

of prej udice against certain New Yorkers. He pleaded for extens ions so that t he

quotas could be met with volunteers. ButLincolnremainedﬁrmandsetthe

resumption of the draft in New York for August 19, 1863.

Theriotshaddramaticeffectsonconscriptionpolicy.Theyunderscoredthe

existing strong popular disdain to forced service, and they made the reality of vio-

lent rebellion in response to a draft a strong concern for the government. For

example, New York City, in an effort to avoid future riots, paid more than

$300,000 for substitutes and commutation fees so N ew Yorkers would not be

forced to serve in the Civil War. Although the draft was reinstated in New York

after the riots with out incident, it disappeared after the Civil War, a nd it did not

reappear for more than 40 years, until during World War I.

—Rolando Avila

See also all entries under Know-Nothing Riots (1855–1856); Harpers Ferr y Raid (1859).

Further Reading

Barnes, David M. The Draft Riots in New York, July, 1863: The Metropolitan Police, Their

Services During the Riot Week, Their Honorable Record. New York: Baker and

Godwin, 1863.

Berstein, Iver. The New York City Draft Riots: Their Signiﬁcance for American Society and

Politics in the Age of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Cook, Adrian. The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863. Lexing-

ton: University of Kentucky Press, 1974.

Headley, Joel Tyler. The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873; Including a Full and

Complete Account of the Four Days’ Draft Riot of 1863. New York: Dover, 1971.

McCague, James. The S econd Rebel lion: The Story of the New York City D raft Riots of

1863. New York: The Dial Press, Inc., 1968.

Schecter, Barnet. The Devil’s Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to

Reconstruct America. New York: Walker & Co., 2005.

Werstein, Irving. The Draft Riots: July 1863. New York: Julian Messner, 1971.

440 New York Draft Riots (1863)

Civil War (1861–1865)

Some major long-term causes of the American Civil War inc luded divergent sec-

tional interests on tariffs, internal improvements, and states’ rights. Some major

short-term causes of the war were the breakdown of the political system in the

1860 presidential election, the secession of 11 southern states (The Confederate

States of America), an d the federal government’s attempt to preserve the Union.

The immediate cause of the conﬂict was the Confederate attack on the federally

held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.

Sectionalism h ad been an ever-present problem throughout earl y U.S. history,

but sever al compromi ses had been able to smooth out differences. However, by

1861, compromise seemed unattainable. Confederate leaders were appalled by

Abraham Lincoln’s election, since 10 out of 11 Confederat e states had not cast a

single popular vote for him. Consequently, the South felt that it had no real repre-

sentation, and set out to build a new nation where its values and interests could be

better served. Lincoln, however, was dead-set against secession for economic and

pol itical reasons. First, th e North was dependent on the South for raw materials,

such as cotton for northern textile factor ies. Second, Lincoln believed that, if the

South was allowed to leave the Union, it would establish a precedent so dangerous

that it would threaten the future integrity of the Union.

After the Fort Sumter attack, both the Union and the Confederacy began asking

for short-term volunteers to raise armies for what most believed would be a short

ﬁght . However, as the war dragge d on, the war became increasingly unpopular.

Unable to raise th e needed troops, Lincoln instituted conscription in the summer

of 1863. Ironically, conscription served to make the war even more unpopular,

and draft riots broke out in New York. Also, the Copperheads, a political peace

faction, opposed the war and pushed for its end.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln transformed the character of the war by issuing the

Emancipation Proclamation as a military necessity. The proclamation elevated the

struggle from economic and political motivations to a ﬁght against human bond-

age. The redeﬁning of the war aims led to greater displays of racism in the North.

The Proclamation freed slaves in the rebelling states and served as an effective

diplomatic weapon by preventing European intervention on behalf of the slave-

holding Confed eracy. In 1864, the Union ad opted a radical milit ary approach by

waging total war on the South. On April 9, 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant

accepted Gene ral Robert E. Lee’s surre nder at Appomattox Court House . In the

aftermath of the war, more than 600,000 men lost their lives, slavery was abol-

ished, and the Union was preserved.

—Rolando Avila

441

Further Reading

Catton, Bruce. The Centennial History of the Civil War. 3 vols. Garden City, NY: Double-

day and Co., 1961–1965.

Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative. 3 vols. New York: Random House, 1958–1974.

McPherson, James M. The Ill ustrated Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civi l War Era.New

York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Conscription

The ﬁ rst attempt in American history to cons cript (or dr aft) an army occurred

during the American Civil Wa r (1861–1865). From its inception, conscription

was extremely unpopular and wa s met with protests. Due to strong popular

opposition to conscription, the U.S. Congress allowed for exemptions. Conse-

quently, some historians have called the effectiveness of the conscription policy

into question, but this issue has remained debatable. Likewise, the question

of whether or not conscription policy favored the rich has remained a point of

contention.

During the ﬁrst year of the war, conscription had not been necessary, because of

the great number of volunteers on both sides. However, by 1862, serious man-

power shortages prompted the Confederate States of America to institute conscrip-

tion. That summer, in an effort to also keep its ranks ﬁlled, the Union absorbed

state militias into war service. Furthermore, on March 3, 1863, the U.S. Congress

passed the Enrollme nt A ct, which instituted national conscription. Many people

felt that conscription violated the principle of freedom on which the country was

founded. Widespread demonstrat ions erupted, which included Copperhead

opposition and draft riots. In fact, the strong protests prompted Congress to soften

the blow of conscription by making allowances for exemptions from service.

Under t his exemption system, whe n a man was called to service, he was put

through a physical examination. If he passed, he was given 10 days to buy an

exemption by paying a $300 commutation fee, and, if the fee was out of reach,

the prospective conscript was allowed to pay a substitute to take his place.

Government ofﬁcials used com mu tation fees to pay bounties for volunteers, but

growing desperation for men led Congress to repeal commutation in 1864, which

made the price for substitutes rise. Statistics from the ﬁrst 1863 draft have shown

that 190,000 men were excused for reasons of physical disabilities or family hard-

ships, 52,000 men paid for commutation, 26,000 men paid for substitutes, and

14,560 men evaded the draft. So, the ﬁrst 1863 attempt to conscript 292,441 men

442 New York Draft Riots (1863)

netted only 9,881. Consequent draft attempts did not fare much better. In fact, by

the end of the war, conscripts accounted for only 5.54 percent of the Union Army.

For years, scholars have debated the effectiveness of conscription during the

Civil War. Some point out that conscription fell short of raising the desired number

of men. On the other hand, others argue that, since conscripts were not eligible for

bounties, many men who would not have done so otherwise volunteered before

they were drafted. Also, while it has been generally accepted that a major cause

of the New York Draft Riots was the Irishmen’s inability to pay for commutation

or substitutes, recent scholarship has attempted to debunk the “rich man’s war,

poor man’s ﬁght” charge. Throughout the war, it is argued, men of all classes con-

tinued to pay for substitutes by various means, and the Union Army remained a

fair representation of the North.

—Rolando Avila

Further Reading

Geary, James W. We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War. DeKalb: Northern

Illinois University Press, 1991.

Murdock, Eugene C. One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North. Madison: State

Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971.

Copperheads

The Copperheads were a peace faction within the Democratic Party that developed

at the onset of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Labeled traitors by Republi-

cans, Copperheads opposed the policies of Abraham Lincoln’s administration. The

Copperhead inﬂuence on the home front rose and fell throughout the war based on

the f ortunes on the battleﬁelds a nd growing pressures at home. Over the years,

scholars have reevaluated the threat that Copperheads posed during the war.

During the 1860 presidential election, the Democratic Party split into two

camps. One group supported the war effort while the other supported a peace plat-

form, which favored a free Confede rate States of America. Republicans consid-

ered peace Democrats traitors and, equating them to poisonous snakes, dubbed

them “copperheads.” Some Copperheads embraced the title and wore copperhead

pennies as bad ges of honor. They opposed emancipation, because Irish and

German immigrants feared losing jobs to freed black s, and they used the existing

racist beliefs of many northerners to gain support for their agenda. Lincoln’s

administration responded by shutting down Copperhead newspapers and arresting

suspected traitors. Clement L. Vallandigham was by far the most high-proﬁle

New York Draft Riots (1863) 443

Copperhead. Charged as a traitor, Vallandigham was convicted of treason and ban-

ished from Union borders. Copperheads also op posed the administration’s abuse

of constitutional rights by revoking civil liberties (such as free speech and press)

in some areas. They also opposed the war, because they wanted to avoid bloodshed

and destruction of the South and its way of life.

