“If it were not hopeless to expect foresight from
Governments, we should find good ground for complaint that this City should
have been stripped of all its troops, first by the General Government and then
by Gov. Seymour, and that then the draft should have been put in force when it
was morally certain to meet with sharp resistance.”
- New York Times, July 17, 1863
“Over
four hundred voted for a Catholic priest, one hundred and fifty-four, for any
kind of a Protestant minister; eleven, for a Mormon elder; and three hundred
and thirty-five said they could find their way to hell without the assistance
of clergy.”
-
Father Joseph O'Hagan on being elected chaplain of the 73rd Regiment, Excelsior
Brigade
Recently Green Book writer Nick Vallelonga was forced to apologize for a
false twitter post about Muslims. Remarkably, many historians and
journalists, including the NY Times,
have never admitted or apologized for their egregious claims blaming Irish
immigrants for the New York draft riots and Civil War "skulking." This is an old blind spot, a hangover from old
ethnic and sectarian prejudice that persists in some quarters even today,
finding scapegoats for a war with too much bumbling and disasters before
victory.
In this essay,
I review the background for these collective guilt stories and canards to get
at the real story behind their centerpiece: the 1863 New York City draft
riots. I approach this not as an
historian, but as a data scientist and consultant who has helped some of the
world’s largest organizations separate fact from fiction. Someone whose family rattled around New York
City for generations … the Five Points neighborhood to Park Avenue and Carnegie
Hill ... iron and steel and the Croton Dam … Tammany Hall and Silk Stocking
Republicans … the 69th
Fighting Irish’s Father Duffy and TV Soong … the Brooklyn Bridge, Harlem and,
strangest of all, Samuel Morse. When I
was a boy, my relatives were still complaining about their father and the men
having to arm themselves to defend churches during the Bible fight when
“Dagger” John Archbishop Hughes told the mayor his flock would turn New York
into a second Moscow if a single Catholic church were burned. Who knew the Catholics were the first to
demand that religious instruction (the King James Bible kind) be kicked out of
the public schools.
Immigrants
were proportionally under-represented in the Union’s armed services...Despite
the fighting reputation of the Irish Brigade, the Irish were the most
under-represented group in proportion to population, followed by German
Catholics … this group furnished a large number of substitutes and bounty men
during the final year of the war — thereby achieving an inglorious visibility —
they also furnished a large number of deserters and bounty jumpers. -- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 1988
My shirttail
relative 69th New York chaplain Francis Duffy, of New York’s Duffy
Square renown, sparked my interest in the Irish and the Civil War. In his book Father Duffy’s Story, Duffy claims the 69th earned its
name the “The Fighting Irish” at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. When I ran across Princeton Professor James
McPherson’s unfortunate remarks about Irish immigrants and the Civil War, I
decided to use my consulting skills to figure out who was fibbing: Duffy and his friend Joyce Kilmer or
McPherson.
“They’ll see the
Fighting Irish are the Fighting Irish yet.”
- Joyce
Kilmer, Sergeant 69th New York, Editor NY Times, Columbia U, KIA
France WW1, Trees and Other Poems
In the 19th
century what passed for “progressive” thought on immigration was summed up by Edward Everett Hale and Lyman Beecher: we
need the dull brutes to free us [Anglo-Saxons] from manual labor for “higher
duties.” Immigrants are welcome – even
if they are “a rush of a dark-minded
population from one country to another”—but only if they leave behind their
priests and bishops and European allegiances. The relationship between the Party of Lincoln
and immigrants was clouded long before Donald Trump, even before the GOP was
born. The author of the wickedly
anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic and widely read A Plea for the West, was Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
father. Though Lincoln himself was not a
Nativist or anti-Catholic, many of his supporters were.
When James
McPherson called immigrants, especially the Irish Catholic kind, skulkers” and “deserters” in his Pulitzer- Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom and his For
Cause and Comrades, he was echoing Hale and Beecher. This bias also led McPherson to misrepresented
his sources when he claimed Catholic immigrants were Civil War skulkers, saying
only 140,000 Irish immigrants joined the army, most gaining “inglorious”
visibility by late war enlistments.
As his source the Sanitary
Commission report noted, the Union army did not record place of birth for many
of the soldiers (about 40 percent), and no one recorded the soldiers’
religions. Moreover, the Sanitary
Commission report only estimated the number of foreign-born soldiers in the
Union’s volunteer units and did not estimate how many foreign-born served in
the Union navy, marines, and regular army.
We know even less about the ethnicity of soldiers who deserted; some may
not have existed at all.
My research on
Medal of Honor records tells the real story of the Irish and the Civil War. We
know the place of birth for virtually all the 1523 Civil War soldiers and
sailors who were awarded the Medal of Honor (the number of medals awarded has
changed somewhat over time) . These
records as a group are highly correlated with enlistment sources and combat
mortalities of the entire population of Union soldiers and sailors. The records constitute what statisticians
call a proxy for a study population and tell us that about 25 percent of the
union soldiers and sailors were immigrants with about 10 percent being immigrants
from Ireland. Judging by shared names, perhaps
as much as another 10 percent of the Union’s service members were ethnic Irish
born in the US or immigrants from other countries (e.g., Scotland, Canada and
England). The immigrants had a
significant presence throughout the war.
As many medals were awarded for valor in the period 1861-63 as the
period 1864-65. This is true for all
soldiers and sailors, both US-born and immigrant, including the Irish. While the Irish were the largest group,
Germans, Scots and English immigrants also fought for the Union in large
numbers. The Medal of Honor records tell us people from all over the world
joined the fight (see Table 1 at end).
The North would not have won the war without its immigrants.
New York State
unit records corroborate the Medal of Honor findings. Heavily immigrant New York City units
accounted for about 150,000 of approximately 345,000 New York State soldiers
and 8,524 of the state’s 19,879 combat deaths.
The city accounted for 103 of the 239 medals awarded to New York State
soldiers, the same proportion as enlistments and combat deaths. More than half the city soldiers were
immigrants with the Irish being the largest group.
New York
City’s Irish and Excelsior brigades were
two of the five Union army brigades with the highest killed in action totals,
though the Irish Brigade enlisted so many, including Irish regiments from
Boston and Philadelphia, that by the end of the war it might have been called a
division. The city’s Mozart Hall
regiment was 16th among all Union army regiments on the dismal regimental
list. The city’s Tammany Hall and German
regiments were also decimated. At the top of the dismal regimental list,
including its losses at Bull Run as militia unit, the city’s 69th
New York, the original “Fighting Irish.”
There is some substance
to the conscription opposition’s battle cry:
“Rich man’s war, poor man fight.”
My research on Union army casualties, shows that 245 of the over 2000
Union army combat units (infantry regiments, artillery batteries, cavalry) did
a disproportionate share of the heavy fighting, suffering nearly 40 percent of
the combat deaths, with heavily immigrant Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New
York making up half of the 40 percent. Most
Civil War soldiers did not bear the brunt of the fighting in repeated intense
battles. About 500,000 soldiers served
in white volunteer units that averaged only one combat death. Ohio, Indiana and Illinois had the most
soldiers who experienced virtually no combat.
