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New York City Draft Riots of 1863
Part of Opposition to the American Civil War
An illustration in The Illustrated London News depicting armed rioters clashing with Union Army soldiers in New York City
Date	July 13–16, 1863 (1863-07-13 – 1863-07-16)
Location	Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
Caused by	Civil War conscription; racism; competition for jobs between black and white people.
Resulted in	Riots ultimately suppressed
Parties
Rioters New York Metropolitan Police Department New York National Guard Union Army New York Fire Department
Casualties
Death(s)	119–120
Injuries	2,000

The New York City draft riots (July 13–16, 1863), sometimes referred to as the Manhattan draft riots and known at the time as Draft Week, were violent disturbances in Lower Manhattan, widely regarded as the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress that year to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War. The riots remain the largest civil urban disturbance in American history. According to Toby Joyce, the riot represented a "civil war" within the city's Irish community, in that "mostly Irish American rioters confronted police, soldiers, and pro-war politicians ... were also to a considerable extent from the local Irish immigrant community."

President Abraham Lincoln diverted several regiments of militia and volunteer troops after the Battle of Gettysburg to control the city.

The protests turned into a race riot against African-Americans by Irish rioters. The official death toll was listed at either 119 or 120 individuals. Conditions in the city were such that Major General John E. Wool, commander of the Department of the East, said on July 16 that "Martial law ought to be proclaimed, but I have not a sufficient force to enforce it."

The military did not reach the city until the second day of rioting, by which time the mobs had ransacked or destroyed numerous public buildings, two Protestant churches, the homes of various abolitionists or sympathizers, many black homes, and the Colored Orphan Asylum at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue, which was burned to the ground. The area's demographics changed as a result of the riot. Many black residents left Manhattan permanently with many moving to Brooklyn. By 1865, the black population had fallen below 11,000 for the first time since 1820.

Background

New York's economy was tied to the South; by 1822, nearly half of its exports were cotton shipments. In addition, upstate textile mills processed cotton in manufacturing. New York had such strong business connections to the South that on January 7, 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood, a Democrat, called on the city's Board of Aldermen to "declare the city's independence from Albany and from Washington"; he said it "would have the whole and united support of the Southern States." When the Union entered the war, New York City had many sympathizers with the South.

The city was also a continuing destination of immigrants. Since the 1840s, most were from Ireland and Germany. In 1860, nearly 25 percent of the New York City population was German-born, and many did not speak English. During the 1840s and 1850s, journalists had published sensational accounts, directed at the white working class, dramatizing the evils of interracial socializing, relationships, and marriages. Reformers joined the effort.

The Democratic Party's Tammany Hall political machine had been working to enroll immigrants as U.S. citizens so they could vote in local elections and had strongly recruited Irish. In March 1863, with the war continuing, Congress passed the Enrollment Act to establish a draft for the first time, as more troops were needed. In New York City and other locations, new citizens learned they were expected to register for the draft to fight for their new country. Black men were excluded from the draft as they were largely not considered citizens, and wealthier white men could pay for substitutes.

New York political offices, including the mayor, were historically held by Democrats before the war, but the election of Abraham Lincoln as president had demonstrated the rise in Republican political power nationally. Newly elected New York City Republican Mayor George Opdyke was mired in profiteering scandals in the months leading up to the riots. The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 alarmed much of the white working class in New York, who feared that freed slaves would migrate to the city and add further competition to the labor market. There had already been tensions between black and white workers since the 1850s, particularly at the docks, with free black people and immigrants competing for low-wage jobs in the city. In March 1863, white longshoremen refused to work with black laborers and rioted, attacking 200 black men.

Riots

Monday

There were reports of rioting in Buffalo, New York, and certain other cities, but the first drawing of draft numbers—on July 11, 1863—occurred peaceably in Manhattan. The second drawing was held on Monday, July 13, 1863, ten days after the Union victory at Gettysburg. At 10 am, a furious crowd of around 500, led by the volunteer firemen of Engine Company 33 (known as the "Black Joke"), attacked the assistant Ninth District provost marshal's office, at Third Avenue and 47th Street, where the draft was taking place.

