In New York City a recent strike had been broken by importing freed slaves willing to scab. This further incensed poor whites against Negroes. More than half the city’s dwellers were foreign-born, most were Democrats, and 203,740 were Irish. Tammany Hall, dependent on the Irish vote, was eager to undermine the national war effort. The Daily News charged that the federal draft was a deliberate attempt to reduce the number of Democratic voters in the city.
The draft was scheduled to begin here on Saturday, July 11, 1863. The city was divided into districts, each having an enrollment office. There the names of eligible men would be drawn from revolving lottery wheels. City officials were not asked to take part in the draft; the War Department had appointed Robert Nugent chief provost marshal to oversee everything. Nugent, a colonel of the Sixty-ninth Regiment, an Irishman, and a Democrat, was named in the hope of assuring the city’s Irish that the draft would be conducted fairly.
As the deadline approached, New York City was almost stripped of troops. Confederate General Lee had invaded Maryland and filled Pennsylvania with wild alarm. President Lincoln had asked the governor of New York to send 20,000 men for 30 days to resist the invaders, and 19 regiments of the state national guard had been rushed to the front. Only about 1,900 military men remained here. Of these, 1,000 belonged to various militia and volunteer companies still being organized; 700 were soldiers, sailors, and marines garrisoning the city’s forts and manning the warships anchored here; and 200 were members of the Invalid Corps, or crippled and wounded soldiers protecting arsenals, armories, and munitions plants. A few of these invalids were detached from duty to protect draft offices. There was 1 constable for each of the city’s 22 wards. The police force totaled only 2,297 men.
The infamous Draft Riots of July, 1863, were so well led that they constituted an organized insurrection, rather than a spontaneous mob uprising. Definite strategy may be seen in the efforts to cut off approaches to the city, to sever communications, to capture forts, to seize armories and munitions works with all their weapons and ammunition, and to plunder banks and federal treasury vaults. In fact, the mobs have been called “the left wing of Lee’s army.” G. T. Strong spoke of the “scoundrels who are privily engineering the outburst” as “agents of Jefferson Davis,” the president of the Confederacy—but he stretched a point.
Some contemporary New Yorkers regarded the riots as a Catholic plot, since Protestant property was burned and looted, while no Catholic property was even threatened. This seems unlikely, for on several occasions lone Catholic priests turned back murderous mobs. It is true, however, that most rioters were Irish Catholics. Between 50,000 and 70,000 of them took part in the orgy, and some individual mobs numbered as many as 10,000 frenzied men and women.
On Saturday morning, July 11, Governor Seymour was vacationing at Long Branch, New Jersey, a two-hour carriage drive from New York City. He sent the state adjutant general from Long Branch to Washington to ask federal officials to postpone the draft. Lincoln’s twenty-year-old son, Robert Todd Lincoln, on holiday from Harvard, was stopping in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, at Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. Sir Winston Churchill’s paternal grandfather, Leonard Walter Jerome, sometime adviser to Cornelius Vanderbilt and a big stockholder in the New York Times, puttered about his mansion, at Madison Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street.
Early that morning the police heard that the arsenal at Seventh Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street was to be raided by Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society of Northerners siding with the South. The police superintendent, John A. Kennedy, sent a sergeant and fifteen patrolmen to the building, where they broke up a gathering crowd and then marched inside.
News of the Union victory at Gettysburg now reached the city, and optimists assured one another that the rebellion had been put down. Who wanted to be drafted when the whole shooting bang was about over? A sullen crowd collected in front of the Ninth District’s enrollment office on the northeastern corner of Third Avenue and Forty sixth Street, where the city’s first draft lottery was to be held. Names and addresses of eligible men were written on white slips of paper. The papers were folded and dumped inside a wooden revolving drum. It was hand-cranked until the papers were thoroughly scrambled. This process was repeated again and again until 1,236 names had been picked. Then it was announced that the draft would be resumed the following Monday.
Saturday’s evening papers published the results of this first local draft. As Leslie’s Illustrated said:
It came like a thunderclap on the people, and as men read their names in the fatal list the feeling of indignation and resistance soon found vent in words, and a spirit of resistance spread fast and far. The number of poor men exceeded, as a matter of course, that of the rich, their number to draw being so much greater, but this was viewed as a proof of the dishonesty in the whole proceeding.