New State unit
records indicate that heavily immigrant New York City (its two largest groups
German and Irish), had a disproportionate, heavier share of enlistments and
deaths in 1861 and 1862. This, in great
part, was because of the recruitment efforts of the city’s Union Defense
Committee. New York City units suffered
heavy casualties in the 1861, 1862 and 1863 battles: Bull Run, the Peninsula
before Richmond, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville,
and Gettysburg.
To illustrate
the divide between New York City’s early response to the war and the upstate
response: the ancestors, Luther Osborn
and Jesse Beecher, to whom Professor McPherson dedicates For Cause and Comrades, enlisted in upstate New York units later in
1862 and didn’t see any significant combat until 1864. Upstate recruiting posters that promised
garrison duty for enlistees in heavy artillery regiments added to the
perception that the burden of war was not shared fairly – though Grant called
on the heavy artillery regiments to help man his 1864-65 campaigns.
In addition to
New York City’s soldiers, tens of thousands joined the Union navy at New York
City. Ironically, the city built by
immigrants and subsidized by the cotton trade was America’s Civil War arsenal
of democracy. Just north of the city at
the West Point Foundry, the Irish and other immigrants built America’s first
locomotive, the Best Friend of Charleston, for hauling slave-produced goods in
South Carolina. Later the West Point
Foundry cast Parrott canons and the gigantic Dahlgren guns that sank the CSS
Alabama and armed the USS Monitor. The
Monitor was built at Greenpoint on the East River, using a turret and engines
manufactured in Manhattan, before being commissioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. One of the more puzzling aspects of the 1863
draft riots is that its fiercest battles were fought on the city’s east side in
the 18th and 11th Wards near where the USS Monitor’s
turret was manufactured in 1862. Indeed,
the whole New York waterfront became devoted to manufacturing maritime
equipment for the Union navy with the 13th and 7th Wards
relatively quiet during the riots, in contrast to the uptown wards. Irishman John Roach, who owned the Etna Iron
Works in the 7th Ward and is one of America’s greatest rags to
riches stories, prospered from the wartime business and after the war would
consolidate New York City and Philadelphia’s maritime manufacturing businesses
into the largest shipbuilding firm in the United States.
When Bob
Herbert wrote his egregious New Times draft riots column in 1997 and claimed
the riots were about poor Irish immigrants refusing to fight to free poor
blacks, he was mistaken. In July of
1863, tens of thousands of New York City immigrants were already fighting in a
war that New Yorkers knew was about slavery. The city’s Irish Brigade virtually
committed suicide on the eve of Emancipation while storming the stonewall at
Fredericksburg, 12/13/1862. Just days before the riots started, the city’s
Tammany Hall infantry regiment played helped defeat the Confederacy’s last
great grasp for victory at the Battle of Gettysburg. The Irish Brigade would be twice resurrected
to fight in the Wilderness and at Appomattox.
Fordham University’s James McMahon joined the Irish Brigade after Fort
Sumter was attacked and later died atop the Confederate ramparts leading
Corcoran’s Legion during the battle at Cold Harbor in 1864. Of Fordham’s three McMahon brothers, only
Martin survived the war. He was awarded
the Medal of Honor for valor during the Battle of White Oak Swamp in 1862 and
promoted to Major General in 1866. For
their valor at the Battle of Williamsburg in 1862 serving with the city’s 37th
Irish Rifles regiment, Irish immigrants Thomas Fallon and Martin Conboy were
awarded the Medal of Honor.
Irish-Americans
General Thomas Devin and General William Gamble led Buford’s cavalry brigades
in the first hours of the Gettysburg battle.
Patrick Henry O’Rorke led the charge that saved Little Round Top on the
second day of the battle. Irish-American
generals Meade and Reynolds led the Union army to victory at Gettysburg.
"Gen.
MEADE, the new leader of the Army of the Potomac, is the grandson of GEORGE
MEADE, of Philadelphia, an eminent Irish-American merchant, whose firm
(MEADE & FITZSIMMONS) contributed in 1781 $10,000 to a fund for the
relief of the famishing army of Gen. WASHINGTON." -- New York Times,
July 2, 1863
Phil Sheridan,
who cleared the Confederates from the Shenandoah Valley once and for all, was
Irish. William Tecumseh Sherman was
raised by an Irish family and his in-law Mother Angela Gillespie is
commemorated on Notre Dame University’s Wall of Honor. After the war, Sherman became one of New York
City’s most celebrated residents and most sought after speakers, especially by
the German and Irish veterans he led early in the war and during his march from
Atlanta to the Sea.
“At Blackburn Ford they think of us, Atlanta and
Bull Run…” – Joyce Kilmer, “When the Sixty-ninth Comes Back”
Dan
Sickles. 100 years ago I wouldn’t have
to write another word, Sickles was so notorious, the most “flexible” individual
in New York history, or maybe the most politically cynical. Archbishop Hughes married Dan to the “natural”
daughter of Lorenzo DaPonte who’d immigrated to New York City after writing
librettos for Mozart. Apropos, DaPonte had
written the libretto for Mozart’s Don
Giovanni (aka Don Juan). How Sickles
became Catholic enough for Hughes to perform the ceremony is anybody’s guess? In 1859, while Sickles was cheating on his
wife, his wife cheated on him. Sickles
shot the lover Barton Key and only an insanity defense engineered by his
lawyers, including Irish exile Thomas Meagher, saved Dan. When the slave states started seceding,
Sickles tried to enlist Meagher in Mayor Fernando Wood’s harebrained scheme to
have New York City secede with the South.
Meagher demurred, “I will not turn my back on the country that gave me
refuge from tyranny and oppression.” The
secession idea was stillborn. Meagher
organized the Irish Brigade to fight for the Union. Not to be outdone, Sickles changed his
stripes and organized the even bigger Excelsior Brigade. Fernando Wood got into the act, too, sponsoring
the Mozart Hall regiment, first enlisting Irishmen who’d been turned away by
Massachusetts recruiters. Sickles
literally played his cards right and commanded an army corps at Gettysburg
where his impetuous decision to move his troops closer to the Confederates got
his leg blown off. He never bothered
with a wooden leg, but looking like Long John Silver, would hop up and down 5th
Avenue on crutches, his pants leg conspicuously empty. He devoted most of his last years to creating
the Gettysburg Battlefield Park, New York City’s grandest Civil War
memorial. Privately Dan called it the grandest
memorial to Dan. Thousands showed up for his funeral at (the new) St. Patrick’s
Cathedral on 5th Avenue, nine blocks south of the statue of New
York’s most popular general: William
Tecumseh Sherman.
What’s the
real Draft Riots story? It begins weeks
before the riots broke out when Robert E. Lee invaded the North and the Lincoln
administration called for the states to mobilize their militias to help defend
Pennsylvania. Except for a small
contingent from New Jersey, New York was the only state to send help and most
of New York’s militia regiments came from New York City. With tens of thousands of New York volunteers
already enlisted in the Union army, the state mobilized 27 militia regiments,
totaling about 20,000 soldiers. Under the
supervision of George McClellan (yes, that George McClellan), the regiments were
rushed by rail to Harrisburg, PA, and Maryland.
Of the city regiments, 15 came from New York City proper, 5 from
Brooklyn, and 3 from the suburban counties.
New York City was left virtually
defenseless on the eve of conscription.