The crowd threw large paving stones through windows, burst through the doors, and set the building ablaze. When the fire department responded, rioters broke up their vehicles. Others killed horses that were pulling streetcars and smashed the cars. To prevent other parts of the city being notified of the riot, rioters cut telegraph lines.

Since the New York State Militia had been sent to assist Union troops at Gettysburg, the local New York Metropolitan Police Department was the only force on hand to try to suppress the riots. Police Superintendent John Kennedy arrived at the site on Monday to check on the situation. An Irish-American himself, Kennedy was a steadfast unionist. Although he was not in uniform, people in the mob recognized him and attacked him. Kennedy was left nearly unconscious, his face bruised and cut, his eye injured, his lips swollen, and his hand cut with a knife. He had been beaten to a mass of bruises and blood all over his body. Physicians later counted over 70 knife wounds alone. He would never fully recover.

Police drew their clubs and revolvers and charged the crowd but were overpowered. The police were badly outnumbered and unable to quell the riots, but they kept the rioting out of Lower Manhattan below Union Square. Inhabitants of the "Bloody Sixth" Ward, around the South Street Seaport and Five Points areas, refrained from involvement in the rioting. The 19th Company/1st Battalion US Army Invalid Corps which was part of the Provost Guard tried to disperse the mob with a volley of gunfire but were overwhelmed and suffered over 14 injured with 1 soldier missing (believed killed).

The Bull's Head hotel on 44th Street, which refused to provide alcohol to the rioters, was burned. The mayor's residence on Fifth Avenue was spared by words of Judge George Gardner Barnard, and the crowd of about 500 turned to another location of pillage. The Eighth and Fifth District police stations, and other buildings were attacked and set on fire. Other targets included the office of the New York Times. The mob was turned back at the Times office by staff manning Gatling guns, including Times founder Henry Jarvis Raymond. Fire engine companies responded, but some firefighters were sympathetic to the rioters because they had also been drafted on Saturday. The New York Tribune was attacked, being looted and burned; not until police arrived and extinguished the flames was the crowd dispersed. Later in the afternoon, authorities shot and killed a man as a crowd attacked the armory at Second Avenue and 21st Street. The mob broke all the windows with paving stones ripped from the street. The mob beat, tortured and/or killed numerous black civilians, including one man who was attacked by a crowd of 400 with clubs and paving stones, then lynched, hanged from a tree and set alight.

The Colored Orphan Asylum at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue, a "symbol of white charity to blacks and of black upward mobility" that provided shelter for 233 children, was attacked by a mob at around 4 pm. A mob of several thousand, including many women and children, looted the building of its food and supplies. However, the police were able to secure the orphanage for enough time to allow the orphans to escape before the building burned down. Throughout the areas of rioting, mobs attacked and killed numerous black civilians and destroyed their known homes and businesses, such as James McCune Smith's pharmacy at 93 West Broadway, believed to be the first owned by a black man in the United States.

Near the midtown docks, tensions brewing since the mid-1850s boiled over. As recently as March 1863, white employers had hired black longshoremen, with whom many White men refused to work. Rioters went into the streets in search of "all the negro porters, cartmen and laborers" to attempt to remove all evidence of a black and interracial social life from the area near the docks. White dockworkers attacked and destroyed brothels, dance halls, boarding houses, and tenements that catered to black people. Mobs stripped the clothing off the white owners of these businesses.

Tuesday

Heavy rain fell on Monday night, helping to abate the fires and sending rioters home, but the crowds returned the next day. Rioters burned down the home of Abby Gibbons, a prison reformer and the daughter of abolitionist Isaac Hopper. They also attacked white "amalgamationists", such as Ann Derrickson and Ann Martin, two white women who were married to black men, and Mary Burke, a white prostitute who catered to black men.

Governor Horatio Seymour arrived on Tuesday and spoke at City Hall, where he attempted to assuage the crowd by proclaiming that the Conscription Act was unconstitutional. General John E. Wool, commander of the Eastern District, brought approximately 800 soldiers and Marines in from forts in New York Harbor, West Point, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He ordered the militias to return to New York.