Throughout the war, the rise of Copperhead inﬂuence was d irectly tied to the

Unio n Army’s performance on the battleﬁelds. Problems on the home front, like

the institution of conscription and draft riots, also increased Copperhead inﬂuence.

In the 1864 presidential election, Copperheads supported Union general George B.

McClellan, who ran on a peace platform. But Union victories leading up to the

election diminished Copperhead support, and Lincoln won his bid for reelection.

In late 1864, Jefferson Davis wrote Confederate agents i nstructing them

to establish a ba se in Canada f rom w hich they could seek out and work togeth er

with Copperheads to weaken northern morale and support for the war. Situations

like this that came to light during the war caused contemporaries to take the

Copperhead threat very seriously. But after the war, historians downplayed the

threat tha t Copperh eads posed. Some accounts portrayed Copperheads more as

victims than legitimate opposition. They argued that, in a democracy, the political

opposition of peace Democrats to the administration’s war policies did not consti-

tute disloyalty to the Unio n. Recently, however, historians have re eval uated the

role that Copperheads played during the Civil War and concluded that Lincoln’s

concerns were not misplaced.

—Rolando Avila

Further Reading

Curry, Richard O. “The Union as It Was: A Critique of Recent Interpretations of the

‘Copperheads.’ ” Civil War History 13, no. 1 (March 1967): 25–39.

Klement, Frank L. Lincoln’s Critics: The Copperheads of the North. Shippensbu rg, PA:

White Mane, 1999.

Weber, Jenni fer L. Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Racism

Racism is the belief that one race is superior to another, which has led to prejudice

and discrimination against the allegedly inferior race. Racism has been a constant

ﬁxture in American history. During the American Civil War era, for example,

444 New York Draft Riots (1863)

individual and institutional racism was p racticed against African Americans and

immigrants.

One of the greatest reasons for antagonism against certain groups was that they

were different. They looked different, spoke unknown languages, and held mysteri-

ous customs. Africans were imported after 1619 and were enslaved. Studies have

shown that racism against African Americans was just as strong in the North as it

was in the South before, during, and after the Civil War . Also, in the decades leading

up to the Civil War, the United States saw the greatest proportional inﬂux of immi-

grants in its history. It has been estimated that about 2.4 million (or about 14.5 per-

cent of the total population) were recent Irish, German, or Chines e immigrants.

The Irish immigrants, escaping famine, accounted for the greatest number of immi-

grants during this time, and they were discriminated against mostly for their Catholic

religion. The Know-Nothing political party, for example, demanded the exclusion of

immigrants and Catholics from public ofﬁce. In some cases, prospective employers

shunne d Irishmen. Chin ese immigrants felt the blunt edge of rac ism even harder

with the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration.

During the Civil War, the American Colonization Society proposed ridding the

United States of what they considered to be the African American problem by

freeing as many slaves as possibl e and then sending them to Africa. This idea

was very popular among the ruling class in the North, reformers, and abolitionists.

Even Abraham Lincoln, the “Great Emancipator,” supported the relocation plan

for the ﬁrst two years of the war. By late 1862, however, Lincoln abandoned the

idea and decided to strike a blow at the core of the Confederate States of America

by abolishing slavery in the rebelling states. Copperheads opposed emancipation,

because they believed that freed slaves would take jobs away from Irish and

German factory workers.

After the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in January 1, 1863, as a mili-

tary necessity, many northern cities were overrun with liberated slaves, and north-

erners exhibited prejudice and racism against the new arrivals. African Americans

that served in the Union Army also faced the discrimination of low pay. In the

summer of 1863, draft riots erupted in New York, and Irishmen, who could not

pay for commutation or substitutes, took out their rage on African American resi-

dents. After the war, racism against African Americans and other ethnic groups

continued.

—Rolando Avila

Further Reading

Dain, Bruce. A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Joyce, Toby. “The New York Draft Riots of 1863: An Irish Civil War?” History Ireland 11,

no. 2 (2003): 22–27.

New York Draft Riots (1863) 445