That night Southern sympathizers visited saloons in the Five Points and along the waterfront, fanning the first flames of resentment.
On Sunday morning, in hundreds of homes, the meaning of the draft sank deeper into the minds of conscripted men, their wives, and their sweethearts. The city’s seventeen detectives spread through streets to look and listen. Stormy-faced citizens gathered at corners to growl that some rich men had already paid their $300 and been excused from military duty. Messages flew back and forth among gang chieftains. Hoodlums collected bricks, clubs, stones, and other weapons and hid them. Superintendent Kennedy kept a guard at the arsenal and made full use of his detectives, but otherwise his Sunday assignments were routine. That evening several fires broke out in lower Manhattan, and firemen noted that the watching crowds were larger and more boisterous than usual.
Monday morning dawned hot and clear. About 6 A.M. men and women slunk out of Lower East Side slums, filtered to the West Side, and paused to regroup. They were joined by others until the crowd became enormous. Now it split into two detachments, which tumbled north up Eighth and Ninth avenues. Groups of men spun off from these main bodies and darted into side streets, yelling for workers to lay down their tools and join the fun. By the time respectable people sat down to breakfast, the mob had turned east and reached its rendezvous. This was a vacant lot just east of Fifth Avenue near Fifty-ninth Street. Agitators climbed onto boulders and bellowed about the injustice of the draft.
At eight o’clock, augmented by newcomers, the human tide began moving again, this time southward, clattering in two thick columns down Fifth and Sixth avenues, cursing, singing, brandishing weapons, and screaming defiance of the federal government. At Forty-seventh Street the columns merged and wheeled east in one vast multitude, filling the street from curb to curb, requiring twenty-five minutes to pass a given spot. At Third Avenue the rabble turned south and tramped down the broad thoroughfare to the draft office at Forty-sixth Street, where another crowd was already assembled.
Although Police Superintendent Kennedy knew that trouble was brewing, he was not yet aware of how deadly it would become. He had sent a captain and 60 cops to reinforce the squad of patrolmen on duty at the uptown draft office. He also dispatched a captain, 4 sergeants, and 69 cops to another threatened draft office on Broadway at Twenty-ninth Street. That Monday morning, July 13, Kennedy had a total of only 800 policemen available for duty as the riots began.
Federal officials in the city began to stir uneasily. Major General John Ellis Wool was in charge of the Department of the East, with headquarters in New York City. The seventy-four-year-old general was muddleheaded and indecisive. Now he detached fifty members of the Invalid Corps from guard duty elsewhere and sent them limping toward Third Avenue horsecars to ride to the Forty-sixth Street draft office. By this time rioters were chopping down telegraph poles around the menaced building.
Ruffians along Second and Third Avenues halted the horsecars, and by 8:30 A.M. no more of these vehicles were moving on the avenues. G. T. Strong had heard the roars of the mob and boarded a Third Avenue car to go see what was happening. At Thirteenth Street he found the tra
ck blocked by a line of motionless cars stretching way up the avenue, so he got off and began walking. Above Twentieth Street all shops were closed.
At 9 A.M. so many alarming reports reached Police Headquarters, at 300 Mulberry Street, that Superintendent Kennedy sent this message over the police telegraph system: “To all stations in New York and Brooklyn: Call in your reserves and hold them at the station house subject to further orders.” A millionaire merchant, named George Opdyke, was now mayor of New York City. From his City Hall office Mayor Opdyke sent a request to Major General Charles W. Sanford to call out all the militia units left in town. As a result, the first military unit mustered on Monday—apart from the Invalid Corps already under arms—was the Tenth Regiment of the national guard. It assembled in the arsenal at Elm and Worth streets. The mayor also telegraphed an appeal to Governor Seymour to hasten to the city from his Jersey retreat.