Wednesday

The situation improved July 15 when assistant provost-marshal-general Robert Nugent received word from his superior officer, Colonel James Barnet Fry, to postpone the draft. As this news appeared in newspapers, some rioters stayed home. But some of the militias began to return and used harsh measures against the remaining rioters. The rioting spread to Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Thursday

Order began to be restored on July 16. The New York State Militia and some federal troops were returned to New York, including the 152nd New York Volunteers, the 26th Michigan Volunteers, the 27th Indiana Volunteers and the 7th Regiment New York State Militia from Frederick, Maryland, after a forced march. In addition, the governor sent in the 74th and 65th regiments of the New York State Militia, which had not been in federal service, and a section of the 20th Independent Battery, New York Volunteer Artillery from Fort Schuyler in Throggs Neck. The New York State Militia units were the first to arrive. There were several thousand militia and Federal troops in the city.

A final confrontation occurred in the evening near Gramercy Park. According to Adrian Cook, twelve people died on this last day of the riots in skirmishes between rioters, the police, and the Army.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that Plug Uglies and Blood Tubs gang members from Baltimore, as well as "Scuykill Rangers and other rowdies of Philadelphia", had come to New York during the unrest to participate in the riots alongside the Dead Rabbits and "Mackerelvillers". The Times editorialized that "the scoundrels cannot afford to miss this golden opportunity of indulging their brutal natures, and at the same time serving their colleagues the Copperheads and secesh sympathizers."

Aftermath

The exact death toll during the New York draft riots is unknown, but according to historian James M. McPherson, 119 or 120 people were killed, although other estimates list the death toll as high as 1,200. Violence by longshoremen against black men was especially fierce in the docks area:

West of Broadway, below Twenty-sixth, all was quiet at 9 o'clock last night. A crowd was at the corner of Seventh avenue and Twenty-seventh Street at that time. This was the scene of the hanging of a negro in the morning, and another at 6 o'clock in the evening. The body of the one hung in the morning presented a shocking appearance at the Station-House. His fingers and toes had been sliced off, and there was scarcely an inch of his flesh which was not gashed. Late in the afternoon, a negro was dragged out of his house in West Twenty-seventh street, beaten down on the sidewalk, pounded in a horrible manner, and then hanged to a tree.

In all, eleven black men and boys were hanged over five days. Among the murdered black people was the seven-year-old nephew of Bermudian First Sergeant Robert John Simmons of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, whose account of fighting in South Carolina, written on the approach to Fort Wagner July 18, 1863, was to be published in the New York Tribune on December 23, 1863 (Simmons having died in August of wounds received in the attack on Fort Wagner).

The most reliable estimates indicate at least 2,000 people were injured. Herbert Asbury, the author of the 1928 book Gangs of New York, upon which the 2002 film was based, puts the figure much higher, at 2,000 killed and 8,000 wounded, a number that some dispute. Total property damage was about $1–5 million (equivalent to $19.4 million – $97.2 million in 2023). The city treasury later indemnified one-quarter of the amount.

Historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that the riots were "equivalent to a Confederate victory". Fifty buildings, including two Protestant churches and the Colored Orphan Asylum, were burned to the ground. The orphans at the asylum were first put under siege, then the building was set on fire, before all those who attempted to escape were forced to walk through a "beating line" of white rioters holding clubs. To escape, they would need to run through the gauntlet as the rioters viciously attacked them. Many did not manage the escape. 4,000 federal troops had to be pulled out of the Gettysburg Campaign to suppress the riots, troops that could have aided in pursuing the battered Army of Northern Virginia as it retreated out of Union territory. During the riots, landlords, fearing that the mob would destroy their buildings, drove black residents from their homes. As a result of the violence against them, hundreds of black people left New York, including physician James McCune Smith and his family, moving to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or New Jersey.