The city’s
militia and their armories were part of the city’s elaborate social network of
churches, VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANIES, German
gymnasiums and libraries, beer halls, and political halls. The militias were
social clubs as much as military units. The upper classes drilled and danced at
the 7th Regiment armory, the Irish at the 69th. In times of riot or emergency, the militia
would be called out to restore order.
When the South seceded, the 7th and 69th were
among the first state troops rushed to defend the capital and Lincoln. Although never transformed into a Union army
volunteer unit, many of the 7th’s young men became officers in other standing
volunteer units. Like several other New
York City militias, the 69th recruited scores of new volunteers, so
successfully that the 69th transformed itself into the Army of the
Potomac’s Irish Brigade. Many of the
older men and married men who stayed behind were later mobilized with their
militia unit for temporary service when needed. The militia would have easily restored order
when the draft rioting broke out, but they were out of town in July of 1863.
The malcontents were left with a law and order vacuum in which they could run
amok as they pleased… at first.
There was
plenty of discontent in New York City in 1863, but poor immigrants didn’t
incite it. Upper-class commercial
interests wanted to preserve the Union, but they wanted it preserved the way it
was, protecting New York’s interests in the cotton trade, and supplying
manufactured products to a slave owning, cotton producing South.
They also had interests in booze and sugar. Many were stout old Anglo-Saxon stock with
pedigrees from Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, Yale and Union colleges, but not
all.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
-- Emma Lazarus, Statue of Liberty poem
If you’ve ever
wondered how the door got to be golden, the legacy of Ms. Lazarus helps shed
some light on the question.
Before the
Erie Canal was born, a group of Quaker entrepreneurs led by Jeremiah Thompson
began planning a packet shipping system that would make it economical and
highly profitable to ship cotton from the American South to England. Their Black Ball Line of packet ships would
run on a regular schedule to Liverpool carrying cotton shipped from Southerner
ports to New York, bringing back to New York from England whatever was
profitable.
Cotton wasn’t
New York’s only Southern connection. Ms.
Lazarus was the daughter of Moses Lazarus, a wealthy merchant, who was the
business partner of Bradish Johnson. Johnson
and Lazarus owned sugar refining interests and a large distillery and stables
along the Hudson River in what’s now the Chelsea neighborhood. Johnson was born in Louisiana and educated at
Columbia. Sugar for the refinery was
imported from Louisiana plantations Johnson inherited from his Nova Scotia ship
captain father. In quasi-feudal New
York, Johnson’s political vassal was Michael “Butcher Mike” Toumey, publican
and Tammany politician, who’d been born and lived in the 14th Ward
where the old St. Patrick’s Cathedral was located. Johnson and Toumey represented Democratic “preserve
the Union as it was” interests. In
1858, Toumey’s political star fell when he became entangled in the swill milk
scandal defending Johnson against reformers who wanted to shut down the Johnson
cattle stables that were producing contaminated, baby-killing milk. Toumey would reappear years later in an upper-west-side
New York closer to Johnson’s interests.
Johnson would become notorious during the war for suing a Union army
general who confiscated Johnson’s plantation property and for proposing that Lincoln
let Louisiana reenter the Union as a slave state. There is no direct connection known between
the riots and Johnson and Toumey, but 16th, , 20th and 22nd
wards neighborhoods near Johnson’s interests were among the parts of the city
where the worst riot battles were fought.
Another
examples of New York’s Southern connection was the relationship of August
Belmont, a German immigrant, and John Slidell who graduated from Columbia in
1810 and moved to Louisiana in 1819 to make his fortune. Financier Belmont married Slidell’s niece and
became the political protégé of now senator and Southern Democrat Slidell. Unionist Belmont would campaign throughout the
war for “the Union as it was,” backing Douglas in 1860 and George McClellan
against Lincoln in the 1864 election.
Shifty Mayor
Fernando Wood, descended from Welsh Quakers and German immigrants, spent his “formative
years in Kentucky, South Carolina, and Virginia.” He split with Tammany Hall before the war, believing
New York’s economy and his national political aspirations were tied to the
South. First, he proposed New York
secede with the South, then he joined the Union Defense committee. He sponsored a regiment. Then he campaigned on propaganda claiming
freed blacks would come North to take white jobs.
To add to the city’s
discontent, the city’s upper-classes were oblivious to the plight of the people
who worked for them and who were doing the Union army’s fighting. Wages weren’t keeping up with inflation and
conscription was another burden for those who worked. The bodies piled up, conscription loomed,
and the Archbishop held a requiem mass for the Irish Brigade at the first St.
Patrick’s cathedral for the many dead at Malvern Hill, Antietam and
Fredericksburg. As the Confederates
marched towards Gettysburg, New York City’s elites planned a yachting regatta.
Later in 1864,
to underscore the oblivious wartime disposition of the elites, Harvard, Yale,
Amherst, Williams and Brown held a rowing regatta and baseball games. The dead from the battles in the Wilderness, Spotsylvania
and Cold Harbor were barely warm, some still unburied. Fordham’s James P. McMahon was among the
dead, his body riddled with 18 bullets as he stood atop the Confederate
fortifications at Cold Harbor urging on his 164th Regiment
volunteers. Among the Yale crew at the 1864
summer regatta, E.D. Coffin, Jr., ancestor of Yale’s Vietnam War protester,
William Sloane Coffin.
Not all the
governing were oblivious. A strong Union
man, New York’s Governor Seymour responded immediately when Lincoln asked him
to call out the militia during the Gettysburg emergency. But at the same time, Seymour was a Democrat
who objected to the Lincoln administration’s arrest of dissenting civilians,
conscription and its class privilege, and the Emancipation Proclamation.
He was not
alone. The Emancipation Proclamation was
the last straw for some in the “loyal” opposition. These upper-class commercial interests banded
together to form the “Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge,” which
started churning out anti-Lincoln and pro-Slavery propaganda. Yale’s Samuel Morse, the telegraph inventor
and the Society’s most rabid pro-slavery propagandist and Nativist, was
president. Manton Marble, editor of
August Belmont’s New York World, was secretary.
Samuel Tilden and Seymour were members.
Its contributors included Robert Winthrop, Amasa Parker and George
Comstock.
When I was a
small boy, my grandmother, who was old enough to remember the old pirate Dan
Sickles of Excelsior Brigade fame hopping up and down 5th Avenue,
would point to a building on the other side of the street and say: “That’s where the forty thieves lived.”
My father had
to explain: “Everyone loves firemen now. Back in the old days they were trouble. They’d put out fires … and then take home
anything they liked that hadn’t burned with the house.”
“You mean they
stole?”
“Yes, and
sometimes the fire companies would fight over who got to loot the buildings.”
“Daddy, what
does loot mean?”
As Adrian Cook
observed in his careful study of the draft riots and its casualties, The Armies of the Streets, the draft
started quietly enough on July 11th and ended the day without
trouble. Things might have remained that way when it restarted on
Monday, July, 13th. After
great Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg earlier in July, it seemed
that an end to the war might be near. Since
the names drawn on the first day didn’t appear to disfavor any ethnic group,
perhaps no one group of New Yorkers had reason to complain.
THE DRAFT.