Up at the Third Avenue draft office, for the next hour and a half, the police had little trouble coping with the mob surrounding the place. The lottery wheel stood on the ground floor, while the upper three stories were occupied by poor families. The Invalid Corps had not yet arrived. The cops, clubs drawn and faces tense, stood with their backs against the building as the draft lottery resumed. To complete the Ninth District’s quota, 264 more names had to be picked. The mob extended half a dozen blocks north and south of Forty-sixth Street, pushing and yelling and hooting. A few reckless carriage drivers tried to whip their horses through the throng. Plug-uglies caught the bridles of horses, unhitched animals from their shafts, and forced drivers and passengers to get out. Bobbing up and down in the melee were placards reading: “No DRAFT!” The mob surged closer to the cops ringing the draft office. Its vanguard consisted of members of a street-brawling outfit, volunteer firemen in Engine Company 33, popularly known as the Black Joke. The Black Jokers jeered the cops and shouted so uproariously that those inside draft headquarters could barely hear themselves.
At 10:30 A.M. someone in the mob shot a pistol into the air. Then a volley of bricks and stones shattered windows of the draft office. The Black Jokers lunged toward the door. The police fought bravely but were overwhelmed. A police captain ordered his men to retreat inside the building. They backed through the door but were unable to slam it shut, so fast did the howling firemen pour in after them. Draft officials scampered out rear windows. In the halls the cops fought a hopeless rearguard action. Then they dived out windows into the alley and ran toward Second Avenue. Thousands of rioters surged inside. They broke the lottery wheel. They set fire to the building. The flames spread to an adjoining building. Loyal firemen raced up; but the mob kept them from dousing the blaze, and they had to stand by helplessly and watch the destruction of the entire block from Forty-sixth to Forty-seventh Street.
Moments later those on the southern fringe of the mob saw the Invalid Corps unit closing in. These veterans of battlefield horrors, their flesh and bones mending from wounds, had been delayed when the horsecars had stopped running. Now they walked and limped straight toward the mob, which wheeled and charged at them. The clash came at Third Avenue and Forty-second Street. The veterans were vastly outnumbered. Gangsters stoned them, killing one soldier and injuring half a dozen more.
The commanding officer ordered his front rank to fire blanks. The volley pricked the mob into greater fury and left half the troops defenseless. Snarling Irish plug-uglies lunged at the soldiers. The second rank of the Invalids fired real bullets, slaying and wounding six men and one woman. For a second the mob paused. Then, with ferocious roars, the ruffians fell en masse on the veterans, who did not have time to reload. Muskets were jerked from their trembling hands. Many were clubbed with the butts of their own weapons and shot point-blank in the belly. One veteran ran toward the East River and clawed his way to the top of a cliff. He was followed, caught, and hurled to death on the rocky beach below. Then his lifeless body was pounded to pulp by boulders so big that it took two strong men to lift and throw them. All told, a score of veterans were killed. Those able to run took to their heels. They abandoned wounded comrades, who were mutilated as they lay on the ground.
Meantime, Police Superintendent Kennedy had left his headquarters to make a tour of inspection. That hot summer day he wore civilian clothing and carried a bamboo cane. By carriage he drove to Forty-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue, where he heard the hoarse shouts of the mob and saw smoke charcoaling the sky. Kennedy got out and began walking east on Forty-sixth Street. He had gone only half a block when he was recognized. Gangsters rushed him, and one man in an old army uniform knocked him down. Kennedy jumped up and slashed the bully across the face with his cane. Kennedy was beaten to the ground again. He was kicked and stamped on. Once more he leaped up. A hail of blows hammered him to the edge of a hole dug in the street, and he was knocked into it. Up he bobbed. He fled across a vacant lot toward Forty-seventh Street, where another gang met him. He was slugged and slashed as he tried to escape to Lexington Avenue. There a thug pounded him into a deep mudhole. Kennedy pulled himself out and, muddy and bloody, staggered on until he collapsed in the arms of an influential citizen, named John Eagan. This good Samaritan convinced Kennedy’s attackers that the police superintendent was dead. He was indeed unconscious. Kennedy later was placed in a wagon, covered with gunnysacks, and driven to Police Headquarters. There a surgeon found seventy-two bruises and more than a score of cuts on his body.