The white elite in New York organized to provide relief to black riot victims, helping them find new work and homes. The Union League Club and the Committee of Merchants for the Relief of Colored People provided nearly $40,000 to 2,500 victims of the riots. By 1865 the black population in the city had dropped to under 10,000, the lowest since 1820. The white working-class riots had changed the demographics of the city, and white residents exerted their control in the workplace; they became "unequivocally divided" from the black population.

On August 19, the government resumed the draft in New York. It was completed within 10 days without further incident. Fewer men were drafted than had been feared by the white working class: of the 750,000 selected nationwide for conscription, only about 45,000 were sent into active duty.

While the rioting mainly involved the white working class, middle and upper-class New Yorkers had split sentiments on the draft and use of federal power or martial law to enforce it. Many wealthy Democratic businessmen sought to have the draft declared unconstitutional. Tammany Democrats did not seek to have the draft declared unconstitutional, but they helped pay the commutation fees for those who were drafted.

In December 1863, the Union League Club recruited more than 2,000 black soldiers, outfitted and trained them, honoring and sending men off with a parade through the city to the Hudson River docks in March 1864. A crowd of 100,000 watched the procession, which was led by police and members of the Union League Club.

New York's support for the Union cause continued, however grudgingly, and gradually Southern sympathies declined in the city. New York banks eventually financed the Civil War, and the state's industries were more productive than those of the entire Confederacy. By the end of the war, more than 450,000 soldiers, sailors, and militia had enlisted from New York State, which was the most populous state at the time. A total of 46,000 military men from New York State died during the war, more from disease than wounds, as was typical of most combatants.

Order of battle

New York Metropolitan Police Department

New York Metropolitan Police Department under the command of Superintendent John A. Kennedy.
Commissioners Thomas Coxon Acton and John G. Bergen took command when Kennedy was seriously injured by a mob during the early stages of the riots.
Of the NYPD Officers-there were four fatalities-1 killed and 3 died of injuries

New York State Militia

1st Division: Major General Charles W. Sandford

Unorganized Militia:

Union Army

Department of the East: Major General John E. Wool headquartered in New York

Defenses of New York City: Brevet Brigadier General Harvey Brown, Brig. General Edward R. S. Canby

• Artillery: Captain Henry F. Putnam, 12th United States Infantry Regiment.
• Provost marshals tasked with overseeing the initial enforcement of the draft:
  • Provost Marshal General U.S.A.: Colonel James Fry
  • Provost Marshal General New York City: Colonel Robert Nugent (During the first day of rioting on July 13, 1863, in command of the Invalid Corps: 1st Battalion)

Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton authorized five regiments from Gettysburg, mostly federalized state militia and volunteer units from the Army of the Potomac, to reinforce the New York City Police Department. By the end of the riots, there were more than 4,000 soldiers garrisoned in the troubled area.

In popular culture

Fiction

• Wilderness: A Tale of the Civil War (1961) by Robert Penn Warren
• The Banished Children of Eve, A Novel of Civil War New York (1995) by Peter Quinn
• My Notorious Life: A Novel (2014) by Kate Manning
• On Secret Service (2000) by John Jakes
• Paradise Alley (2003) by Kevin Baker
• New York: the Novel (2009) by Edward Rutherfurd
• Grant Comes East (2004) by Newt Gingrich
• Last Descendants (2016) by Matthew J. Kirby
• Riot (2009) by Walter Dean Myers
• A Wish After Midnight (2008) by Zetta Elliott, speculative fiction set in Brooklyn alternating between the early 21st century and 1863.
• Libertie (2021) by Kaitlyn Greenidge
• Moon and the Mars (2021) by Kia Corthron
• Booth (2021) by Karen Joy Fowler

Television, theatre and film

• The short-lived 1968 Broadway musical Maggie Flynn was set in the Tobin Orphanage for black children (modeled on the Colored Orphan Asylum).
• Gangs of New York (2002), a film directed by Martin Scorsese, includes a fictionalized portrayal of the New York Draft Riots in its finale.
• Paradise Square (2018), a musical that had its Broadway debut in 2022, depicts events that led up to and included the New York Draft Riots.
• Copper (2012), a BBC America television series about the Five Points in New York City in 1864-1865, has flashbacks to the riots and the lynchings which took place in the area.