Yesterday's Operations
Over 1,200 Names Drawn -- No Excitement
Everybody Quiet and Everything
as it Should be
The Drawings to be Resumed
To-Morrow
Full Lists of the Drafted Men
New York Times, July 12, 1863
Unfortunately,
Cook notes, the Ninth District draft office authorities had “the bad luck to
draw the names of several members of Black Joke Engine 33, including John
Masterson, brother of the company’s foreman.”
The firemen argued they should be exempt from the draft. The Masterson’s
were neither immigrants nor poor, but solidly middle class contractors and
small-time politicians. Betraying their
attitudes toward Lincoln and slavery, the nickname of their company celebrated
a slave ship turned privateer during the war of 1812. Though two blacks
allegedly worked for the Black Joke, they weren’t allowed to bunk with the
white firemen.
Over the weekend, the anti-Lincoln newspapers
continued their drumbeat of anti-Lincoln, anti-draft propaganda, focusing on real
and imagined conscription inequities, including the class privilege that
allowed the wealthy to avoid service, if drafted, by paying $300. In an editorial on July 16th, the
New York Times, then the flagship newspaper of the Republican party, singled
out for villainy Manton Marble and August Belmont’s New York World: “Who has day after day
devoted time and talent and strength to denunciations of the law
[conscription] …”
The New
York Copperhead attacked conscription and the class-privileged $300
exemption with a parody of the James S. Gibbons poem “We’re Coming, Father
Abraham.”
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred
thousand more,
We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding
hearts and sore,
Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy
decree,
We are the poor who have no wealth to purchase
liberty.
When
rioters attacked the Gibbons house at Lamartine Place, in Bradish Johnson territory,
thinking it belonged to Horace Greely, a sometime Gibbons visitor, it is one of
the few draft riots connections to sectarian troubles. Eight years later, almost to the day, the
Lamartine Orange Hall’s decision to stage a Boyne Day march ended with scores
of “rioters” gunned down by the New York militia guarding the Orange marchers.
On Monday the
13th when the draft resumed, the Black Joke firemen attacked the
Ninth District office to destroy its records and liberate their drafted
comrades. A crowd gathered. Police reinforcements arrived. The firemen showed up with their wagon filled
with rocks. The police held them off
for a while, but were soon overcome and the firemen burned down the draft
office. The fire spread to nearby
buildings. When police Superintendent
Kennedy arrived on the scene, former policeman Francis Cusick knocked Kennedy
and his driver Murphy unconscious.
Rioters cut the telegraph cables that connected the city police
precincts. Police telegraph
superintendent Crowley reconnected the wires.
Police reinforcements started to arrive.
Unfortunately, they didn’t arrive at the same time, but showed up in
small squads that were routed piecemeal by the rioters.
Colonel Robert
Nugent, an Irish Brigade commander who had been put in charge of the provost
marshal’s bureau and the draft after being wounded at Fredericksburg, heard
there was trouble. It was at this
point, Cook observes, a well-organized military force could have handily put
down the riot and ended the trouble. Even
a rumor that the city’s 7th Regiment was on the way would have
probably sent the rioters scurrying. Unfortunately,
the 7th and other city militia regiments who backed up the police
during civil disturbances were in still in Pennsylvania and Maryland, thanks to
Lincoln’s call for reinforcements and Governor’s Seymour’s response back in
June. Nugent had only 70 soldiers
recovering from wounds who were assigned to light duty in the Invalid Corps. He sent a squad of 30 to the Ninth District
office. Like the police, they were
quickly routed. Kennedy still
unconscious, the police were leaderless.
Chaos ensued.
It was
July. It was hot. It was muggy.
The streets of a crowded city were crowded. At first curious, the crowds were drawn to
the chaos, young boys and others joined the mob of rioters. John Andrew, a Confederate sympathizer from
Virginia, jumped on a shanty and harangued the mob: Lincoln’s a despot, rich man’s war, poor
man’s fight, down with conscription. The
mob set more fires and started looting along 40th street.
Irishman
Patrick Merry led a mob one way, according to Cook’s narrative. English immigrant Thomas Sutherland led a
mob another, rallying workers from factories, including his own Allaire Iron
Works and the Novelty Iron Works, which had manufactured the turret for the USS
Monitor. Francis Cusick headed downtown
to cause trouble along 2nd Avenue where an armory and the Union
Steam Works were located. Later as my
uncle put it, “The morons burned the colored children’s orphanage.” But not before the police were able to
evacuate all the children to a police station.
Mobs, often small bands of men and boys, began attacking the city’s
African Americans, who at first are taken completely by surprise. The rioters’ battle cry is class-privilege:
down with the draft and the privilege that let the rich avoid serving by paying
$300, a year’s wages for a laborer.
Anyone with dark skin, known-Republicans, anyone wearing a suit was at
risk. The rioting took a bizarre and
even more savage turn when blacks were lynched for defending themselves. “How dare you shoot back when all we were
trying to do was beat you within an inch of your life, strip you naked, throw you
in the river, and burn down your house if we could before the police arrived.” If the shooter got away the rioters grabbed
anyone with dark skin unlucky enough to be in the vicinity.
Police
Commissioner Acton and Mayor Opdyke tried to take charge of the situation and
began sending out appeals for help.
General Sanford of the state militia could only rally a few hundred of the
remaining militia, most untrained recruits.
General Wool was in charge of the skeleton force of troops at the harbor
forts, but there were only a few hundred of these, and most as unseasoned as
the militia. The Navy was able to
mobilize a few hundred sailors and marines from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and
ships in the harbor.
In one history’s
interesting coincidences, Richard Worsam Meade, nephew of the Army of Potomac’s
Gettysburg commander George Gordon Meade, took charge of the naval battalion of
sailors and marines who helped secure New York below Chambers street during the
rioting. Meade was an alumnus of Annapolis and Holy Cross College, which he
attended along with the children of other prominent Catholic families. He had been born in New York City and was
posted home after being wounded while commanding the ironclad USS Louisville
during the Mississippi River campaigns in 1862.
Mayor Okdyke
telegraphed Washington.
NEW YORK CITY,
July 13, 1863
Hon.
E.M. Stanton,
Secretary
of War:
Sir:
The national draft has been resisted in this city to-day. A riot
has ensued. It threatens to be serious. A block of buildings has
been burned, including a provost-marshal’s office. We have but little
military force to suppress it.
-- Geo.
Opdyke, Mayor
General
Halleck replied on behalf of the War Department
WAR DEPARTMENT,
Washington, July 14, 1863—2.37 p.m.
Governor
Seymour,
New
York
Sir:
The Secretary of War requests that you will call out sufficient militia to quell
the riot and enforce the laws in the city. Please confer with General
Wool, who will co-operate with you.
If
absolutely necessary, troops will be sent from Maryland, but this should be
avoided as long as possible. Please telegraph if you deem them necessary
to assist in maintaining order.
-- Henry Halleck,
General-in-Chief
Halleck was
apparently unaware that he, Halleck, was then commander of virtually the entire
New York State militia, which in July of 1863 was still stationed in
Pennsylvania and Maryland. Perhaps,
understandably, Halleck was distracted.
General George Gordon Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac, had
pursued Lee after the Gettysburg battle and trapped Lee on the east side of the
Potomac River on the 13th of July.
