July 11, 1863---The New York Draft Riots: Day One

JULY 11, 1863:            

The New York Draft Riots (Day One). 

From the outset of the war, New York City (then comprising lower and middle Manhattan Island) had mixed loyalties. As the nation’s largest city, New York was home to everyone from everywhere---and this included Confederates. (Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of future President Theodore Roosevelt, was a “thoroughly unreconstructed” Georgian, sister of James Dunwoody Bulloch, the Father of the Confederate Navy, and an unabashed Southerner---it’s said she hung the Stars and Bars out the window of her stylish midtown townhouse after a Confederate victory; while, at the same time, her husband, Theodore Roosevelt Sr. dined with the President and bought bonnets for Mary Lincoln while on government business in Washington.)

Much of Confederate government finance was handled quietly on Wall Street. The New York Bank Note Company printed Confederate money that was then smuggled South in return for cotton. The sweatshops on the Lower East Side’s Ludlow Street sewed Union uniforms from bolts of blue cloth and Confederate uniforms from bolts of gray cloth in the same rooms. Illicit Confederate shipments went to Europe through New York’s unblockaded port, and illicit shipments came from Europe bound for Richmond.

Southern business was so important to New York that the city’s Copperhead Mayor, Fernando Wood, had tried to set New York up as a Free City in the North. Unlike the civic leaders who tried to do the same with New Orleans in the South, Wood was not arrested by the Powers That Be. Instead, he was elected to Congress.

The Copperheads lost none of their influence among New York’s traditionally Democratic, Tammany Hall-dominated voting populace. Tammany had worked intensely to co-opt the Irish Catholic vote, above all, in the face of considerable nativist resistance. Nor was this resistance merely political. Each political faction clandestinely supported the street gangs that roved the working class areas of the city, such as Five Points, as muscle; the Protestant nativists employed the “Bowery Boys”, led by Bill The Butcher Poole; the Irish Catholic “Dead Rabbits” were their mortal enemies. The Nativists were War Democrats who opposed Fernando Wood; Wood was the current head of Tammany, and a Peace Democrat.

New York in 1863 was one of the most segregated places in the country. Blacks were unwelcome and not allowed to ride the public conveyances or appear in public parks. A thriving illegal slave trade, bringing blacks from Africa to the city and then South, had only recently been stopped by the exigencies of war. Though legally given the franchise, black would-be voters faced literacy tests, poll taxes, and the nation’s first Grandfather Clause as hurdles. The first public performance of the song “Dixie” had taken place in 1857 as part of a minstrel show in town.  

Among New York’s Irish immigrants there was much fear (privately reinforced by Tammany Hall) that the Emancipation Proclamation would lead to fierce competition between the newly-emancipated blacks and the recently-arrived Irish for the limited number of existing low paying jobs. Tammany publicly vowed to fight Emancipation as well as stop the Draft. 

Thus, when the Draft was announced in March 1863, it was as if a match had been thrown into the powder keg that was New York.  The Draft Law had several aspects that added to the potential for violence: firstly, a man could pay a $300.00 fee and buy an exclusion from the Draft (as many wealthier New Yorkers did), and a wealthier man could hire a substitute to fight in his place for an agreed-upon price (as many wealthier New Yorkers also did); secondly, due to racist prejudices about the “fitness” of blacks, blacks were excluded from the Draft (though they could volunteer); thirdly, the Draft applied not only to citizens but to resident aliens who had not attained citizenship as of yet. For the socially depressed, economically struggling Irish (and others), this meant that the Civil War had become two things: one, “A rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight,” and two, a “ni**er war.” The Irish bitterly compared themselves to the South’s slaves---"[We] are sold for $300 while they pay $1000 for negroes."

In despite of Tammany Hall’s efforts, the first Draft was called on a swelteringly hot Saturday; somewhat like a later bingo or lottery game, numbers were pulled at random from a large rotating cage. The first day’s Draft proceeded peacefully despite the gathering of a loud crowd in the street. Rumors of riots in other cities tinged the air.