See also

• Fishing Creek Confederacy
• History of New York City (1855–1897)
• List of ethnic riots#United States
• List of expulsions of African Americans
• List of identities in The Gangs of New York § Draft riots
• List of incidents of civil unrest in New York City
• List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States
• List of massacres in the United States
• Lynching in the United States
• Mass racial violence in the United States
• Opposition to the American Civil War
• Racism against Black Americans
• Racism in the United States

Notes

1. Brown was in overall command of the military fortresses in New York city at the time and volunteered his services to General Wool. Wool instructed Brown to serve under the command of militia General Sandford to which Brown initially refused but eventually offered to serve in whatever capacity needed.
2. Brown was relieved of duty on July 16 and Canby succeeded him in command of the military post of New York City on July 17

References

1. McPherson, James M. (1982), Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 360, ISBN 978-0-394-52469-6
2. "VNY: Draft Riots Aftermath". Vny.cuny.edu. Retrieved August 1, 2017.
3. ^ Barnes, David M. (1863). The Draft Riots in New York, July 1863: The Metropolitan Police, Their Services During Riot. Baker & Godwin. pp. 5–6, 12.
4. Foner, Eric (1988). Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. The New American Nation. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 32–33. ISBN 0-06-093716-5. (updated ed. 2014, ISBN 978-0062354518).
5. Toby Joyce, "The New York Draft Riots of 1863: An Irish Civil War?" History Ireland (March 2003) 11#2, pp 22–27.
6. ^ "Maj. Gen. John E. Wool Official Reports for the New York Draft Riots". Shotgun's Home of the American Civil War blogsite. Retrieved August 16, 2007.
7. ^ Harris, Leslie M. (2003). In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863. University of Chicago Press. pp. 279–88. ISBN 0226317757.
8. "New York: Pro-Southern City: G1 King Cotton continued". New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War. New York Historical Society. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
9. ^ Roberts, Sam (December 26, 2010). "New York Doesn't Care to Remember the Civil War". The New York Times. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
10. "New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War Online Exhibit". New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War. New York Historical Society. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
11. ^ "The Mob in New York". The New York Times. July 14, 1863.
12. ^ Schouler, James (1899). History of the United States of America, Under the Constitution. Dodd, Mead & Company. p. 418.
13. ^ Rhodes, James Ford (1902). History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, Volume 4. New York: Macmillan. pp. 320–23.
14. Bernstein, Iver (1990), pp. 24–25.
15. ^ "The Mob in New York" (PDF). The New York Times. July 14, 1863.
16. "On This Day: August 1, 1863". The New York Times. Retrieved January 21, 2023.
17. Bernstein, Iver (1990), pp. 25–26
18. ^ "New York Draft Riots". HISTORY. A&E Television Networks. April 16, 2021. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
19. Cook, Adrian (1974). The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863, The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-1298-5
20. "Facts and Incidents of the Riot: The Murders of Colored People in Thompson and Sullivan Streets". The New York Times. July 16, 1863. p. 1.
21. Iver Bernstein, "The New York City Draft Riots" page 288 note 8.