Meade planned to attack the heavily entrenched Confederates the next day
– but before Meade could, the rain-swollen Potomac subsided and Lee escaped to
the west bank during the night.
With the
meagre forces on hand Acton, Sanford and Wool tried to regain control of the
city. This was complicated since Wool
was old and tired and ceded his authority to General Harvey Brown. Sanford and Brown wouldn’t cooperate. Sanford wanted to defend the armories and
arsenals. Brown wanted to go on the
offensive and fight the mobs in the streets.
The militia and army went their separate ways. Citizen groups started organizing vigilante
committees to protect their neighborhoods.
Under Acton, the police began concentrating their forces. Almost immediately Acton’s “SWAT” battalions,
strike groups numbering 100 to 200 police officers, began defeating the mobs,
an impressive feat since Acton refused to issue rifles to his men, expecting them
to rely on their police clubs. Late on
the 13th the police defeated a mob of 200 headed downtown at Bleeker
and Broadway a few blocks north of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Later that the police drove off the mob led
by James Whitten that invaded the Tribune building.
With police SWAT
battalions taking on the role of the militia, the city’s African Americans were
left vulnerable to small bands of men and boys who were attacking blacks on
sight throughout the city, as Cook recounts.
Blacks fled to Brooklyn and New Jersey.
In some places, neighbors, churches and fellow workers defended the
blacks. A French navy ship gave
sanctuary to 200 black sailors and the British consulate took in 100. In the
few neighborhoods where there was a large black presence, blacks successfully
defended themselves, e.g, Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village. The city’s blacks did not go down without a
fight. Where they lost the fight it led
to two of the three lynchings that the riots are now infamous for. The police held onto almost all of their
precinct buildings and these became refuges for many of the city’s blacks. Central headquarters took in 700 black
refugees, another precinct took in 400. The
20th precinct took in the 200 orphans from the burned orphanage,
according to Cook. At one precinct the
police armed the black men to help hold off besieging rioters. The police steamboat ferried many blacks to
the safety of Governor’s Island. The
police were ineffective in protecting black property from arson and looting,
and ineffective in preventing molestation of the black population, though often
stopping incidents, but there is no question that the police were effective in
saving many, many black lives, limiting
fatalities to less than a dozen in wave of violence that took the lives of 122
New Yorkers.
Cook’s
carefully researched list of draft riots deaths and the New York Times list of
major fires (July 18, 1863) helps follow how the chaos played out (see map of
deaths and fires below). Most of the
arson occurred on July 13th while riot deaths peaked on July 14th
during the uptown battles between rioters, the police and army.
July 13th,
21 killed
The locations
are known for all but one of the deaths:
·
Ninth Street
draft office near 43rd Street and 3rd where the riot
began (19th Ward) - three policemen attacked by rioters killed or
missing.
·
Colored
Children’s Asylum near 5th Avenue and
42nd Street (19th Ward – 7 pm) – orphanage burned
and bystander, 13-year-old Jane Barry killed by a piece of furniture thrown out
the window while rioters sacked the orphanage.
·
Armory fight
and arson fire at 2nd Avenue and 21st Street (infamous 18th
Ward – 5 pm) – Police shot two rioters and nine rioters and one firemen died when
rioters set the armory on fire.
·
Downtown near
Chambers and Oak streets (5th Ward) - rioters beat a Native American
to death, believing he is an African American.
·
Clarkson
Street near Greenwich (9th Ward) – rioters lynched William Jones, a
black man, after another black man shoots rioter Nicholson in self-defense.
·
Madison and
Catherine Street (4th Ward) – rioters beat black man Jeremiah
Robinson to death.
·
A bystander
falls to his death at West 29th Street (20th Ward)
·
Police SWAT
battalion defeats mob led by Whitten at Tribune building (1st Ward)
– no known fatalities.
·
Police SWAT
battalion defeats mob of 200-300 headed south at Broadway and Bleeker (15th
Ward), north of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Police return to headquarters chanting “Red, White and Blue.” No known fatalities. Acton refused to arm police with rifles and
orders them to use their clubs. Irish
cops this time win Boyne Day battle.
·
677 3rd Avenue
(19th Ward - 11 am). Provost-Marshal JENKINS' enrolling office.
Three buildings burned. Loss $25k.
· Lexington Avenue between 44th and 45th
Streets (19th Ward - 3 pm). Two brown stone buildings and their
contents burned. Loss $28k.
· 44th Street, between 4th and 5th
Avenues (19th Ward - 4:30 pm). Bull's Head Hotel, owned by Mr. Allerton
burned. Loss $20k.
· 429 Grand Street (7th/13th Ward- 8 pm). Enrolling Office and dwelling of
Prevost-Marshal John Duffy burned. Loss $10k.
·
62 Roosevelt Street (4th
Ward – 9 pm). Frame dwelling, occupied by colored people. Loss $100.
·
1100 Broadway (20th
Ward – 5 pm). Provost-Marshal B.F.
Manniere’s Enrolling Office and twelve
other buildings destroyed by fire, from 28th to 29th
Streets. Loss $125k.
·
87th Street (12th
Ward - 9:30 pm). Residence of Postmaster
Wakeman burned and 23rd Precinct Police Station-house, directly in
rear at 86th Street, also destroyed. Total losses $40k.
July 14th,
51 killed
The locations
are known for 35 of the deaths. Commissioner
Acton: “the 18th Ward is a plague.”
·
Near 1st
Avenue and 18th Street (18th Ward)– one rioter shot by
army and another by a bystander.
·
Along West 29th
Street (20th Ward) – a policeman was shot by the army.
·
Armory and
Union Steam Works near 2nd Avenue and 21st Street (18th
Ward) – army and police shot five
rioters. One bystander was shot by a
rioter and another was beaten to death by a rioter. Two rioters and a bystander were beaten to
death by the police.
·
2nd
Avenue and 34th Street (21st Ward) - 2-year-old Ellen Kirke was killed by army
gunfire. In retaliation, Colonel Henry
O’Brien was brutally murdered by the child’s relatives and neighbors.
·
5th
Avenue and 47th Street (22nd Ward) – a rioter was beaten
to death by an unknown assailant.
·
Along 9th
Avenue from 29th to 44th streets (20th and 22nd
Wards) – A rioter shot a bystander. Army
shot two rioters and two rioters were shot by unknown assailants.
·
Near 10th
Avenue and 41st Street (22nd Ward) – one rioter shot by
army, another shot by unknown assailant.
·
At Burling
Slip near Maiden Lane (2nd Ward) – a bystander was beaten to death
by an unknown assailant.
·
Near
Greenwich, Leroy and 12th Street (9th Ward) – rioter shot
by civilian, African American beaten to death by rioter.
·
Pitt Street near
Grand (11th Ward)—Eight rioters shot by army.
·
Worth Street
(5Th Ward) – Ann Derrickson of a mixed race family is beaten and
later dies.
·
129th Street
and 3rd Avenue (12th Ward - 3:30 am). Six frame buildings burned. Loss $22k.
·
11th Ave and 41st
Street (22nd Ward - 12:30
pm). Allerton’s hotel burned. Loss $15k.
·
Weehawken Ferry-house,
foot of 42nd Street, North River (22nd Ward - 3 pm). Loss
$6k.