In the nation’s capital President Lincoln was getting telegraphic news of the riot from Sidney H. Gray, managing editor of the New York Tribune. At 11:45 A.M. the federal government ordered the city draft offices closed. This did not end the violence. The criminals, the poor, and the disloyal were out to seize control of the town, and they did. By tearing up tracks, they isolated the city from direct approach by train. They cut wires that cobwebbed the police telegraph system, but repairmen soon spliced lines and restored communications.
With Superintendent Kennedy unconscious, police command devolved upon police commissioners John C. Bergen and Thomas C. Acton. Bergen took charge in Brooklyn and on Staten Island. Acton, a prominent Republican and a founder of the Union League Club, assumed command in Manhattan. Intelligent and energetic, Acton received and answered more than 4,000 telegrams between Monday morning and Friday afternoon. All this time he neither slept nor changed clothes.
Monday noon a mob clattered toward the home of Mayor Opdyke, at 79 Fifth Avenue, near Fifteenth Street. Although the mayor had neglected to provide a guard for his residence, fifty neighbors now armed themselves and took up defensive positions. Supreme Court Justice George G. Barnard climbed onto the stoop of an adjoining house and spoke to the mob. Everybody knew that Barnard had been elevated to the court by William Marcy Tweed, and the fat Boss was everybody’s friend. So the judge talked the crowd out of attacking the mayor’s home.
Mayor Opdyke was in his City Hall office, where he now called for a special session of the city council. Because only half a dozen aldermen appeared, no quorum could be obtained. The mayor then issued a proclamation ordering the rioters to disperse. The Irish, who regarded the mayor as a Black Republican, reacted violently. A mob began to howl under City Hall windows. Since the mayor was in danger, Tweed and other Democrats persuaded him to seek safer quarters in the St. Nicholas Hotel, at Broadway and Spring Street.
Monday afternoon the city was mob-ruled. As Carl Sandburg has written: “Never before in an American metropolis had the police, merchants, bankers, and forces of law and order had their power wrenched loose by mobs so skillfully led.” Now brutal Irishmen began attacking Negroes, whom they blamed for the war.
The Colored Orphan Asylum, on the west side of Fifth Avenue, occupied the entire block between Forty-third and Forty-fourth streets. It looked a little like the White House in Washington. Here were sheltered more than 200 Negro children under the age of twelve, together with 50 matrons and attendants. Soon after the abortive attack on the mayor’s home, a mob of 3,000 persons gathered in front of the asylum a
nd began shouting threats. The asylum superintendent, William E. Davis, barricaded the doors. Rowdies roared that they damned well would break in. The children’s eyes widened in terror. Davis and other staff members herded them out the back and into a nearby police station. Later, under military escort, the children were taken to Blackwells Island. Moments after the asylum was evacuated, rioters stormed its front doors, broke them down, tumbled inside, smashed furniture, carried out toys and bedding, and then set fire to the place. While the vandalism was at its height, one little Negro girl, overlooked in the hasty departure, was found trembling under a bed. She was pulled out and beaten to death.
The middle of Monday afternoon the rioting spread to the downtown section of the city. Most stores had closed, but saloons stayed open to stoke people’s fury with raw liquor. Jewelry shops were looted. Hardware stores were raided for guns and pistols and ammunition. Fires were set here, there, everywhere. Negroes were chased and cornered and strung up and tortured. Irish biddies knifed the flesh of hanged Negroes, poured oil into the wounds, set fire to the oil, danced under the human torches, and sang obscene songs.
(Despite the unspeakable cruelty of some of New York’s low-class Irish, many of the city’s Irishmen served with distinction in the Union army. At least 8 all-Irish regiments were formed here. Thousands of Patricks and Clanceys and Emmets donned the honorable blue uniform, a total of 150,000 Irishmen from all parts of the North swelling the ranks. Generals Meade, Rosecrans, Sheridan, Meagher, Sickles, Ord, and Gillmore were Catholic. At Fredericksburg, Virginia, an Irish brigade marched into battle flying Ireland’s green flag with its golden harp. Later a color sergeant was found with the flag wrapped about his body, a bullet having pierced the flag and his heart. An Irish washerwoman followed some of her countrymen into combat during the Second Battle of Bull Run and stood tall and unafraid as she cheered them on.)
The Epic of New York City Page 35
