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The New York Draft Riots
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The draft riots stemmed from many causes — not the least of which was the way that violence
had been used for political reasons in the past three decades. But the most significant cause was
the fact that New York City — which had furnished too many soldiers to the Union Army at the
beginning of the war now furnished too few. Because it was failing to meet its recruitment
quotas, it had to follow the provisions of the Enrollment and Conscription Act passed by
Congress on March 3, 1863. Conscription (the draft) was to be employed when enrollment
targets were not met by a community. "The draft needed to be applied to New York State and
city sooner than anywhere else," wrote historian Daniel Van Pelt. "At the close of the year 1862,
it was reported to the department that since July, 1862, New York State was short 28,517 in
volunteers, of which 18,523 was to be charged to New York City. But for this very reason
conscription was least likely to be welcomed here. The revulsion in sentiment had carried an
anti-war Governor, Horatio Seymour, into office" in 1862.
Unlike his Republican predecessor, Edwin D. Morgan, Governor Seymour did not want to send
many more troops to war. Instead, he dragged his feet in order to hold off providing more troops.
In the second place, he was evasive and dishonest. Once the draft was a law, however, he
publicly declared that it would never work and ought to be tested in the courts.
That set the stage for the bloody and brutal violence of July 14-17, 1863. Apparently, those who
started the movement did not intend for the riot to last as long as it did. They simply desired to
break up the draft in some of the upper districts of the city, and destroy the registers in which
certain names were enrolled," wrote Joel Tyler Headley in The Great Riots of New York City.
The Confederate invasion had contributed to the riots in another way. At the request of the
Lincoln Administration, Governor Horatio Seymour had forwarded all available militia units
from New York City to the Pennsylvania war front. "George Opdyke, the Republican mayor of
New York, protested when he learned that all the troops had been ordered to leave the city for
the front, but Major-General [Charles W.] Sandford declared that the governor must be obeyed.
Seymour planned to replace the soldiers who had left with militia from the interior of the state,
but General Wool requested him to countermand his order to this effect," wrote Seymour
biographer Stewart Mitchell.
New York in 1863 was beset by many problems. "Municipal services failed to keep pace with
the rise in population," wrote William K. Klingaman in Abraham Lincoln and the Road to
Emancipation, 1861-1865. Nearly two-thirds of New York City lacked sewers; many of the
sewer lines that existed were so poorly constructed that they frequently were clogged with filth.
Epidemics regularly swept through the tenements, giving New York the highest death rate of any
city in the civilized world. Merchants sold milk from diseased cattle and coffee tainted with
street sweepings and sawdust," wrote Lincoln chronicler William K. Klingaman.7 But the most
important problem in mid-July was the absence of security personnel combined with the
presence of angry draft dodgers. The result was an incendiary situation.
A City Divided
The National Conscription Act, which was to be enforced initially in New York City on
Saturday, July 11, exacerbated long-simmering class tensions in the city. The act proved
especially unpopular among New York City's white working class, many of whom were recent
immigrants from Germany and Ireland. New York City at mid-century had become an important
destination for Irish immigrants, especially after the devastating Irish famine in the 1840s. By
1860, one of every four of New York City's 800,000 residents was an Irish-born immigrant.
While many labored in several of the city's skilled trades, the vast majority of Irish immigrants
worked as unskilled laborers on the docks, as ditch diggers and street pavers, and as cartmen and
coal heavers. In several of these occupations they competed directly with the city's AfricanAmerican workers.
African Americans had lived and worked in New York City-- some as slaves, some as free
people-- since well before the Revolutionary War. The city's African-American community grew
during the first four decades of the nineteenth century, establishing and sustaining churches,
newspapers, literary societies, and free schools. Black workers lived in close proximity to white
workers in racially mixed communities that dotted the lower half of Manhattan. Increased
immigration from Europe after 1840 diminished employment opportunities for black New
Yorkers. Working-class African Americans competed directly with immigrants, especially newly
arrived Irish, for unskilled jobs, a competition that often turned ugly and violent in the years
before the war.
When the Civil War began in 1861, large numbers of New York City's white workers did not
embrace the fight to preserve the Union. Many resented the war effort, which brought economic
hardship and increasing unemployment to the city's working-class neighborhoods, especially
following a sharp economic downturn in the war's first year. Competition for jobs between Irish
and black workers, already intense before the war, increased dramatically in the conflict's early
years and racial tensions mounted in work places and in working-class neighborhoods
throughout the city. Even the return of wartime prosperity in 1862 did not lessen these tensions,
as living costs rose faster than wages, further undercutting working-class living standards. In
spring 1863, in the midst of a strike of Irish dock workers, strikers attacked and beat AfricanAmerican strike-breakers before federal troops arrived to protect the black workers.
Bibliography
Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None, p. 357.
Daniel Van Pelt, Leslie’s History of the Greater New York, Volume I, p. 412-413.
Daniel Van Pelt, Leslie’s History of the Greater New York, Volume I, p. 413.
Stewart Mitchell, Horatio Seymour of New York, p. 313.
Joel Tyler Headley, The Great Riots of New York City, .
Stewart Mitchell, Horatio Seymour of New York, p. 301.
William K. Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865, p. 262.
Daniel Van Pelt, Leslie’s History of the Greater New York, Volume I, p. 414.