22. "New York Draft Riots: 1863, Civil War & Causes". History TV. A&E Television Networks. October 27, 2009. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
23. "The New York Riot: The Killing of Negroes". Buffalo Morning Express and Illustrated Buffalo Express. Buffalo, New York. July 18, 1863.
24. McPherson, James M. (2001). Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. McGraw-Hill Education. p. 399. ISBN 0077430352.
25. ^ Asbury, Herbert (1928). The Gangs of New York. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 169.
26. Pete Hamill (December 15, 2002). "Trampling City's History 'Gangs' misses point of Five Points". Daily News. New York.
27. Johnston, Louis; Williamson, Samuel H. (2023). "What Was the U.S. GDP Then?". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved November 30, 2023. United States Gross Domestic Product deflator figures follow the MeasuringWorth series.
28. ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot (1972). The Oxford History of the American People: Volume Two: 1789 Through Reconstruction. Signet. p. 451. ISBN 0-451-62254-5.
29. Donald, David (2002). Civil War and Reconstruction. Pickle Partners Publishing. p. 229. ISBN 0393974278.
30. Bernstein, Iver (1990), pp. 43–44
31. Jones, Thomas L. (2006). "The Union League Club and New York's First Black Regiments in the Civil War". New York History. 87 (3): 313–343. JSTOR 23183494.
32. For the context see Seraile, William (2001). New York's Black Regiments During the Civil War. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0815340287.
33. Costello, Augustine E. Our Police Protectors: History of the New York Police from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. New York: A.E. Costello, 1885, pp. 200–01.
34. "Patrolman Edward Dippel". Odmp.org. Retrieved August 1, 2017.
35. "Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sandford Official Report (OR) For The New York Draft Riots". Civilwarhome.com. Retrieved August 1, 2017.
36. ^ "Maj. Gen. John Z. Wool Official Report (OR) For The New York Draft Riots". Civilwarhome.com. Retrieved August 1, 2017.
37. "John Ellis Wool Biography". 19th Century Biographies. Archived from the original on August 12, 2013.
38. Eicher, p. 146
39. "US Military casualties in the 1863 Draft riots..." Civilwartalk.com. January 2, 2017. Retrieved August 1, 2017.
40. Swinton, William (August 1, 1870). History of the Seventh Regiment, National Guard, State of New York, During the War of the Rebellion: With a Preliminary Chapter on the Origin and Early History of the Regiment, a Summary of Its History Since the War, and a Roll of Honor, Comprising Brief Sketches of the Services Rendered by Members of the Regiment in the Army and Navy of the United States. Fields, Osgood & Company. Retrieved August 1, 2017 – via Internet Archive. Draft Riots.
41. "Edward Jardine". localhistory.morrisville.edu. Retrieved August 1, 2017.
42. "The Eleventh Regiment of Infantry | The Army of the US Historical Sketches of Staff and Line with Portraits of Generals-in-Chief | U.S. Army Center of Military History". history.army.mil. Retrieved October 28, 2020.
43. "13th New York Cavalry – Battles and Casualties during the Civil War – NY Military Museum and Veterans Research Center". dmna.ny.gov. Retrieved August 1, 2017.
44. "1863 New York City Draft Riots" Archived December 6, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, mrlincolnandnewyork.org. Retrieved April 26, 2014.
45. "17th NY Veteran Regiment of Infantry – battles and casualties during the Civil War – NY Military Museum and Veterans Research Center". dmna.ny.gov. Retrieved August 1, 2017.

Bibliography

• Bernstein, Iver (1990). 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. ISBN 0198021712.
• Cook, Adrian (1974). The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813112985.
• Fry, James Barnet (1885). New York and the Conscription of 1863. G.P. Putnam's Sons.
• Headley, Joel Tyler (1873). The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1863 – including and full and complete account of the Four Days' Draft Riot of 1863. E.B. Treat (publisher), stereotyped at the Women's Printing House
• McCabe, James Dabney (1868). The Life and Public Services of Horatio Seymour. Oxford University Press. horatio seymour.
• McPherson, James M. (1982), Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 978-0-394-52469-6
• Rumsey, David. "Map Of New York and Vicinity (1863)" (1863 ed.). Matthew Dripps. Retrieved July 20, 2007.
• Schecter, Barnet (2005). The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 080271837X.
• Schecter, Barnet (2007). "The Civil War Draft Riots". North & South. 10 (1). Civil War Society: 72.

Further reading

• Anbinder, Tyler. "Which Poor Man’s Fight?: Immigrants and the Federal Conscription of 1863." Civil War History 52.4 (2006): 344–372.

• Barrett, Ross. "On Forgetting: Thomas Nast, the Middle Class, and the Visual Culture of the Draft Riots." Prospects 29 (2005): 25–55. online

• Cohen, Joanna (2022). "Reckoning with the Riots: Property, Belongings, and the Challenge to Value in Civil War America". Journal of American History. 109 (1): 68–98.
• Geary, James W. "Civil War Conscription in the North: a historiographical review." Civil War History 32.3 (1986): 208–228.
• Hauptman, Laurence M. "John E. Wool and the New York City draft riots of 1863: a reassessment." Civil War History 49.4 (2003): 370–387.
• Joyce, Toby. "The New York draft riots of 1863: an Irish civil war?" History Ireland 11.2 (2003): 22–27. online
• Lanham, Andrew J. "'Protection for Every Class of Citizens': The New York City Draft Riots of 1863, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Government's Duty to Protect Civil Rights". UC Irvine Law Review, Vol. 13, Issue 4 (2023): 1067-1118.
• Man Jr., Albon P. "Labor competition and the New York draft riots of 1863." Journal of Negro History 36.4 (1951): 375–405. On Black role. online
• Moss, Hilary. "All the World's New York, All New York’sa Stage: Drama, Draft Riots, and Democracy in the Mid-Nineteenth Century" Journal of Urban History (2009) 35#7 pp. 1067–1072; doi:10.1177/0096144209347095
• Perri, Timothy J. “The Economics of US Civil War Conscription.” American Law and Economics Review 10#2 (2008), pp. 424–53. online
• Peterson, Carla L. "African Americans and the New York Draft Riots: Memory and Reconciliation in America’s Civil War." Nanzan review of American studies: a journal of Center for American Studies v27 (2005): 1–14. online
• Quigley, David. Second Founding: New York City, Reconstruction, and the Making of American Democracy (Hill and Wang, 2004) excerpt
• Quinn, Peter. 1995 Banished Children of Eve: A Novel of Civil War New York. New York: Fordham University Press (fictional account of Draft Riots)
• Rutkowski, Alice. "Gender, genre, race, and nation: The 1863 New York City draft riots." Studies in the Literary Imagination 40.2 (2007): 111+.
• Walkowitz, Daniel J. "‘The Gangs of New York’: The mean streets in history." History Workshop Journal 56#1 (2003) online.
• Wells, Jonathan Daniel. "Inventing White Supremacy: Race, Print Culture, and the Civil War Draft Riots." Civil War History 68.1 (2022): 42–80.

Primary sources

• Dupree, A. Hunter and Leslie H. Fishel, Jr. "An Eyewitness Account of the New York Draft Riots, July, 1863", Mississippi Valley Historical Review vol. 47, no. 3 (December 1960), pp. 472–79. In JSTOR
• New York Evangelist (1830–1902); July 23, 1863; pp. 30, 33; APS Online, pg. 4.
• United States War and Navy Departments (1889). Official Records of the American Civil War, volume xxvii, part ii.
• Walling, George W. (1887). Recollections of a New York Chief of Police, Chapter 6. online

External links

• "1863 New York City Draft Riots", mrlincolnandnewyork.org
• "New York Draft Riots", 2002, source Civil War Society's Civil War Encyclopedia, Civil War Home website
• "New York Draft Riots", First Edition Harper's News Report, sonofthesouth.net
• New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War Online Exhibit, New York Historical Society, (November 17, 2006 – September 3, 2007, physical exhibit)
• Report of the Committee of merchants for the relief of colored people, suffering from the late riots in the city of New York. New York: G. A. Whitehorne, 1863, African American Pamphlet Collection, Library of Congress.

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• 1863 in New York (state)
• 1863 riots
• African Americans in the American Civil War
• Anti-war protests in the United States
• Conscription in the United States
• Irish-American history
• Mass murder in New York City
• Military history of New York City
• Military history of New York (state)
• New York (state) in the American Civil War
• Political riots in the United States
• Racially motivated violence against African Americans
• Riots and civil disorder in New York City
• Riots and civil unrest during the American Civil War
• White American riots in the United States
• Protests in New York (state)
• Working class in the United States
• July 1863 events
• 1860s in New York City
• 19th century in Manhattan
• 19th-century mass murder in the United States
• Riots and civil disorder in New York (state)
• 1863 murders in the United States
• Rebellions in the United States
• Working-class culture in New York City
• United States military killing of American civilians
• 19th-century political riots
• 1860s political events
• Conscription crises