· 73 and 75 Roosevelt Street (4th Ward – 5 pm). Two
dwellings occupied by colored families burned down. Loss $3k.
· 163 East 22nd Street (18th Ward – 11 pm). 18th Precinct Station-house, fire
alarm bell-tower and No. 51 engine house, all destroyed by fire. Loss $20k.
· 24 East 33rd Street (21st Ward - 11:45 pm).
Dwelling and library of Mr. Jared Peck, Port Warden, burned. Loss $5k.
July 15th,
27 killed
The locations
are known for all but four of the dead
·
10th
Avenue and 41st-42nd streets (22nd Ward) – three
rioters and a bystander shot by unknown assailants.
·
1st
and 2nd avenues 19th to 37th street (18th
and 21st Wards)– two soldiers killed by unknown assailants, one
bystander killed by fall, rioter killed by army, an African American killed by
unknown assailant, rioter killed by unknown assailant.
·
East 32nd
Street (21st Ward) – rioter shot by rioter.
·
West 33rd
Street (20th Ward) – African American killed by army, sabre cut.
·
3rd
Avenue 20th-32nd (18th and 20th
Wards) Rioter shot by army, two African Americans killed by unknown assailants,
bystander killed shot by unknown assailant.
·
West 41st
and 42nd streets (22nd Ward) – two rioters shot by
unknown assailants
·
7th
Avenue 28th – 32nd streets – two African American lynched
by rioters, rioter shot by army, rioter shot by civilian, rioter shot by
unknown assailant.
· Avenue C and 14th Street (18th Ward – 2 am). Lumber yard of Ogden and Co. burned. Loss $2k.
· 91 W 32nd Street (20th Ward – 10:30 am). Three brick buildings, occupied as tenement
houses by colored people burned. Loss
$15k.
July 16th,
12 killed
The locations
are unknown for three of the dead
·
1st
Ave and 15th Street (18th Ward) – rioter shot by unknown
assailant.
·
1st
Ave and 34th Street (21st Ward) – African American drowns
when rioters throw him in river.
·
2nd
Avenue (18th Ward) – policeman beaten to death by rioter.
·
2nd
and 3rd avenues and 21st and 22nd Streets (18th
Ward) – bystander shot by army, rioter shot by army, soldier shot by rioter.
·
3rd
Avenue and 42nd Street (19th Ward) – soldier beaten to
death by rioter.
·
9th
and 7th avenues and 32 Street (20th Ward) – two rioters
shot by army.
Unknown July
date, 11 dead
Only four
locations known
·
2nd
Ave and 24th Street (18th Ward) – bystander shot by
unknown assailant.
·
6th
Ave and 21st Street (16th Ward) – bystander shot by
unknown assailant.
·
7th
Ave and 37th Street (20th
Ward) – rioter shot by army.
·
Broome Street
(13th Ward) – Ill woman died of illness after being chased by
rioters
Who died? Most of the dead were the rioters according
to Cook’s accounting with many killed by army gunfire. Professor McPherson concurred with Cooks
assessment of who killed whom: “The
Department of War rushed several regiments from Pennsylvania to New York, where
on July 15 and 16 they poured volleys into the ranks of the rioters with the
same deadly effect they had produced against the Rebels at Gettysburg two weeks
earlier.” This is good illustration of
the Draft Riots mythology, great writing about something that never quite happened
the way it’s portrayed. Army troops did
indeed do most of the shooting, but it was the small force already in the city,
many ill-prepared troops from the harbor forts, who were responsible. No Gettysburg troops were rushed to New York
City. The Gettysburg troops were on the
Potomac pursuing Robert E. Lee when the riots started (by the time the War Department
was alerted to the riots on the 14th, Lee had already escaped into
Virginia). Three New York State militia regiments that
never got close to the Gettysburg fighting were sent back to New York along
with two volunteer regiments from the large Washington defense army that never
got near the Gettysburg fighting, either.
These soldiers arrived very late on the 15th and early on the
16th and following days. None of them arrived in time to do much, if
any shooting. Their presence was mostly
a “mopping up” exercise that relieved the exhausted police, helped restore
order, and let the government send the feckless artillerymen who had battled
the rioters back to the harbor forts.
While it is
hard to question use of force by the army units in defending armories filled
with rifles, complaints about civilian casualties began immediately on the 14th. The allegations are hard to dismiss
entirely. There were simply too many
woman and children among the dead “rioters” (probably 17 or more) for
that. Militia troops had no intention
of harming anyone on the 14th when ordered to fire into the air, but
somehow they shot two-year-old Ellen Kirke.
Kirke’s family and neighbors didn’t care if it was an accident. They literally tore their neighbor militia
Colonel Henry O’Brien apart when he returned to the neighborhood later in the
day. Cook claims that at most the
biggest mobs were made up of 100-200 fighting men, but the streets were filled
with people in the hot summer. Was the
army really justified in shooting 12-year-old Catherine Waters, who may have
simply been an onlooker in the wrong place at the wrong time? Patrick Garvey (14), William Stevens (13)
and William Thompson (10) were killed on Pitt Street along with many others on
the 14th when army troops fired on a crowd in an incident which
might well be judged unjustified by today’s standards. Justified or not, the deaths and injuries
only further enraged the affected neighborhoods.
Rioting was still
severe but on the wane by the 15th.
The army and police were winning all the big mob battles and the police
were taking back control of the streets.
A thousand or more New York citizens volunteered to temporarily join the
police force. Many veterans rejoined
militia and army units to help restore order.
Neighborhoods formed vigilante groups to combat rioters and
looters. Perhaps the most bizarre aspect
of this is the firemen who started the riots joining the vigilantes who defended
the neighborhoods. “In the draft riots
of 1863 Masterson organized his company [“Black Joke” No. 33] in the interests
of law and order, and kept his apparatus ready for service. His conduct won him thanks from a committee
of citizens, and he was presented with a case of pistols, and the members of
his command received a purse of money.”
(NY Times, Death List, October 3, 1900)
On the 15th,
US Provost Marshal General Frye authorized Colonel Nugent to stop the draft in
New York City and Brooklyn and Nugent announced this in the newspapers on the
16th. Also on the 15th,
the city’s Common Council voted to pay the $300 exemption fee for poor men who
are drafted and chose not to serve.
Early on the 16th the 7th Regiment militia returned
to the city. Later on the 16th
the largest Draft Riots crowd gathered at Archbishop Hughes’s residence. The non-violent crowd estimated at 5,000
listened to a rambling speech that can be summed up as: Are there any rioters here? No! If
you don’t like what the government does, use your right to vote to oppose what
you don’t like, not rebellion in the streets.
The riots had ended.
