The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil WarOxford University Press, 1991 M10 10 - 376 pages For five days in July 1863, at the height of the Civil War, New York City was under siege. Angry rioters burned draft offices, closed factories, destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines, and hunted policemen and soldiers. Before long, the rioters turned their murderous wrath against the black community. In the end, at least 105 people were killed, making the draft riots the most violent insurrection in American history. In this vividly written book, Iver Bernstein tells the compelling story of the New York City draft riots. He details how what began as a demonstration against the first federal draft soon expanded into a sweeping assault against the local institutions and personnel of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party as well as a grotesque race riot. Bernstein identifies participants, dynamics, causes and consequences, and demonstrates that the "winners" and "losers" of the July 1863 crisis were anything but clear, even after five regiments rushed north from Gettysburg restored order. In a tour de force of historical detection, Bernstein shows that to evaluate the significance of the riots we must enter the minds and experiences of a cast of characters--Irish and German immigrant workers, Wall Street businessmen who frantically debated whether to declare martial law, nervous politicians in Washington and at City Hall. Along the way, he offers new perspectives on a wide range of topics: Civil War society and politics, patterns of race, ethnic and class relations, the rise of organized labor, styles of leadership, philanthropy and reform, strains of individualism, and the rise of machine politics in Boss Tweed's Tammany regime. An in-depth study of one of the most troubling and least understood crises in American history, The New York City Draft Riots is the first book to reveal the broader political and historical context--the complex of social, cultural and political relations--that made the bloody events of July 1863 possible. |
Contents
3 | |
DRAFT RIOTS AND THE SOCIAL ORDER | 15 |
ORIGINS OF THE CRISIS 1850s AND 1860s | 73 |
Illustrations | 124 |
RESOLUTIONS OF THE CRISIS 1860s AND 1870s | 193 |
The Draft Riots Lost Significance | 259 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
AICP American Armies artisans Association Astor Place riot attacks August Belmont Avenue Bellows bosses bricklayers builders building Catholic Citizens city's Civil Committee conflict conscription Cooper crowd cultural district draft riots early East Side economic eight-hour movement elite employers factory federal Fernando Wood fifties George German Greeley groups Herald Horace Greeley Horatio Allen Horatio Seymour House immigrant Industrial Congress industrial workers industrialists Irish iron James John John Adams Dix journeymen July 14 June Kleindeutschland leaders longshoremen loyal manufacturing MARC martial law Mayor merchants metropolitan mid-century Monday municipal Olmsted Opdyke organization police poor Provost racial reformers Republican Party rioters Roach rule Seymour Society Street strike Tammany Tammany Hall Tammany's Tilden tion trade unions Tribune Tweed Tweed Ring Union League Club Upper East Side upper-class uptown urban violence wage earners Ward wartime waterfront West Side William working-class workmen York City York's Young America
Popular passages
Page vii - Thanks, also, to grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities...