July 13, 1863---The New York Draft Riots: Day Three

JULY 13, 1863:            

The New York Draft Riots (Day Three):    

It immediately became apparent that serious trouble was in the air as thousands of city workers and other workingmen did not show up for work on the morning of July 13th. As dawn broke, two very large crowds assembled in Midtown---including men armed with guns, clubs, knives, whips, brickbats, and lengths of pipe and chain, women with children, and sign-carrying protesters. At about 7:00 AM the two groups converged, their leaders held a brief meeting, and the two wings of what had now become a small army proceeded to the Draft office at 46^th Street and 3^rd Avenue. The swollen crowd stood outside the Draft office chanting and jeering; when the Draft resumed around 10:30, the jeers became a roar. It wasn’t until Engine Company 33 (“The Black Jokers”) of the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) arrived before 11:00 AM and set fire to the Draft office that the mob flashed into violence. The burning building was looted; the Draft officers were brutalized; when other FDNY units responded to the alarms to put out the fire they were attacked by the mob; Police called to the scene were likewise attacked, and New York’s Police Superintendent was savagely beaten.

The famous Bull’s Head Hotel refused to give alcohol to the rioters, and it was burned down. The Mayor’s residence was set ablaze. The headquarters of vociferously pro-Union New York Times was likewise set alight. The Times staff managed to put out the fire and defended themselves from the rioters with a Gatling Gun (where did they get it?). Dismayed by the machine gun, the mob turned southward, attacking random people in the streets. More police and firefighters were called to quell the disturbance and to put out the myriad fires lit by the rioters, but many joined the mob instead, which now numbered in the tens of thousands. The rioters moved south, looting shops and battling anyone in their path.

Some nameless and unfortunate African-American became an unwilling victim of the mob, which now made blacks the focus of the riot and turned its rage against them almost exclusively. One man was attacked by a mass of 400 rioters who brutally stomped him to death, hung his battered body from a lamppost, and set it afire.

The Colored Orphans Asylum was burned to the ground by the rioters after being looted. Fortunately, the police were able to parley with the mob’s leaders and managed to remove the staff and the children before the building was torched.

At least 100 blacks were killed that afternoon, most of them in brutal lynchings. The first black-owned pharmacy in the United States was destroyed, and other black-owned businesses were likewise razed to the ground. Businesses that catered to blacks or served black and white customers without regard to race became focal points of the mob’s rage. They were wrecked, and the white owners were stripped and beaten in the streets. In the docks area, rioting longshoremen attacked taverns and cathouses serving blacks.

The riots continued into the evening, when a heavy rainstorm put out most of the fires and sent the mob scurrying for cover inside their rattrap homes.