Enrollment Act

On March 3rd, 1863, the federal government passed the Enrollment Act. This was the first example of conscription or compulsory military service in United States history. It is estimated that of those who took part in the American Civil War, 75,215 were regulars, 1,933,779 were volunteers and 46,347 were drafted and 73,600 were substitutes. Officially, 201,397 men deserted, of these 76,526 were arrested and returned to their regiments.

The war was not over, and Lincoln needed still more men to fight it. He issued the first Federal draft call that summer, eager to replenish his army with 300,000 fresh troops, then finish the job begun by Meade and Grant. All men between twenty and forty-five were enrolled, and all men inducted were to serve three years. The law favored the well-to-do. Any man who could come up with $300 as a "commutation fee," or could find a substitute willing to serve in his place, was exempt. "[This law] is a rich man's bill," Congressman Thaddeus Stevens charged, "made for him who can raise his $300, and against him who cannot raise that sum."

The fathers of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt paid substitutes. So did Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, and two future Presidents, Chester A. Arthur and Grover Cleveland. George Templeton Strong found his substitute, "a big `Dutch' boy of twenty or thereabouts, for the moderate consideration of $1,100 ... My alter ego could make a good soldier, if he tried. Gave him my address and told him to write to me if he found himself in the hospital or in trouble, and that I would try to do what I properly could to help him.” Abraham Lincoln himself, though technically overage, tried to set an example by paying for a substitute, an otherwise unremarkable young man from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, named John Summerfield Staples.

Opportunities for corruption were everywhere. Unscrupulous physicians granted unwarranted deferments for a fee. "The prospect of involuntary service," said the New York Illustrated News, "develops an amount of latent diseases and physical disabilities that are perfectly surprising." Other doctors colluded with substitute brokers, approving for service alcoholics scoured from city streets, invalids, retarded boys lured from their homes. Professional bounty jumpers - men who signed up from one district, received a reward for enlisting, then deserted to do the same from another district - also made a good living: one managed to repeat the process thirty-two times before he was caught.

None were more resentful of the system's inequities than the immigrant Irish of the northern city slums, who feared the blacks with whom they competed for the lowest-paying jobs, and for whose freedom they did not wish to fight. Democratic politicians fanned their anger. "Remember this," said New York Governor Horatio Seymour, "that the bloody and treasonable and revolutionary doctrine of public necessity can be proclaimed by a mob as well as by a government."

On Saturday, July 11, the names of the first draftees were drawn in New York City. They appeared in the newspapers the next day, alongside long lists of those who had fallen at Gettysburg. As more names were drawn on Monday morning, a mostly Irish mob attacked the draft office, destroyed the files, razed the building, then fanned out across the city, stoning Horace Greeley's offices at the New York Tribune, setting fires and looting stores.

Harper's Weekly reported, "On Monday evening, a large number of marauders paid a visit to the extensive clothing store of Messrs Brooks Brothers [and] helped themselves to such articles as they wanted." A woman watched the mob race through the streets: "Thousands of infuriated creatures, yelling, screaming and swearing ... The rush and roar grew every moment more terrific. Up came fresh hordes faster and more furious: bare-headed men, with red, swollen faces brandishing sticks and clubs ... and boys, women and children hurrying on and joining with them in this mad chase up the avenue like a company of raging fiends.”

For three days, the east side of Manhattan belonged to the mob. They broke into the homes of the wealthy and smashed store windows, killed two disabled veterans who tried to stop them, beat the chief of police unconscious, stoned to death an unarmed officer home on leave. But blacks were their special targets: they burned down black boardinghouses, a black church, a black orphanage, and lynched a crippled black coachman while chanting, "Hurrah for Jeff Davis," then set his corpse on fire.

Police and soldiers battled rioters back and forth through the streets, in and out of buildings, across rooftops, until, on the fourth day, sunburned troops fresh from Gettysburg helped impose order. At least 105 people had been killed. Forty-three regiments were eventually encamped around the city to ensure that fighting did not break out again. Smaller but bloody riots occurred in other northern cities, including Boston and Troy, New York. "The nation," wrote the editor of the Washington Times, "is at this time in a state of Revolution, North, South, East and West."

By the mid 1800s, New York City had reached its peak as a cultural melting pot. The wave of European immigrants arriving at the city's ports every day had caused the population to grow to a staggering 813,669 people by 1860. Many of the immigrants were ill and half-starved due to the rough journey on the seas, and arrived in New York grateful to be alive and looking for work.