For those like
Orestes Brownson who think Hughes didn’t opposed slavery strongly enough, invoking
the Pope’s 1839 denunciation of slavery, In
Supremo Apostolatus, there are a
number of things to bear in mind. James
McMaster was to blame for the most outrageous “Catholic” apologies for
slavery. While Hughes sold his
newspaper, the Freeman’s Journal, to McMaster,
a rabid states rights Democrat, in 1856, Hughes broke with McMaster and
dissolved any association between McMaster and the church. The
intemperate McMaster was really MacMaster, by the way, and his heritage was
Scots Presbyterian before he converted to Catholicism, merrily becoming the
cafeteria kind and completely ignoring In
Supremo. He was educated at Union
College, Columbia University and the General Theological Seminary of the
Episcopal Church. McMaster argued there was nothing wrong with slavery,
rationalizing perhaps that In Supremo
didn’t really prohibit slavery or prohibit endorsing it in any way. Judge for yourself, In Supremo:
This is why, desiring to remove such a shame from all the
Christian nations, having fully reflected over the whole question and having
taken the advice of many of Our Venerable Brothers the Cardinals of the Holy
Roman Church, and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors, We warn and
adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one
in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to
servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these
practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they
were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no
matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of
justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest
labour. Further, in the hope of gain, propositions of purchase being made to
the first owners of the Blacks, dissensions and almost perpetual conflicts are
aroused in these regions.
We reprove, then, by virtue of Our Apostolic Authority, all the
practices abovementioned as absolutely unworthy of the Christian name. By the
same Authority We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person
from presuming to defend as permissible this traffic in Blacks under no matter
what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner
whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth
in this Apostolic Letter.
In 1863 Hughes
was gravely ill with kidney disease and would be dead by the beginning of the
new year. He had devoted most of his
career to defending Catholic immigrants and telling Nativists that the Catholic
Church in America would stay out of politics.
He stepped over that line to become a Lincoln ally and declare it a just
war when Lincoln’s government used force to oppose secession: secession is an illegal and unconstitutional
act that the government has a right and obligation to oppose. By 1863, Hughes, having celebrated one too
many requiem masses, wanted the bloodshed to end and believed there needed to
be an inclusive political solution to slavery.
He was right. The North would not be able to successfully
impose an end to slavery by military means alone. The 13th and 14th
Amendments to the Constitution were a start, but the solution didn’t truly
begin to be realized until Martin Luther King and a southern president, Lyndon
Johnson, gave us the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Even today we still haven’t addressed all the problems created by
America’s slavery past.
It is
fascinating to read Irish-American James Connolly’s diary and letters written
while Connolly helped General Sherman’s army march through Georgia and South
Carolina in 1864-65. Major Connolly was
the officer who blew the whistle on the Union army general who left scores of
freed slaves behind at Ebenezer Creek to drown or be re-enslaved by the
Confederates. Connolly was vocal about
thrashing Southerners and ending slavery.
In the next breath, he’d tell his wife he’d be home as soon as the job
was done … which would be very soon.
The naivete is hard to fathom today.
After all those Confederates fought so hard to retain their status quo,
Connolly believed he’d go home and the slaves would remain free. In fact, slavery would be over in name only
once Connolly and Sherman went home. Archbishop
Hughes having lived in Maryland for a time was less naïve.
Who were the
rioters? The easy answer long has been to blame the immigrants, i.e., the
Irish. No one ever checked the rioters birth
certificates, passports or visas. There
isn’t a random sample of who they were.
Cook identifies many rioters as Irish, but others weren’t. For example, Cook tells us that Irishman
George Glass led the mob that lynched poor Abraham Franklin, for no other
reason than Franklin’s skin was black.
Then Cook adds that Mark Silva an English Immigrant supplied the rope.
An examination
of Cooks lists (521) of “rioters” and those arrested during the riots suggests
about 45% had names or origins appear to be Irish. That seems reasonable, although the name
game can be tricky. One of Cook’s
rioters is Richard Sears McCulloh, a Columbia University chemistry
professor. His name could be Irish or
Scots. It turns out that the McCulloh’s
ancestors were Scots and Pilgrims. His
father’s name is a very famous part of American history as McCulloch v.
Maryland, the Supreme Court case that held that the U.S. Constitution and laws
in accordance with the Constitution were supreme and could not be controlled by
the states. The younger McCulloh was a
states’ rights Confederate sympathizer.
Ironic, isn’t it. Underlining
the sectarian divisions in those days McCulloh was Columbia’s second choice for
the chemistry job. The first choice was
disqualified from consideration because he was a Unitarian and not an orthodox Presbyterian
or Episcopalian. It is purely
speculation, but McCulloh might have been the riots’ chief arsonist. He disappeared from New York during the
riots and showed up in Richmond offering his services to Jefferson Davis to
make weapons of mass destruction. The
war ended before McCulloh succeeded in weaponizing poison gas. What we can be certain of is that not all
Columbia University professors were arsonists... nor were all Columbia
graduates slavery supporting Southern sympathizers. Irish-American Phil Kearny, a Columbia
alumnus, was one of the North’s most aggressive generals. Had he not been killed in the front lines at
Chantilly in 1862 he might have been asked to command the Army of the Potomac
instead of Meade. Before Columbia,
McCulloh studied and taught at Princeton.
Princeton had lots of Confederates.
There’s plenty
of blame to go around for the riots, rich and poor, FIREMEN, and especially the federal government, which created the
problem in the first place by passing and enforcing a class-privileged
conscription law. The most important point to be made, though, is that most of the city
including its 300,000 Irish immigrants, did not riot. The city’s “bloody” 6th Ward and its
infamous Five Points neighborhood featured in the movie Gangs of New York were relatively quiet. Most of the work to
restore order was done by New Yorkers themselves. If even as much as five percent of New York’s
800,000 citizens had rioted, a few soldiers and police battalions armed only
with clubs would never have defeated the mobs.
According to Cook, “The New York Times estimated that the whole number
of real rioters was only two to three thousand.
The crowds who filled the streets were mostly spectators, though numbers
of them might have taken a marginal part in the rioting: adolescent boys by throwing stones, women by
shrieking obscenities and threats at the police and soldiers or, more rarely,
by putting stones in their stocking to make slingshots.”
The aftermath…
besides providing fodder for those inclined to vilify immigrants? With the riots behind it, the city went back
about its business and immense role in supporting the war. In August, the draft was recommenced without
trouble, a large federal military force in town just in case. Lincoln and Seymour reached an accommodation
lowering the city’s draft quota and the city government promised to “… pay $300
to exempt any drafted FIREMEN [my
emphasis], policemen, members of the militia, or indigent New Yorker who could
prove that his induction into the army would cause hardship to his family.”
The rich and
their children continued to hold their summer regattas and baseball games while
the city’s Irish Brigade, Excelsior Brigade, Corcoran’s Legion, Tammany Hall
regiment and other soldiers fought on at Spotsylvania, the Wilderness and the
siege of Petersburg. The city’s Mozart
Hall regiment returned to the fighting, too, long having renounced its sponsor
Fernando Wood. Otto Von Steuben joined
the city’s German Rangers in February of 1864 and was killed at Spotsylvania along
with his fellow Prussian officer Count Herman Von Haake. Irish American Edward Patrick Doherty, who
fought at Bull Run, was captured, escaped and joined Corcoran’s Legion, led the
16th New York Cavalry contingent that hunted down and killed John
Wilkes Booth in 1865. After many years
residing in New York City, Doherty died in 1897 and was buried at Arlington
Cemetery after his funeral at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Harlem.
Hundreds were
arrested for rioting or looting in the July riots. Only a few dozen were punished, some for riot,
most for robbery, very few for murder, according to Cook’s accounting. Virginian John Andrew was sentenced to three
years hard labor for treason and inciting rebellion. Egert Cox was sent to jail for sixty days for
attacking a tenement where blacks lived.
William Cruise was sent to state prison for two years for his part in
the attack on a mixed race family that resulted in the death of Ann
Derrickson. Michael Doyle was convicted of
larceny and sentenced to fifteen years in state prison. George Glass and Mark Silva, arrested for
lynching Abraham Franklin, were never brought to trial. Neither was Matthew Zweick who was arrested
for the lynching of African American James Costello. The grand jury refused to indict Franicis
Cusick for attacking Superintendent Kennedy and his driver Murphy.
After rioting,
the iron workers in the 18th Ward went back to their jobs, e.g., Franklin’s
Forge, the Allaire Iron Works, and Novelty Iron Works, making machinery to
support the Union war effort. The city
was a major center for iron work, shipbuilding and enlisting sailors to man the
Union navy’s ships. The records for men
joining the Union navy after the riots are very different from those of the
army units of all the states, which remained segregated throughout the war. The “Return of the United States Naval
Rendezvous at New York” for the week
ending December 5, 1863 shows Black, “Colored,” and Mulatto men enlisting one
after another alongside men from Ireland, Germany, England and the United
States.
It would be
the powerful Union navy that would allow General Grant to swing his overland
campaign around Richmond in 1864 and lay siege to Petersburg, much like
McClellan had planned in 1862. Supplied
by sea, Grant was able to sustain a months long siege and eventually drive
Robert E. Lee into the open and defeat at Appomattox.
Some, like the
New York Times Sam Roberts, point to the 1865 New York State census report showing
a decline in New York City’s African American population and blame the Draft
Riots. The 1870 U.S. Census, on the
other hand, shows an increase in the African American population compared to
1860. Apparently, Roberts et al neglected to read the notes accompanying that 1865
census. These acknowledge undercounting
due to difficulties finding enumerators in 1865 and reluctance of many in the
city to being recorded by a government that had subjected them to conscription. Moreover, if the New York State 1855 Census
decline is an indication for African Americans, the state censuses appear to
have had a tendency to undercount the population relative the U.S. Censuses.
US and New
York State Censuses 1850 - 1870
|
New York
City
|
|
Brooklyn
|
|
Census Year
|
Total
|
African American
|
Total
|
African American
|
1850 (US)
|
501,732
|
13,815
|
94,414
|
2,424
|
1855 (state)
|
629,904
|
11,840
|
205,250
|
3,788
|
1860 (US)
|
793,170
|
12,472
|
262,348
|
4,313
|
1865 (state)
|
726,386
|
9,943
|
296,378
|
4,189
|
1870 (US)
|
942,292
|
13,072
|
396,099
|
4,944
|
Another factor
in the 1865 enumeration, by June many of the city’s African American soldiers
and sailors were still mobilized in the Union service. One of the city’s three African-American
regiments appears to have been part of the powerful African-American XXV Corps
that helped trap Lee at Appomattox and was taken by General Sheridan to pacify
Texas and liberate Mexico. It is
fascinating to speculate that some of General Sheridan’s “discharged” soldiers
who helped Juarez evict the French may have been African Americans from New
York City.
Simon
Winchester in his The Professor and the
Madman provides another counterpoint to the narrative of continued New York
City and immigrant support for the war after the riots. Winchester’s story is about an Oxford English Dictionary contributor
who has been driven mad and to murder after being forced to brand an Irish
deserter following the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. To embellish his story, Winchester observes
that after Emancipation (announced in the fall of 1862), “Irish troops … began
to run away, to desert. And large
numbers of them certainly deserted from the terrible flames and bloodshed of
the Battle of the Wilderness.”
Consider the
source, first. Before his success with The Professor and the Madman, Winchester
was a reporter for the Guardian on the Northern Ireland beat during The Troubles. He was best known then for being denounced on
the floor of Parliament by Bernadette Devlin McAliskey. McAliskey objected to a Guardian story where Winchester
justified British soldiers shooting bystander Berney Watt.
The story
about a dictionary contributor haunted by an Irish deserter was probably just a
“Twinkie Defense” dreamed up by lawyers to entertain an English judge and jury
and save a defendant from the gallows.
During the Civil War, the Union army did not use whipping or branding to
punish anyone. It was unconstitutional
cruel and unusual punishment and would have discouraged volunteers from joining
the army. Even if it had happened, it
is unlikely the dictionary contributor Dr. William Minor ever got close to the
Battle of the Wilderness, or its aftermath.
Minor’s military record suggests that, after graduating from Yale, he
was in transit to Washington at the time the battle occurred.
Winchester’s
allegations of Irish desertion are a fiction, too. Desertion was a widespread problem for the
Union army, not confined to one group, e.g., the Army of the Potomac, and the
demographics of the deserters are not, in fact, well known. There is quite a bit of missing data. My own research on New York State unit
records, based on a random sample, does indicate some difference between
soldiers in the city units and soldiers in the upstate units. This primarily reflects early war enlistment differences
and chaotic early city recruiting that was too vulnerable to bounty jumping and
soldiers switching units without authorization. One subject in my sample deserted from the
navy to join the army – maybe he suffered from sea sickness. Upstate and city, the majority of desertions
occurred within the first ninety days of a soldier’s enlistment, probably due
to bounty jumping or failure to adapt to army life. Overall the most desertions occurred during
1861, 62 and 63. By 1864, desertions
declined and there is no unusual desertion activity associated with 1864 and the
Battle of the Wilderness. If anything,
spikes in desertion are associated with time periods when recruiting efforts
were the heaviest. The Emancipation
Proclamation appears to have had no effect on desertion rates.
It is best to
avoid what Aristotle called the Fallacy of Composition, judging a group by the
appearance or behavior of some of its members.
It is better yet to avoid just making things up. Blatant generalizations likely tell us more
about the prejudices of an author than they do about the story the author is
telling. The New York Times conclusion,
however, about responsibility for the New York City Draft Riots was spot on:
“If it were not hopeless to expect foresight from
Governments, we should find good ground for complaint that this City should
have been stripped of all its troops, first by the General Government and then
by Gov. Seymour, and that then the draft should have been put in force when it
was morally certain to meet with sharp resistance.”
- New York Times, July 17, 1863
Poets 1, Princeton 0.
Table
1
Individuals
awarded
the
Medal of Honor
Civil
War
Total
by Birth Country
US
|
1125
|
Ireland
|
148
|
England
|
72
|
Germany
|
70
|
Canada
|
30
|
Scotland
|
26
|
France
|
11
|
Norway
|
6
|
Unknown
|
6
|
Sweden
|
5
|
Denmark
|
3
|
Holland
|
2
|
Austria
|
2
|
Italy
|
2
|
Switzerland
|
2
|
Hungary
|
2
|
Spain
|
2
|
Belgium
|
2
|
Russia
|
2
|
Chile
|
1
|
Cape Verde Islands
|
1
|
Mexico
|
1
|
Malta
|
1
|
India
|
1
|
|
1523
|
|
|
Included in
the total, 25 African American soldiers and sailors, 23 born in the US, 1 born
in Mexico and 1 born in the Cape Verde Islands.