Most of the city's immigrant population had settled in Lower Manhattan and found work on the docks, in factories or as domestic servants to the city's wealthy. Living conditions were uncomfortable at best; deplorable at worst. It wasn't uncommon to find four or five families squeezing into one-and two-room tenement apartments. Cattle, pigs and chickens openly roamed the streets and lived among the human residents. The notorious neighborhood known as the Five Points — so named because of the five-pointed intersection of Anthony, Orange and Cross Streets — was home to much of the city's German, Polish, Jewish and Italian population. Many Irish-Americans, who had been fleeing their home country since the mid-1820s, and more than half of the city's black population lived here, as well. Tension arose between the two because they competed for similar work and a fear of being unable to provide for their families contributed to the hostility.

With the onset of the Civil War, New York had responded by sending more than 50,000 men to battle. Many of the city's poor, who had joined the war as a way to escape the crippling poverty at home, soon learned that fighting in battle was much worse. Soldiers returned home with limbs amputated or various forms of mental distress. Many were unable to work to support their families, which caused further strain. By the summer of 1863, New York was a town divided. The city's poor population "downtown" struggled to support their families while living in filthy quarters amid crime, corruption, prostitution, gambling and a host of other vices. Lower Manhattan, and the Five Points especially, was home to many of the city's most feared gangs, including the Bowery B'hoys, Plug Uglies, Know-Nothings, Shirt Tails and Dead Rabbits. Meanwhile, the wealthy families lived uptown in opulent mansions and populated the city's most affluent neighborhoods. The wealthy also helped to drive the city's political machine, Tammany Hall.

During the summer of 1863, Confederate general Robert E. Lee led his rebel soldiers to victory at Winchester, Virginia, giving the Southerners a clear passage to the north. As the grim news of the South's victory reached the Northern states, New Yorkers panicked. If Lee crossed the Potomac River, the cities of Baltimore, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia were all vulnerable to attack. New York, already the young country's commercial and industrial center, was particularly at risk, as the city housed a number of Southern ironclad warships in its harbors. There was a good possibility that these ships would be used in an attack on the city. Horace Greeley, publisher of New York's Tribune newspaper, reported that, in fact, Lee was setting his sights on a rebel invasion of Pennsylvania. New York would not be far behind.

For Lee, the invasion's timing was particularly crucial. Thousands of Union soldiers were reaching the end of their enlistment term. The War Department would need to replenish its regiments with approximately 300,000 more soldiers in order to continue fighting the rebels. The first conscription law had passed in March 1863, allowing the first federal draft in history. Lee reasoned that enlisting so many additional troops would take weeks, if not months, and planned his invasion during this period of reorganization. The new law came with a clause. Any man who could provide a substitute, or pay what equaled almost a year's salary of $300, was exempt from going to war. As news of the draft, and its exemption, reached New York, the already tense atmosphere in the city grew even worse. The city's volunteer firemen, who had previously been exempt from serving in the military, were particularly angry. Leaders of the city's No. 33 Engine Company, commonly referred to as the "Black Joke", began to plot their retaliation.

New Yorkers waited anxiously for news of the rebels' attack and what it could mean for them. On 4 July 1863, General Lee's Confederate army was defeated by General George Pickett's Union forces at Cemetery Ridge in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with devastating results. Lee lost nearly one-third of his troops — approximately 28,000 men — with the Union army's losses at 23,000. Lee had little choice but to turn back. New Yorkers rejoiced at Lee's defeat, but not for long. New York's mayor, Republican George Opdyke, had already anticipated rioting. The city's poorer residents were outraged over the upcoming draft, and particularly, the exemption clause, and violence seemed inevitable. New York, already a powder keg of ethnic and racial tension just waiting for a spark, would not have to wait much longer. The draft was scheduled to be held only one week later.

Monday 13 July 1863 was a day different from the rest that summer. When dawn broke, the air was already thick with humidity. The very atmosphere had taken on a new headiness, as though absorbing the city's tense mood. Around 7 AM, crowds of factory and railroad workers, dockhands and other laborers began to gather in the streets of Lower Manhattan. A short time later, they called a work stoppage and began to move uptown towards the city's central draft office at 46th Street and Third Avenue, picking up a variety of weapons, including bricks, bats and clubs. Many carried white signs that read "NO DRAFT". As they walked, several of the women in the mob pulled up live telegraph wires and pried railroad tracks up with crowbars. This would virtually cripple New York's ability to communicate with outlying suburbs and the rest of the country. A number of the city's unemployed men joined the fray as the crowd moved uptown. The mayor arrived at his office in City Hall and received reports of a "serious riot in progress". He called both the state's militia and Major General John Wool of the US Army and asked for standby reinforcements should the rioters get out of control. Tammany politicians didn't necessarily want to stop the rioters, as any legal action on their part could cost them votes on Election Day. William "Boss" Tweed, one of the county's supervisors, stepped in to help Opdyke try to reason with the city's governing board and head off the worst of the mob, with little success.

At 10 AM, the draft office on 46th Street opened and the first of, the crowd gathered outside filed in. Things proceeded peacefully until the Black Joke Engine Company pulled up in front of the building. One of the firemen threw a brick through the window. Almost simultaneously, the rest of the rioters set the building on fire with cries of "Down with the rich".

The spark that the city had long been waiting for had been lit at last. Within hours, a second wave of the mob had formed and was burning buildings, looting and taking on any law enforcement official who crossed their path. Black people were being sought out and publicly lynched, their bodies set on fire as they dangled from tree limbs and any telephone poles that hadn't already been cut down. Mass destruction was not the intent of the initial group that had shown up at the draft office at 46th Street, who meant to protest the draft peacefully, but would defend themselves if necessary. Fighting, looting and rioting continued all across the city throughout the day.

One of the most vulnerable targets for the rioters was the Colored Orphans Asylum on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. Founded by three Quakers in 1843 and financially supported by both white and black benefactors, the stately mansion housed 233 children. As the mob, who by now numbered well over 1,000 men, women and children, approached the orphanage, the staff rounded up all of the children and issued them strict orders to be quiet. Remarkably, the superintendent and head matron were able to get all of the children out safely through the building's back door to 44th Street. A few of the children who strayed away from the rest of the group were returned by sympathetic adults whom the group passed on their way. Meanwhile, the mob stormed through the front door, taking as much food, clothing and any other items they could carry before setting fire to the building. The entire orphanage was destroyed in 20 minutes

By nightfall, smoke was coming from fires all over town. The mob had steadily moved further uptown and started burning mansions and townhouses in the Upper East and Upper West Sides of the city. Around 11 PM, rioters made their way to the offices of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune on Park Row. The newspaper, which had unashamed Republican bias throughout the war, had printed editorials that clearly incensed the city's immigrant population. The newspaper's staff was ready, however, and met the rioters with an arsenal of their own. Staffers had armed themselves with guns, grenades, blockades of newsprint and had melted down the lead from the printing presses, ready to pour onto the angry mob.

The rioting and looting continued through the night and into Tuesday, July 14. Ironically, the Black Joke Engine Company, who had started the rioting on Monday morning, was helping law enforcement patrols try to put down the mobs and restore order. Other volunteer fire companies were doing the same throughout the city. Over the course of the two days, entire black neighborhoods had been pillaged and burned. Some of New York's white residents hid black fugitives who had been forced out of their homes. Many black people had fled the city altogether and taken refuge in Manhattan's suburbs, particularly Brooklyn, where the draft had taken place without incident only a few months earlier. Surprisingly, despite the hostilities that existed between the Irish-Americans and African-Americans in the city's notorious Five Points neighborhood, there had been very few episodes of violence reported there. By most accounts, Tuesday saw the worst of the rioting.

The riots continued for the rest of the week, until the mob was finally put down on Saturday, 18 July 1863. General Wool had brought in a number of infantrymen for additional riot control. Many of the soldiers had recently returned from the Civil War battlefield, only to find a war of a different kind on the streets of New York City.

It was reported that 73 soldiers and 105 policemen were injured over the course of the week. Numbers vary as to how many people were actually killed in the riots. Though newspapers originally reported that approximately 1,200 people were killed, later numbers stated that it was closer to 500.

Most of the city's residents demanded justice for the rioters. Tammany officials were fully aware of the public outcry, and assured them that the harshest punishments would be delivered. It was difficult to prosecute many of the rioters, however. Out of the nearly 500 people who had charges brought against them, more than half of them were dropped due to lack of evidence. Looters and thieves were given the harshest sentences — those nearly equal to murderers'.

The Civil War draft riots impacted both New York City and the rest of the US for years afterward. Despite the Union's victory in 1865, it would take years for the country to heal its wounds and become one again. New York and its people would call on its fighting spirit to rebuild the city countless times in later years. The draft riots and their aftermath remain a dark period in the city's colorful, but turbulent, history.

Sara Hodon. Gotham Mayhem. History Magazine. August/September 2009.

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